Social Movements And Activism

Sociologyindex, Social Movements Abstracts, Sociology Books 2009, Books on Social Movements, Bibliography, Syllabus, Journals, Collective Behavior, Social Activism

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.

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). Much traditional work on the sociology of mass movements concentrated on the processes by which such movements emerged, how they 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 (e.g., tax-exempt status). - Stephen T. Kerr - University of Washington

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 movements which are distinguished mainly by their quality or style: expressive 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 mostly of vague goals or objectives. They lack organization, leadership, and structure. They grow gradually out of what Blumer calls "cultural drifts," which are "gradual and pervasive changes in the values of a people." As a general movement begins to form from a cultural drift, it gradually acquires spokesmen who are not real leaders.
A specific social movement usually grows out of a general movement as the latter grows out of a cultural drift. The specific 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 beginning somewhat earlier. Specific movements are apt to be of either a reform or revolutionary nature. Its organization and other characteristics are not, of course, 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 the "career" of a specific social movement. Most social problems are 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.

Smelser (1962 :IX and X) deals with two kinds of specific movements: norm-oriented and value-oriented movements. The first of these 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. Smelser calls value-oriented movements: 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. They 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. By contrast, norm-oriented 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.
With extracts from Armand Mauss, Social Problems as Social Movements, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975, pp. 38-71.

Prof. Pamela Oliver. - University of Wisconsin  - Protests and Social Movements
ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/PROTESTS/PROTESTS.HTM

The American Social Movement Cultures (Washington State).
This site provides a space for the study of social movements in the US, including those movements as linked to transnational and global movements. Our emphasis is on recent and contemporary movements, but we also aim to provide materials on earlier movements. We seek 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.
We are particularly interested in helping develop work on the cultural dimension of social movements. We believe that, despite some excellent work, the specifically cultural study of social movements remains relatively undeveloped. - wsu.edu:8080/~amerstu/smc/

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, but may be less adequate when exploring forms of culture, action, and communication in a globalized world.

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 (March 10, 2006)
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. It argues that protest movements in America reflect and influence mainstream politics.
The Politics of Protest opens with a short history of social movements in the United States, and then discusses the social impulse to protest, considers the strategies and tactics of social movements, looks at the institutional response to protest, and finally examines the policy ramifications. With lively analysis of social movements in America, The Politics of Protest is ideal for political science or sociology courses that consider social movements and political protest.

Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action (Comparative Politics) by Mario Diani (Editor), Doug McAdam (Editor) - January 1, 2004. 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. This study surveys the history of the social movement, puts forward a theory of collective action to explain its surges and declines, and offers an interpretation of the power of movement that emphasizes its effects on personal lives, policy reforms and political culture.

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. The book also addresses the recent shift and false dichotomies between political and cultural dimensions of social movements.
This thoughtful introduction to the sociological study of social movements is good for graduate students in courses on collective action and social movements.

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. Strong historical foundation in which to understand each type of movement. Examines movements as a response to the modern world and looks at how they are changing to adapt to the "post-modern" era world of globalized markets and cultural diversity.

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

Social Movements Abstracts

A Durkheimian Theory of Social Movements
Segre, Sandro
Abstract:
This essay formulates a Durkheimian rational choice and network theory of social movements. This Durkheimian theory may account for the different outcomes of the Civil Rights movement in the US, and Social Democracy in Imperial Germany.

Historical Social Movements, Ecological Crisis and ‘Other’ World Views
Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 24, No. 1, 31-56 (2008)
Sing C. Chew
Andre Gunder Frank and Marta Fuentes have suggested that social movements of protest tend to cluster during periods of economic downturns. This article examines the rise of two social movements that have emerged during different periods of world history when the world system was/is in crisis: Christian monasticism and Bioregionalism. Both of these social movements can be considered as part of the family of social movements that have occurred in world history that Frank and Fuentes (1989, 1990) have written about in the late 20th century.

Social Movements as Catalysts for Policy Change: The Case of Smoking and Guns
Constance A. Nathanson
Johns Hopkins University
Social movements organized around perceived threats to health play an important role in American life as advocates for change in health policies and health behaviors. This article employs a framework drawn from social movement and related sociological theories to compare two such movements: the smoking/tobacco control movement and the gun control movement.

Social Movements, Law, and Society: The Institutionalization of the Environmental Movement
Cary Coglianese
University of Pennsylvania Law School
John F. Kennedy School of Government Working Paper Series RWP01-046
Abstract: As conventionally understood, social movements, law reform, and society interact in a unidirectional fashion. Social movements seek to secure law reform; in turn, changes in the law bring about changes in society. Social movements, law, and society interact with each other in much more complex, dynamic ways. Through an examination of the environmental movement in the United States, I show how a successful social movement not only uses law reform to change society, but how it also depends on changes in society to sustain its law reform efforts.

Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment
Robert D. Benford, David A. Snow
The recent proliferation of scholarship on collective action frames and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates that framing processes have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements.

Sovereignty, globalization and transnational social movements
Raimo Väyrynen, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. Abstract: The anti-globalization movement, although it is unable to halt the process of economic integration, has been able to redefine the terms of the globalization debate and influence responses by national governments and international financial institutions.

Social Movements Research and the ‘Movement of Movements’: Studying Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation
By Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Abstract: Explores the state of research on the ‘movement of movements’ against neoliberal globalisation. Starting from a general consideration of the significance of the movement and the difficulties inherent in studying it, it discusses the literature on the movement from within social movement studies, and argues that the response from social movement researchers falls short of what could be expected in terms of adequacy to the movement and its own knowledge production. It explores some effects of this failure and locates the reasons for it in the unacknowledged relationship between social movements theorising and activist theorising.

NGOs, Social Movements, External Funding and Dependency
Fernand Vincent
Abstract: Fernand Vincent points out the differences between NGOs and transnational social movements (TSMs) concerning both their financing sources and possible implications.

Social Movements: An Analytical Exploration of Organizational Forms
Russell L. Curtis, Jr. ,Louis A. Zurcher, Jr.
A review of the literature on social movement organizations yields two key organizational variables: 1) the nature of the goals (instrumental-specific or expressive-diffuse); 2) the nature of membership requirements (exclusive or inclusive).

DEMOCRATISATION AND THE DECLINE OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: THE EFFECTS OF REGIME CHANGE ON COLLECTIVE ACTION IN EASTERN EUROPE, SOUTHERN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA
CHRISTOPHER G. PICKVANCE
Abstract: The paper explores how regime change affects social movements, drawing on studies of Latin America, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. It is argued that social movements do exist in authoritarian regimes.

GENDER AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Gender Processes in Women's Self-Help Movements
VERTA TAYLOR, Ohio State University
Draws from a case study of the postpartum depression self-help movement to outline relationship between gender and social movements. Linking theories of gender to mainstream theories on social movements allows us to recognize gender as a key explanatory factor in social movements and, in turn, to identify the role that social movements play in the social construction of gender.

What Are Social Movements and What Is Gendered About Women's Participation in Social Movements? A Sociological Perspective
by Benita Roth and Marian Horan.
Abstract: A theoretical discussion of social movements can inform our historical understanding of specific historical examples of women and social movements. This summary of sociological interpretations of social movements will help visitors to the site bring larger theoretical questions to bear on the empirical evidence contained in the site's other projects.

Health care reform and social movements in the United States. Hoffman B.
Because of the importance of grassroots social movements, or "change from below," in the history of US reform, the relationship between social movements and demands for universal health care is a critical one. Grassroots health care demands have also contained the seeds of a wider critique of the American health care system, leading some movements to adopt calls for universal coverage.

URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN PORTUGAL, 1974–1976
PEDRO RAMOS PINTO, University of Manchester
ABSTRACT: Examines the impact of the urban social movement active in Lisbon on the Portuguese transition to democracy (1974–6). Academic and public discourse over the last three decades has tended to characterize the movement either as an embryonic form of a participatory society, or an illusion created by the manipulation of a minority of activists. Conversely, this article argues that the movement was largely autonomous and powerful enough to win valuable concessions for the urban poor, in the context of increasing competition between political elites, although more moderate than many have assumed.

From Wollstonecraft to Mill: What British and European Ideas and Social Movements Influenced the Emergence of Feminism in the Atlantic World, 1792-1869?
Prepared under the direction of Nancy Hewitt, revised by Kitty Sklar.
Abstract: Feminist ideas and social movements emerged in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States in an international context that promoted the migration of people and ideas across national boundaries.

How Did Oberlin Women Students Draw on Their College Experience to Participate in Antebellum Social Movements, 1831-1861?
by Professor Carol Lasser and Oberlin College Students.
Abstract: Oberlin College, founded in 1833, opened to train teachers and preachers during the fervor of the Second Great Awakening. Based on egalitarian principles, the college began accepting students of color in 1835. It also became a center for antislavery activities. Oberlin was a pioneer in coeducation, accepting female students from its beginning. The female students at Oberlin embraced their gendered responsibilites for domestic virtue and discovered an empowering call to action in their communities. The following documents reveal how female students in the antebellum era drew on their college experience to participate in local as well as national social movements.

How Did Sarah Bagley Contribute to the Ten-Hour Movement in Lowell and How Did Her Labor Activism Flow into Other Reform Movements, 1836-1870?
by Teresa Murphy and Thomas Dublin.
Abstract: The documents brought together in this project both illuminate Bagley's activism in the ten-hour movement and demonstrate how early factory employment not only brought women's work out of the home but it provided women a collective experience that supported their participation in the world of broader social reform movements.

How Did Diverse Activists Shape the Dress Reform Movement, 1838-1881?
by Melissa Doak and Melissa Karetny.
Abstract: Examination of the three currents in the dress reform movement allows for a complex picture of the varied reasons why women attempted to break free of the restraints of nineteenth-century women's fashionable clothing.

Why Did Some Men Support the Women's Rights Movement in the 1850s, and How Did Their Ideas Compare to those of Women in the Movement?
by Gretchen Becht and Kathryn Kish Sklar
Abstract: This project focuses on the efforts of some of the nineteenth-century male supporters of women's rights, examining the beliefs that led them to promote women's rights and analyzing how their values compared to those of women reformers. The documents are presented in three groups: the beginnings of the woman's rights movement; the beliefs of male advocates of women's rights; and conflict within the movement.

How Did a Multi-Racial Movement Develop in the Baltimore YWCA, 1883-1926?
by Kimberly Crandall Bowling and Kriste Lindenmeyer.
Abstract: Given the practice of segregation in the Baltimore, however, two YWCA's emerged, the (white) Baltimore YWCA founded in 1883 and the Colored YWCA founded in 1896. This project traces the founding of the two Y's and the fitful process that resulted in their merger in 1920 and the emergence of interracial efforts to meet the needs of white and black young women on their own in the city.

How Did Gender and Class Shape the Age of Consent Campaign Within the Social Purity Movement, 1886-1914?
by Melissa Doak, Rebecca Park and Eunice Lee.
Abstract: "Age of consent" referred in the late nineteenth century to the legal age at which a girl could consent to sexual relations. Men who engaged in sexual relations with girls before they reached the legal age of consent could be found guilty of statuatory rape. American reformers were shocked to discover that the laws of most states set the age of consent at ten or twelve. Women reformers and social purists initiated a campaign in 1885 to petition legislators to raise the legal age of consent to at least sixteen in all states in the nation. Shows that the age-of-consent campaign inspired a broad base of support because it expressed deep cultural tensions over gender, class, and race.

What were the Origins of International Women's Day, 1886-1920?
by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Lauren Kryzak.
Abstract: International Women's Day originated in the first decade of the twentieth century, building on traditions drawn from the eight-hour and woman's suffrage movements in the United States as well as the organizing activities of the Socialist Party in the United States and the Second International in Europe.

How Did Black and White Southern Women Campaign to End Lynching, 1890-1942?
by Thomas Dublin, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Karen Vill.
Abstract: African-American women took the lead in the 1890s in vocally opposing lynching in the South. The growth of an interracial movement after 1920 contributed to the organization of white women in the Association of Southern Women to Prevent Lynching.

How Did the First Jewish Women's Movement Draw on Progressive Women's Activism and Jewish Traditions, 1893-1936?
by Joyce Antler, Nina Schwartz, and Claire Uziel.
Abstract: The first Jewish women's movement in the United States began after the upsurge of eastern European immigration to the United States in the 1880s and continued until around 1920. Those who composed the movement were mostly middle- and upper-class women who had emigrated from Germany and Central Europe. These women frequently referred to the triumphs of biblical women to help persuade other Jewish women to join their movement, but the Great Migration of 1881 was the primary factor that energized Jewish women to begin an organized fight for social reform. The achievements of the first Jewish women's movement were substantial.

How Did the General Federation of Women's Clubs Shape Women's Involvement in the Conservation Movement, 1900-1930?
by Kimberly A. Jarvis.
Abstract: The American conservation movement, with its sense of public responsibility for the protection of America's natural resources and beauty, reflected the social consciousness of the Progressive Era. Middle- and upper-class white women, who participated in many Progressive reform efforts, were important players in the conservation movement. Addresses the question of how the women's club movement shaped women's involvement in the conservation movement as well as the influence of women's networks on the success of conservation campaigns between 1890 and 1930.

How Did the Debate Between Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett Shape the Movement to Legalize Birth Control, 1915-1924?
by Melissa Doak and Rachel Brugger.
Abstract: Mary Ware Dennett and Margaret Sanger took up the "birth control" cause. The two women adopted differing approaches to the birth control question, however. Although many activists who fought for the legalization of contraception urged Sanger and Dennett to unite for the good of the cause, the differences between the two women set the stage for a very competitive and at times confrontational relationship. Examination of the conflict's impact on the successes and failures of the birth control movement.

How Did Women Antifeminists Shape and Limit the Social Reform Movements of the 1920s?
by Kim Nielsen
Abstract: In the 1920s feminist and progressive female reformers attempted to use their newly gained electoral citizenship to advance a series of social welfare and reform measures.

How Did Women Peace Activists Respond to "Red Scare" Attacks during the 1920s?
by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Helen Baker.
Abstract: Examines how the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) responded to anti-socialist intimidation during the 1920s. This second "red scare" targeted the women's peace movement during a period of armaments buildup following World War I.

How Did Women Shape the Discourse and Further Interracial Cooperation in the Worldwide Mass Movement to “Free the Scottsboro Boys”?
by Sara L. Creed and Hasia Diner.
Abstract: This project explores the influence that women exerted in the mass movement for justice and civil rights surrounding the 1930s trials of the Scottsboro Boys.

How Did the March on Washington Movement's Critique of American Democracy in the 1940s Awaken African American Women to the Problem of Jane Crow?
by Cynthia Taylor.
Abstract: Demonstrates the critical role women played in the 1940s March on Washington Movement (MOWM) during its formative period. African American women activists of the 1940s enthusiastically joined the MOWM because it promoted broad race-based employment goals. Although the MOWM relied on women activists, it never developed a place for women's activism.

How Did Suburban Development and Domesticity Shape Women's Activism in Queens, New York, 1945-1968?
by Sylvie Murray.
Abstract: This project explores the rich and complex experience of public and political involvement of a group of housewives in a set of semi-suburban neighborhoods in Queens, New York City. Women were active at the local level and took key leadership roles in community organizations. Their activism was mostly (although not exclusively) related to issues close to home, such as children's and neighborhoods' needs. But although battles to obtain sufficient school seats and appropriate traffic regulation were central to the political lives of suburbanites--and for good reason, since the neighborhoods in which a large number of families with young children lived had been recently developed--issues of national and international importance also mobilized local activists. With the children and neighborhood needs as an excuse, to paraphrase Friedan, women of the 1950s generation shaped an important episode in the history of women's activism.

How Did State Commissions on the Status of Women Overcome Historic Antagonisms between Equal Rights and Labor Feminists to Create a New Feminist Mainstream, 1963-1973?
by Kathleen A. Laughlin.
Abstract: The Equal Rights Amendment divided organized feminism from the 1920s until the modern women's movement in the 1960s. The deliberations of ongoing state commissions were eventually influenced by the strategies and goals of the modern women's movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

How Did Catholic Women Participate in the Rebirth of American Feminism?
by Mary Henold.
Abstract: In the second half of the twentieth century, thousands of American Catholic women participated in the movement for women's rights and women's liberation. By the 1970s, many of these feminist women of faith chose to direct their activism through specifically Catholic feminist organizations which together formed a distinctive Catholic feminist movement in the United States.

How Did Diverse Activists in the Second Wave of the Women's Movement Shape Emerging Public Policy on Sexual Harassment?
by Carrie N. Baker.
Abstract: A close look at the history of the emergence of sexual harassment activism reveals a diverse group of people involved in conceptualizing and theorizing sexual harassment, and creating legal prohibitions against it. African-American women, blue-collar women, as well as middle-class white women participated in different ways to create a powerful movement that changed the social landscape of U.S. workplaces and schools.

How Did Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City Forge a Successful Class-Based Coalition during the 1982 Contract Dispute?
by Xiaolan Bao.
Abstract: The 1982 strike thus marks the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the labor movement in the Chinese community and in the garment industry of New York City.

How Have Recent Social Movements Shaped Civil Rights Legislation for Women? The 1994 Violence Against Women Act
by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Suzanne Lustig.
Abstract: In 1994, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which responded to the inadequacies of state justice systems in dealing with violent crimes against women.