Elizabeth Cherry

Department of Sociology, University of Georgia

Home Contact CV Research Teaching

My dissertation, entitled “Cultural Structures and Tactical Repertoires: The Animal Rights Movements in France and the United States,” investigates the differential trajectories of a social movement with deceptively similar goals, tactics, and strategies. In this project I examine why the movement took such different forms in each country.

Activists in both countries share long-term goals and strategies, engaging in the same cultural work—both seek to deconstruct symbolic boundaries between humans and animals, as well as between companion and farm animals. They do this through various deconstruction strategies, which also illuminate the cultural work of other new social movements. Looking to the national context provides clearer answers to the differential outcomes of the French and U.S. movements. The extant culture in both countries differentially shapes the strategic and tactical repertoires available to activists. How activists actually choose from those repertoires, however, is best explained through a meso-level analysis, specifically looking at how the culture of the movement shapes the choices of social movement organizations.

More generally, my research interests include culture, social movements, subcultures, gender, and social psychology. In past projects, I’ve studied veganism, punk, food packaging, pro-anorexia websites, and professional wrestling. Click here to see my article on veganism as a cultural movement from the journal Social Movement Studies.

Methodologically, I have conducted content and semiotic analyses, but am specialized in the qualitative methods of interviewing and participant observation. I’ve taken courses in the Qualitative Research Program at UGA, and used Atlas.ti to analyze my dissertation data.

Future projects include expanding my dissertation to include England as a comparative case, as well as studying movement-opponent interactions, self-efficacy and conceptions of movement success, gender issues in the animal rights movement, and the effects of competing philosophical outlooks on social movement outcomes.