The Study of Social Movements

THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: RECURRING QUESTIONS, (PARTIALLY) CHANGING ANSWERS

Chapter – 1

Harshit Sharma

Political Science (BHU)

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In the late 1960s, global transformations and revolutions were marked by movements such as American civil rights, antiwar protests, and various student uprisings.
The study of social movements grew rapidly, with early criticism about its descriptive nature evolving into a recognized major research area by the mid-1970s.
By the end of the 1980s, there was a notable increase in theoretical and empirical research on social movements and collective action.
Social movements are now well-established, with specialized journals and professional associations, and have become a permanent feature of Western democracies.
Despite fluctuations in the intensity and impact of collective action, protest movements have continued to emerge and evolve over recent decades.
At the start of the 21st century, global justice movements have shown potential for global impact, combining class and new social movement themes like ecology and gender equality.
Anti-globalization movements are diverse and address various issues, including child labor, deforestation, human rights, and military interventions.
Public opinion often reflects concerns about globalization, with significant voices opposing its effects coming from prominent figures and activists.
Individual opposition to neoliberal globalization manifests through various forms of political and social participation, including petitions, donations, and lifestyle changes.
Events organized by global justice activists, such as protests against international meetings and large-scale demonstrations, demonstrate the ongoing strength and relevance of social movements.
Opposition to neoliberal globalization includes both broad coalitions and specific organizations, some with long histories of activism and others newly formed.
Organizations like Attac and People’s Global Action, along with networks supporting fair-trade and countercultural practices, play crucial roles in sustaining collective action.
The global justice movement includes diverse organizations, ranging from environmental and social justice groups to religious and fundamentalist networks.
While organizations support continuity and escalate collective action, they should not be conflated with the broader movement itself, which retains a diverse and decentralized character.

Four Core Questions for Social Movement Analysis

Studying social movements involves focusing on how ideas, individuals, events, and organizations link in broader processes of collective action over time.
Social movements can be approached with diverse intellectual questions.
The book focuses on four main questions relating to grassroots political action and cultural resistance.
The first set of questions examines the relationship between structural change and patterns of social conflict.
It explores whether social movements express conflicts, what conflicts, and how these have changed.
The second set of questions looks at the role of cultural representations in social conflict.
It investigates how social problems are identified, how a collective identity forms, and the origins of social movement cultures and values.
The third set of questions addresses how values, interests, and ideas become collective action.
It examines the roles of identities, symbols, emotions, organizations, and networks in mobilization.
The fourth set of questions considers how social, political, and cultural contexts affect social movements’ success and forms.
It explores factors explaining varying intensity of collective violence and public challenges over time.
The 1960s saw new forms of political participation and changes in conflict issues, prompting innovation in social science approaches.
Traditional social movements focused on labor and national issues, while new movements centered on women’s liberation and environmental protection.
Marxist and structural-functionalist models were deemed inadequate for interpreting new social conflicts.
European scholars used Marxism to explain 1960s conflicts but faced problems due to new social stratifications like gender relations.
Critics challenged the deterministic element of Marxism and the idea of homogeneous, strategically capable movements.
American scholars viewed collective action as crisis behavior, focusing on individual deprivation and aggression.
Psychological theories linked social movements to feelings of deprivation and frustration.
Structural-functionalist approaches saw social movements as side-effects of rapid social transformation.
Neil Smelser’s value-added model outlined six steps for collective behavior: structural conduciveness, structural strain, generalized belief, precipitating factors, mobilization, and social control.
Smelser’s model integrated different processes but became associated with the crisis of functionalism.
Despite criticisms, Smelser’s work aimed to connect social movement analysis with general sociology.

Is social change creating the conditions for the emergence of new movements?

European social sciences critiqued Marxist models to explain the rise of 1960s and 1970s movements.
Criticism targeted structuralist Marxism and those focused on class consciousness.
Scholars of new social movements emphasized innovation in forms and content of movements.
Alain Touraine highlighted new central conflicts in postindustrial society.
Claus Offe stressed movements’ critique of social order and representative democracy.
New movements have decentralized, participatory structures and emphasize interpersonal solidarity.
Alberto Melucci described contemporary societies as systems requiring closer integration and control.
New social movements oppose state and market intrusion, defending personal autonomy.
New movements challenge diffuse notions of politics and society, rather than seeking material gain.
Offe and Melucci modified their positions over time, acknowledging influences of traditional political action.
New social movements theorists reevaluated conflict importance and emphasized actors’ roles.
Structural approaches inspired by Marxism influence research on global justice phenomena.
Manuel Castells linked urban social movements to consumption processes and class relations.
Castells connected identity conflicts to the emergence of a network society.
Pierre Bourdieu’s insights used to explore cultural meanings and structural determinants of political conflicts.
Some scholars explain social movement activism as driven by cultural values and norms.
Criticism of new social movements theory for assuming traits not generalizable.
Structural approaches criticized for not specifying mechanisms from structural tensions to action.
Theories of social conflict focus on structural transformations’ impact on stakes and forms of conflict.

How do we define issues as worthy objects, and actors as worthy subjects of collective action?

In the 1950s and 1960s, collective behavior studies grouped diverse phenomena like crowds, movements, panics, and fashions.
Scholars of collective behavior focused more on unexpected dynamics than on deliberate organizational strategies.
James Coleman criticized this approach for reducing collective action to individual behaviors and ignoring the dynamics of macro phenomena.
Symbolic interactionists from the “Chicago School” developed collective behavior analysis, focusing on observable actions rather than individual motivations.
Founders like Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess viewed social movements as engines of change, producing new norms and solidarities.
Collective behavior was seen as driven by large-scale changes like technological innovation, mass communications, and cultural decline.
Contemporary symbolic interactionism emphasizes the meaning actors attribute to social structures, especially in less structured situations.
New norms emerge when existing systems of meaning are insufficient, defining situations as unjust and justifying action.
Collective behavior transforms institutional behaviors through emergent normative definitions.
Social movements arise from conflicting value systems and groups in conflict.
Insufficiently flexible institutions unable to respond to dissatisfaction lead to social movement development.
Collective behavior school viewed movements as meaningful acts driving social change.
Empirical research and new techniques were emphasized, integrating field research and archive data.
Interactionist theory of collective behavior highlights symbolic production and identity construction.
Joe Gusfield’s work demonstrated the influence and diversification of this research program.
Movements develop new ideas and values, acting as agents of cultural change.
In the 1990s, researchers emphasized the role of emotions in collective action, challenging the strategic and rationalistic view.
Moral shocks and emotional responses are key in individual mobilization and protest organization.
Movements produce symbols and rhetoric to evoke emotions within a libidinal economy.
Despite recognizing purposeful phenomena, collective behavior studies often focused on unexpected dynamics and lacked attention to organizational strategies.
Empirical analysis in collective behavior studies often overlooked the structural origins of conflicts.
Structuralist approaches like new social movements and organizational perspectives like resource mobilization theory addressed these shortcomings.

How is collective action possible?

In the 1970s, American sociologists focused on how resources for collective action are mobilized.
They viewed collective movements as rational, purposeful, and organized, part of the normal political process.
Emphasis was placed on external obstacles, incentives, and the variety of resources to be mobilized.
Mayer Zald, Anthony Oberschall, and Charles Tilly defined social movements as rational actions driven by cost-benefit calculations.
Mobilization depends on material and nonmaterial resources available to the group.
Social movements organize discontent, reduce action costs, create solidarity networks, share incentives, and achieve external consensus.
Solidarity networks challenge the assumption that movement recruits are isolated and rootless individuals.
Participants are often well-integrated individuals, not socially isolated.
Scholars focus on how collective actors acquire resources and mobilize support.
Recent research explores relations between organizations and dynamics in organizational populations.
Network studies examine interactions between organizations and individuals in social movements.
Increasing attention is given to transnational dimensions and connections between organizations.
Organizational ecology concepts are applied to study organizational survival.
Resource mobilization defines social movements as conscious actors making rational choices.
Critics argue it overlooks structural conflict sources and the self-organization potential of dispossessed groups.
The approach is said to overemphasize rationality and ignore the role of emotions.
Early resource mobilization models are criticized for exaggerating the centrality of strategic decisions.
The approach overemphasizes similarities between social movements and interest politics.

What determines the forms and intensity of collective action?

Political process theory emerged as a systematic response to understanding social movements, focusing on political and institutional environments.
It shares a rational view of action with resource mobilization theory but emphasizes interactions with institutional political actors.
Central to political process theories is the concept of “political opportunity structure.”
Peter Eisinger introduced this concept, examining the openness of political systems and other variables like electoral instability and influential allies.
Sidney Tarrow integrated these variables into a framework for studying protest cycles.
Variables include the degree of openness or closure of political access, stability of political alignments, and conflicts among elites.
Institutional conditions, such as agenda-setting and decision-making processes, also influence protest development.
Comparative analysis has enhanced understanding of the relationship between social movements and institutional political systems.
Political process theory has shifted attention to interactions between new and traditional actors, and less conventional forms of action and institutionalized systems.
Persistent difficulties include debates on appropriate indicators to measure institutional phenomena.
The concept of political opportunities has expanded, but its specificity has decreased.
The risk of the concept becoming a “dustbin” for various variables exists.
A second problem is distinguishing between objective reality and its social construction.
Structural availability must be perceived as important by movements to have an effect.
Analyzing activists’ perceptions of opportunities is crucial.
Political process theory has been criticized for political reductionism and neglecting cultural contexts.
Contemporary movements are influenced by cultural as well as political contexts.
Research has focused on movements within the public sphere and transnational opportunities.
The development of the European Union as an arena for movement demands has been discussed.
Recent studies have also focused on the effects of movements on policy processes and decisions.

Are these questions specific of social movement analysis?

Questions in social movement research can also apply to collective action.
Collective action involves individuals sharing resources for collective goals.
Political parties and interest groups also mobilize members and adapt strategies to changing environments.
Voluntary organizations focus on service delivery but still face challenges in attracting members and securing resources.
Analyses of collective action and social movements are interconnected.
Social movements share similarities with political parties, interest groups, and religious sects.
Recent attempts to synthesize social movement scholarship aim to link it to broader theoretical and empirical concerns.
The Dynamics of Contention (DOC) program integrates social movement theory with studies on revolutions, democratization, and ethnic conflicts.
Contentious politics is defined as public, collective interaction involving claims affecting at least one government and claimant.
The DOC program advocates for a dynamic use of concepts and identifies general mechanisms of contention.

What is Distinctive about Social Movements?

The concept of a social movement

Mario Diani argues that social movements are distinct social processes involving conflictual relations, dense informal networks, and a collective identity.
Conflictual collective action involves political and/or cultural conflicts promoting or opposing social change.
Conflict involves actors seeking control of the same stake and making negative claims on each other.
Social movement action requires targeting collective efforts in social or political terms.
Dense informal networks differentiate social movement processes from collective action within specific organizations.
Social movement processes involve sustained exchanges of resources among autonomous actors pursuing common goals.
No single actor can represent a movement as a whole.
Collective identity goes beyond specific events and initiatives, creating a sense of common purpose and shared commitment.
Membership criteria in social movements are unstable and depend on mutual recognition between actors.
Boundary definition is central to collective action emergence and shaping.
Recent research shows varying degrees of distinctiveness in movements, e.g., animal rights activism in Britain vs. Italy.
Not all networks reflect social movement processes, e.g., the international Zapatista support network.
Collective identity involves connecting occurrences across time and space into broader narratives.
Organizational and individual actors see themselves as part of larger processes of change or resistance.
Different combinations of conflictual relations, networks, and identity help contrast social movements with other collective-action processes.
Empirical instances of collective action usually involve more than one process.

Conflictual and consensual collective action

Broad coalitions of charities and voluntary associations mobilize on solidarity issues, such as social exclusion, development, or human rights.
These coalitions may be better characterized as “consensus movements.”
Consensus movements share solidarity and a world interpretation but lack a conflictual element.
Collective goods in consensus movements are produced cooperatively without identifying specific adversaries.
Solutions focus on service delivery, self-help, personal and community empowerment.
Alternative lifestyles do not require opponents in social or political terms.
Ethereal adversaries in artistic, style-oriented, and some religious movements do not blame social actors for the state of things.
Conflict as a trait of movements does not exclude analysis of collective action without clear conflict, such as personal change or solidarity movements.
Analysts should recognize and explore the interaction of multiple social mechanisms within each instance of collective action.

Social movements, events, and coalitions

Social movement dynamics involve perceiving single episodes of collective action as parts of a longer-lasting action.
Participants feel linked by solidarity and ideal communion with others in similar mobilizations.
Example: The U.S. movement for toxic waste control evolved from local initiatives to a national collective force with sophisticated cultural elaboration.
Identity-building maintains a sense of collective belonging even after specific initiatives end.
Persistent feelings of belonging facilitate the revival of mobilization under favorable conditions.
Movements often oscillate between phases of intense activity and long latent periods focused on self-reflection and cultural production.
Trust and solidarity links from past mobilizations can support new waves of protests.
Collective identities developed in one period can transform and facilitate new movements and solidarities.
Example: The new left movements of the 1970s and subsequent political ecology movements.
Informal networks of collective action, like coalitions, show the importance of collective identity.
In coalitions, actors are connected through alliances and identify opponents but lack strong identity links.
Resource mobilization and campaigning are conducted through exchanges and pooling of resources between distinct groups.
Participants’ identities and loyalties are tied to groups and organizations, not the network.
After a specific campaign, there may not be a longer-term legacy of identity and solidarity.
Social movement identity dynamics occur when groups/individuals feel part of a collectivity supporting/opposing social change.
They identify shared elements in their past, present, and future experiences.
Other social or political actors are held responsible for the state of affairs being challenged.
The inclusivity or exclusivity of collective identity and shared traits are empirical questions.

Social movements and organizational processes

Social movements, political parties, and interest groups are often compared, assuming different styles of political organization.
Social movements are not organizations but networks, which may include formal organizations or not.
A single organization is not a social movement but may be involved in a social movement process.
Scholars sometimes use “social movement” to mean both networks of interaction and specific organizations.
Concepts from organizational theory do not always apply to social movement analysis.
Terms like “movement strategy” and “leadership” apply to organizations, not whole social movements.
Calling organizations like Common Cause or the Sierra Club “social movements” can lead to terms like “professional social movement.”
“Public interest group” or “sect” may be more accurate for certain organizations.
Social movements are fluid phenomena, with collective belonging prevailing in formation phases.
Movements burn out when organizational identities dominate.
Shifting focus to informal networks highlights the importance of individual participation.
Social movements have participants, not members, and participation can vary.
Political parties can be part of social movements under certain conditions.
Social movements and political parties perform different functions at the level of interest representation.
Specific organizations within social movements perform functions of interest representation.
Organizations involved in social movements can be part of both the party system and the social movement system.
Recognizing the distinction between social movement processes and organizational processes is crucial.
Rigorous definitions help distinguish between movements and organizations, such as the Nazi party and the Nazi movement.
A view of movements as informal networks helps identify tensions between movement and organizational dynamics.

Social movements and protest

Early debates on social movements emphasized their non-institutionalized nature.
Social movements were thought to be distinguished by unconventional political behavior, such as public protest.
Objections to protest as a core feature include its marginal role in movements focused on personal or cultural change.
Protest forms, like specific lifestyles or rituals, may stretch the concept of protest considerably.
Political protest has become part of the conventional repertoire of collective action in Western democracies.
Protest is no longer restricted to radical sectors but is an option for a broader range of actors.
Protest differentiates social movements from networks like “epistemic communities,” which focus on scientific or managerial expertise.
Epistemic communities involve decision-making power and certified knowledge, unlike social movements which mobilize public opinion.
Social movements invent new disruptive actions and challenge the state on law and order issues.
Global justice mobilizations show that social movement politics often involves “politics in the streets.”
The use of protest affects the structure and strategy of social movements.

On This Book

Recent global justice mobilizations address four key questions about social movements.
These questions involve changes in social structure affecting collective action, cultural production shaping social problems and identities, resources enabling successful collective action, and how political and social systems influence action.
Influential approaches to these questions include new social movements, collective behavior, resource mobilization, and political process theories.
New social movements theory addresses changes in social conflict under evolving structural conditions.
Collective behavior theory explores symbolic production in shaping collective action and new issues.
Resource mobilization theory examines conditions for collective action emergence despite obstacles.
Political process theory analyzes variations in collective action across political regimes and times.
Social movements are distinct as informal networks linking individual and organizational actors with a shared collective identity.
They differ from collective actions with non-conflictual goals, instrumental coalitions, political organizations, and protest repertoires.
The chapter is organized around these central questions and includes discussions on structural bases of movements, symbolic production, organizational factors, and interaction with the political system.
It covers the impact of structural changes like public welfare growth, higher education expansion, and globalization on political participation.
The book focuses on cultural elaboration in defining social problems and reinforcing identity and solidarity.
It explores organizational factors behind meaning production and resource mobilization, analyzing individual participation and organizational models.
The interaction between movements and political systems is examined, including protest cycles, political opportunities, and effects on political and social spheres.
The book is not a comprehensive review but focuses on central problems and selected influential works.
It emphasizes studies combining theoretical analysis and empirical research while acknowledging the limitations and heterogeneity of social movement analysis.