Social Movements

11 Key excerpts on "Social Movements"

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  What is a Social Movement?

  • Hank Johnston(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  1 What is a Social Movement? Social Movements are key forces of social change in the modern world. Although not all social change emanates from them – technological innovation, climate change, natural disasters, and wars also are causes – Social Movements are unique because they are guided purposively and strategically by the people who join them. Another key characteristic is that they mobilize and do their business mostly outside established political and institutional channels. This makes questions of their origin and growth especially compelling for the social scientist. Some Social Movements represent efforts by citizens to collectively create a more just and equitable world. Other movements are motivated by compelling grievances that push their adherents out of their ordinary daily routines. Social Movements are typically resisted by forces that favor the status quo, which imparts a fundamental contentiousness to movement actions. But the defining characteristic of all movements, big and small, is that they move history along, sometimes in significant ways. Knowing what they are and how social scientists study them are important tasks if we are to understand contemporary society and where it is headed. In 2011, Time magazine selected “the protester” as its person of the year. This was partly because movements in opposition to repressive regimes exploded that year in North Africa and the Middle East. In both Egypt and Tunisia, the Mubarak and the Ben-Ali regimes were brought down by unexpected mass movements of political opposition. In Syria, a similar opposition movement took a different course. It spiraled into a civil war with casualties over 100,000 and a flow of refugees approaching 1.5 million

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  The History of Social Movements in Global Perspective

  A Survey

  • Stefan Berger, Holger Nehring, Stefan Berger, Holger Nehring(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Deutschland, Frankreich und USA im Vergleich (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1994). 9 Tarrow, for example, defines Social Movements as ‘socially mobilized groups engaged in sustained contentious interaction with powerholders in which at least one actor is either a target or a participant’. Sidney Tarrow, ‘Transnational Politics: Contention and Institutions in International Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2011), pp. 1–20, here p. 11. 42 D. RUCHT that undergirded the feudal and absolutist order. In other situations, Social Movements insist on the values that are rhetorically upheld by the elites and/or legally enshrined but are severely violated in practice, as was the case with the US civil rights movement. Accepting reference to a funda- mental societal change as a definitional element does not necessarily mean that this reference is explicitly articulated in every single protest event or campaign. Social movement groups often concentrate on, and articu- late, more tangible and specific aims, for either purely tactical reasons or because the ultimate goal of fundamental change is all too obvious when minor steps into a certain direction are envisaged. The ‘social’ or, preferably, the ‘ societal’ dimension of Social Movements should not be misinterpreted as being non-political. Many basic social norms and institutions are defined, shaped and enforced by political rul- ers and institutions. Hence an attempt to change society almost inevita- bly requires engagement in the political sphere and confronting political actors. In that sense, most Social Movements are also political movements, an aspect that, for example, led Craig Jenkins to propose the term ‘socio- political movements’. 10 Still, in purely analytical terms, it makes sense to separate comprehen- sive Social Movements from political, religious and cultural movements that predominantly act in a particular realm or sub-system of society.

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  Leadership in Science and Technology: A Reference Handbook

  • William Sims Bainbridge, William S. Bainbridge(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Social Movements A huge literature exists concerning two general categories of social movement, religious movements and political movements , but only modest and poorly organized litera-tures are available about many other areas of human life where movements are often significant. One reason is that the consolidation of collective behavior into formal move-ments is obvious in these two domains, and the result may be a legally registered religious denomination or political party. Given that our topic is scientific and technological movements, which are built on an extensive cultural base in the form of new discoveries and devices, Herbert Blumer’s (1969) concept of general movement applies: a collection of organizations rather than one organization, connected by common aims and conceptions into a subcul-ture. These organizations may individually become well established as an industrial corporation, a university department, the community supporting a particular scien-tific journal, or even a formal program in a government bureaucracy. The most visible of these general science and technology movements may be called pioneer movements because they explore a field for the first time, but revival movements can also be significant, restoring vitality to an existing field. Pioneer Movements Perhaps the most significant technical movement that flourished in the decades around the year 2000 is not usually analyzed as such by academics, perhaps because it was so large that no scholar could become conversant with all of it: personal computing .

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  The SAGE Handbook of Comparative Politics

  • Todd Landman, Neil Robinson, Todd Landman, Neil Robinson(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Here, we review some of the major contri-butions from comparative politics to the study of Social Movements, noting signifi-cantly different areas of inquiry in the North and in the South. We focus on the range of independent variables that scholars use to explain the origins, emergence, development, organization, and ultimate impact of Social Movements. By situating our review in a sys-tematic retracing of major differences in the organization of political authority, we mean to suggest grounds for a larger, contextual, understanding of how Social Movements relate to other political phenomena, enabling the development of broader comparisons across different political contexts. We begin by offering a brief history of the field of Social Movements within comparative politics, then turn to review major issues in studies of unrest in the North, then in the South. We consider the influence of interna-tional context on social movement develop-ment, and conclude with suggestions for further research. PROTEST POLITICS AND Social Movements The term, ‘Social Movements’ is inclusive, perhaps overly so, referring to a wide range of political phenomena. Indeed, scholars fre-quently offer a specific definition that applies to the case at hand, and talk past other work on the topic. For our purposes, we appreciate Tarrow’s (1998: 4) handy definition of Social Movements as ‘collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sus-tained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities.’ This definition locates Social Movements firmly as political phenomena, but allows considerable flexibility in the range of political formations and sequences of events that might be included in an analysis. Despite this flexibility – or perhaps because of it – scholars with a range of relevant concerns have often ignored the broader connections that were possible in their findings.

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  Available until 25 Jan |Learn more

  Polite Politics

  A Sociological Analysis of an Urban Protest in Hong Kong

  • Denny Ho Kwok-leung(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 Theories of Social Movements: A Review of the Literature

  Introduction

  The study of Social Movements became popular in the 1960s, an era in which protests and direct actions outside the formal political system played an important role in social change. This led to a growth in the general sociology literature of work informed by resource mobilization theories which considered protests and Social Movements to be the products of the political participation of rational people. This view is contrary to that offered by the dominant classical perspective which deemed collective action to be initiated by irrational people. Resource mobilization theorists emphasize the study of the process of collective actions and their impacts on social change. In urban sociology, Pickvance (1977) suggested that it might be fruitful to adopt this perspective to study the process of translating a social base to a social force. The study of this aspect in urban sociology seems necessary since the development and dynamics of urban movements have received little attention (Hannigan, 1985). Later Pahl (1989) in his evaluation of class analysis pointed out that the analysis of urban movements often invoked a structure-consciousness-action chain to theorize its origin, but had in practice given little attention to the mechanisms by which the social group in question acquired the ‘consciousness’ that guided and informed its actions. Despite such awareness of the need to study the relationship between action and structure, little effort has been put into this question (Giddens, 1984).

  This chapter reviews the existing literature on Social Movements, and in doing so brings out the main theoretical issues concerning the analysis of urban movements. Our aim is to develop a more usefiil and coherent theoretical framework to understand urban movements in a specific social and political context. Another objective of this chapter is to bring out the theoretical issues pertinent to the analysis of locally based urban movements. We shall argue that the strategy of an urban movement is an adequate dependent variable, and that the analysis of the process of its formulation and implementation is the key to unravelling the complexity and dynamics of urban movements. We shall start with a brief review of the classical perspective on collective action in section 2.1. Section 2.2 discusses the resource mobilization perspective. Although there are problems in this perspective, we shall draw on the analytical classification of resource acquisition for the study in this thesis. In sections 2.3 and 2.4, we explore and examine two recent theoretical models, that is, the political process model and the social construction of protests, and try to show that these two models are complementary to the resource mobilization perspective. At the end of each section, we point out the major shortcomings of the perspectives. In section 2.5, we link up the resource mobilization perspective with the political process and social construction models, and illustrate a possible way of using their conceptual and analytical elements in our analysis of Social Movements.

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  The SAGE Handbook of European Studies

  • Chris Rumford(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Changes in the nature of the conflict are also reflected in the characteristics of the new actors. In contrast with the labour movement, Social Movements develop a fundamental, Social Movements 367 metapolitical critique of the social order and representative democracy, challenging insti-tutional assumptions regarding conventional ways of ‘doing politics’, in the name of a radical democracy (Offe, 1985). Among the principal innovations, in contrast with the workers’ movement, are a critical ideology in relation to modernism and progress; decen-tralized and participatory organizational structures; defence of interpersonal solidarity against state and corporate bureaucracies; and the reclamation of autonomous spaces, rather than material advantages. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, European sociologists also engaged in the analysis of cultural habits (or the cultural predispositions produced by processes of socialization) as well as their structural determinants. Attention has been paid to the cultural meanings (or habitus) within the specific fields of social action to which individuals belong: ‘Going beyond economic interests, some scholars explained indeed social movement activism as following needs and desires that derive from values and norms that are typical of specific cultures (or fields)’ (della Porta and Diani, 2006). New Social Movements’ approaches have been criticized on various grounds. First – looking especially at the evolution of the environmental or women’s movements – the very concept of ‘new social movement’ tended to be constructed around historically contingent characteristics (such as informal organization or a focus on non-material issues) taken as general defining traits of Social Movements (della Porta and Diani, 2006: chapter 1).

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  The International Handbook of Sociology

  • Stella R Quah, Arnaud Sales, Stella R Quah, Arnaud Sales(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  236 Social Movements: Trends and Turns 11 Social Movements: Trends and Turns Bert Klandermans Social Movements according to Tarrow, who builds on Charles Tilly’s work, are “collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities” (1994a: 4). Elaborating on this definition Tarrow emphasizes (a) that movements mount disruptive action against elites, authorities, other groups and cultural codes; (b) that they do so in the name of common claims against opponents, authorities and elites; (c) that they are rooted in feelings of solidarity or collective identity; and (d) that it is by sustaining their resulting collective action that contention turns into a social movement. During the past decades many new and old movements have been studied by social movement scholars all over the world: the labor movement, farmer’s protest, the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the environmental movement, democratization movements, and movements of the extreme right, to mention only some. Reviewing what is found with regard to all these movements is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, I have taken a more conceptual approach. I will start with four concepts which in the past decades have dominated the field: grievances, resources, opportunities, and meaning. Then, I will discuss some new issues which have cornered the field during the past years: the internalization of politics and protest, political change as it impacts on protest behavior, collective identity, Social Movements and culture, protest policing, and sustained participation. Furthermore, I will allude to the growing methodological sophistication that characterizes the field. The downside of all these developments is disciplinary fragmentation. Therefore, the need for synthesizing theoretical frameworks is growing. In a final section I will discuss a few recently undertaken attempts to such a synthesis.

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  Changing the Wor(l)d

  Discourse, Politics and the Feminist Movement

  • Stacey Young(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 Social Movement Theory

  Some social movement1 theorists and women's movement scholars are beginning to acknowledge that a social movement's success in securing fundamental social transformation may best be indicated by the degree to which the movement's ideas become an integral part of a culture, influencing people's world views and their individual and collective actions. In general, however, this remains a minority view. Despite growing acknowledgment among scholars of the need to assess social movement success in terms of both policy change and more fundamental transformation, social movement theorists and scholars of the women's movement continue to assert that social movement success is indicated by the degree to which movement organizations become part of the policy process, working within that process to influence legislation and other social policy. Yet this is but one form of success; it is not the only—or even the most far-reaching—form. For students of the contemporary women's movement, then, the question remains: why do the women's movement studies fall short of representing and exploring feminist activism in all its complexity? Why, in particular, do they so often ignore the discursive activities aimed at effecting radical change in dominant ideologies?

  The answer to this question lies in the studies' liberal theoretical underpinnings, and the methodologies that follow from them. The studies are theoretically grounded in liberal constructions of power and domination, resistance and social change. A look at the history and development of social movement theory helps to illuminate the reasons contemporary studies of the women's movement conceive of power, domination, resistance, and social change as narrowly as they do.

  Prior to the 1960s, the study of collective behavior was grounded mainly in variations of "frustration-aggression theory," which emphasized grievances or deprivation as the root cause of collective action. Deprivation could be absolute or relative, but it was assumed to be the engine of social movement activity.2

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  Social Movements in a Globalized World

  • Cristina Flesher Fominaya(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Finally, as I will discuss more at length in the next chapter, social move-ments have effects on other Social Movements, both in a specific period of time, as Social Movements in one place trigger or inspire social protest in other areas, and over time, through the historical transmission of memories, ideas, ideolo-gies, identities and practices from one movement’s generation to the next. Although it is easy to dismiss the outcomes or achievements of Social Movements once their period of mobilization has waned, the following quote from Hayden (2012) illustrates just how much Social Movements can achieve in a short period of time: The ‘60s movements stumbled to an end largely because we’d won the major reforms that were demanded: the 1964 and 1965 civil and voting rights laws, the end of the draft and the Vietnam War, passage of the War Powers Resolution and the Freedom of Information Act, Nixon’s environmental laws, amnesty for war resisters, two presidents forced from office, the 18-year-old vote, union recognition of public employees and farmworkers, disabil-ity rights, the decline of censorship, the emergence of gays and lesbians from a shadow existence … Perhaps never in US history had so many changes occurred in so short a time, all driven by the vibrancy of participatory democracy. 40 Social Movements IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD Today, many of these gains, such as the vote for 18-year-olds or restrictions on censorship, are largely taken for granted and many people do not even associate them with the 1960s movements that achieved them. Conclusion Although it provides an orientation to central questions and concepts, this brief discussion only scratches the surface of the vast and rich literature in the field of social movement studies.

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  Power, Politics, and Society

  An Introduction to Political Sociology

  • Betty A Dobratz, Lisa K Waldner, Timothy Buzzell, Betty Dobratz, Lisa Waldner(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Box 8.2 .

  TEXT BOX 8.2 Why Social Movements Matter

  One of the most difficult tasks for social movement theorists is identifying how Social Movements actually make a difference and how they create social change. In general, there are three areas of agreement about how Social Movements make a difference. Social Movements can influence political, cultural, and social changes. Political changes include gaining (a) acceptance (i.e. recognition by formal political bodies, representation in decision-making processes) and/or (b) new advantages (i.e. ability to set/influence political agenda, influence public policy, or influence long-term systemic change [Gamson 1975, 1990]). Cultural changes include influencing (a) attitudes, opinions, and values of the general public; (b) systems of knowledge or traditions (Earl 2000, 2004); or (c) the emergence of collective identities (Polletta and Jasper 2001). Finally, social changes include influencing (a) an individual social movement participant (i.e. shaping their life path, occupation, political involvement) or the life course patterns of large blocks of people (e.g. influence of the 1960s on the life chances and life goals of the Baby Boomers [Giugni 2004]) and (b) changes in social networks and the flow of social capital (Diani 1997).

  To demonstrate how Social Movements matter, let us examine the case of three localized “smart growth” movements. First, in 2003 in Ames, Iowa, a group of local citizens upset with a proposal for a new mall formed an SMO called the Ames Smart Growth Alliance (ASGA). The group led the charge against the proposed development and promoted planned growth that balanced economic, social, and environmental concerns. In 2005, in Brunswick, New York, after the local newspaper ran an article about a proposal for a new Wal-Mart Superstore and after learning about the proposal of four large residential developments, seventeen people formed Brunswick Smart Growth (BSG). BSG became the lead organization against the various proposals by voicing concern over the adverse effect these developments would have on the “town’s rural character.” Finally, in 2001 in Centreville, Maryland, a local developer proposed the development of thirty condominiums on land at the headwaters of the Corsica River referred to as the “Wharf” property. Approximately sixty local area residents came together to speak out against the proposal and formed the Citizens for Greater Centreville (CGC).

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  The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements

  • David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Making such a case would require understanding political leaders’ agendas and the content of legislative programs prior to the challenge as well as assessing how legislators might have voted in its absence. New legislation must also be implemented, and movements can influence the speed and nature of this process as well. This sort of technique is possible in settings where these processes are often quite separate, as in the US polity, but would require some modification for use in other polities. Conclusion Conclusion Scholars have pursued issues surrounding the impact of Social Movements, especially state-related impacts. As we have seen, however, understanding the state-related consequences of Social Movements poses several difficult conceptual, theoretical, and methodological problems. The problems stem mainly from the fact that to have an impact on states, challengers depend on many actors inside and outside states and are further removed from these processes than most outcomes of concern to move-ments. For that reason scholars need to think specifically about the state-related consequences of Social Movements. This means conceptualizing these impacts beyond the standard ideas of new advantages and acceptance. It also means theoriz-ing in ways that take into account other key actors and institutions. From there scholars need to devise methodological strategies to ascertain the impact of challen-gers and appraise often complex arguments about their influence. Despite the fact that much social movement activity is aimed at states, conceptual-izations of the potential consequences of this collective action have not relied enough on conceptual developments in political sociology scholarship on states. Instead, social movement scholars have focused on broad notions of new advantages and the acceptance of social movement organizations, as might be applied to any target of a challenge.

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