Mayer Zald - Work and Influence

Work and Influence

On his home page at Michigan Zald wrote that his research focused "on social movement theory, organizational theory, and on sociology as a science and a humanities". Zald made substantial contributions to the field of social movement research. The term social movement organization (SMO) entered the literature through the work of Zald and Roberta Ash (now Garner) (Zald, Mayer N. and Roberta Ash, Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay and Change. Social Forces 44:327-341, 1966). As of 2012 their article in Social Forces was one of top 10 most frequently cited articles ever published in this journal. With John D. McCarthy, Zald developed the resource mobilization theory, which became one of the major theories on social movements. Zald’s article with McCarthy, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” published in the American Journal of Sociology in May 1977, has been described by Jeff Goodwin as one of the most influential and frequently cited articles in the field and in the discipline. Zald and McCarthy called "attention to the rising trend of professional activism in social movements and general principles of organizational dynamics to" social movement organizations.

Zald wrote more than 60 articles in all and wrote and edited nearly two dozen books; as of May 2012 his CV listed 21 Books and Monographs, 67 Empirical Studies and Theoretical Essays, 44 "Review Articles and Commentaries" and 5 "Pamphlets and Reports". His works included including Social Movements in an Organizational Society: Collected Essays (with John McCarthy) (1987), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (with Doug McAdam and John McCarthy) (1996), and Social Movements and the Transformation of American Health Care (with Jane Banaszak-Holl and Sandra Levitsky) (2010).

In 2008 he received the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior from the Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change at University of Notre Dame.