Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871

Abstract

Although sociologists increasingly recognize the importance of networks in social mo ment mobilization, efforts to understand networkfactors have been hampered by the o tionalization of network factors as individual-level variables. I argue that disaggregat relational data into individual-level counts of social ties obscures the crucial issues of work structure and multiplexity. I analyze data on insurgency in the Paris Commune o and show that organizational networks and pre-existing informal networks interacted mobilization process, even in thefinal moments of the insurrection. Network autocorre models reveal that enlistment patterns in the Paris National Guard created organizat linkages among residential areas that contributed to solidarity in the insurgent effort, b efficacy of these linkages depended on the presence of informal social ties rooted in Pa neighborhoods. Thus the role of networkfactors can only be understood by studying th influence offormal and informal social structures on the mobilization process. A decade ago, Snow, Zurcher, and Ekland-Olson (1980) pointed to the importance of social networks for understanding the mobiliza-tion of social movements, but the state of research in this area is still best described as inchoate. Despite widespread acceptance of the idea that "network" or "structural" factors play a role in mobilization or recruitment, only a handful of studies have made genuine progress toward un-derstanding the significance of these factors. A principal reason for this state of affairs is that -often because of data considerations researchers have typically used purely scalar vari-ables to measure networks of social relations. "Network effects" are examined by simply count-ing social ties and using these counts as interval variables in regression equations, so that the pro-cess by which social ties influence mobilization is analyzed as though it operates exclusively on the individual level. This in turn means that two key issues -network structure and multiplexity -have received insufficient consideration in theory and research. My goal is to demonstrate that the effect of social relations on the mobilization of collective action depends on the way in which these rela-tions are structured and, more precisely, on the correspondence between organizational and in-formal networks. I use data on patterns of insur-gency during the Paris Commune of 1871 to show that successful mobilization depended not on the sheer number of ties, but on the interplay be-tween social ties created by insurgent organiza-tions and pre-existing social networks rooted in Parisian neighborhoods. Organizational networks maintained solidarity because they were struc-tured along neighborhood lines. Paradoxically, neighborhood ties even determined the impor-tance of organizational links that cut across neigh-borhoods. Previous studies have rarely demonstrated that structural properties of relational systems are important for social movements, and there is no discussion in the literature of the ways in which formal and informal networks interact in the mobilization process. In the conclusion, I argue that these issues are best addressed through data collection procedures and analytic strategies that respect the structure of networks rather than re-ducing networks to individual-level counts of social ties.