Protesters and Authorities: Modification of Merton’s "Rebellion" for Analysis of Discourse (Case Study of a Mother’s Hunger Strike)

Abstract

In the article, I focus on the role of discourse in the perception of protests. This will concern protest in which social demands are made as well as a review of the tactics of these protesters. The position is taken that the success of a protest is determined by various discourses that emerge around it with varying degrees of intensity. Using the concept of “rebellion” by R. Merton, I suggest a typology that enables us to analyze representations of collective protest behavior in the mass media. Applying T. Gurr’s explanation of protests via the term “relative deprivation,” I focus on the protests of those groups most affected by social and economic deprivation groups and, as such, make mostly social demands. Such protests are determined by the protesters’ acceptance of institutionalized or conventional goals that they try to achieve within varying degrees of legitimacy. This degree of legitimacy is redefined within the representations that appear in the course of discourse, which, in the end, determine the response of the authorities. To illustrate the interpretative scheme introduced here, I analyze the case of a hunger strike of mothers with multiple children that took place in February 2014 in the Volgograd region.