Resisting Reagan: The US Central America Peace Movement by Christian SmithReview by: Fred KnissSociology of Religion, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 93-94Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3711970 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 93

healing had to be of the women themselves. Orsi's analysis emphasizes the importance

of narrative in the transformation of these women's understandings of their troubles. Ttle letters reveal a "narrative of inversion" with women bpoised between acknowledging des peration and visions of alternatives, between reality and desire" (p. 132). In the letters, and the women's devotional culture that they reveal to us, Uone woman's narrative of grace opened the space to another's narrative of petition" (p. 133). Orsi sees a special relation between Jude, Uthe inverting saint," with his gin between lo- cation"-powerful but forgotten and the central features of the devotional practices. Examples of inversion and in betweenness run throughout the book. Orsi takes us through many layers of understanding to arrive at an appropriately ambivalent interpretation of this multi-vocal symbol and the meaning Catholic women have made of it. While I do not find the evidence entirely convincing for some of Orsi's claims regarding the uniqueness of devotion to Jude in American Catholic practice, I find this a respectful and provocative book with much to say about the lives of American Catholic women.

Mary Jo Neitz Universit of Missouri

ResistingReagan: The US CentralAmerica Peace Movement, by CHRISTIAN SMITH. Chicago:UniversityofChicagoPress, 1996, xx + 464 pp. $19.95 (pbk.3.

Reasling tis boolc was a pleasure, tha4* pedlaps a perverse one. In a strange way, it fek good to once again feel my anger rising at outrageous acts of sute by the US govemment. If your f ires af politicoSmoral outrage have bilrned low dunng & Clint years, if you want to rekindle the flames of righteous indignation at so often warmed you in the Reagan era,

then this is the book for you. In painstaking (and often painful) detail, Christian Smith re- tells the story of US supported atrocities in Central America, a story that many of us read or heard in bits and pieces as it happened. But the book is more than a skillful recounting of those events. It is also an insightful case study of faith based opposition to US policy in the re- gion a social movement that was probably underexposed when it happened, and certainly has been neglected by scholars.

The case study is important because it reminds us that not all recent religious move- ments have been right wing, and it provides an opportunity to examine in new ways the role of religion in social movements. By focusing on religious commitment in the Central American peace movement, Smith gains leverage for an insightful critique of the rational choice as- sumptions underlying muchof the recent work on social movements.

In his introductory chapter, Smith states his central purpose as gto answer a number of key questions conceming the who, what, why, and hows of the Central America peace move- ment." Using the "political process model" of social movements as a framework, he accom- plishes this task splendidly. In Part One, he sets the historical and political context of US policy in Central America. Chapter Three provides a particularly vivid description of the political, economic, and human costs of the US-sup- ported strategy of low-intensity warfare. In Parts Two, Three, arld Four, he treats, respectively, the emergence, maintenance, and outcomes of the peace movement that arose in opposition to American policy in the region. The political process model serves him well as a heuristic framework for telling the movement's story. Indeed, this book is one of the best case study applications of the model that I have read.

The model serves him less well, however, in achieving one of his chief goals for the book

explicating the role af religion in Q moveS ment. Throughout the bE, Smith refers to the Central American peace movement as a faith based movement. He often discusses the reliS gious motivations and moral commitments of the movement's participants and leaders. It seems clear from the general tone of his account that showing the important role of religion was

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94 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

one of his key interests in telling this story. He was hampered in this project, however, by his deperdence on the political process model which provides few analytical handles for grappling with the role of religion as religion.

The model leads Smith to treat religion at

various points as a communication network, a fertile recruiting Seld} or a set of institutions and organizational resources that are easily mobilizable. The primary iing that sets reli- gion apan from other institutional contexts in these regards seems to be its ubiqulty. The actual content of religion, the ideological or cultural resources it provides, seems strangety

absent from the account. lEere were several places in the analysis

where I expected to learn more about the role of religion in this movement. One was in Smith's discussion of ehe contests between the Reagan administration and the movement over framing the Central American problem. Smith does a very nice job of delineating six different frames that were availabte, what Feir culwral reso- nances were, and what their vulnerabilities were. I was struck, however, by how areligious these frames were. None of them drew on any explic - itly religious ideas, symbols, or ilaages. Why was this the case7 Was it because dw framing battles were public arglaments and movement partici- pants wanted to keep the* religious commitS

ments under ie table in the public arena? If so, what does iis say about the role of rellgion in the movement and about the efficacy of particuo lar religwus resources?

Anodler place I expected to leam more about religion vas in Smi6's analysis of the paticipants and leaders in the movement. ReS ligiort shows up here, but primarily as the infor- mational ard relatiotul ctext iat facilitated

recruitment into movement and supported individuals' activism. We don't leam much about khe amtent of participants' religious beS liefs arKl commitment;. Earlier in the boolc, the audror highlighb the growing popularity of libS eration dueology us American religious dght as an ideological context ihat supported the movement, bue the surveys and intenriews dcit tell us much about participant;' {amiliarity wii

or commianent to libexation d - DlOgy ideas. It was unclear to me whether this absens:e of explicit religious content was a chafacteristic of

the individuals, or was an artifactual conse- quence of the kinds of questions the political process model generated.

E v e n i e d i s c u s s i o n o f m o r a I c o m m i t m e n t s as motivation for participants focuses on how these commitments led them to calculate the costs arul benefits of participation. There is

little attention to the content of those commit- ments. Did it matter what people were commit-

eed to, oronly that they were committedt If the latter, then how is this movement different from others, and why does lt matter that it was religious?

To be sure, Smith's discussion of the moral commitmentsofparticipants isone ofthis book's very important contributions to the literature. As he points out, in this movement (and prob

ably in many others) people's actions were moz tivated deontololly rather than teleologically. That is, people carried out actions, not because they were efficient means to desired ends, but because they believed ie actions to be inherS

ently right and necessary regardless of their consequences. They engaged in these actions

even when they knew they might result inharm to the movement's larger goals or to their own

persons. If this kind of action is common in social movementst it poses a difficult problem for ie rational chotce assumptions that underw lie much of contemporary social movement theory, especially the resource mobilization and political process approaches. Smith raises these important q"estions, aldlough he mostly leaves them as agenda for fiture theoretical develop ment.

SmiF is to be congratulated for writing a book Fat is both in to read and challenging in that it raises so many important questions. Teachers will Snd it useful as a text in graduate and undexgraduate courses in the sociology of religi and social movements. For researchers, Smii has mapped out several paths that are worth exploring considerably furier. Perhaps he did not go down all Xse paths as far as he might have, but we should be gratefil that he left sofnething for e rest of us to do.

Fred Kniss Le Uruversit C

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