Two research streams examine how social movements operate both “in and around” organizations. We probe the empirical spaces between these streams, asking how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts contributes to transformative social change. By exploring activities in the mid-1990s related to advocacy for domestic partner benefits at 24 organizations in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, we develop the concept of inhabited ecosystems to explore the relational processes by which employee activists advance change. These activists faced a variety of structural opportunities and restraints, and we identify five mechanisms that sustained their efforts during protracted contestation: learning even from thwarted activism, borrowing from one another’s more or less radical approaches, helping one another avoid the traps of stagnation, fostering solidarity and ecosystem capabilities, and collaboratively expanding the social movement domain. We thus reveal how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts animates an inhabited ecosystem of challengers that propels change efforts “between and through” organizations. These efforts, even when exploratory or incomplete, generate an ecosystem’s capacity to sustain, resource, and even reshape the larger transformative social change effort.

中文翻译：

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有人居住的生态系统：推动组织之间和通过组织的变革性社会变革

两个研究流研究了社会运动如何在组织“内部和周围”运作。我们探讨了这些流之间的经验空间，询问多组织环境中的激进主义如何促进变革性的社会变革。通过探索 1990 年代中期在明尼阿波利斯 - 圣路易斯的 24 个组织中与倡导国内合作伙伴利益相关的活动。明尼苏达州的保罗，我们开发了有人居住的生态系统的概念，以探索员工积极分子推动变革的关系过程。这些积极分子面临着各种结构性机会和限制，我们确定了在旷日持久的竞争中维持他们努力的五种机制：甚至从受挫的激进主义中学习，借鉴彼此或多或少激进的方法，帮助彼此避免停滞不前的陷阱，培养团结和生态系统能力，协同扩大社会运动领域。因此，我们揭示了多组织环境中的激进主义如何激发挑战者的生存生态系统，推动“组织之间和通过”组织的变革努力。这些努力，即使是探索性的或不完整的，也会产生生态系统维持、资源甚至重塑更大的变革性社会变革努力的能力。