Challenging Codes

Cambridge Cultural Social Studies

by Melucci

Alberto Melucci brings an original perspective to research on collective action, emphasizing the role of culture and making telling connections with the experience of the individual in postmodern society. The focus is on the role of information in a world both fragmented and globalized, and topics addressed include political conflict, feminism, ecology, identity politics, power and inequality. The book builds on the author's Nomads of the Present (1989), and is a companion volume to The Playing Self (CUP, 1996).

456 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is interesting to return to this book roughly 22 years after it has been published to see how it holds up. *Challenging Codes* cannot help but be influenced by the alter-globalization movement that was emerging at the time of its writing and publication. Its focus on direct action and certain generalizations about the "purism" of movements doesn't speak so well to more diverse struggles beyond "youth," environmental, and women's movements Melucci speaks of. There is a necessary degree of abstraction that always runs into the danger of over-generalizing. Also, the book is mired in endless debates of social movement sociology that is a turgid at best and largely irrelevant to the present age.

But, like any good work, if you selectively read it to see what is relevant to the present situation, quite a bit of the book still holds up, particularly its final and fourth section. Melucci makes good points about framing theory needing to be tied with ideological analysis in order to better ground it; how new movements form and the importance of informal networks; the role of leadership in social movements. Most notable is Melucci's stress of symbolic action and his rejection of just reading movements in instrumental terms. Yes, as others have noted, he does at times over-emphasize the symbolic, often veering into a hyperbolic Baudrillardian account of simulacrum. But one must keep in mind that at the time of the book, the symbolic was getting short shrift in sociological theory-- and, quite honestly, still does in my mind. His argument to need to focus on the representations created within movements while balancing with other types of sociological analysis seems very important, and something that still guides much of my own research that contrasts close-analysis of various movements texts (videos, websites, written, etc) with more observational analysis of actions and interviews.

*Challenging Codes* is still an interesting and worthwhile read even given its limitations. I highly recommend for anyone involved in or analyzing (or most likely both) social movements.

[Öznur · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kinda like more the earlier works of Melucci, I did not like the parts when he associates the new social movements with a sort of neo-naturalism and insists on the necessity to find institutional mechanisms to further the values thusly created on th street.