Social movement theory, especially the resource mobilization perspective, as yet lacks the theoretical tools to comprehended the subjective motivations of its participants.  The research reported here, based on in-depth interviews with 30 center-left religious social activists, combines a motivational typology derived from religious ethics with Weber's social action schema to comprehend the root reasons these long-term activists give for undertaking work for social betterment. 

The activists demonstrate four kinds of motives.  The teleological/utilitarian motives on which resource mobilization theory focuses are clearly goal-rational (in Weberian terms).  Yet deontological (value-rational), cathekontic, and "charismatic" motives are clearly more important for this population.  These last two categories modify and enrich Weber's schema – a possibility to which he was open. 

Keywords

Religious social activism; ethics; social movement theory; Max Weber

TEXT

There is a growing consensus that resource mobilization theory – the dominant paradigm in the study of social movements – suffers from a flawed social psychology (Zurcher and Snow 1981; Klandermans 1984; Cohen 1985; Ferree 1992; Gamson 1992; Mueller 1992; Buechler 1993).  This approach originally developed as a challenge to an older school – connected to but not identical with collective behavior theory (Turner and Killian 1957; Smelser 1963; Turner 1964; Toch 1965) – that focused on individuals in collective situations.  The earlier approach had emphasized such things as the psychology of "the true believer" (Hoffer 1951), the evolution of individual grievances into policy proposals (Judkins 1979), the ways that people are recruited to the "new religious movements" (Lofland and Stark 1965; Snow 1976)[1] "often for reasons bearing little relationship to the movement's goals and assumptions" (Turner 1981, p. 4), and so on.

The resource mobilization perspective (hereafter R-M) found

people's shared grievances, interests and aspirations considerably less problematic than their capacity to act on them collectively.  From this perspective, the key question asked of a social movement is no longer, 'Why do these people want social change so badly and believe that it is possible?' but rather, 'How can these people organize, pool resources and wield them effectively?' (Fireman and Gamson 1979, p. 9)

Though in many respects this was a change in direction, not a denial of the earlier approach (Oberschall 1973; Turner 1981;[2] but see Gamson 1975), researchers working in the R-M tradition threw doubt on several earlier social-psychological hypotheses.  Movement participants appear not to be typically marginal or alienated (Leahy and Mazur 1978; Oberschall 1973; Kenniston 1968; cf. Opp 1989); they lack characteristic personality traits (Klandermans 1983; Roberts and Kloss 1974); and they often do not even share grievances (Walsh and Warland 1983; Gerlach and Hine 1970).  Similarly, Turner and Killian's (1957) notion that social movements arise in socially disorganized settings and attract persons whose institutional attachments are weak was contradicted by several studies (Snow, Zurcher and Eckland-Olson 1980; Gamson 1975; Morris 1984; see McCarthy and Zald 1977; see Snow et al 1986).  Various authors also faulted the social-psychological approach for portraying movement participants as passive and irrational (e.g., Lofland 1977; Traugott 1978; McCarthy and Zald 1977; Hannigan 1985; Richardson 1985).

Yet despite R-M theory's notion "that movements are produced and shaped by organizations engaged in the rational selection of strategies and tactics for the mobilization of resources," such theories also assumed things about the ways that individuals act.  Specifically, "adherents are generally viewed as acting rationally within the movement" (Turner 1981, p. 9), but the rationality meant was of a particular kind.  R-M theory stressed the continuities between institutional and non-institutional behavior, and saw both types of behavior as motivated by incentives.  As Ferree and Miller (1985) noted, some theorists focused on the ways that movement entrepreneurs reward movement participants personally (McCarthy and Zald 1977).  Others showed how individuals are rewarded when the movement realizes its collective goals (Gamson 1975; Tilly 1978).  In either case, theorists treated individuals as if they calculated the costs and benefits of movement participation (McCarthy and Zald 1977; Jenkins 1983; Marullo 1988; see Fireman and Gamson, 1979).  The R-M view – overtly or tacitly – saw individuals as rational utilitarians.[3]

As Hirsch (1990) noted, however, social movement participants' actions often do not match those predicted by a utilitarian calculus.  Authorities often attempt to penalize movement participation, without much effect.

Increased costs do not always result in decreased participation in the movement; protesters often respond to threats and repression by developing a greater willingness to ignore personal costs in favor of the collective struggle. (Hirsch 1990, p. 244)

This can be true even if the outlook for collective success is dim (Hirsch 1986, 1990; McAdam 1986).  Were movement participants thinking about costs and benefits – even where the 'benefits' involve solidarity, not just self-interest (Fireman and Gamson 1979) – increased repression should increasingly discourage them.  When it does not, other factors must intervene.

Recognizing the inadequacy of a purely utilitarian image of social movement participation, several theorists in the past few years have attempted to combine social-psychological and R-M approaches.  Klandermans (1984) applied expectancy-value theory to movement participation, yet without leaving the utilitarian framework.  Ferree and Miller (1985) substituted a cognitive social psychology based on attribution theory for the incentive model, and concluded that ideology has an independent causal role in determining whether one joins movement activities.  Snow et al (1986) used Goffman's (1974) notion of frame alignment to argue that movement participation occurs only after individuals come to see the world in movement-informed ways. 

As Buechler (1993) pointed out, each of these corrections is a partial, not a complete, solution.  The first, as noted, does not transcend utilitarianism.  The second and third give ideology (or "framing") independent status but do not directly confront the limits of R-M theory's psychology; presumably people still act in a utilitarian way within the frames that their ideologies set (although Ferree 1992 has provided a cogent critique of utilitarian rational theorizing).

Yet the research reported here shows that this is not the case.  Without returning to a collective behavior approach, I shall show that social movement participants report acting from a range of motives – utilitarianism among them.  From the subjective point of view, they evidence not one but four concrete styles of reasoning in making choices about movement participation.  These styles amount to a typology of social action, one similar to but more complete than Weber's (1922) social action schema.  Use of this schema does not undercut the R-M approach; instead it clarifies the level on which R-M's tacit utilitarianism operates.  It also allows for a more complete understanding of social movement actor's motives without discarding either R-M's emphasis on actors' rationality or its useful focus on social movement organizations.

The article is organized as follows.  It begins by presenting a tripartite schema for the analysis of motives that was originally developed by philosophical and religious ethicists.  It then reports the results of interviews with 30 white, progressive, religiously-oriented social activists about their activist involvements and the reasons that they work for social change.  They were asked for their movement histories, their general reasons for choosing a life of activism, and to recount their motives for specific choices they had made in their work.  The in-depth, open-ended interview format both encouraged reflection and brought forth extensive detail. 

These interviews call for the addition of a fourth motivational category, one parallel to (but modified from) Weber's typology.  The resulting neo-Weberian schema is, I argue, a better tool for understanding social movement actors' motives than is R-M theory's tacit utilitarianism. 

Three Types of Motives

Philosophical and theological ethicists divide ethical systems into types according to the principles each system uses to judge right behavior.  Philosophical ethicists contrast teleological ethical systems with deontological systems as two forms of rationalistic ethics.  Teleological action is oriented toward achieving some goal (telos is Greek for "goal"); deontological action is oriented toward following some rule (deon is Greek for "duty"). 

A teleological theory holds that an action is morally right either if a person's doing it brings about good consequences, or if the action is of a kind which, if everyone did it, would have good consequences. ... A deontological theory holds that an action is right if it accords with a moral rule, wrong if it violates such a rule.  Moral rules are based on an ultimate principle of duty which, in contrast to teleological ethics, does not specify an end or purpose whose furtherance makes actions right. (Taylor 1975)

The distinction between outcomes and absolute rules is central.  A deontological theory argues that certain acts are always right and others are always wrong; a teleological theory says that rightness and wrongness depend on results.  Where the former would always condemn murder, for example, the latter might support murder it if caused a greater good or a greater happiness.

Utilitarianism is the best known teleological ethic; it recommends rationally calculated self-interest as the ideal motive.  Immanuel Kant's ethical formalism is the best known deontological ethic; it argues that people should act only according to principles that they can will universally – the moral equivalent of the Golden Rule.  Most philosophical ethicists locate themselves in one of these two camps; much formal ethical writing seeks to prove the superiority of one system over the other.[4] 

H. Richard Niebuhr (1963) pointed out that these two systems do not describe the entirety of human ethical possibilities.  Each system is built on a root image; other images can generate other systems.  The root image of teleological ethics is human-as-maker: ethical action is a means to an end.  Teleologists see people as always doing things for the sake of a product or an accomplishment.  The root image of deontological ethics is different: human-as-citizen; for it, ethical action is obeying the law.  Just as countries have differing legal codes, deontological systems differ about what laws their ideal citizens are to follow; yet the root image of following a rule is the same for all deontologies.

Both images posit a self that is independent of others and that makes judgments without undue social influence.  They see the self as isolated and as theoretically prior to society.  For many ethicists who use these images, "social ethics" is at best an offshoot of individual ethics; at worst it is a contradiction in terms.

If we start with a social notion of the self, we get quite a different image: human-as-responder-to-others-in-the-context-of-ongoing-social-interaction.  In Niebuhr's words:

What is implicit in the idea of responsibility is the image of man-the-answerer, man engaged in dialogue, man acting in response to action upon him. ... Biology and sociology as well as psychology have taught us to regard ourselves as beings in the midst of a field of natural and social forces, acted upon and reacting, attracting and repelling.  We try also to understand history less by asking about the ideals toward which societies and their leaders directed their efforts or about the laws they were obeying and more by inquiring into the challenges in their natural and social environment to which the societies were responding.  (Niebuhr 1963, p. 56)

How does the human-as-responder act?  The responder acts according to what fits the circumstances.  Building on the social psychology of George Herbert Mead, Niebuhr emphasized that all action occurs as part of on-going social intercourse.  This interaction involves a reciprocal presentation of symbols, which when interpreted call forth a response.  To be fitting, that response must be accountable to the interaction.  It must also occur with an eye to continued social solidarity – a solidarity both Niebuhr and Mead thought central to the self.

Niebuhr called this "ethics of the fitting" cathekontic ethics – from the Greek katheko: "to be fit or proper" (Niebuhr 1963, p. 87).  It emphasizes universal responsibility: a life of responses to actions that always sees those actions as part of a universal pattern, to which humans owe allegiance. 

The Niebuhrian expression of this approach is not the only one – it is just the most developed.[5]  Some feminist scholars have proposed a similar "relational" approach to moral problems, based on what Gilligan (1979, p. 440) has called "woman's place in man's life cycle ... nurturer, caretaker, and helpmate, the weaver of those networks of relationships on which she in turn relies."  This approach contrasts women's typical experiences of social situatedness with men's typical experiences of isolation, and argues that the former generate an ethic that Noddings says is "rooted in and dependent on natural caring."

Ethical agents adopting this perspective do not judge their own acts solely by their conformity to rule or principle, nor do they judge them only by the likely production of preassessed nonmoral goods such as happiness.  While such agents may certainly consider both principles and utilities, their primary concern is the relation itself – not only what happens physically to others involved in the relation and in connected relations but what they may feel and how they may respond to the act under consideration. (Noddings 1988, p. 219)

Clearly, this relational approach stresses the same elements as does Niebuhr's cathekontic ethic: the social rootedness of behavior and humans' on-going responsibility to respond properly to the relationships in which they find themselves.[6]  Niebuhr grounds the ethic in religion, while feminists ground it in women's experiences; this only underscores its independence from both God and gender.  It is thus highly suited to use as a third ideal-type of ethical motivation.

The tripartite typology of teleological, deontological and cathekontic ethics provides a better way of classifying social activists' empirical motives.  People who are motivated teleologically act in order to get things.  In social movement circles, this typically means success for the movement, as few social activists get rich from their work.  Teleological social activists choose to act or not act depending on what they think will result.  An action expected to succeed will be carried out; one expected to fail will not.  R-M theory's tacit utilitarianism – and rational choice theory's explicit cost-benefit analyses – are good examples of this type. 

Activists who are motivated deontologically, on the other hand, work not for success, but for what they think is right.  Ideal-typically, they act on the basis of right and wrong, regardless of the consequences.  Kant's categorical imperative is the most famous rule for determining what is right: "I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law" (Kant 1785, p. 70).  Deontologists follow such rules; they do not weigh results.

Cathekontic action may also ignore consequences, but it does not obey formal rules.  Instead, it is motivated out of a sense of responsibility to the community of which one is a part.  One acts because one has certain ties to one's fellow beings (human or otherwise).  One may consider outcomes – for the community, not for oneself.  One may consider rules – in so far as they contribute to one's relationships.  But one acts out of those relationships, not because of results or rules.  One's actions arise from one's concrete situation, not abstractly. 

This Study

This article draws from an ongoing study that sheds light on this issue.  In the course of a research project on the process of identity-construction among religiously-based social activists, I have collected a large number of open-ended interviews.  Among the elements covered has been the way these activists connect the spiritual and the political.  There is great variety in their responses.  Some see religion and social action as intimately related; others connect them hardly at all.  Some look to religion as a source of inspiration, while some feel that it sustains them in times of trial.  Most relevantly to this article, religion provides some with their basic motivation to do good in the world.  And of course for some it does none of these.  My task in the interviews has been to view the connection through my informants' eyes.[7]

Religiously-oriented social activists are not the people that social movement investigators usually study.  Many writers focus their attention on movement followers (e.g., Bolton 1972; Wood and Ng 1980); others focus on those who lead movement organizations (e.g.: Oliver 1983; Marullo 1988).  Studies of the religiously-oriented have usually focused on clergy (e.g., Tygart 1977; Quinley 1974), whose "activism" is sometimes no more than a willingness to donate to activist causes (Tygart 1973).  Other scholars have focused on religion as a demographic factor among social movement participants (e.g., Hoge and Luidens 1972), or have provided general histories of 'the religious left' (Epstein 1990; Craig 1992).  There have been a few studies of Catholic activists (e.g.: Gray 1969; Coles 1987, Murray 1990) and one book of interviews with activist "superstars" from several religious traditions (Ingram, C. 1990). 

The focus of the interviews reported here was different.  My interviewees were all long-term social activists for whom faith commitment of some kind was a central part of life.  They worked both inside and alongside social movement organizations.  At the time I interviewed them, each had spent at least 5 years working committedly for social betterment.  The oldest veteran had worked 50 years for a variety of causes; the median span was about 10.  Those interviewed range in age from 25 to 75, without bunching.

For this article, I have selected a subset of 30 interviews, each with good material on motivations.  All members of this subset are white, and all save one are Christian.  (That one – a pagan – attends a Quaker meeting and comes from a Protestant background.)  Thirteen are Catholic, eleven are Quaker, and – besides the pagan – the rest are mainline Protestant.  Half are women, half men.  Six of the Quakers were born Protestant; two were born Catholic.  Six of the Catholics are nuns; one is a current and one a former priest; my sample includes no other clergy.

These are people who are personally religious, yet work outside parish organizations.  About half devote at least half their time to social betterment work.  Ten work full-time at it.  Politically, they represent what can vaguely be called "the Center-Left."  Their causes range from nuclear disarmament to aid for the homeless.  They work for groups such as the Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund, the American Friends Service Committee, the Resource Center for Non-Violence, and the Christian Appalachian Project.  None work for the so-called "conservative social agenda": abortion rights, prayer in schools and so on.  Some think of themselves as political, others do not.  Some, indeed, have rather conservative political views.  Yet all are active in movements for what can be called "progressive" social change.  About half, in fact, call themselves "progressives" and speak of their commitment to "the Movement" as if there were one unified political/environmental/cultural movement for human liberation.  Though institutionally diverse, they see themselves as engaged in the "same" struggle: for justice, for peace, and for a better way of life for the disadvantaged.

My selection is obviously narrow, both demographically and politically; that choice is deliberate.  If this homogeneous sample reports a broad range of motives for social activism, then we can expect a similar range among activists in general – unless religious activists are more unlike other social activists than previous research has led us to expect.  If we find teleological, deontological and cathekontic motives – and perhaps others – here, we can expect to find them elsewhere as well.  Negatively, even if we find cost-benefit calculations rampant in this population, we still will not know if social movement theory needs to find a better psychology.  Perhaps only white religious progressives act teleologically.

Applying the Typology

There is little need for concern on that score.  Not one of my informants is a pure teleologist.  Though most – but not all – cared that their actions resulted in success for their cause, none listed that as a first motive.  Most often, people described a hierarchy of motives.  Results were mentioned, but they were less significant than other factors.

For example, I asked all my informants to recall a particularly hard decision and explain why they had chosen to act as they did.  Fifteen of the 30 said their primary concern in any situation was to do "what was right."  When I pressed them to unpack that phrase, 11 described an external rule of conduct by which they tried to live.  That rule might be the Sermon on the Mount, the Commandments, church teachings or the notion that "God is Love."  As one informant put it, "If you take Christianity seriously, killing people is out of the question.  That's where all my anti-war work comes from." (INT C-1-5)  This informant did not mind destroying military property – by sabotaging missiles, for example.  He did not admit having done so, but he honored those who had.  His rule said: Do not kill or have complicity in killing.  He followed it to the letter.

Others held similar external rules.  A member of the Catholic Worker community attributed his work with the homeless to his consistent efforts to fulfill Jesus's command to "love your neighbor as yourself."  He spoke of how hard this command was to follow in the face of parental and societal opposition. 

People just don't understand why I devote my life to this.  They don't get it when I spend my free time down at the [soup] kitchen.  And inviting the homeless to share my house – my parents really went ballistic over that one.  But that's what we've decided to do here because that's what Christ told us was our duty.  And I feel I have to live up to that. (INT D-3-5)

Another Catholic Worker activist spoke of following Dorothy Day's teachings:

Dorothy taught us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless.  So we've got this soup kitchen, give out whatever clothes we can (though there are lots of places for people to get clothes), and invite people to live with us.  It's really pretty simple.  We protest war and the culture of death.  We do whatever we can to help relieve suffering.  (INT D-4-3)

Not all 15 had such external rules.  Six spoke of an internal rule: a moral sense of fitness to which they looked for guidance.  When asked why she spends so much time working with Salvadoran refugees, a doctor replied, "It's just the right thing for me.  I mean, I grew up with this notion that you help your neighbors.  Everybody's your neighbor.  I can't help them all, so I help those that others ignore." (INT C-1-1)  Others spoke of "an internal sense of right" (INT D-3-7) that guided their actions, and a few even argued that everyone has the same sense of right and wrong.

I can't believe that the politicians and the rich people and everyone else in power – that all those people don't know right from wrong.  They're greedy, they're weak, they've made compromises, they've deluded themselves; but deep inside there's a little voice that tells them they're blowing it.  I work to make that voice so loud that they'll stop what they're doing – just stop.  Then we'll all be doing the right thing. (INT B-2-5)

Such internal and external rules are not exclusive.  Two informants mentioned following both.  I would consider all fifteen to be deontological; they follow some kind of explicit rule in deciding what to do.  Two others whom I shall consider momentarily were deontological with a twist. 

Ten of my informants were cathekontically directed, with one additional claiming a modified version of this approach.  Asked for a reason for their choice of action, these activists spoke of their "responsibilities."  For some, these came from church membership.  "We are the Body of Christ," one lay Catholic remarked.  "It's our job to continue Jesus's work in the world." (INT A-3-3)  A Methodist tied his efforts for peace in the Middle East to being an American Christian. 

America has imperialized the Mid-East for the last 40 years. We're part of the problem there.  Plus, the state of Israel is the direct result of centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.  We never consulted the Palestinians.  Christians brought about suffering.  I have to work for peace there.  It's the least I can do. (INT C-1-10)

Other responsibilities were more personal.  A clinical psychologist who now devotes his life to peace work, said, "When my daughter was born, I knew I owed it to her to make the world a safer place."  Yet he also spoke about his responsibility to God: "My life has been so rich.  I've been given all these gifts, these abilities.  I have to use the tools I've been given.  I have to give something back." (INT C-1-4)  An engineer who came home to Appalachian to work with the poor was quite specific about his responsibilities.  He remarked, "I worked all around the world, but I never gave anybody anything.  Then I came back.  Everything's different now.  These are my people.  Helping them has given me a reason to live." (INT B-1-3)  These activists clearly see themselves as Niebuhr's "man-the-answerer" responding responsibly to those with whom they are connected.

Some of these activists talk about "community" and "the Community" in near-ideological terms.  They regret what they see as the decline of relatedness in modern life, and see fostering community as a key part of their activism.  Their co-workers and their congregations become key parts of their social support; as one Catholic laywoman put it,

I don't know what I'd do without the women here.  They keep me centered, they pick me up when I'm down.  It's not so much my goals that keep me in the Movement, but the fact that we're in this together.  We're a bunch of real sisters.  I'd do anything for them – including chide them when they get off the track!  We've all got to pull together down the right road if we're going to see any real social change. (INT D-4-2)

Another Catholic spoke lovingly about her parish, of how supported she felt in it, and of how much being a part of that community mattered to her.  But she also told of having to leave it when a new priest undercut the activist path that the parish had set for itself.

It was the same old story.  Someone from the top comes in and destroys what the people are trying to do.  We fought it and fought it, but we lost in the end.  We're kind of underground now, waiting.  We still support each other's work, but are having to find other communities as well.  (INT A-1-7)

Some activists use the term "community" differently, to refer to the people on whose behalf they are working.  They speak of "going before the Community" or "keeping the Community's support" as if the poor and downtrodden were a single entity with a clear collective voice.  Indeed, one activist spoke of following "the Community's" wishes as a rule, not out of relationship or responsibility:

How do I know what I'm supposed to do?  I let the Community tell me.  I connect with them, look at what they need, give them feedback on what I see, and then let them choose what they want me to do.  That's the only way I can avoid "doing-for" them.  That's how I avoid the liberal white imperialism that makes even activists put ourselves on center stage.  We're not supposed to be there; they are.  Letting the community run things despite my experience, despite my education, is the only way I can be sure to stay responsible.  (INT A-1-6)

As this instance makes clear, people do not divide themselves neatly into boxes.  This activist speaks of responsibility and relationship, but turns his relationship to the community into obedience to a rule.  Other cases are similarly complex; several other of my informants also used both deontological and cathekontic language.  Usually they would propose a hierarchy of motives.   One example will suffice: a Catholic Sister mentioned both her responsibilities as a Christian and the importance of Church social teachings.  When asked which was most important for her, she was clear.  "I am a Christian first," she said, "and a Catholic second.  The teachings are just a guide, that's all.  They advise me after I've chosen what to do."  This woman gave up the chance for a cloistered spirituality – which she finds vitally important – to establish a shelter for homeless women.  "The Church values both things," she told me.  "But it's clear to me where my responsibilities lie." (INT C-1-3)

Almost universally among my informants, teleological motives come second or third.  Once people decide what to do, they can calculate how to carry it out.  These can be results-oriented.  The previously quoted anti-war activist was typically direct.  "I sue the military," he said.  "I pick the grounds for a case against them, one I know I can win.  Then I try to cost them as much as possible – both in money and public relations."  This was not his primary motive.  He told of recently becoming active on behalf of the homeless:

I got called out of the [city] council meeting to take someone to the hospital.  It was an old homeless man who'd fallen. My wife had found him lying in a doorway.  I dropped the two of them off at Emergency, then went back to the meeting.  The council was still stonewalling about opening the homeless shelter.  When the meeting ended, I just couldn't leave!  I knew some people were going to sit in, but I hadn't intended to.  But having to take that man in, knowing he'd just be put out on the street again, hurt, with nowhere to go  [pause]  I just had to stay.  I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd gone home.  (INT C-1-5) 

This man sat in because it was the right thing to do.  An inner voice told him that.  He did not take time to weigh results.  He heard, and he had to obey.

Another activist told of a long conversation with her husband to decide which one of them would go to jail after the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970.  "We knew one of us had to do it," she said. "And we also knew it wouldn't change things." (INT A-2-2)

To probe people's potential teleological thinking, I asked them about success.  "How important is success to you – that your actions get the results you want?"  Most said it was a help, but not a motivator.  The psychologist's response was typical:

It would be hard to say I need success.  How could I?  I've been at this ten years, and there's not a lot less war than there was when I began.  America seems an even more violent place.  It's the little things that count.  Peace psychology is now a recognized part of the profession – just as military psychology has been for years.  When I reach a new person, get a new donor, turn someone on to the work.  [pause]  I don't do this work just for that.  But those little things sure keep me going.  (INT C-1-4)

To some, of course, success is more important.  "I don't want to piss into the wind," one poverty worker remarked.  "I'm not here to make a statement.  I'm here to help people."  Yet this informant took pains to distinguish this attitude from his underlying motivation. 

If I just wanted success, I'd get another job.  I'd have a lot less frustration, and be richer too.  But here, I can go home at night proud of what I've done.  The problems are so big, I can't expect to see much change.  I can't need that change.  I just need faith that I make a difference.  And I see that in the people I work with, whether I 'succeed' or not. (INT B-1-4)

Clearly, the assumption that social activists are motivated by cost-benefit considerations is not borne out by the facts.

If a teleological cost-benefit calculus is inadequate as a social movement psychology, does the typology I have borrowed from religious ethics fill the bill?  That is, do activists' motives sort themselves out into rationales of results, rules and responsibility? 

My data show this tripartite schema to be an improvement over philosophical ethics, which traditionally counts only teleology and deontology.  Clearly, a sense of responsibility is a stronger factor than the wish for results among the social activists I interviewed.  It is still not as important as a sense of right, which I have traced to both external and internal codes of conduct.  Many people do act out of their responsibility to others, and many act out of a sense of following the rules; some people do both.  One must follow Niebuhr in including at least these three ideal-typical ethics in our account of people's activist motivations.

A Fourth Type?

Yet is a three-factor typology enough?  I could probably squeeze all my informants into these three boxes, but one set of people fails to fit them well.  They use deontological and cathekontic languages, but they use other ways of speaking as well – ones that were intrinsically ethical, yet in other modes.

The clearest examples are those for whom activism and spirituality are most closely related – and whose spirituality is of the contemplative kind.  This is clearly a religious ethic, which I can best introduce with an example. 

At the time that I interviewed her, one of my informants had sat Zen for 60 years.  She was by then a Quaker – "a Buddhist Quaker, if you please," she said.  She rose at 5 very morning, and sat for an hour or so, always focusing on the present.  "I am here, I sit, I breathe," she said in describing her practice.  "The thoughts go in and out like the breath.  They make as little impression.  They are; I am; that is all."

This woman was well known in her city for her involvement in social causes.  A German by birth, she had worked in the resistance against Hitler.  Coming to this country, she then worked in the civil rights movement.  Then she moved to Japan to work with victims of the atomic bomb.  Each tour of duty involved several years of commitment.  Why did she do this, at considerable personal sacrifice?  She answered this question by referring to her spiritual life.  "When I sit," she said, "I can't not respond to the world around me.  I spend an hour every morning attuning myself to life.  When life calls me, how can I say no?" 

More exactly, her spiritual practice determined which causes she joined and which she did not. 

Sometimes I'll sit in the morning, and I can't be still.  I get involved with my thoughts, rather than just being present to them.  A day or two – that's normal.  I think nothing of it.  But if I keep thinking about an issue for a week or so – then I know I won't be able to sit until I've done something.  I go out, get active.  As soon as I've started, I can sit again.  (INT A-2-6)

This woman's contemplative religion forced her to work in the world.  Her spiritual life moved her – but not in the sense that it gave her teachings to follow.  It gave her a practice.  To pursue that practice, she had to work for the good of others.  Her Buddhist compassion was no ideological matter; it was an inner requirement of her spiritual path.

Two of my informants fit this mold well; three others combined it with attention to inner rules of right and wrong.  Four of these are contemplatives.  Only one paid much attention to theology or social movement ideology.  This pattern seems to be a fourth ideal-type that must be set alongside the other three.

I shall label these motives "charismatic", though I shall leave the justification of that term to the end of the article.  Contrasting this motivational style with another purely religious approach will show its distinctiveness.  Several of those I interviewed framed their world with Christian metaphors.  That is, they interpreted their experiences and their actions through the lens of Christian narratives.

Again an example gives a sense of their approach.  Throughout my interview with him, an older man, a retired teacher, used Biblical stories to answer many of my questions.  I asked about success and he talked about the mustard seed.  I asked about frustration and he talked about loaves and fishes.  Christian language dominated the interview.  Before it dawned on me that this was not religious belief – at least not in the usual sense – I asked him why he used 2000 year old events to explain the present.  I had it all wrong, he said.

I'm not talking about the way things were back then.  I don't have a clue about that.  I don't care that these stories describe something someone once did, even if he's supposed to be the "son of God."  They describe the world right now!  They help me see what's important – help me focus on things I might otherwise miss.  (INT A-1-1)

These stories were the way he saw the world.  No literalist, he used these metaphors to guide and sustain his activism.  "You know," he said,

things often feel to me like they must have felt to Jesus on the Cross.  You do what you're supposed to do, you do everything right, and you still get crucified.  Sometimes it feels so hopeless.  But the Christian story says there's hope.  In the midst of a genocidal occupation, a holy baby is born.  His death by excruciating torture saves the world.  It's not a pretty story.  And there's no proof that it happened.  But the world is really like that.  The story tells me what to expect.  It keeps me going.

This approach is more prevalent among the Protestant-born in my sample;[8] Catholics more often frame their actions with "Body of Christ" imagery – the notion that present-day Christians and/or the Church are "Christ's Body," carrying out his work in the world.  Both kinds of imagery are more clearly ideological than experiential, though the line between ideology and experience is by no means a clear one (Neitz and Spickard 1990; Spickard 1991b, 1992).

Yet something more is involved here than Snow et al's (1986) notion of "frame-alignment" – a concept designed to correct resource mobilization theory's naive utilitarianism by reemphasizing the ideological frames within which utilitarian choices are made.  The frame supposedly defines a social movement actor's reality and determines the values that s/he will seek to maximize in utilitarian fashion.

Yet this is not what my interviewees do.  The above-cited retired teacher framed his activism religiously, yet acted deontologically within that frame: his religious worldview told him about reality and about what God wanted from him.  He and another like him are the "deontologists with a twist" to whom I referred above.  Several of my Catholic informants framed themselves as called to substitute for Christ on earth, even if they lack the skills to do so; as such, they felt themselves responsible to heal others' pain and suffering.  One took this as a primary stance; others did so secondarily.  For them, ideology provided a frame within which cathekontic and deontological motives operate.  The idea of frame-alignment is thus useful, but only if the motives operating within the frame are not seen as strictly utilitarian; the concept does not rescue R-M theory from a too narrow understanding of social actors' motives.

Though only a subset of my interviews, this sample demonstrates the range of motives claimed by social activists.  Clearly, these activists do not base their choices on the marginal utility of one or another deed; at best, utility is a secondary consideration.  As several observers have noted (e.g: Fireman and Gamson 1979; Klandermans 1984; Ferree and Miller 1985; Snow et al 1986; Ferree 1992), social movement theory needs a better explanation of why people choose as they do than the teleological psychology that resource mobilization and rational choice theories assume.

The expanded typology of motives I have borrowed from religious ethics does a better job.  My interviews show that people decide what to do on deontological and cathekontic, as well as on teleological grounds.  In fact, activists have multiple motives.  Yet these three are ideal-typical, and most people favor one or another of these ways of thinking. 

Interestingly, this typology is similar to – though more developed that – a typology of social movement action orientations put forward by Turner and Killian (1987) to distinguish social movement mobilization campaigns.  They distinguish between: 1) power orientations, which focus on the movement's influence; 2) value orientations, which focus on the movement's ideology and goals; and 3) participation orientations, which focus on the ties between a movement and its members.  The first looks to the movement's results, the second to its inherent values (regardless of results), and the third to its social ties that create a sense of communal responsibility.  These are remarkably like the teleological (results), deontological (rules), and cathekontic (relationships) ethical types noted here – though they operate at the organizational not the individual level.

The typology is less similar to Parsons and Shils' (1951) division of action into instrumental, normative, and affective types.  Cathekontic ethics are relational, not affective; as Durkheim reminds us, social ties cannot be reduced to emotion.

Of course it is always possible to deconstruct these types into utilitarianism.  Klandermans (1993), for example, laces his discussion of Turner and Killian's typology with references to values being an "incentive" and participation being a "benefit"; by extension, only individual utility is "real."  Perhaps this is not Klandermans' intention but merely an artifact of his language.  Yet such a deconstruction belittles the subjectively-expressed motivations of my interviewees.  Sociologists of altruism have lately stopped looking for egoism behind every kindly act (Piliavin and Charng 1990).  Such oversimplifications prevent understanding as much as they further it.

Yet the three-fold typology of religious ethics does not cover all the cases.  While 17 of my 30 informants are primarily deontological, and 11 others primarily cathekontic, the remaining two are directly moved by their religious practices or metaphors.  For an added three, religious factors not encompassed by the deontological, teleological, and cathekontic systems are also important.  What schema can turn this variety to good sociological usage?

Refining Weber

Ethical systems present ideal images of human motives – logically consistent ones, from so many years of being worked over by philosophers.  Teleological, deontological, and cathekontic ethics all recommend different kinds of action and orient actors toward their action in different ways.  As Niebuhr notes and as my research confirms, these recommendations and orientations are all followed in practical life – perhaps not purely, but as analytic categories to which empirical actions can be compared.  Being logically consistent, they describe the possible field of human motives: human action from the subjective point of view. 

This language is familiar, of course; it is the way Max Weber described his typology of social action.  He was concerned with motives, with action from a subjective point of view.  "We shall speak of 'action' insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior. ... Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course."  (Weber 1922, p. 4)

Weber divided possible action into four ideal-types, each logically clear and unique: goal-rational action, value-rational action, traditional action, and affective action.  He recognized that empirical actions will be driven – on their subjective side – by combinations of these types, and even that they may be but semi-conscious. 

In the great majority of cases actual action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-consciousness or actual unconsciousness of its subjective meaning.  The actor is more likely to 'be aware' of it in a vague sense than he is to 'know' what he is doing or be explicitly self-conscious about it.  ...  The ideal type of meaningful action where the meaning is fully conscious and explicit is a marginal case. ... But the difficulty need not prevent the sociologist from systematizing his concepts by the classification of possible types of subjective meaning. (Weber 1922, pp. 21-22)

Weber insisted that sociologists can use the logical types as analytic tools.  He focused on the meaning that actors give to and get from their actions.  He proceeded from "the interpretive understanding of social action" to "a causal explanation of its course and consequences" instead of jumping immediately to the latter (Weber 1922, p. 4).  My use of a typology of ethical systems to analyze social activists' expressed motives is fully consonant with his approach.

Indeed, two of the ethical systems that I have highlighted are nearly identical with two of Weber's ideal-types of social action.  Deontological ethics recommends actions that Weber calls "wertrational": value-rational.  These actions are "determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success."

Examples of pure value-rational orientation would be the actions of persons who, regardless of possible cost to themselves, act to put into practice their convictions of what seems to them to be required by duty, honor, the pursuit of beauty, a religious call, personal loyalty, or the importance of some "cause" no matter in what it consists.  In our terminology, value-rational action always involves 'commands' or 'demands' which, in the actor's opinion, are binding on him.  (Weber 1922, pp. 24-25)

Teleological ethics recommends actions that Weber called "zweckrational": instrumentally rational or goal-rational.  In his words:

Action is instrumentally rational when the end, the means, and the secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed.  This involves rational consideration of alternative means to the end, of the relations of the end to the secondary consequences, and finally of the relative importance of different possible ends.  ... Choice between alternative and conflicting ends and results may well be determined in a value-rational manner.  In that case, action is instrumentally rational only in respect to the choice of means. (Weber 1922, p. 26)

Weber clearly intended to limit this type to a rational calculation focused on consequences.  As he noted of the relationship between what we call wert- and zweck-rationalität:

From the latter point of view, however, value-rationality is always irrational. Indeed, the more the value to which action is oriented is elevated to the status of an absolute value, the more 'irrational' in this sense the corresponding action is.  For, the more unconditionally the actor devotes himself to this value for its own sake, to pure sentiment or beauty, to absolute goodness or devotion to duty, the less is he influenced by considerations of the consequences of his action. (Weber 1922, p. 26)

Teleological/utilitarian ethics thus corresponds to goal-rational action in Weber's terms.  Action is pursued because of its outcome, and actors rationally subordinate all other motives to the action's results.  Deontological ethics is just as clearly value-rational: actors rationally subordinate all other aims to the valued rule that they seek to uphold.  Both of these ideal-types organize and focus action rationally – a reminder to rational-choice theorists that utilitarian rationality is not the only kind of rationality humans can exhibit.[9] 

What about his other two types?  Weber did not give many details about "traditional" and "affectual" actions, despite using them as explanatory devices.  He said that they are both on the borderline of what can be called meaningfully oriented action, and seems to have equated them with something purely reactive.  Traditional action, he wrote, "is very often a matter of almost automatic reaction to habitual stimuli, which guide behavior on a course which has been repeatedly followed."  Similarly, Weber equated affectual action with emotions and feeling states.  Neither of these types is very developed or very useful, nor do they illuminate the social activists' motives I have uncovered in my study.[10]

Niebuhr's "ethics of responsibility" is a much more precise description of "traditional action" than the one that Weber provided.  Cathekontic ethics is an ethic of persons, not of reasons.  It is an ethic of social relationships, not of the individual in isolation.  It is, in short, the ethic of a world in which persons and relationships are more important that disembodied rationality – though this world and the actions that fill it are not irrational in any universal sense of the word. 

The central thrust of Weber's sociology was to understand the emergence and shape of modernity.  His genius was to see this from the perspective of the social actor and to ask what changes in the form of subjective action occurred in the move from a "traditional" to a "modern" world.  Clearly, he found modernity typified by disembodied, calculating Reason; both his religious and his organizational sociology detail its workings.  "Tradition" easily became for him the opposite: unthinking habit as seen from the modern point of view.  But what if we do not take that point of view?  How does "tradition" appear subjectively?  That is the real Weberian question – one which Weber, so focused on modern rationality, missed.

Taken subjectively, traditional action appears very much like Niebuhr's description of an ethics of responsibility.  It starts with a social notion of the self – just the opposite of the isolated, calculating rationality that Weber saw as modernity.  Nested in a web of stable social relations, one traditionally responds to others in the context of these relations.  One acts out of one's responsibilities to those to whom one is tied.  One follows traditional authorities, for example, not out of inertia but because one has an ongoing relationship with them that one is not willing to break for either goal- or value-rational reasons.  Likewise a traditional leader acts out of an established, ongoing relationship with followers, not because of mindless habit but because these social ties establish the very selves that relate with one another.  Remembering the Meadian basis of Niebuhr's theorizing, we can see traditional action as person-centered and relationship-centered – the very embodiment of human-as-responder-to-others-in-the-context-of-ongoing-social-interaction that Niebuhr presented as a third ethical form.  Renaming it "traditional/relational" action highlights the Niebuhrian modification needed to put this ideal-type to use. 

"Affectual" action is a bit harder to incorporate, both because Weber explains and uses it less, and because the instances of what I have called "charismatic motives" do not fit it well.  Weber bases this type on emotional feeling states, yet the ethic based on direct religious experience – e.g., that of my "Buddhist Quaker" informant – is not much concerned with feeling.  To encompass these motives as ideal-types of action, we must take up Weber's invitation to expand his four-type schema.[11]

I have called one type of motives "charismatic"; I must now justify that choice.  Weber's concept of "charisma" comes from his sociology of authority, where it is used to explain the special hold that certain people have over others by reference to their special qualities.  In his depiction, it seems to combine an affective element with a sense of calling: both the call that leads the holder of charisma to act and the call that leads others to follow.  It is something experienced more than something thought.  A religious call is value-rational if it comes through the mind; it is charismatic if one experiences it directly.  Though various scholars have complained about the concept's imprecision, (e.g., Shils 1968; Worsley 1968; Bensman and Givant 1975; Camic 1980; Miyahara 1983; Greenfeld 1985; Lindholm 1990; and Spinrad 1991), the fact that it is still commonly used indicates its continued worth. 

The religious motives that I have called "charismatic" likewise combine "calling" with "experience".  That is, they begin with particular religious gifts and with the calling that these gifts make to the individual.  Our "Buddhist Quaker" encounters her calling in the midst of her religious practice and cannot continue her practice until she heeds the call.  A Catholic interviewee spoke tenderly of a transcendent encounter that he said had changed his life forever – and moved him from the contemplative to the activist path.  A second Quaker spoke of finding greater strength through prayer, not just to "do right" but to do what she "had to do" – even though she could not articulate her decisions to act in teleological, deontological, or cathekontic terms.  These instances and others that my interviewees related point to a separate category of motive, not encompassable by the other three.

These charismatic motives are certainly not just emotional, nor are they just personal.  With only a few cases before me, it is impossible to say much about them in detail.  Yet the strong connection between the other three types of motive and three of Weber's types of social action, plus a continuing sense among sociologists that "charisma" cannot be reduced to mere emotion, lead me to suggest appropriating the term "charisma" to cover these cases and to propose a new ideal-type of social action – "charismatic action" – to describe action based on them.  Both these motives and this action are underexplored; perhaps naming them as a concrete type will encourage the investigation they so need.

Thus we have goal-rational, value-rational, traditional/relational, and charismatic action: four ideal-types of subjective action that with Weber's original affective action-type give us a typology with which we can measure the empirical motives of social movement actors.  And we have goal-oriented, value-oriented, relationship-oriented, and charismatic motives in the social activists' narratives reported here.  The first three correspond to teleological, deontological, cathekontic ethics as developed within ethical theory.  The fourth, so far underexamined, arises out of the data.  Together they do a much better job of comprehending social movement activists' subjective motives than do the schemas used heretofore.