Citation

Bloom J. Am. J. Sociol. 2020; 126(2): 195-259.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/711672

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

When authorities repress insurgents, does it quell their rebellion? Classic approaches to this question yielded inconsistent results because they sought to generalize repressive effects without accounting for the practices repressed. This article proposes that insurgent practices that draw allied support in a given historic context evade the de-escalatory capacity of repression. The article assesses the effects of repression on odds of remobilization for various forms of Black insurgent practice in the postwar United States, comparing the impact on civil rights protests and urban uprisings between 1954 and 1992, before checking final models on out-of-sample data. Generalizing the dynamics of practice better accounts for the evidence, transcending invariant models to explain social process without devolving to ideographic analysis.

Language: en