Social Movements

Conceptualizing Social Movements

- Definition: Social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a
plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural
conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities.
- We can identify four aspects of social movement dynamics:
o Networks of informal interaction;
o Shared beliefs and solidarity;
o Collective action on conflictual issues
o Action which displays largely outside the institutional sphere and the routine
procedures of social life.
- Networks of informal interaction
o The Presence of informal interactions involving individuals, groups and
organizations is widely acknowledged.
o The characteristics of these networks may range from the very loose and
dispersed links to the tightly clustered networks.
o Such networks promote the circulation of essential resources for action
(information, expertise, material resources) as well as broader systems of meaning.
o Thus, networks contribute both to creating the preconditions for mobilization and
to providing the proper setting for the elaboration of specific world-views and
life-styles.
o Thus, there is a plurality of actors involved in social movements and an
informality in the ties which link them to each other.
o This gives us the first element:
 ‘A social movement is a network of informal interactions between a
plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations’.
- Shared beliefs and solidarity
o To be considered a social movement, an interacting collectivity requires a shared
set of beliefs and a sense of belongingness.
o Collective identity is both a matter of self- and external definition.
o Actors must define themselves as part of a broader movement and, at the same
time, be perceived as such, by those within the same movement, and by opponents
and/or external observers.
o In this sense, collective identity plays an essential role in defining the boundaries
of a social movement.
o Only those actors, sharing the same beliefs and sense of belongingness, can be
considered to be part of a social movement.
o However, ‘collective identity’ does not imply homogeneity of ideas and
orientations within social movement networks.

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 o A wide spectrum of different conceptions may be present, and factional conflicts
may arise at any time.
o Therefore, the construction and preservation of a movement’s identity implies a
continuous process of ‘realignment’ and ‘negotiation’ between movement actors.
o Thus, the second element basically implies that:
 ‘The boundaries of a social movement network are defined by the specific
collective identity shared by the actors involved in the interaction’.
- Collective action on conflictual issues
o As promoters or opponents of social change social movements become involved
in conflictual relations with other actors (institutions, counter-movements, etc.).
o Social movements are oriented to the political sphere.
o However, increasingly the true bulk of social movement experience has to be
found in the cultural sphere: what is challenged is not only the uneven distribution
of power and/or economic goods, but socially shared meanings as well, that is the
ways of defining and interpreting reality.
o Social movements tend to focus more and more on self-transformation. Conflicts
arise in areas previously considered typical of the private sphere, involving
problems of self-definition and challenges to the dominant life-styles, for example.
o Thus, both cultural and political movements should be considered within the
broader category of social movements. This gives us the third component:
 ‘Social movement actors are engaged in political and/or cultural conflicts,
meant to promote or oppose social change either at the systemic or non-
systemic level’.
- Action which primarily occurs outside the institutional sphere and the routine procedures
of social life
o Several scholars maintain that the fundamental distinction between movements
and other social political actors is to be found in the contrast between
conventional styles of political participation (such as voting or lobbying political
representatives) and public protest.
o Another widely shared assumption, at least in the more conventional version of
the idea of social movements as ‘unusual’ phenomena, is that organizations
involved in social movements are basically loosely structured.
o Social movements may have features such as the extra-institutional nature of
social movements, the prevalence of violent or disruptive political protest and the
loose structure of social movement organizations, though it is not always the case.
- Social movements vs. political or religious organizations
o The main difference is that social movements are not organizations.
o They are networks of interaction between different actors which may either
include formal organizations or not, depending on shifting circumstances.

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 o A single organization, whatever its dominant traits, is not a social movement. Of
course, it may be part of one, but the two are not identical, as the latter reflects a
different, more structured organizational principle.
o Political or religious organizations on the other hand display greater
organizational rigidity and a more hierarchical structure.
o Social movements are unique in their interaction processes through which actors
with different identities and orientations come to elaborate a shared system of
beliefs and a sense of belongingness, which exceeds by far the boundaries of any
single group or organization, while maintaining at the same time their specificity
and distinctive traits.
o Under this conception, even political parties may sometimes be a part of a broader
social movement (although that is rare). This is the case for example when parties
originate from movements, such as Green Parties. This, however does not mean
political parties are not, and are different from, social movements.
Types of Social Movements

- Social movements can occur on the local, national, or even global level.
- The most common axis of differentiation concerns the degree or amount of change
pursued, which makes sense since the promotion of or resistance to change is the raison
d’ˆetre of virtually all social movements.
- The most basic distinction in this regard is between reform and revolutionary movements.
- Reform social movements - seek to change something specific about the social structure.
o Examples include antinuclear groups, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD),
the Dreamers movement for immigration reform, and the Human Rights
Campaign’s advocacy for Marriage Equality.
- Revolutionary social movements - seek to completely change every aspect of society.
o These include the 1960s counterculture movement, including the revolutionary
group The Weather Underground, as well as anarchist collectives.
- A more subtle distinction is provided by Smelser’s (1962) differentiation between norm-
oriented and value-oriented movements.
o Norm-oriented movements are said to seek relatively limited but specific system
changes, mainly with respect to rights and rules of access and participation in the
various societal institutions.
 Examples might include movements that have sought to change labor laws,
decriminalize marijuana, expand or restrict immigrant rights, and
criminalize or decriminalize abortion.
o Value oriented movements, in contrast, seek more fundamental changes in cultural
values and institutional structures and practices, as with movements that seek to
redefine the fundamental rights and privileges of personhood and citizenship, like

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 the Gandhi-led Indian Independence Movement and the African American civil
rights movement.
- Wallis (1984) provided a similar typology with his distinction between world-rejecting
and world-affirming movements. This dichotomy parallels the norm- and value-oriented
distinctions.
o The world-rejecting movement, like the value-oriented movement, condemns the
dominant social order, including both its values and institutional arrangements, as
with the Jim Jones movement that ended in mass suicide.
o The world-affirming movement, like the norm-oriented movement, is less
contemptuous of the prevailing religious or social order and thus seeks more
selective changes in specific segments of that enveloping order, as with the
Liberation theology movement in South America (Smith 1991).
- The above classifications are dependent on the amount of change sought. They are
incomplete as they miss the fact that change can have a different focus or occur at
different levels.
- David Aberle (1966) provides a more detailed classification by focusing both on the
degree of change and the locus or level of change sought, directing attention to the target
of change, which can vary from the individual level to some aspect of the broader
structure.
- Based on the cross classification of these two dimensions, Aberle derived four generic
types of movements:
o Alternative movements - which seek partial change in individuals, as in the case
of the therapeutic and self-help movements that proliferated in the US in the
1970s and 1980s. These are focused on self-improvement and limited, specific
changes to individual beliefs and behavior.
o Redemptive movements - which seek more complete or total rather than partial
change among individuals, which was the objective of various religious
movements that flowered in the 1970s, such as the Hare Krishna and Unification
Church (Moonies) movements. They are “meaning seeking,” and their goal is to
provoke inner change or spiritual growth in individuals.
o Reformative movements - which seek limited but focused changes in the social
system like the normative and world-affirming movements noted above.
o Transformative movements – which are akin to value-oriented and revolutionary
movements.
- Another way of differentiating among movements relates to strategic and/or tactical
differences.
o Perhaps the foremost example is the distinction between violent and nonviolent
movements.
o Although the use of violence may occur intermittently in a movement’s career,
some movements are sometimes defined in part by their strategic use of violence,

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 as with terrorist movements, or nonviolence, as with the US civil rights movement
and the Indian Independence Movement.
o Strategic or tactical actions are also pivotal in McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s
(2001: 7–8) distinction between constrained contention and transgressive
contention. In the case of the former, “well established means of claims making”
are employed, which is to say that they are institutionalized or routinized; whereas
in the case of transgressive contention, some parties embroiled in the contention
“employ innovative collective action” – that is, the claims or means are “either
unprecedented or forbidden within the regime in question.”
Theoretical Perspectives on Social Movements
- There are several theoretical perspectives on social movements. The following can be
considered as some of the most important ones.
- Resource Mobilization Theory
o Resource mobilization theory focuses on the purposive, organizational strategies
that social movements need to engage in to successfully mobilize support,
compete with other social movements and opponents, and present political claims
and grievances to the state.
o Social movements will always be a part of society as long as there are aggrieved
populations whose needs and interests are not being satisfied.
o Grievances do not become social movements unless social movement actors are
able to create viable organizations, mobilize resources, and attract large-scale
followings.
o As people will always weigh their options and make rational choices about which
movements to follow, social movements necessarily form under finite competitive
conditions: competition for attention, financing, commitment, organizational
skills, etc.
o To be successful, social movements must develop the organizational capacity to
mobilize resources (money, people, and skills) and compete with other
organizations to reach their goals.
o McCarthy and Zald (1977) conceptualize resource mobilization theory as a way to
explain a movement’s success in terms of its ability to acquire resources and
mobilize individuals to achieve goals and take advantage of political opportunities.
o For example, PETA, a social movement organization, is in competition with
Greenpeace and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), two other social movement
organizations.
o Taken together, along with all other social movement organizations working on
animals rights issues, these similar organizations constitute a social movement
industry.

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o Multiple social movement industries in a society, though they may have widely
different constituencies and goals, constitute a society’s social movement sector.
o Every social movement organization (a single social movement group) within the
social movement sector is competing for your attention, your time, and your
resources.

o Mechanisms of Resource Access

 Self-production - Movements produce social organizational resources
when they launch SMOs, develop networks, and form issue coalitions.
They produce human resources by socializing their children into the ways
and values of the movement, or by training participants and developing
leaders. Social movements also produce items with movement symbolic
significance like T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, art, and even cakes and
cookies for bake sales, which can be sold to raise money or used directly
to promote the movement.
 Aggregation - Monetary or human resources are aggregated by soliciting
donations from broadly dispersed individuals in order to fund group
activities, or recruiting volunteers to help with an activity. Yet, SMOs also
aggregate other types of resources as well. For example, moral resources
held by others can be aggregated by compiling and publicizing lists of
respected individuals and organizations that endorse group goals and
actions.

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  Co-optation/appropriation - Social movements often utilize relationships
they have with existing organizations and groups to access resources
previously produced or aggregated by those other organizations.
 Patronage - Social movements also gain access to resources through
patronage. Patronage refers to the provision of resources to an SMO by an
individual or organization that often specializes in patronage. Foundation
grants, private donations, or government contracts are common in
financial patronage.
- Framing/Frame Analysis
o The sudden emergence of social movements that have not had time to mobilize
resources, or vice versa, the failure of well-funded groups to achieve effective
collective action, calls into question the emphasis on resource mobilization as an
adequate explanation for the formation of social movements.
o Over the past several decades, sociologists have developed the concept of frames
to explain how individuals identify and understand social events and which norms
they should follow in any given situation.
o A frame is a way in which experience is organized conceptually.
o Social movements must actively engage in realigning collective social frames so
that the movements’ interests, ideas, values, and goals become congruent with
those of potential members. The movements’ goals have to make sense to people
to draw new recruits into their organizations.
o Successful social movements use three kinds of frames (Snow and Benford 1988)
to further their goals.
 Diagnostic Framing - states the social movement problem in a clear, easily
understood way. When applying diagnostic frames, there are no shades of
grey: instead, there is the belief that what “they” do is wrong and this is
how “we” will fix it. The anti-gay marriage movement is an example of
diagnostic framing with its uncompromising insistence that marriage is
only between a man and a woman. Any other concept of marriage is
framed as sinful or immoral.
 Diagnostic framing entails two aspects: a diagnosis of some event or
aspect of social life or system of government as problematic and in need
of repair or change; and the attribution of blame or responsibility for the
problematized state of affairs. Diagnostic framing provides answers to the
questions of “What is or went wrong?” and “Who or what is to blame?”
 Prognostic framing, the second type, offers a solution and states how it
will be implemented. When looking at the issue of pollution as framed by
the environmental movement, for example, prognostic frames would
include direct legal sanctions and the enforcement of strict government

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 regulations or the imposition of carbon taxes or cap-and-trade mechanisms
to make environmental damage more costly.
 Prognostic framing involves the articulation of a proposed solution to the
problem, including a plan of attack and the frame-consistent tactics for
carrying it out, and often a refutation of opponent’s current or proposed
solutions.
 Motivational framing is the call to action: what should you do once you
agree with the diagnostic frame and believe in the prognostic frame? It
involves elaboration of a call to arms or rationale for action that goes
beyond the diagnosis and prognosis.
 These frames are action-oriented. In the aboriginal justice movement, a
call to action might encourage you to join a blockade on contested
aboriginal treaty land or contact your local MP to express your viewpoint
that aboriginal treaty rights be honored.
o When social movements link their goals to the goals of other social movements
and merge into a single group, a frame alignment process (Snow et al. 1986)
occurs—an ongoing and intentional means of recruiting a diversity of participants
to the movement.
- New Social Movement Theory
o New social movement theory (NSMT)emerged in the 1980s in Europe to analyze
new social movements (NSMs) that appeared from the 1960s onward.
o These movements were seen as “new” in contrast to the “old” working-class
movement identified by Marxist theory as the major challenger to capitalist
society.
o By contrast, NSMs are organized around gender, race, ethnicity, youth, sexuality,
spirituality, countercultures, environmentalism, animal rights, pacifism, human
rights, and the like.
o NSMT is a distinct approach to the study of social movements, albeit with
significant internal variations.
o Despite their diversity, it is possible to identify several themes that are prominent
in most if not all versions of NSMTs.
o First and foremost, these theories identify a distinct social formation that provides
the context for the emergence of collective action.
 While theorists differ on specifics, the identification of a historically
specific social formation as the structural backdrop for contemporary
collective action is perhaps the most distinctive feature of NSMTs.
 As a corollary, transitions between social formations change the context
and hence the types of movements that emerge over time.

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o Hence, a second theme is a causal claim that links NSMs to the contemporary
social formation; they are direct responses to post-industrialism, late modernity,
advanced capitalism or postmodernity.
 If contemporary society is defined by capitalist markets, bureaucratic
states, scientized relationships, commodified culture, and instrumental
rationality, then NSMs are historically specific responses to these
conditions.
o A third theme concerns the diffuse social base of NSMs.
 Some analysts see these movements as rooted in a fraction of the (new)
middle classes (Kriesi 1989). Others have argued that these movements
are no longer rooted in the class structure, but rather in other statuses such
as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, or citizenship that are
central in mobilizing new NSMs (Dalton, Kuechler, & Burklin 1990).
 Overall, the social base of these movements is presumed to be more
complex than in older, class-based activism.
o Another theme involves the politicization of everyday life as the “relation
between the individual and the collective is blurred” (Johnston, Larana, &
Gusfield 1994: 7) and formerly intimate and private aspects of social life become
politicized.
 The equation of the personal and the political fosters not only identity
politics but a lifestyle politics in which everyday life becomes a major
arena of political action.
o Another theme concerns the values advocated by NSMs.
 While some have argued that the sheer pluralism of values and ideas is
their defining hallmark, others have focused on the centrality of
postmaterialist values in such activism.
 Whereas materialist values involve redistributive struggles in the
conventional political sphere, postmaterialist values emphasize the quality
rather than the quantity of life.
 Rather than seeking power, control, or economic gain, postmaterialist
movements are more inclined to seek autonomy and democratization.
o A final theme in NSM activism is a preference for organizational forms that are
decentralized, egalitarian, participatory, prefigurative, and ad hoc.
 NSMs function less as standing armies than as cultural laboratories that
vacillate between latency and visibility (Melucci 1989, 1996) as they
episodically organize for specific battles and then revert to politicized
subcultures that sustain movement visions and values for the next round of
explicitly organized activism.