Viva Solidarity!: Framing Repertoire of Emerging Social Movements against Institutional Change in Two Turkish Universities

Abstract

Purpose of this paper is to explore how resistance of individual and collective actors play role in maintenance and change of institutions. Framing tactics of two emerging social movements in Istanbul Technical University and Middle East Technical University, which emerged against institutional changes in Turkish higher education, were examined by hybrid ethnography, using both online and offline data sources. Findings show that framing tactics of institutional entrepreneurs comprise different discourses and different forms of power, which also vary during different life stages of these movements. This paper contributes to existing literature in three ways. First power dynamics in institutional change, which is mostly disregarded in institutional theory, is taken into consideration. Second, with a longitudinal comparative study, it is shown that outcomes of social movements with similar demands may diverge according to different framing tactics based on power mechanisms that appealed at different stages of their life cycle. Third, this paper, as one of the few examples of a hybrid ethnographic approach, underlines the key role of considering both offline–online data sources, as an important part of actors’ life that take place in the online world.

Citation

Güneştepe, K. and Tunçalp, D. (2016), " Viva Solidarity!: Framing Repertoire of Emerging Social Movements against Institutional Change in Two Turkish Universities", Towards a Comparative Institutionalism: Forms, Dynamics and Logics Across the Organizational Fields of Health Care and Higher Education (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 45), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 297-326. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20150000045022