CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL-CHANGE THROUGH PHILANTHROPY - BOUNDARY FRAMING AND THE ARTICULATION OF VOCABULARIES OF MOTIVES FOR SOCIAL-MOVEMENT PARTICIPATION

I embrace Mills's (1940) conception of motives to offer new insight in to an old question: why do people join social movements? I draw upon e thnographic research at the Crossroads Fund, a ''social change'' found ation, to illustrate that actors simultaneously articulate two vocabul aries of motives for movement participation: an instrumental vocabular y about dire, yet solvable. problems and an expressive vocabulary abou t collective identity. This interpretive work is done during boundary framing, which refers to efforts by movements to create in-group/out-g roup distinctions. I argue that the goal-directed actions movements ta ke to advance social change are shaped by participants' identity claim s. Moreover. it is significant that Crossroads constructs its actions and identity as social movement activism. rather than philanthropy. Th is definitional work suggests that analyzing the category social movem ents is problematic unless researchers study how activists attempt to situate themselves within this category. Hence, methodologically atten ding to organizations' constructions of movement status can theoretica lly inform research which essentially takes social movements as a give n, in exploring their structural components.