Social movements, field frames and industry emergence: a cultural-political perspective on US recycling

Abstract

This article examines how social movements contribute to institutional change and the creation of new industries. We build on current efforts to bridge institutional and social movement perspectives in sociology and develop the concept of field frame to study how industries are shaped by social structures of meanings and resources that underpin and stabilize practices and social organization. Drawing on the case of how non-profit recyclers and the recycling social movement enabled the rise of a for-profit recycling industry, we show that movements can help to transform extant socio-economic practices and enable new kinds of industry development by engaging in efforts that lead to the de-institutionalization of field frames.