Disciplined academic study of social movements should help us make sense of the movements and politics of our time, but social science often leads us astray. Particularly, the ideal of limiting the frame of analysis in terms of independent and dependent variables and in terms of time routinely neglects the disparate causes and effects of social protest. These challenges are particularly acute when considering contemporaneous campaigns, that is, analysis on the fly. Using the case of the first Women’s March, staged the day after Donald Trump became president of the United States, I elaborate the false steps that social science analysis encourages by identifying patterned errors of exclusion: applying misplaced models; producing unduly narrow fields of action; the difficulty of evaluating practical possibilities; the challenge of assessing institutionalization; and the necessity of truncating time. I conclude with suggestions for continuing to engage in analysis of contemporary movements and ways to avoid egregious errors while doing so.

对社会运动的纪律严明的学术研究应该有助于我们理解我们这个时代的运动和政治，但社会科学常常把我们引入歧途。特别是，根据自变量和因变量以及时间来限制分析框架的理想通常忽略了社会抗议的不同原因和影响。在考虑同期活动（即动态分析）时，这些挑战尤为严峻。以唐纳德特朗普成为美国总统后的第二天举行的第一次妇女大游行为例，我阐述了社会科学分析通过识别排除的模式错误而鼓励的错误步骤：应用错位的模型；产生过于狭窄的行动领域；评估实际可能性的难度；评估制度化的挑战；以及截断时间的必要性。最后，我提出了继续分析当代运动的建议，以及在这样做时避免严重错误的方法。