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Transnational Nationalism: Strategic Action Fields and the Organization of the Fenian Movement

Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change

ISBN: 978-1-78560-359-4, eISBN: 978-1-78560-358-7

Publication date: 1 September 2015

Abstract

How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Michael Benediktsson, Katherine Chen, John Chin, Maureen Cummins, Thomas DeGloma, Mark Halling, Michael Hanagan, Miranda Martinez, Keara O’Dempsey, and the anonymous reviewers at RSMCC for assistance in preparing this work; to the George N. Schuster Faculty Fellowship Fund at Hunter College, the Irish American Cultural Institute, and the Research Fund of PSC-CUNY for research support; and to the American Antiquarian Society, Burns Library at Boston College, The New York Public Library, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Fenian Brotherhood Collection of the Washington Research Library Consortium for access to archival materials.

Citation

Lune, H. (2015), "Transnational Nationalism: Strategic Action Fields and the Organization of the Fenian Movement", Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 38), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-786X20150000038001

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited