Reclaiming Democracy: Oppositional Knowledge and the U.S. Peace Movement.

Institutionally privileged political discourses not only legitimate the rule and policy agendas of power-holders, but also de-legitimate dissent. Oppositional discourses are social movement responses to these cultural obstacles to mass mobilization. Drawing examples from statements issued by U.S. peace movement organizations over a fifteen-year period, we conceptually map the reproduction and transformation of oppositional discourses across five conflict periods. Blending quantitative and qualitative methods, our analysis of the peace movement's democracy discourse shows that four forms of oppositional knowledge were generated to facilitate policy dialogue and accountability among authorities: counter-informative, critical-interpretive, radical envisioning, and transformative. Through their statements, peace movement organizations aimed at defining, redefining, and potentially transforming both dominant and oppositional political discourses. The study highlights the interplay between macro-level symbolic culture and meso and micro-level efforts at political persuasion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]