Activism research is over-reliant on social psychological frameworks emphasising framing or ideological-based explanations. The current underdevelopment of resource-based accounts requires urgent attention from social movement scholars. Stressing the rationality of social movement actors, resource mobilisation theory is used to assess and understand the empirical validity of resource-driven social mobilisation. Anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) activism in France is selected as a uniquely ripe context for exploring resource mobilisation. A resourcebased examination reveals why, when and how key anti-GMO movement actors differentiated their strategies on the basis of protest, politics and produce. A new framework is proposed to encompass key variables around material, human and network-based resources. It is argued that resource mobilisation research designs need to move beyond financially driven causal arguments.

, , , , ,
doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2013.818955, hdl.handle.net/1765/125755
Local Environment : The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability
Department of Public Administration and Sociology (DPAS)

McCauley, D.A. (2015). Protest, Politics and Produce. Local Environment : The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 18(6), 34–49. doi:10.1080/13549839.2013.818955