When it comes to social change impacting government policies, what role do activists play in the process? In this article, the author explores this and more, by tracing newspapers and legal documents, to show how social movement activists create change over time. The article explores affirmative consent advocacy in the United States, specifically drawing on Antioch College’s affirmative consent from 1990 to 2016.
Check out the abstract below, and then click through to the main article to learn more:
Policy Relay: How Affirmative Consent Went from Controversy to Convention
Peer-reviewed research by: Katelyn Rose Malae
This article analyzes how a formerly mocked policy idea became a widespread solution. Through content analysis of newspaper articles and legal documents, I develop a framework that extends timelines of social movement influence, expands the range of actors and locations of mobilization, and traces how activists frame policy ideas over time: the policy relay. This framework allows for an analysis of how opponents unintentionally advanced the reform process in 1993 by turning its originators into laughingstocks. Anti-rape advocates eventually reformulated the policy in 2014. This time, the origin was removed from the story, presenting a concise narrative that credited politicians and college administrators, rather than activists, for the reform. By tracing the ideas of a movement, rather than focusing on organizations or public protests, I uncover a complicated process of social change, where consequential actors work across different settings to ignite reforms and strategically remove controversial aspects from narratives of social change.
Click here to read the full open-access article, published in 2016 in the journal Sociological Perspectives.
Full Reference //
Malae, K. R. (2022). Policy Relay: How Affirmative Consent Went from Controversy to Convention. Sociological Perspectives, 65(6), 1117-1143.
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