See: http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/HCLAS/SOCIO/CBSM/cbsm_sched.html

The conference will be organized through three distinct kinds of events – plenary sessions, thematic sessions, and concurrent panel sessions. Three plenary sessions will be organized with no other events scheduled simultaneously. These forums will anchor the conference with panels organized around the broad themes of the conference, and they are intended to provide intellectual continuity and coherence to the conference as a whole. The three topics of the plenary sessions are: (1) Strategy: Conceptual Foundations and Agendas; (2) The Formation and Development of Strategy; and (3) Strategy and the Cultural and Political Consequences of Movements. Leading scholars have already submitted abstracts for consideration for inclusion as part of these sessions.

Thematic sessions will be smaller gatherings with multiple sessions and panels running concurrently. They will be organized around short discussion statements rather than papers and are intended to promote equal participation and open-ended discussion. Unlike past conferences, the call for papers for the proposed conference has strongly encouraged faculty members to propose thematic workshops to be jointly organized with graduate students, and we have already received a number of joint proposals. We have also actively promoted sessions that bring together activists with researchers who study their movements. We have already received proposals for sessions linking section members with global justice, peace, and immigrant rights activists. In connecting scholars with activists in discussing strategy, we hope to better service segments of society traditionally under-serviced by the discipline. At the same time, dialogues with activists promise to enrich intellectual debates and research about social movement strategies. We seek to better understand how various kinds of activists think about strategy and the strategic dilemmas that they are currently facing. Close communication with activists is vital to developing accurate theoretical models and up-to-date research on movement strategies.Paper panels will follow the more established model in which three or four scholars present well-developed article length papers organized around a common question or topic. These panels will be structured around four basic themes:

(1) What is strategy? How should we conceptualize and operationalize it? What are the main forms of strategy and their underlying logics? What are the recurring strategic dilemmas that movements face? How is strategy related to other elements that scholars often study including goals, tactics, organizational forms and practices? These issues, in turn, open up the core theoretical question about whether and to what extent movements are instrumental, expressive, and/or pre-figurative.

(2) What are the origins/sources of strategy and how have these varied across movements, societies, and history? What are the biographical, cultural, emotional, and structural sources of strategy in social movements? What roles does leadership play in the articulation and development of strategy? How do forms of social organization, modes of community building, emotions, ideologies, and organizational identities shape strategy-making? Strategies are shaped by factors both external to movements and their internal dynamics. Most scholars tend to emphasize the relative importance of one or the other of these factors rather than how they interact. External factors might involve political conditions, availability of resources, policy-making procedures and schedules, etc., while internal factors involve movement cultures, organizational ideologies and structures, power relations within movements, leadership, etc.

(3) How should scholars conceptualize and study the dynamic aspects of strategy? At a middle range of analysis this would include the processes of strategizing – how authority, organization, relationships, emotions, ideologies, and identities not only shape, but are shaped by strategizing. At a macro level, this would include strategic interaction – the effort to describe, interpret and explain the moves and counter-moves between movement actors alongside their allies, opponents and targets and the diffusion of strategies across movements and nations. The use of violence and terrorism pose important cases for exploring how actors arrive at particular strategic choices.

(4) Finally, what are the major social consequences of strategic choices for the development of movements, the attainment of goals, and their broader legacies? What are the consequences of different strategy-making processes that movements engage in? For example, what are the trade-offs between open, deliberative modes of strategy-making and closed, authoritative ones? Between putting together broad coalitions or remaining smaller and more focused? Between hiring staff and relying on volunteers? Between direct insurgency and the indirect building of organizations for the longer run? The relationship between strategies and movement goals is a major theoretical concern. This is because the factors and dynamics shaping strategies along with assessments of their effectiveness differ depending on whether groups are pursuing long-term vs. short-term goals, reformist vs. radical goals, expressive vs. instrumental goals, or internal goals (such as capacity building or recruitment) vs. external goals (such as changing policies, rulers, or increasing media coverage of an issue).