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Social Movements: Introduction

Social movements bring about social change, alter culture, sway public opinion, and influence laws.

Questions Answered by Social Movement Theorists

Why do social movements happen when they do?

How do they gather and maintain support?

How are the issues presented?

How are strategies and tactics presented?

How are the organizations structured?

What causes opposition?

What causes their decline?

How and why do they succeed/fail?

Origins of Social Movements

The Basics of Social Movements

When Movements Become Professionalized

  • Include fairly stable organization
  • Often headed by paid leaders
  • Membership consisting largely of financial contributors or "paper members"
  • Very few actual "activists"

According to Tilly:

17th Century: Petit Mouvement

"A localized collective action by ordinary people which the authorities considered necessary to end by force."

Limited forms of protest are familiar during a given time, a concept known as repertoire of collective action.

Interaction with targets using a familiar tactics in public gathering s are known as claim-making performances .

Charivari: A traditional form of collective action directed towards those persons who had crossed or transgressed the norms of the community.

Common Characteristics of Traditional Forms of Action Shared with Charivari

  • Short duration
  • Local
  • Even when on the national level, targets of protests were local authorities
  • Actions were focused on the local community

In contrast to the traditional repertoire...

Some Things Never Change...

A new repertoire of collective action began to emerge in Europe and North America in the late 18th century, which included such tactics as large-scale demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts. These actions typically were more cosmopolitan with protests targeting national figures. The tactics were also more "modular", meaning that they could easily be applied to many different areas and situations. By the 19th century, the new repertoire was firmly established.

Social Movements Defined

Social movements still use tactics from the repertoire established in the 19th century.

However, Tilly notes that "social movements and its repertoire are the products of historical circumstances and could changes as political conditions change."

"Collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities." -Tarrow

"A set of opinions and beliefs in a population which represent preferences for changing some elements of the social structure and/or reward distribution in a society." -McCarthy and Zald

More Simply...

According to Tilly, a social movement is a series of enduring collective actions that are completed by a group of people with common interests, a shared identity, and broad goals.

Changes in Social Movements

Looking back, major changes in social movement tactics (repertoires and performances) become obvious.

Consider the actions taken in social movements now as compared to stoning tax collectors (as done by the women of Narbonne).

Social Movements as a Form of Contentious Politics

Campaigns

  • Episodic, public interactions of claim makers and their targets based on claims related to the interest of social movement actors or other claim makers.
  • Contentious: Collective making of claims that conflict with another's interests.
  • Political: Governments play into the claim making in some way (claimants, objects of claims, allies of objects, or monitors of the contention).

  • Public interactions among movement actors, their targets, the public, and other relevant actors.
  • Social movements developed after 1750 in the West consisted of sustained campaigns.

Countermovement

  • A set of opinions or beliefs in a population opposed to a social movement.
  • In this view, social movements are "preference structures".
  • Sets of opinions, beliefs, and goals that may or may not become collective actions.

Social Movement Organization

SMO

A complex organization that identifies its goals with the preferences of a social movement or countermovement and attempts to implement those goals.

Social Movement Community

The idea that movements consist of networks of individuals, cultural groups, alternative institutions, and institutional supporters as well as political movement organizations.

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