White-collar agitation, no-collar compliance : the privilege of protest in Varanasi, India

An investigation of contentious action by associations representing six occupational groups at different socio-economic levels reveals that middle-class groups tend to favor contentious means of making demands such as demonstrations and strikes, while lower-class groups tend to avoid contentious action, preferring more institutionalized or contained means. While such findings might appear to be puzzling given middle-class groups’ superior access to state institutions and the Habermasian concept of a rational, orderly, bourgeois public sphere, they are consistent with the literature on resource mobilization and social movements in the West: Access to financial resources and strong mobilizing structures enables the middle-class groups to take advantage of a political opportunity structure that rewards contentious action.