1. #MeToo responses in the Norwegian Labor Party as cultural diffusion and improvisation.
- Author
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Hoeft, Brian
- Subjects
CULTURE diffusion ,POLITICAL participation ,PRACTICAL politics ,POLITICAL culture ,POLITICAL organizations ,POLITICAL party leadership - Abstract
The #MeToo movement began in the United States in October 2017 and traveled worldwide on social media platforms that sociologist Zeynep Tufekci (2017) calls an "attention economy." In Norway, #MeToo shook several political parties intensely. I focus on the demotion of one of the Norwegian Labor Party's two deputy leaders, Trond Giske. His demotion was reported to have been driven by the party leader with assistance from the other deputy leader. Traditionally in Norway, however, the power to decide on party leadership has been vested in mass-membership chapters, up through elected delegates to peak assemblies at 2-year or 4-year intervals. (Allern and Karlsen 2014). This paper works from more than 140 news clippings and Facebook posts in a 10-week period. I interpret the Labor Party's #MeToo response leaders to have divided roughly into two sets of cultural contestants. One set invited #MeToo-related complaints and promised to address unsatisfactory behavior while preserving inherited practices of membership democracy. The other set dramatized a rapid and public response, somewhat akin to how commercial managers might move to contain a crisis. I look at this case using theories of sociological institutionalism to consider how, in nationally conditioned repertoires of political behavior (Fourcade and Schofer 2016; Schofer and Fourcade-Gourinchas 2001), individuals may extend an inherited practice or improvise a divergence (Berk and Galvan 2009; Swidler 1986). Transnational diffusion is seen to unfold through political movements and organizations (Kriesi 2015; Roggeband 2010; McAdam and Rucht 1993) amid online mediatization (Benson et al 2012). In this case, I suggest that we see American influence on Norwegian political culture as predicted by theories of world society (Navari 2018; Schofer et al 2012: 60). And we see politics turning more consumeristic (Streeck 2012; Papakostas 2011; Wijkström 2011) - following Otto Kirchheimer's (1966) classical theory of catch-all parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019