Framing social movements: A geographical perspective

Abstract

The geographical concepts of scale, space and place have informed and refined the theory of “framing” in the social movement literature. Going beyond the conventional approach of understanding social movements, this article aims to bring discussions on relational ontology into conversation with the geographical literature on scale and spatial strategies in social movements, proposing a theoretical framework that goes beyond established approaches in the literature on collective action framing. This article proposes for a holistic cross-disciplinary dialog among political and development geographers and with activists and scholars from other cognate disciplines of social science to understand the complexities of framing in social movements.