Major Social Movements

Major social movements are organized efforts by individuals and groups to either bring about or resist social change, often operating outside established political institutions. These movements can vary in scope, addressing specific issues or broader societal concerns, and may range from local initiatives to global movements. Their goals include advocating for policy or legal reforms, raising awareness of social injustices, and challenging existing cultural, economic, or political practices. Social movements are classified into several categories, including personal transformation movements, social change movements, and reactionary movements, each aiming to address different aspects of social life.

Prominent examples of contemporary social movements include the human rights movement, the women’s movement, and environmental movements, all of which highlight specific areas of advocacy and struggle. Through collective action, social movements mobilize resources and create a sense of shared identity, often utilizing various forms of communication to energize supporters and spread their messages. The emergence of new social movements reflects shifts in societal values and challenges, with many focusing on issues like gender equality, civil rights, and environmental justice. Overall, these movements play a crucial role in shaping societal change by challenging authority and pushing for reforms that align with their ideals of justice and equity.

Published in: 2021

By: Wienclaw, Ruth A. | Howson, Alexandra

Subject Terms

Major Social Movements

Social movements are a widespread feature of modern life. As a specific form of collective action and behavior that typically operate outside established political institutions, social movements may be narrowly defined and target a specific social issue or broader in scope and target fundamental issues within the society. Thus, some are small and local; others are vast and inspire global membership. The goals of social movements vary too. Some work toward policy or legal reform, while others exist to signal protest and draw attention to areas of social, cultural, economic or political life that are problematic in some way. Although social movements do not, generally, begin as formal organizations (with bureaucratic rules and regulations), they sometimes become formal organizations. Thus, social movements are intentional, relatively organized efforts on the part of individuals and groups to either bring about or resist social change within a society. Researchers have classified social movements into different broad categories: personal transformation movements whose goal is to bring new meaning to individual's lives by changing them for the better, social change movements that attempt to change a particular aspect of society as a whole, and reactionary movements that have as their goal to either resist change that they see occurring within society or to actively attempt to reinstate an earlier social order that they perceive as being superior to the current one. Some examples of major social movements today include the human rights movement, the women's movement, and the environmental movement.

Keywords Collective Action; Environment; Feminism; Gender Inequality; Gender Role; Gender Stratification; Glass Ceiling; Grassroots Movement; Human Rights Movement; Social Change; Social Justice

Overview

Social movements are a widespread form of collective behavior and feature of modern life. Collective behavior may be seen as "spontaneous and goal-oriented activity performed by a large number of people who try to develop a common solution to unclear situations" (Tesar & Doppen, 2007). As a specific form of collective action and behavior that typically operates outside established political institutions, social movements may be narrowly defined and target a specific social issue, or may be broader in scope and target fundamental issues within the society. Thus, some are small and local; others are vast and inspire global membership. The goals of social movements vary too. Some work toward policy or legal reform, while others exist to signal protest and draw attention to areas of social, cultural, economic or political life that are problematic in some way. Although social movements do not, generally, begin as formal organizations (with bureaucratic rules and regulations), they sometimes become formal organizations.

While there are many examples of people acting collectively to protest change (e.g. bread riots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) contemporary social movements tend to be organized efforts by a significant number of people to promote change. Such movements are associated with trade unionism, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, and the civil rights movement. These movements typically organize around a particular issue (such as discrimination) or are sparked by a crisis (especially economic or military). For instance, the civil rights movement was fueled by racial segregation in the Southern US states and it used sit-ins, boycotts and nonviolent protests as ways of drawing attention to this persistent segregation (Seidman, 1997). Thus, social movements are intentional, relatively organized efforts on the part of individuals and groups to either bring about or resist social change within a society.

In order to answer questions about how social movements mobilize social and political action, and how practices of social change and political action might be blocked by counter-movements, researchers have classified social movements into different broad categories:

Personal transformation movements whose goal is to bring new meaning to individual's lives by changing them for the better (referred to by some as New Social Movements);
Social change movements that attempt to change a particular aspect of society as a whole (such as the civil rights movement); and
Reactionary movements that have as their goal to either resist change that they see occurring within society, or to actively attempt to reinstate an earlier social order that they perceive as being superior to the current one. Some examples of major social movements today include the human rights movement, the women's movement, and the environmental movement.

In the first part of the twentieth century, the study of collective action in sociology focused largely forms of behavior such as revolution and riots, violence, crowds, and mass hysteria. While some scholars, drawing on Durkheim's view that these forms of collective action were irrational responses to rapid social change, argued that these kinds of collective action or behaviors (typically associated with urban contexts) were threats to the established social order, others—notably Charles Tilly (1978) —argued that such action expresses the frustrations of social groups that do not have access to formal or established channels of protest. In a classic paper, Tilly argued that there are four components of modern collective action that focuses on challenging some aspect of the established social order:

Groups that form to protest against something (laws, ideals, practices) are typically organized; they are not haphazard or disjointed groups, though the form of organization may vary.
Collective action mobilizes the resources (people, materials, communication channels) that are available to them in order to achieve their goals.
Groups engaged in collective action share common interests—such as a belief in the injustice of the oppression of women, minorities, or gay people.
Collection action typically utilizes opportunity.

Social movements then, are particular kinds of collective action that may share the four components outlined by Tilly, but they are also more than the sum of these components. For Darnovsky, Epstein, and Flacks (1995), social movements are

… collective efforts by socially and politically subordinated people to challenge the conditions and assumptions of their lives … collective action becomes a "movement" when participants refuse to accept the boundaries of established institutional rules and routinized roles (p. vii).

Resource Mobilization Theory

Resource Mobilization Theory (RM) captures two essential elements of and theoretical approaches to social movements in (post) industrial societies. First, North American approaches to social movements typically emphasize the ways that social movements mobilize available economic, political and communications resources to address and impact clearly identifiable political issues. In this view, social movements are in conflict with the state or agents of the state and mobilize resources to challenge it, to create social change and demand reform. For instance, the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam protest in the US might be seen as movements with clear social and political objectives; that mobilized people and ideas to challenge the establishment view; and that were rationally organized.

New Social Movement (NSM) theory first developed in Europe, specifically addresses movements that have emerged since the 1960s and beyond, that seem to place high importance on group or collective identity, values and lifestyles. As Canel (1997) puts it, NSM theory:

emphasizes the cultural nature of the new movements and views them as struggles for control over the production of meaning and the constitution of new collective identities. It stresses the expressive aspects of SMs and places them exclusively in the terrain of civil society, as opposed to the state (par. 3).

As Seidman (1994) observes, NSM emerged in part from as responses to changes in the economic and political structure in Europe and North America after the Second World War. Social protest in both Europe and the U.S. was predominantly organized around race, gender and sexuality, spawning protest movements in support of civil rights, women's rights and gay rights; that not only challenged prevailing norms, but also sought to produce new knowledge and ways of living. Thus, while the NSM perspective acknowledges social movements as forms of collective action that are engaged in political and social protest, it also emphasizes that such movements are engaged in struggles over meaning and the means of cultural production.

Collective Identity

One of the things that distinguishes new social movements from other forms of collective action (such as trade unionism) is the sense of collective identity, or group self-image that emerges and is, indeed, cultivated and negotiated by a movement's members in an ongoing process (Melluci, 1995). Collective identity might be marked or symbolized by shared styles, behaviors or language (e.g. the long hair associated with 'hippies'); symbols (e.g. the eagle of the farmworkers flag); or a form of artistic expression (freedom songs, Chicano murals).

Social movements in general seek social change, although they do not necessarily go about it in the same manner. Such movements may be norm-focused, value-focused, or both. For example, the civil rights movement of the early 1950s simultaneously worked to change the attitudes of people toward segregation as well as working to get laws implemented that supported integration. In general, social change movements may be either reform or radical in nature. Reform movements attempt to change society through legal or mainstream political means, and typically work within established institutions. Radical movements, on the other hand, try not only to reform society, but to seek even more fundamental change. For instance, the women's movement and the gay rights movement both, in their own ways, sought to challenge prevailing ideas and attitudes about gender roles and sexuality. Social movements not only raise awareness of specific issues but also challenge authority and those in power to enact legislation and regulations in order to enforce social change. For instance, the protests involving veterans of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the passing of the Rehabilitation Act of 1974, while disability rights activism resulted in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Finally, reactionary social movements have the goal to either resist change that they see occurring within society or actively attempt to reinstate an earlier social order that they perceive as being superior to the current one. Examples of such reactionary movements include the Aryan Nation (a white supremacy coalition that seeks to suppress Jews and minorities), the right to life movement (a movement that seeks to overturn legalized abortion and recriminalize it), and the militia movement consists of individuals and groups who seek to risk this government authority and return power to the people.

Applications

The Women's Movement

The second wave women's rights movement in Europe and the United States (also known as the Women's Liberation Movement or the Feminist Movement) was concerned with issues of women's rights, gender inequality, and gender stratification (Whittier, 2002). While feminist movements existed prior to the second wave women's movement in the 1960s, these were focused on dismantling specific legacies and policies that prohibited women from participating in public, economic and political life.

Other social movements, such as the civil rights movement, student activism and the anti-war movement, influenced the resurgence of feminism in the twentieth century women's movement. Although the women's movement focused on policy and legal change (in relation to sexual discrimination in the workplace, inequalities in pay, barriers to particular occupations or holding public and political office), it was also organized around self and collective identity (or, as Betty Friedan observed, 'the problem with no name').

The women's movement continues to challenges social injustices that affect women across the globe. For instance, both in developing and advanced societies, women often are more likely than men to live in poverty and women tend to be more likely to be unpaid for their labors than men, not only within the home, but also as unpaid family agricultural workers. This leaves many women in a situation in which they have less access to social protection or job security. Yet, women are slowly becoming more able to participate in paid, non-agricultural employment around the globe, particularly in areas such as southern and western Asia and Oceania where, historically, women have had the lowest levels of participation in the labor market.

The Human Rights Movement

The human rights movement is an international movement that promotes the cause of human rights throughout the globe. According to Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948):

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Although from a middle-class, postindustrial perspective it is difficult to imagine a situation in which individuals are not treated equally or with dignity, this is not a universal situation. For example, it has been estimated (Shifman, 2003) that there are thousands of sweatshops in Asian and Latin America that exploit labor by forcing employees to work sixteen-hour days and paying minimal wages. Moreover, torture and human trafficking still occurs in many places of the world and has been helped by the current trend toward globalization and the use of technology: women and girls can now, for example, be obtained in one country and sexually exploited in another or even be sold over the Internet (Shifman, 2003). One of the goals of the human rights movement is to eradicate these trends and conditions through organized communication and protest efforts. However, the increasing reliance of organizations such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch on supranational organizations (specially the United Nations) to take the lead on human rights issues (Habibi, 2007) may have the consequence of diverting resources from where they can do the most good, to where they will receive the most political capital. The politicization of a social movement in this way not only reduces the effectiveness of the movement, but may also damage its credibility.

Conclusion

Movements organized around what Habermas (1987) has termed the colonization of the lifeworld, such as environmental justice, the politics of food, and environmental health and disease, are especially focused on responding to what its members view as evidence of risk. To this end, social movements increasingly rely on and make use of the print, broadcast and electronic media to communicate their messages, generate empathy and mobilize support. As Susser (2006) notes:

In moments of major transformation, people may find that new forms of action are more productive than the ones they are used to, or that older forms make sense in a different way, or that ideals they could only aspire to before are now realizable. Such moments lead to reconfiguring one's world; the process can be individual or collective (p. 212).

Indeed, social movements have been transformed by new media and the capacity of the Internet to "foster new affiliations and stage events" (Kahn & Kellner, 2004, p. 84) in protest against capitalism, such as the Battle for Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 (Wood, 2008) and the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 (Langman, 2013; Schneider, 2013). As Edmunds and Turner (2005) observe, these new communication technologies and mechanisms provide new reasons for protest and engender global consciousness as global inequalities and injustices are made more visible, and new means of protest through opportunities for counter-propaganda and co-ordination (p.568). Accordingly, social justice and grassroots movements, such as the environmental movement, which addresses the capitalist-industrial system's impact on the environment (Lueck, 2007), and the pro-democracy movements that started taking place around the world in 2011 (Chatterji, 2013) are using new media to stimulate, inform and support a global citizenry.

Terms & Concepts

Feminism: An ideology that is opposed to gender stratification and male dominance. Feminist beliefs and concomitant actions are intended to help bring justice, fairness, and equity to all women and aid in the development of a society in which women and men are equal in all areas of life.

Gender Inequality: Disparities among individuals based solely on their gender rather than objective differences in skills, abilities, or other characteristics. Gender inequalities may be obvious (e.g., not receiving the same pay for the same job) or subtle (e.g., not being given the same subjective opportunities for advancement).

Gender Role: Separate patterns of personality traits, mannerisms, interests, attitudes, and behaviors that are regarded as "male" and "female" by one's culture. Gender role is largely a product of the way in which one was socialized and may not be in conformance with one's gender identity.

Gender Stratification: The hierarchical organization of a society in such a way that members of one gender have more access to wealth, prestige, and power than do the members of the other gender.

Grassroots Movement: A movement that is initiated by the members of a community rather than from a formal center of major political activity. Grassroots movements tend to be naturally spontaneous rather than structured as in the case of traditional organizations.

Human Rights Movement: An international movement that promotes the cause of human rights throughout the globe. According to Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Sexual Discrimination: The differential treatment of individuals based on their sex. Although sexual discrimination can occur against either sex, in most cases in today's society it occurs against women. Sexual discrimination can be exhibited in such actions as lower wages being given to one sex for the same work when performed by the other sex, discounting of the characteristics or attributes of one sex in comparison with the other, or unfair hiring or promotion policies that are biased against one sex.

Social Change: The significant alteration of a society or culture over time. Social change involves social behavior patterns, interactions, institutions, and stratification systems as well as elements of culture including norms and values.

Social Justice: A striving to achieve justice in every aspect of society not merely through the application of the law. Social justice is based on the principle of universal human rights and working to ensure that all individuals receive fair treatment and equally share the benefits of society.

Social Movement: An intentional, relatively organized effort on the part of individuals and groups to either bring about social change or resist it within a society. Social movements typically operate outside established political institutions. Social movements may be narrowly defined and target a specific social issue or may be broader in scope and target fundamental issues within the society.

Bibliography

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Chatterji, M. (2013). The globalization of politics: From Egypt to India. Social Movement Studies, 12, 96-102. Retrieved November 1, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=84919025

Darnovsky, M., Epstein, B. & Flacks, R. (eds). (1995). Introduction. Cultural politics and social movements. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Habermas, J. (1987). A theory of communicative action, Volume 2. Boston: Beacon.

Habibi, D. A. (2007). Human rights and politicized human rights: A utilitarian critique. Journal of Human Rights, 6 , 3-35. Retrieved October 7, 2008 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24175912&site=ehost-live

Kahn, R. & Kellner, D. (2004). New media and Internet activism: From the 'Battle of Seattle' to blogging. New Media & Society, 6:87-95. Retrieved December 5, 2008 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=12464105&site=ehost-live

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Melucci, A. (1995). The process of collective identity. In H. Johnston and B. Klandermans, eds. Social movements and culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Seidman, S. (1994). Contested knowledges: Social theory in the postmodern era. Oxford: Blackwell.

Shifman, P. (2003). Trafficking and women's human rights in a globalised world. Gender and Development, 11 , 125-132. Retrieved 30th January, 2009 from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=10491895&site=ehost-live

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Tilly, C. (1978). From mobilization to revolution. London: Longman.

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Major Social Movements

On this Page

Subject Terms

Major Social Movements

Overview

Resource Mobilization Theory

Collective Identity

Applications

The Women's Movement

The Human Rights Movement

Conclusion

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading

Major Social Movements

On this Page

Subject Terms

Major Social Movements

Social Movements & Collective Behavior > Major Social Movements

Overview

Defining Social Movements

Contemporary Social Movement Theory

Resource Mobilization Theory

New Social Movement Theory

Collective Identity

Applications

The Women's Movement

The Human Rights Movement

Conclusion

New Social Movements in the New Millenium

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading