What is a Social Movement? E-Book

Hank Johnston

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: What is Sociology?
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 295

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Social movements play a central role in the scope and direction of social change. They were instrumental in the creation of the modern state and, today, are major forces in politics and culture. Environmentalism, gay rights, alterglobalization, and Islamic fundamentalism are all movements with far-reaching impacts on contemporary society.

What is a Social Movement? traces how the study of movements such as these - of their structures, their ideas, and their repertoires of protest - have grown in recent years to become a major focus in the social sciences. It deftly navigates the organizational, ideational, and cultural complexity of political and social movements, and offers a succinct but comprehensive overview of the hows, whys, and wheretofores of studying them. The book analyzes how politics and culture frequently intersect as people participate in movements that call for change and pursue group interests. By focusing on movement organizations and networks, on what they do, and how they articulate their ideas of justice and collective interests, What is a Social Movement? lays the essential groundwork for understanding this significant and exciting field of research, where it came from, and where it is headed.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

What is Sociology?

Title page

Copyright page

1: What is a Social Movement?

The Study of Social Movements

The Structure of Social Movements

Movements of Ideas

Social Movement Performances

Conclusion

2: The Study of Social Movements

Collective Behavior

The Chicago School

Breakdown Theories

Deprivation, Frustration, and Aggression

Normalizing Protest

The Economic Metaphor

Social Movements as Contentious Politics

3: What is a Political Movement?

Structures of Political Opportunity

Opportunities and Threats in Nondemocracies

Political Opportunities, Real and Imagined

Political Process Theory

Structure, Culture, and Contentious Politics

4: What is a Cultural Movement?

Social Movement Culture

Cultural Movements

Religious Movements

New Social Movements

Collective Identity

Conclusion

5: What Do Social Movements Do?

Media Performances

Performances

The Strategic and the Tactical

How Repertoires Change

The Diffusion of Social Movement Performances

Repertoires and Regimes

6: Researching Social Movements

Historical-comparative Research

Qualitative Methods

Quantitative Methods

7: Where are Social Movements Headed?

Digital Mobilization

Transnational Movements and the Internet

Alterglobalization

Process Tactics and Site Occupations

Social Movements and Contemporary Society

References

Index

What is Sociology?

Johnston, Hank What is a Social Movement?

Lachmann, Richard What is Historical Sociology?

Copyright © Hank Johnston 2014

The right of Hank Johnston to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6084-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6085-1(pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8234-1 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8233-4 (mobi)

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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1

What is a Social Movement?

Social movements are key forces of social change in the modern world. Although not all social change emanates from them – technological innovation, climate change, natural disasters, and wars also are causes – social movements are unique because they are guided purposively and strategically by the people who join them. Another key characteristic is that they mobilize and do their business mostly outside established political and institutional channels. This makes questions of their origin and growth especially compelling for the social scientist. Some social movements represent efforts by citizens to collectively create a more just and equitable world. Other movements are motivated by compelling grievances that push their adherents out of their ordinary daily routines. Social movements are typically resisted by forces that favor the status quo, which imparts a fundamental contentiousness to movement actions. But the defining characteristic of all movements, big and small, is that they move history along, sometimes in significant ways. Knowing what they are and how social scientists study them are important tasks if we are to understand contemporary society and where it is headed.

In 2011, Time magazine selected “the protester” as its person of the year. This was partly because movements in opposition to repressive regimes exploded that year in North Africa and the Middle East. In both Egypt and Tunisia, the Mubarak and the Ben-Ali regimes were brought down by unexpected mass movements of political opposition. In Syria, a similar opposition movement took a different course. It spiraled into a civil war with casualties over 100,000 and a flow of refugees approaching 1.5 million. Many social movements voice wide-ranging demands for political change – in these cases, demands for the overthrow of the old regime and the ushering in of a new, more democratic system.

Also that year, another wave of protests occurred in several Western countries in the form of the Occupy movement in the US, the 15-M (for May 15) movement in Spain, and large anti-austerity protests in the UK, Ireland, and Greece. These protests shared common themes that grew out of the global economic collapse, the complicity of political elites, and their failures regarding economic policy. These movements were less successful in achieving their immediate goals, but they did create networks of activists, linked by the new social media, which serve as the basis for continued social-change activism. They also elaborated new tactics of site occupations of central squares and plazas and radical participatory democracy that will have strategic effects in other future movements.