"Free Spaces" in Collective Action

Good metaphors may be essential to social science. By putting ``the polysemous properties of language in the foreground,'' they facilitate what Richard Harvey Brown calls the ``genre-stretching'' that drives innovation. The danger of a good metaphor, though, is that claims merely implied are subjected neither to theoretical speci¢cation nor empirical investigation. Evocation substitutes for explanation.This has been the case, I argue, in recent discussions of the role of ``free spaces'' in mobilization. Since Sara Evans used the term in her 1979 Personal Politics, ``free spaces,'' along with `̀ protected spaces,'' ``safe spaces,'' `̀ spatial preserves,'' ``havens,'' ``sequestered social sites,'' ``cultural laboratories,'' `̀ spheres of cultural autonomy,'' and `̀ free social spaces'' ^ di¡erent names for the same thing ^ have appeared regularly in the work of sociologists, political scientists, and historians of collective action. For all these writers, free spaces and their analogues refer to small-scale settings within a community or movement that are removed from the direct control of dominant groups, are voluntarily participated in, and generate the cultural challenge that precedes or accompanies political mobilization.