Nan Lin, Chapter 11 Institutions, Networks, and Capital Building: Societal Transformations (from Social Capital: A Theory of Social

Structure and Action, 2001. Cambridge University Press) [p. 194] Networks as Vehicles for Institutional Transformation [RSS: in the urban school system] [text in brackets attributed to RSS] [RSS: Radical school reform will depend on a social movement, which begins when enough actors come together into a network and begin to accumulate various types of resources] It is possible that organizational or even individual actors (DiMaggio 1988: institutional entrepreneurs) may trigger transformations. [RSS: agents of transformation; see Fischman & McLaren www site] The more interesting and powerful indigenous transformation process, I argue, begins with social networking. [vs. charismatic leaders] When a number of actors share alternative rules or values and begin to connect, the network may sustain their shared interests through solidarity and reciprocal reinforcement. For example, actors perceived as deprived or actually deprived of opportunities to acquire [the dominant groups] human or institutional [cultural] capital may form networks and forge a collective identity. Whether such deprivation [oppression] is based on gender, ethnic, religious, class, family origin, or other institutional criteria, networking is the first and essential step in developing collective consciousness. [RSS: my emphasis] As the network expands and the number of participating actors increases, the pool of social capital increases [resources shared and exchanged within the new collectivity]. As shared resources grow, there is an increasing likelihood of a social movement, a process that can transform one or more prevailing institutions. [Teaching Effective Rebellion in Teacher Education, incorporating the study of social movements into teacher education, RSS] One straightforward way of generating institutional transformation by way of a social movement is to turn the movement directly into a rebellion a social movement can quickly generate overwhelming participation leading directly to the overthrow of prevailing institutions. [however] the usual goal is not to reject prevailing institutions, but rather to substitute the alternative institution for the prevailing one or incorporate the alternative institution into the configuration of prevailing institutions. o e.g., [1960s & 70s] ethnic studies, women studies as part of the standard undergraduate curriculum o 1970s: desegregation of center-city schools (social movement-generated, and eventually, court mandated)

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[social networking, rebellion, transformation of institution: (urban school reform); educators as transformative institutional agents (Fischman & McLaren) organizing willing actors into a network that exhibit a certain degree of closure, yet porous enough to continuously recruit new members, and establish bridges to sympathetic and supportive networks, organizations, and institutions developing new, alternative institutional capital among new network of radical educators, develop alternative curricula; political strategies for institutionalizing [and normalizing] this curricula; strategies for infiltrating existing institutionalizing organization (Lin, 203); i.e., teacher education program trains teachers to infiltrate existing schools and educational organizations, including organizing and recruiting new members strategies for neutralizing the resistance and restabilizing efforts and agendas of members of the status quo (e.g., [1970s] early and concerted opposition to ethnic studies and gender studies within academia)

A social movement can be sustained by turning the shared resources into capital and generating returns. That is, the movement must develop its own institutionalizing organizations in which alternative values and rituals are taught and new members are indoctrinated. Further, it must build or persuade organizations to recruit and retain the actors who have acquired such capital [i.e., alternative values, alternative political discourse, critical consciousness, new identities, skill-sets, and rituals (RSS)] .Through these processes, the movement can then sustain itself and challenge existing institutions.

[RSS: review the economic-political rules of capital, Bourdieu; S-S, 1997] The mounting and sustaining of alternative programs in either existing or alternative institutionalizing organizations may generate and process alternative capital for actors. [alternative institutional capitalalternative cultural capital (RSS): alternative values and ideology, behavioral norms, new rituals, new organizational rules, alternative political discourse, critical consciousness, new identities, skill-sets; when they are performed or exhibited, actor becomes entitled to resources: prestige/reputation within organization or network, control and authority over organizational resources, special privileges, decision-making power, influence over others, privilege information, close ties with other actors who control resources] As the number of actors equipped with the alternative institutional capital increases, along with the growing pooled social capital through networking, the likelihood that other organizations may recognize the need to take the alternative institution into account in their actions increases. (p. 195)

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This recognition triggers the need to recruit and retain workers with the knowledge and skills to perform tasks dictated by the alternative institution. o [RSS: the need to recruit and retain teachers, other educators, and administrators with the consciousness, knowledge, and skills necessary to implement a radicalized urban school reform agenda] o [RSS: including networking skills and organizing skills]

[Nan Lin illustrates with a short history of how women studies became institutionalized in academia in the 1970s & 80s] p. 196 The civil rights movement and the womens liberation movement found sympathy and synergy on American campuses, as antiwar and anti-draft activities were generalized into questions and challenges to the status quo. (p. 197) The most innovative element was the distribution and sharing of course syllabi, initiated by Sheila Tobias (first at Wesleyan and then at Cornell) o conference on women in the winter of 1969, she collected the syllabi of seventeen womens courses and distributed the list at the annual meetings of professional associations in 1970 o A third element in developing and institutionalizing womens studies in American colleges was the resources provided by a number of private foundations to support students, programs, and centers. (p. 198) o Finally, the networking approach adopted by many womens studies faculty and programs is also worth noting.

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Educators, Youth Workers, & Informal Mentors as Institutional Agents (RSS Theoretical/Conceptual Notes) Stanton-Salazar educators, youth workers, and informal mentors become institutional agents when they mobilize or directly provide resources to a student or youth that significantly enables the latter to effectively navigate and exert control over the principal environments within which he or she is embedded (Nov. 21); when a student or youth accesses or is receptive to these resources from the agent, these resource become social capital o to safely navigate the potentially harmful ecological aspects of neighborhood, community, school, and society, while reaping the benefits of those aspects that are developmentally empowering (see Garcia Coll; many other sources) o to effectively navigate, integrate, and experience success within the educational institution and within other youth/student-oriented organizations resources via an institutional agent are always embedded within social relations and the complex dynamics between the student/youth and the institutional agent; in turn, these relations are almost always subject to one or more, and sometimes, contradictory institutionalizing forces (e.g., Boykin): rooted in the immediate network they may both participate in, the immediate encompassing organization, and/or the implicated institutions. educators, youth workers, and informal mentors also become institutional agents when they mobilize or directly provide resources to one more other institutional actors that either enables them to effectively actualize the role of institutional agent on behalf a student or youth, or enables these actor/agents to collaborate in empowering in some significant way a student or youth. Here again, the relations among institutional agents are almost always subject to institutionalizing forces. the provision and utilization of resources rarely operates in a cultural or political vacuum; this is to say that this provision and utilization are embedded within a institutionalizing organization or network; the provision or mobilization of resources occurswhether tacitly or explicitly--in the context of socialization agendas: into values and ideology, behavioral norms rituals, organizational rules, political discourse, forms of consciousness, and identities. Thus, institutional agents are also socialization agents.

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Teacher Education, Urban Education, and Social Movement Theory (SMT)

http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/May/chandlerMay05.asp

SMT factors: 1) political opportunity, 2) social networking and resource mobilization, 3) and framing.

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