Transnationalizing Dynamics of Social Movements : Using the Integral Approach of Social Movement Theories

In recent years, transnational social movements have significantly increased in every corner of the world. Additionally, this phenomenon showed that the problem recognition has been globalized. For instance, in view of the wave of anti-nuclear movement since Fukushima, the participants have widely shared problem recognition in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

In past several decades, studies of transnational social movements have focused on viewpoints of cultural /structural factors (i.e. Tarrow 2005; Edwards 2014). However, from examining previous studies, there seems to be little research regarding the mechanism that leads to the transnationalization process of social movement. In other words, they have overlooked what factors influences transnationalization process of protest. In this presentation, we will address one question: how does a local movement change to a transnational social movement? By clarifying this question, we aim to present requisite factors of a transnationalized process of social movement.

In this present work, we analyze a case study of environmental movements on Okinawa prefecture, by using the integral approach. This approach combines the structural approach and the cognitive approach. Therefore we have to extract two factors. In order to find out the cultural factors, we studied the motive of participation, the resource of motive, and construction process of problem recognition, by investigating the claims of protesters. Furthermore, in order to examine the structural factors, we make investigation into history of protests, circumstances surrounding the social movement, by conducting the archival works.

Lastly, we will attempt to clarify that the transnationalized process has a strong association with changing structural/cultural factors of local participant. In addition, the result of this experiment shows that the integral approach can explain transnationalizing dynamics of social movement.