A TRUE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF FINANCE - FRAME RESONANCE IN THE US LABOR-MOVEMENT, 1866 TO 1886

Collective action frames are ideological tools that organize experienc e, diagnose problems, and prescribe solutions for the constituents of social movements. What happens when a social movement ideology tells c onstituents one thing, but their experiences tell them something contr adictory? I investigate greenbackism in the nineteenth-century labor m ovement, a striking example of ideology that blatantly contradicted co nstituents' experiences. I show that, although social movements can ac count for discrepancies between ideology and experience, such strategi es are limited and some collective action frames are ultimately discon firmed empirically. Collective action frames dealing with practical, e veryday issues are similar to falsifiable scientific theories, althoug h the means by which they are disconfirmed is different. Master frames , the larger ideological traditions upon which social movements are ba sed, are comparable to scientific paradigms, which are resistant but n ot immune to disconfirming evidence.