Social Movements And Activism

Social Movements Abstracts, Books on Social Movements, Bibliography, Syllabus, Journals, Collective Behavior, Social Activism, Astroturfing

Social problems are generally characterized by the traits of a specific social movement, though they often begin, and remain for a fairly long time, in the general movement stage.

What is a Social Movement? The Sociology of Social Movements
Sociologists have viewed social movements using a number of different perspectives - movements as a response to social strains, as a reflection of trends and directions throughout the society more generally, as a reflection of individual dissatisfaction and feelings of deprivation, and as a natural step in the generation and modification of social institutions (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1988). Traditional work on the sociology of mass movements concentrated on the processes by which such movements emerged, how mass social movements recruited new members, defined their goals, and gathered the initial resources that would allow them to survive.

Professionally oriented social movements enjoy advantages in terms of expertise, organization, they also are often relatively easy for the state to control. In totalitarian governments, social movements have been controlled simply by repressing them; but in democratic systems, state and federal agencies, and their attached superstructure of laws and regulations, may in fact serve much the same function, directing and controlling the spheres of activity in which a movement is allowed to operate, offering penalties or rewards for compliance. - Stephen T. Kerr

Types of Social Movements - General and Specific Social Movements

Herbert Blumer (1951) set forth a typology of social movementst. His main distinction is between general and specific social movements, which differ according to the degree of their focus and organization. He describes also some kinds of social movements which are distinguished mainly by their quality or style: expressive social movements (including some religious movements and fashion movements), which seek to cope with personal and social dissatisfactions without aiming to change external social conditions; and nationalistic or revival movements, which seek to impose on present-day society certain idealized values or arrangements from the past.

General social movements consist of vague goals or objectives and lack organization, leadership, and structure. General social movements grow gradually out of what Blumer calls "cultural drifts," which are "gradual and pervasive changes in the values of a people." As a general social movement begins to form from a cultural drift, it gradually acquires spokesmen not real leaders.

Specific social movements usually grows out of a general movement as the latter grows out of a cultural drift. The specific social movement is an expression of the activities of interest groups and pressure groups, which have fairly well-defined goals. Blumer offers the example of the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century, which grew out of a more general humanitarian movement. Specific social movements are apt to be of either a reform or revolutionary nature. In specific social movement organization and other characteristics are not present from the beginning, but they develop with the passage of time, largely out of the interaction of the movement with the rest of the society. Blumer stresses the importance of the time dimension in specific social movements. Most social problems are characterized by the traits of a specific social movement, though they often begin, and often remain for a long time, in the general movement stage.

Norm-oriented social movements and Value-oriented social movements - Smelser (1962 : IX and X).

Extracts from Armand Mauss, Social Problems as Social Movements, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975, pp. 38-71.

Norm-oriented social movement seeks to "restore, protect, modify, or create norms in the name of a generalized belief." It addresses existing norms and laws and concrete ways of doing things in a society, sometimes out of conservative tendencies, but usually out of a desire for some kind of change.

Value-oriented social movement are collective attempts to "restore, protect, modify, or create values in the name of a generalized belief." Because value-oriented movements deal with the most fundamental and all-inclusive aspects of a culture, they might be described as trying, in effect, to create a new culture.

Value-oriented social movements include many of the movements called by Blumer "expressive" and "nationalist," many of the religious movements of history, especially those that have swept whole societies and continents, and probably all of the movements based on the great "isms," such as Communism, Fascism, millenarianism, and the like, which attempt to reorder entire ways of life.

Norm-oriented social movements are content to leave the underlying culture and organization of a society pretty much intact, striving only for changes in (or preservation of) some of the social arrangements, rules, norms, laws, and other less fundamental aspects. Most social problems are of the norm-oriented type and only very rarely value-oriented, for they do not typically address the basis of the culture itself.

The American Social Movement Cultures (Washington State). - wsu.edu:8080/~amerstu/smc/
This site provides a space for the study of social movements in the US, including those movements as linked to transnational and global movements. Seeks to bring together the best insights of sociology, political science, anthropology, history, cultural studies, American studies, ethnic studies, women's studies, and other fields of social movement analysis, as well as the insights of movement activists inside and outside of academia. Helps develop work on the cultural dimension of social movements. Believes that the specifically cultural study of social movements remains relatively undeveloped.

Theories of Social Movements - Theories of social movements are closely connected with the general problems of society's development. To analyse social movements separately, in abstraction from the social structure, is to limit the problem by superficial analysis, which is not fruitful and does not allow us to understand the nature of social movements. From the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing at the University of Kent at Canterbury. - lucy.ukc.ac.uk/csacpub/russian/mamay.html

Books On Social Movements

Global Movements
Kevin McDonald
New global movements that throw into question the way we think about culture, power, and action in a globalizing world. Movements, including antiglobalization and the Islamic movements. These movements require a rethinking of the idea of social movement, a concept that owes a great deal to the civic and industrial culture that was so critical to Western modernity.

Social Movements: An Introduction
Donatella Della Porta, Mario Diani
Social Movements is a critical analysis of collective action in society today. In the latter part of the last century, social movements became a permanent feature of modern democracies. Movements focusing on women's rights, ethnic identities, peace and environmental issues.

The Politics of Protest : Social Movements in America
by David S. Meyer
Protest and social movements have become essential features of contemporary American life. The Politics of Protest offers both a historical overview and an analytical framework for understanding social movements and political protest in American politics. The book suggests that protest movements is clearly an integral part of our nation's history from the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement, are hardly confined to the distant past.

Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action (Comparative Politics) by Mario Diani (Editor), Doug McAdam (Editor). Leading social movement researchers map the full range of applications of network concepts and tools to their field of inquiry. Social Movements and Networks casts new light on our understanding of social movements and cognate social and political processes.

Power in Movement : Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)
by Sidney Tarrow, Peter Lange, Robert H. Bates, Ellen Comisso, Peter Hall, Joel Migdal, Helen Milner (Series Editors)
Fundamental literature on social movements. Unlike political or economic institutions, social movements have an elusive power, but one that is no less real.

Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism - by Steven M. Buechler
Sociology and social movements are twin siblings of modernity that view the world as a social construction to be understood and transformed respectively. Building on a critical overview of current social movement theory, this book presents a structural model for analyzing social movements in advanced capitalism.

Social Movement Theory and Research by Roberta Garner

Contemporary Movements and Ideologies - by Roberta Garner
Contemporary Movements and Ideologies introduces the reader to major global social movements. Concepts and theories for the analysis of social movements and provides summaries of the ideas, goals, organization, strategies and social bases of major types of movements, like, civil rights and human rights, movements of religious faith and women's movements.

Social Movements and Social Classes : The Future of Collective Action (SAGE Studies in International Sociology) by Louis Maheu (Editor)
Racism, class, urban politics, citizenship, middle-class radicalism, and education-all are integral factors when examining the phenomena of social movements. In Social Movements and Social Classes, an esteemed international cast of contributors focuses on these and other inherent issues in social movements and social class from the perspective of collective action.

Sociology and social movements