Unmaking a Movement: Identity Work and the Outcomes of Zapatista Community Centers in Los Angeles

Abstract

Identity work explains how participants in social movements build and maintain their collective identities, uniting movement groups. This study, based on ethnographic fieldwork comparing two Zapatista community centers in Los Angeles, asks if the absence of identity work leads to the dissolution of organizations. Both of these groups neglected work of identity convergence and identity construction to integrate three subgroups—“activists,” “organizers,” and “community members”—into a whole. Yet a lack of identity work alone does not explain the relative stability of one group while the second experienced conflict and eventually disbanded. Additional structural influences—an external crisis facing the group and the internal proportions between members—combined with these cultural factors to bring about organizational schism.