#alternate Edit this page Wikipedia (en) Social movement theory From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, and political consequences. [ ] -- o 2.1.1 Political opportunity/political process o 2.1.2 Resource mobilization o 2.1.3 Social movement impact theory + 2.2 Social-constructivist approaches o 2.2.1 New social movements * 3 1990s social-movement studies * 4 The Postcolonial Critique * 5 Relevant concepts -- The classical approaches emerged at the turn of the century. These approaches have in common that they rely on the same causal mechanism. The sources of social movements are structural strains. These are structural weaknesses in society that put individuals under a certain subjective psychological pressure, such as unemployment, rapid industrialization or urbanization. When the psychological disturbance reaches a certain threshold, this tension will produce a disposition to participate in unconventional means of political participation, such as -- view participation in contentious politics as unconventional and irrational, because the protests are the result of an emotional and frustrated reaction to grievances rather than a rational attempt to improve their situation.^[2] These psychologically-based theories have largely been rejected by present-day sociologists and political -- Main article: Collective behavior Gustave Le Bon, an early social scientist who studied social movements Sociologists during the early and middle-1900s thought that movements were random occurrences of individuals who were trying to emotionally react to situations outside their control. An important writer in this -- Mass society theory emerged in the wake of the fascist and communist movements in the 1930s and 1940s and can be seen as an attempt to explain the rise of extremism abroad. The central claim of mass society theory is that socially isolated people are more vulnerable to extremism^[7] An important underpinning of this theory is Émile Durkheim's analysis of modern society and the rise of individualism. Durkheim stated that the emergence of the industrial society caused two problems: * Anomie: There were insufficient ways to regulate behavior due to the increasing size and complexity of the modern society. -- of local communities. These problems signify a weakened restraining social network to control the behavior of individuals. According to Durkheim, this will lead to dysfunctional behavior, such as suicide.^[8] Arthur Kornhauser applied this theory to social movements in his book The Politics of Mass Society. He stated that in a mass society, anomie and egoism cause small local groups and networks to decline. What is -- Main article: Relative deprivation People are driven into movements out of a sense of deprivation or inequality, particularly (1) in relation to others or (2) in relation to their expectations. In the first view, participants see others who -- likely to rebel when a consistently improving situation (especially an improving economy) stops and makes a turn for the worse. At this point, people will join movements because their expectations will have outgrown their actual material situation (also called the "J-Curve theory"). See the work of James Davies, Ted Gurr,^[10] and Denton -- Contemporary approaches[edit] During the 1960s there was a growth in the amount of social movement activity in both Europe and the United States. With this increase also came a change in the public perception around social movements. Protests were now seen as making politics better and essential for a healthy democracy. The classical approaches were not able to explain this increase in social movements. Because the core principle of these approaches was that protests were held by people who were suffering from structural weaknesses in society, it could not explain that the growth in social movement was preceded by a growth in welfare rather than a decline in welfare. Therefore, there was a need for new theoretical approaches.^[2] -- developed were different in the United States than in Europe. The more American-centered structural approaches examined how characteristics of the social and political context enable or hinder protests.^[11] The more European-centered social-constructivist approaches rejected the notion that class-struggle is central to social movements, and emphasized other indicators of a collective identity, like gender, ethnicity or sexuality.^[12] -- Certain political contexts should be conducive (or representative) for potential social movement activity. These climates may [dis]favor specific social movements or general social movement activity; the climate may be signaled to potential activists and/or structurally allowing for the possibility of social movement activity (matters of legality); and the political opportunities may be realized through political concessions, social movement participation, or social movement organizational founding. Opportunities may include: 1. Increased access to political decision making power 2. Instability in the alignment of ruling elites (or conflict between elites) 3. Access to elite allies (who can then help a movement in its struggle) 4. Declining capacity and propensity of the state to repress -- Main article: Resource mobilization Social movements need organizations first and foremost. Organizations can acquire and then deploy resources to achieve their well-defined goals. To predict the likelihood that the preferences of a certain group in society will turn into protest, these theorists look at the pre-existing organization of this group. When the population related to a social movement is already highly organized, they are more likely to create organized forms of protest because a higher organization makes it easier to mobilize the necessary resources.^[16] Some versions of this theory state that movements operate similar to capitalist enterprises that make efficient use of available resources.^[17] Scholars have suggested a typology of five types of resources: 1. Material (money and physical capital); 2. Moral (solidarity, support for the movement's goals); 3. Social-Organizational (organizational strategies, social networks, bloc recruitment); 4. Human (volunteers, staff, leaders); 5. Cultural (prior activist experience, understanding of the issues, collective action know-how)^[18] Social movement impact theory[edit] Main article: Social movement impact theory This body of work focuses on assessing the impact that a social movement has on society, and what factors might have led to those impacts. The effects of a social movement can resonate on individuals,^[19] institutions,^[20] cultures,^[21] or political systems.^[22] While political impacts have been studied the most, effects on other levels can be at least as important. Because Impact Theory has many methodological issues, it is the least studied of the major branches of Social Movement Theory.^[23] Nevertheless, it has sparked debates on the efficacy of violence,^[24] the importance of elite and political allies,^[25] and the agency of popular movements in general.^[26] Social-constructivist approaches[edit] New social movements[edit] Main article: New social movements This European-influenced group of theories argue that movements today are categorically different from the ones in the past. Instead of labor movements engaged in class conflict, present-day movements (such as anti-war, environmental, civil rights, feminist, etc.) are engaged in social and political conflict (see Alain Touraine). The motivations for movement participation is a form of post-material politics and newly created identities, particularly those from the "new middle class". Also, see the work of Ronald Inglehart, Jürgen Habermas, Alberto -- like Charles Tilly. 1990s social-movement studies[edit] In the late 1990s two long books summarized the cultural turn in social-movement studies, Alberto Melucci's Challenging Codes and James M. Jasper's The Art of Moral Protest. Melucci focused on the creation of collective identities as the purpose of social movements, especially the "new social movements", whereas Jasper argued that movements provide participants with a chance to elaborate and articulate their moral intuitions and principles. Both recognized the importance of emotions in social movements, although Jasper developed this idea more systematically. Along with Jeff Goodwin and Francesca Polletta, Jasper organized a conference in New York in 1999 that helped put emotions on the intellectual agenda for many scholars of protest and movements.^[28] He has continued to write about the emotional dynamics of protest in the years since. -- In The Art of Moral Protest Jasper also argued that strategic interaction had an important logic that was independent of both culture and structure, and in 2006 he followed up on this claim with Getting Your Way: Strategic Dilemmas in Real Life, which developed a vocabulary for studying strategic engagement in a cultural, emotional, and agentic way. By then, his theory of action had moved closer to pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. In the same period, Wisconsin social theorist Mustafa Emirbayer had begun writing in a similar fashion about emotions and social movements, but more explicitly deriving his ideas from the history of sociological thought. In France, Daniel Cefaï arrived at similar conclusions in Pourquoi se mobilise-t-on?, a sweeping history and synthesis of thought on collective action and social movements.^[30] The Postcolonial Critique[edit] Recent years have seen the rise of postcolonial critique, which hails from the larger postcolonial debate within the humanities and social sciences. ^[31] ^[32] While it is a diverse field, the epistemic core argument within postcolonial studies is that the discursive dominance -- inherent Western bias because they are based on Western ideas and thought of in Western institutions, which makes them incapable of accurately presenting and explaining events, structures and movements in the South because they misinterpret the South’s particularities. From this perspective, social movement theory has a Western bias, which has led to a variety of authors claiming that mainstream theories are incapable of accurately explaining social movements in the Global South, because they were originally developed to explain movements in the North. Approaches like Resource Mobilization or Political Process Theory therefore have an overt focus on democratic contestation in -- The postcolonial critique on its own has been criticized for failing to come up with new empirical findings, offer different explanations for the development and behaviour of social movements or explain transnational movements.^[40] ^[41] ^[42] ^[43] ^[44] It has also been argued that postcolonial social movements studies, despite forwarding some accurate criticism, is at risk of creating its own form of cultural essentialism and a 'new Orientalism'. ^[45] ^[46] -- Framing[edit] Main article: Framing (social sciences) Certain claims activists make on behalf of their social movement "resonate" with audiences including media, elites, sympathetic allies, and potential recruits. Successful frames draw upon shared cultural understandings (e.g. rights, morality). This perspective is firmly rooted in a social constructivist ontology. See the work of Robert Benford and David A. Snow.^[48] Over the last decade, political opportunity theorists have partially appropriated the framing perspective. It is called political theory of a social movement. Rational choice[edit] -- Under rational choice theory: Individuals are rational actors who strategically weigh the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action and choose that course of action which is most likely to maximize their utility. The primary research problem from this perspective is the collective action problem, or why rational individuals would choose to join in collective action if they benefit from its acquisition even if they do not participate. See the work of Mancur Olson,^[49] Mark Lichbach,^[50] and Dennis Chong.^[51] In Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements, Karl-Dieter Opp incorporates a number of cultural concepts in his version of rational choice theory, as well as showing that several other approaches -- of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2. ^ ^a ^b Stekelenburg, J. van en Klandermans, B. (2009). “Social movement theory: Past, present and prospect”, Movers and Shakers, 17-43. 3. ^ Kornhauser, William. The Politics of Mass Society. Glencoe, Ill.: -- 5. ^ LeBon, G. (1897). The Crowd. Lonon: Unwin. 6. ^ McPhail, C. (1989). Blumer's Theory of Collective Behavior: “The Development of a Non-Symbolic Interaction Explanation”, The Sociological Quarterly, 30(3): 401-423. 7. ^ Buechler, S. M. (2013). “Mass society theory”. In: The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishing. 8. ^ Durkheim, E. (1897) Suicide. Free Press, New York. -- 1970. 11. ^ Carroll, W. K. en Hackett, R. A. (2006). “Democratic media activism through the lens of social movement theory”, Media, Culture and Society, 28(1): 83-104. 12. ^ Buechler, S. M. (1995). “New Social Movement Theories”, The Sociological Quarterly, 36(3): 441-464. 13. ^ Meyer, David S.; Debra C. Minkoff (2004). "Conceptualizing Political Opportunity" (PDF). Social Forces. 82 (4): 1457–92. doi:10.1353/sof.2004.0082. 14. ^ Meyer, David S. (2004). "Protest and Political Opportunities". -- Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory. Sociological Forum. 16. ^ Van Stekelenburg, J.; Klandermans, B. (2009). "Social movement theory: Past, present and prospect". Movers and Shakers: Social Movements in Africa: 17–43. 17. ^ McCarthy, John D.; Mayer N. Zald (1977). "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory". American Journal of Sociology. 82 (6): 1212–41. doi:10.1086/226464. 18. ^ Edwards, Bob; John D. McCarthy (2004). "Resources and Social Movement Mobilization". In Snow; Soule; Kriesi (eds.). The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 116–52. 19. ^ McAdam, Doug. The biographical impact of activism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 20. ^ Moore, Kelly. "Political protest and institutional change: The anti-Vietnam War movement and American science." How social movements matter 10: 97. 1999 21. ^ Ferree, Myra Marx and Beth B. Hess. Controversy & Coalition: The New Feminist Movement across Three Decades of Change, New York: Twayne Publishers. 1994. 22. ^ Amenta, Edwin, and Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su. "The Political Consequences of Social Movements", Annual Review of Sociology. 36: 287-307. 2010. 23. ^ Giugni, Marco, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly. How Social Movements Matter. Minneapolis, MN. The Regents of the University of Minnesota, 1999. 24. ^ Gamson, William. Strategy of Social Protest. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company. 1975. 25. ^ Soule, Sarah A., and Susan Olzak. "When do movements matter? The politics of contingency and the equal rights amendment." American Sociological Review 69.4: 473-497. 2004. 26. ^ Amenta, Edwin, and Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su. “The Political Consequences of Social Movements.” Annual Review of Sociology. 36: 287-307. 2010. 27. ^ Melucci, Alberto (1989). Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. -- 29. ^ The original debate was later published, with additional contributions, as Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, eds., Rethinking Social Movements (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). 30. ^ Paris: La Découverte, 2007. -- Quarterly 20:4 (1999), 703-721. 33. ^ Raewyn Connell, Southern Theory. The global dynamics of knowledge in social science(Cambridge (MA), 2007) 34. ^ Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power”, in: Tania das Gupta et al. (eds.),Race and Racialization: Essential Readings(Toronto, 2007), 56-64 35. ^ Philipp Altmann et al., “Social Movements in the Global South. Some Theoretical Considerations”,Emulations–Revue de sciences sociales19 (2016), 7-24; 36. ^ Simin Fadaee (ed.),Understanding Southern Social Movements(Abingdon/New York, 2016); 37. ^ Laurence Cox et al., “Social movement thinking beyond the core: theories and research in post-colonial and post-socialist societies”,Interface: a journal for and about social movements9:2 (2017), 1-36; 38. ^ Lisa Thompson and Chris Tapscott,Citizenship and Social Movements: Perspectives from the Global South(London, 2010). 39. ^ Steven Seiler,A Theoretical Critique of the Western Biases in the Political Process Theory of Social Movements(MSc Thesis, Virginia State University, 2005). 40. ^ Vivek Chibber, “Capitalism, Class and Universalism: Escaping the Cul-de-Sac of Postcolonial Theory”,Socialist register50 (2014), 63-79; 41. ^ Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu, “Limits of the -- Critique”,Historical Materialism25:3 (2017), 36-75 42. ^ Tom Lewis and Sandra Sousa, “Knowledge and politics across the North/South divide”,International Socialist Review99 (2015-2016), https://isreview.org/issue/99/knowledge-and-politics-across-northso uth-divide -- and Global Diversity”,Millennium: Journal of International Studies30:2 (2001), 331-347. 44. ^ Stijn Kuipers, "Decolonizing Social Movement Theory? Reviewing Simin Fadaee's Framework towards a Global Paradigm in the Study of Social Movements", Academia.edu (04-01-2020), https://www.academia.edu/44183125/Decolonizing_Social_Movement_Theo ry_Reviewing_Simin_Fadaees_Framework_towards_a_Global_Paradigm_in_t he_Study_of_Social_Movements 45. ^ Vivek Chibber, “Capitalism, Class and Universalism: Escaping the Cul-de-Sac of Postcolonial Theory”,Socialist register50 (2014), 63-79; 46. ^ Tom Lewis and Sandra Sousa, “Knowledge and politics across the North/South divide”,International Socialist Review99 (2015-2016), https://isreview.org/issue/99/knowledge-and-politics-across-northso uth-divide 47. ^ Stijn Kuipers, "Decolonizing Social Movement Theory? Reviewing Simin Fadaee's Framework towards a Global Paradigm in the Study of Social Movements", Academia.edu (04-01-2020), https://www.academia.edu/44183125/Decolonizing_Social_Movement_Theo ry_Reviewing_Simin_Fadaees_Framework_towards_a_Global_Paradigm_in_t he_Study_of_Social_Movements 48. ^ Benford, Robert D.; David A. Snow (2000). "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment" (PDF). Annual Review of Sociology. 26: 611–639. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.611. 49. ^ Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. 50. ^ Lichbach, Mark. The Rebel’s Dilemma. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995. 51. ^ Chong, Dennis. Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 52. ^ Karl-Dieter Opp, Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements (New York: Routledge, 2009). * Social sciences.svg Society portal Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_movement_theory&oldi d=987677563" Categories: * Sociological theories * Social movements Navigation menu