Social movements have become a constitutive part of contemporary societies, especially so in democratic contexts where the institutional conditions allow for movements to be formed and express themselves freely. They involve conflictual relations with clearly identified opponents, are linked by dense informal networks, share a distinct collective identity, and engage primarily – but not exclusively – in protest activities. Explanations of movement mobilization have typically stressed a number of key factors, or combinations thereof: in particular, grievances, mobilizing structures, political opportunities, and framing processes. This chapter provides an overview of some key aspects relating to the study of social movements. Given the breath of this field, it can only be very selective in doing so. The chapter first addresses the question of the definition of social movements. Then it moves on to looking at the ways in which they have been studied. Finally, it briefly discusses what movements leave behind them, that is, the issue of their outcomes and consequences. The chapter concludes with a summary of the most salient aspects addressed and some directions for future research.
Two social movements in the last fifty years have had a profound impact on our understanding of law and the role of the courts in our system of government. One is the civil rights movement. The demand for greater racial and gender equality and other civil rights has changed the face of the law in countless ways. For example, it has called into question – or at least required a fundamental revision in – the traditional understanding that the courts should interpret the Constitution and laws in accordance with their original meaning. Decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education and the voting rights cases appear to presuppose that the meaning of the law can change over time as courts' perceptions of social exigencies change. The civil rights revolution has also thrust courts deeply into the governance of traditionally autonomous institutions such as local schools, election boards, prisons, and mental hospitals. There is a second social movement, however, that can also lay claim to have transformed our conception of law and the role of courts – the environmental movement. Environmentalism burst onto the scene on Earth Day in 1970 and, despite some challenges to its position, has not departed since. Although the influence of environmentalism on the legal system has not been as pervasive as that of the civil rights movement, it too has left its mark in many ways. For example, environmentalism can take credit for the vast expansion in the law of standing that took place in the early 1970's. Similarly, environmental groups pioneered the use of "public interest law firms" as private enforcers of public laws. As a consequence of these and related developments, the environmental movement gave rise to a new and much more aggressive style of judicial review of agency action, known as the "hard look" doctrine. Environmentalism has also had an impact on substantive legal norms, most prominently perhaps with respect to causation, where courts have gone so far as to hold that liability may be imposed under the "Superfund" statute without regard to any showing of causation of injury at all. Each of these innovations has spilled over from environmental controversies to other areas of the law.
Social movements can be understood as a group of people organized in self-awareness that continuously challenges the existing system and values. This study aims to read the phenomenon of the 212 Movement (2016) in Jakarta, Indonesia using the perspective of the theory of social movements (1848-2013). This research used qualitative approach with descriptive methods. Data collected through observation, interviews and analysis of literatures and news media. This case study found the Movement 212 was able to mobilize millions of people including the category of the Social movement Based on Religiosity because militancy that mingled with voluntary attitudes that were seen in the behavior of the figures and the mass of the action. The religious basis is the main motive for the new social movement 212. The 295.8 km long march carried out by the Ciamis community led by K.H. Nonop Hanafi towards the Jakarta National Monument which later inspired the Bogor and Bekasi people to do the same is a fact of militancy and voluntary which is carried out with a high and sincere awareness on the basis of their religiosity. There are five main actors of this movement, K. H. Nonop Hanafi, Bachtiar Nasir, Muhammad Zaitun Rasmin, Muhammad Alkhathath, and Habieb Rizieq Shihab. This movement has a semi-moderate Islamic ideology with the Islamic model Ahlussunnah Waljama'ah. The implication of this research is the New social movement 212 can uphold Islamic values by upholding the law against what they call the Islamic oppressors. And the other side, the New social movement 212 can be strengthening ukhuwah Islamiyah (Islamic brotherhood), ukhuwah wathoniyah (nationalism), and demanding justice for all the people of Indonesia.
At the time of writing this article, one of the bastions of liberal democracy is in great turmoil. On 6 January 2021, protesters loyal to President Trump invaded the capitol to stop the certification of election results. It was a move characterised as domestic terrorism and condemned as anti-democratic by politicians from across the aisle. For many commentators, this was an inescapable result of Trumpism left unchecked, of the unfettered circulation of lies and the stoking of resentment against the democratic establishment. Articles question whether America can bridge the rift between democrat and republican forces or whether differences have become irreconcilable. But such polarisation is not the preserve of the US. It is also rampant in other liberal representative democracies, including the UK where Brexit has laid bare the split between remainers and leavers, liberals and conservatives.
The following syllabus is for a course on "social movement literacy†(SML). The course is currently being taught at Grateford State Prison (just outside of Philadelphia). The basic purpose of SML is to help educate students on how to properly read and understand the nature and function of social movements. SML is not reducible to learning about a handful of specific social movements; instead, SML establishes core skills and knowledges that enable people to recognize, discuss, perhaps participate in and, if need be, intelligently critique, the ideologies, political motivations, and tactics of social movements.
I begin with a discussion of globalisation, of New Social Movements and a critique of "identity politics". Taking for granted that actors in social movements want to create alliances, I identify domination/subordination as a possible common bond among actors. Then, I discuss the obstacles to the building of alliances: anger and guilt, denial of responsibility, inability to really listen and hear, rejection of difference. I end by proposing that to build alliances, we must engage in dialogue, that is collective and individual self-reflection, within beloved communities.
This is the third post in the blog series "Movements and Institutions". The relationship of social movements and institutions should not just be seen as one where political demands can influence policy change in a targeted organization or political system. With a focus on instituting practices, instead of resulting institutions, we can understand all social institutions as institutionalizations, as constantly moving processes with the potential for radical change.
Marxists have sought to critically analyze and contribute to (left revolutionary) popular movements. Yet they have not explicitly theorized the term "movement" nor its relationships to other key Marxist concepts, such as class struggle and hegemony. This book seeks to fill that gap in a historical moment when there are worldwide "anti-systemic" movements against austerity, against inequality, against the "democracy deficit," and to protect hard-won rights for subaltern classes, all within the context of the world's most important economic crisis since the 1930s. Analysis helpfully moves back and forth between theory and empirical cases, with a view to informing more effective revolutionary political praxis. The empirical scope is deliberately and usefully broad. Cases are drawn from a range of national contexts in the global North and South and concern movements from the 19th century up to the present. The book's major shortcoming, however, is its failure to draw upon the whole range of historical materialist theorizing, including work by Black socialists, feminist socialists and Indigenous communists, among others. Nonetheless Marxism and social movements makes a useful, if radically incomplete contribution to both social movement theory and historical materialism.
Since its launch in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement has been linked with anarchist theory and practice by several scholars such as David Graeber, NathanSchneider, and MarkBray. However, Occupy was not an isolated case in the history of social movements. It emerged at a paroxysmal point as anti-neoliberal and pro-democracy manifestations – both local and global – have already been flourishing throughout the end of the 20th century. In a few years, demonstrations, uprisings, and social protests spread all around the world in the global North and the global South. It went from the Arab Spring in 2011 to the Greek protests, the Indignants, the OWS and the Gezi Park movement in 2013. This article aims to study the presence of anarchist ideas and practices in these early 2010s movements. To do so, we rely on existing studies dealing with the political and economic aspects of these movements. We argue that if anarchism is linked with the 2010s movements, it is through its political and economic values and practices. As a matter of fact, the period that preceded – from the mid-1990s until 2010 – already witnessed the development of anti-neoliberal, alter-globalization and pro-democracy movements. Thus the central point of contestation which characterizes these movements – which can be referred to as 3rd wave movements – are indeed political and economic. The empirical studies that were analysed in this article may not all point out a link between these movements and anarchism but show, at least, the practice of political and economic alternatives than can be defined as anarchistic – close to the anarchist ideas without clearly mentioning it. The anarchist ideas and practices observed in the 2010s movements thus show a link with the re-emergence of anarchism, under the form of post-anarchism, since the mid-1990s. Its development is closely related to the rise of the alter-globalization movement. Under its new form anarchism tends to distance itself from its violent past in the 19th century. Even though it is not referred to as "anarchism" in mainstream media, it still exists through new movements such as alter-globalization and direct democracy experiments. ; Le mouvement OccupyWall Street, depuis ses débuts en 2011, a été relié à la théorie et à la pratique anarchiste par différents universitaires tels que DavidGraeber, NathanSchneider et MarkBray. Cependant, Occupy n'est pas un cas isolé dans l'histoire des mouvements sociaux. Le mouvement s'est développé à un moment où les manifestations des courants anti-néolibéral et pro-démocratie — à la fois locales et mondiales —, qui étaient apparues à la fin du XXesiècle, ont atteint un point culminant. En quelques années, des manifestations, des révoltes et des protestations sociales se sont répandues à travers le monde, au Nord comme au Sud. Cela va des printemps arabes en 2011 au mouvement de Gezi Park en 2013, en passant par les protestations en Grèce, le mouvement des Indignés et OccupyWall Street. Cet article s'intéresse à la présence d'idées et de pratiques anarchistes au sein de ces mouvements, apparus au début des années2010. Il s'appuie sur des études qui portent sur les aspects politico-économiques de ces mouvements. On pose comme hypothèse que si l'anarchisme est lié aux mouvements des années2010 c'est au travers de ses valeurs et de ses pratiques politiques et économiques. En effet, la période qui précède les mouvements des années2010 – –qui s'étale du milieu des années1990 jusqu'en 2010 – a vu le développement des mouvements anti-néolibéral, altermondialiste et pro-démocratie. Ainsi, le point de contestation central qui caractérise ces mouvements – que l'on qualifiera de mouvements de la 3evague – est donc bien politico-économique. Les études empiriques utilisées comme base de travail pour cet article ne montrent pas toutes de façon explicite le lien qui existe entre ces mouvements et l'anarchisme, mais elles révèlent cependant l'usage de pratiques politiques et économiques alternatives qui peuvent être considérées comme anarchisantes – proches des idées anarchistes sans le mentionner clairement. La présence d'idées et de pratiques anarchistes au sein des mouvements des années2010 montre ainsi un lien avec la réémergence de l'anarchisme, sous la forme du post-anarchisme, depuis le milieu des années1990 et dont le développement est étroitement lié au mouvement altermondialiste. Sous cette nouvelle forme, l'anarchisme a tendance à s'éloigner de son passé violent du XIXesiècle. Ainsi, même si l'anarchisme n'est pas mentionné comme tel dans la presse grand public, il existe au travers de nouveaux mouvements tels que l'alter-mondialisme et les expériences de démocratie directe.
La ricognizione si sofferma sul rapporta tra i movimenti sociali e l'ambiente in virtù della rilevanza sociologica di studiare i movimenti globali nella attuale configurazione della storia economica dei vari Paesi. Ci sono esempi di raffigurazione dell'azione sociale.
The rise of social movements in US legal scholarship is a current response to an age-old problem in progressive legal thought: harnessing law for social change while maintaining a distinction between law and politics. This problem erupted in controversy around the civil rights–era concept of legal liberalism defined by activist courts and lawyers pursuing political reform through law. Contemporary legal scholars have responded by building on social science to develop a new concept — movement liberalism — that assigns leadership of transformative change to social movements to preserve conventional roles for courts and lawyers. Movement liberalism aims to achieve the lost promise of progressive reform, while avoiding critiques of legal activism that have divided scholars for a half-century. Yet rather than resolving the law-politics problem, movement liberalism reproduces long-standing debates, carrying forward critical visions of law that it seeks to transcend.
The capacity of Latin American social groups to mobilize has excited the imagination of students of the region since the birth of Latin American studies itself. Alongside the cultural turn, many social movement organizations continue to engage directly with politics. Aspirational goals notwithstanding, in order to improve conditions they devote much of their energy to influencing policy. Although scholars have begun to address the policy impact of Latin American social movements, we have limited systematized understanding of the conditions and mechanisms by which social movement protest affects policy outcomes. This essay argues that a policy process approach offers a useful first cut into more systematic analysis of social movements, protest, and their policy consequences in Latin America. Resumen: Movimientos Sociales, Protesta y Políticas de Gobierno La capacidad de movilización social que evidencia América Latina ha captado el imaginario de investigadores desde los albores de los estudios latinoamericanos. A pesar del giro cultural sobre el tema, muchos movimientos sociales siguen entablando la política de forma directa. Amén de sus metas aspiracionales, en pos de mejorar sus condiciones dedican una cantidad apreciable de sus esfuerzos a influenciar políticas de gobierno. Si bien es cierto que una cantidad no menospreciable de investigadores consideran esos impactos aún hace falta conocimiento sistematizado sobre las condiciones y los mecanismos a través de los cuales la protesta social afecta las políticas del estado. Este ensayo argumenta que enfoques centrados en los procesos de la política pública ofrecen una buena entrada al análisis más sistemático sobre los movimientos sociales, protesta, y sus consecuencias para políticas de gobierno.
International audience ; In recent years a new realm for study of political and sociological phenomena has appeared, the Internet, contributing to major changes in our societies during its relatively brief existence. Within cyberspace, organizations whose existence is increasingly tied to this virtual world are of interest to social scientists. This study will analyze the community of one of the largest online organizations, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia with millions of volunteer members. Wikipedia was never meant to be a community, yet it most certainly has become one. This study asks whether it is something even more –whether it is an expression of online activism, and whether it can be seen as a social movement organization, related to one or more of the Internet-centered social movements industries (in particular, the free and open-source software movement industry).
Using complexity science, we develop a theory to explain why some social movements develop through stages of increasing intensity which we define as an increase in social focusing. We name six such stages of focusing: disintegration, revitalization, religious, organisation, militaristic, and self-immolation. Our theory uses two variables from the social sciences: differentiation and centrality, where differentiation refers to the internal structure of a social system and centrality measures the variety of incoming information. The ratio of the two, differentiation/centrality (the d/c ratio) is a shorthand way of saying that centrality must be matched by a corresponding level of differentiation to maintain basic focusing. If centrality exceeds differentiation, then the result is a lack of focusing—disintegration. On the other hand, the more differentiation exceeds centrality, the more the system moves into the higher stages of social focusing, from revitalization to the final stage of self-immolation. To test the theory we examine historically indigenous social movements, in particular, the Grassy Narrows movement in northern Ontario Canada. We also suggest how the theory might be applied to explain other examples of social movement, especially millenarian movements at the end of the 20th century. We also suggest sociocybernetic ways the rest of society and the social movement itself can change its own social focusing.
Given the growing interest in social movements as policy agenda setters, this paper investigates the contexts within which movement groups and actors work with political elites to promote their common goals for pol- icy change. In asking how and why so-called outsiders gain access to elites and to the policymaking process, I address several contemporary theoretical and empirical concerns associated with policy change as a social movement goal. I examine the claim that movements use a multi- pronged, long-term strategy by working with and targeting policymakers and political institutions on the one hand, while shaping public prefer- ences ! hearts and minds ! on the other; that these efforts are not mutually exclusive. In addition, I look at how social movement organiza- tions and actors are critical in expanding issue conflict outside narrow policy networks, often encouraged to do so by political elites with similar policy objectives. And, I discuss actors' mobility in transitioning from institutional activists to movement and organizational leaders, and even to protesters, and vice versa. The interchangeability of roles among actors promoting social change in strategic action fields points to the porous and fluid boundaries between state and nonstate actors and organizations.
