Davide Gnes

In the analysis of voluntary organizations, legitimacy and legitimation are useful concepts because they bring to light the process through which organizational entities justify their right to exist and their actions within a particular normative context (Maurer 1971; Meyer and Scott 1983; Beetham 2013). Theories of legitimacy underscore the moral basis of organizational power as grounded in the relationship between organizations and different kinds of audiences. In this chapter, we look at how those concepts and theories relate to the study of voluntary organizations. Those theories not only help us understand how voluntary organizations establish themselves, strengthen their position and survive over time despite very limited material resources of their own, but also how different organizational claims can directly impact communities, either by publicly projecting particular conceptions of community or by articulating specific interests and needs on behalf of its members In our review of the literature on organizational legitimacy, we focus on three main aspects of legitimacy: conceptualization of the term in organizational sociology, political sociology and studies of non-profit organizations; the constraining role of institutionalized normative contexts and competing audiences in the legitimation processes; the agentic role of organizations within both institutional and strategic contexts.

In the analysis of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), legitimacy and legitimation are useful concepts because they bring to light the processes through which organisational entities justify their right to exist and their actions within a particular normative context. Theories of legitimacy underscore the moral basis of organisational power as grounded in the relationship between organisations and different kinds of audiences. In this article, we look at how those concepts and theories relate to the study of NGOs. Those theories not only help us understand how organisations establish themselves, strengthen their position and survive over time despite very limited material resources of their own, but also how organisations may build political power. In our review of the literature on organisational legitimacy, we focus on three main aspects of legitimacy: the conceptualisation of the term in organisational sociology, political sociology and political science; the constraining role...

In this chapter I draw on my fieldwork experience in Los Angeles to discuss the potential of video for qualitative research on migration and political action. I focus specifically on three aspects: access to the field, research respondents and data; video and the study of micro-social interaction; video as a tool to generate new insights and data. I argue that video has facilitated, enriched and expanded my understanding of migrant political action in several ways, some of which were entirely unexpected at the beginning of this research. Within the field of migration studies, video appears particularly suitable to research the terrain of politics and culture, since it provides the means to study a key social aspect that is difficult to investigate in detail only with other types of methods: interaction. Hence, video as both a tool and a method proved a useful complement to interviews, artefacts and archive documentation.

In the analysis of voluntary organizations, legitimacy and legitimation are useful concepts because they bring to light the process through which organizational entities justify their right to exist and their actions within a particular normative context (Maurer, 1971; Meyer & Scott, 1983; Beetham, 2013). Theories of legitimacy underscore the moral basis of organizational power as grounded in the relationship between organizations and different kinds of audiences. In this chapter, we look at how those concepts and theories relate to the study of voluntary organizations. Those theories not only help us understand how voluntary organizations establish themselves, strengthen their position and survive over time despite very limited material resources of their own, but also how different organizational claims can directly impact communities, either by publicly projecting particular conceptions of community or by articulating specific

Immigrant political organisations in the United States have
traditionally built political power by claiming to legitimately
represent an ethnically defined group. However, the emergence
of a number of multi-ethnic, class-based organisations over the
last two decades has challenged this assumption, while raising
questions about the ability of the institutional context to
accommodate organisational change. Building on a neo-institutional theory of legitimacy, I examine the diverging legitimating strategies employed by two long-standing immigrant organisations based in Los Angeles (LA): the Korean Resource Center (KRC) and the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA). Through grant applications, organisational archival data and qualitative interviews, I show how KRC and KIWA, two groups embedded in the same sociopolitical context, have built unique yet equally successful legitimating accounts by adopting different organisational logics, one broadly based on ethnicity and one on class and multi-ethnicity. I suggest that KIWA and KRC’s ideological differences, and their reliance on a different core of supporters – ethnic-oriented for KRC, labour-oriented for KIWA – drove the organisations towards distinct, yet partially overlapping subfields. By discursively mobilising those connections, and by actively shaping the surrounding organisational environment, both KRC and KIWA were able to incorporate in the broader non-profit advocacy sector in LA.