Social movements

1. Social movement: The term “social movements” was introduced in 1850 by the German Sociologist Lorenz von Steinin his book “History of the French Social Movement from 1789 to the Present”. A social movement is A sustained collective effort that focuses on some aspect of social change. M.S.A Rao says that a social movement essentially involves Sustained collective mobilization through either informal or formal organization and is generally oriented towards bringing about change in the existing system. Rao considers ideology as an important component of a social movement. Social movements are of great sociological interest because they are a major source of social change. All societies undergo changes. It may be radical i.e. some social institutions may be replaced by new ones. There may be major changes in the existing social institutions. Social movements are a type of group action to bring or resist change. They are large informal groupings of individuals and/or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change.

Key processes lie behind the history of social movements:

1. Several key processes lie behind the history of social movements. Urbanization led to larger settlements, where people of similar goals could find each other, gather and organize. This facilitated social interaction between scores of people, and it was in urban areas that those early social movements first appeared.
2. Similarly, the process of Industrialization which gathered large masses of workers in the same region explains why many of those early social movements addressed matters such as economic wellbeing, important to the worker class.
3. Universalization of education: Many other social movements were created at universities, where the process of mass education brought many people together.
4. Scientific revolution: With the development of communication technologies, creation and activities of social movements became easier – from printed pamphlets circulating in the 18th century coffeehouses to newspapers and Internet, all those tools became important factors in the growth of the social movements.
5. Democratization: Finally, the spread of democracy and political rights like the freedom of speech made the creation and functioning of social movements much easier.

Nature of social movements:

1. Turner & Kilian define a social movement as a “collectivity which acts with some continuity to promote or resist change in the society or group of which it is a part”. Toch emphasizes that a social movement is an effort by a large number of people to solve collectively a problem they feel they share in common.
2. Although social movement involves collective action by the people. However, any form of collective action cannot be labelled as a social movement, even if it is directed towards changing the existing, social values. It should be sustained and not sporadic.
3. A social movement differs from a crowd by being a long-term collectivity, not a quick spontaneous grouping.
4. Social movements are also different from other movements like cooperative movement or the trade union movement. These movements are institutionalized movements i.e. they function under a given set of rules. The membership of these organizations is not open to all. Members function with a fixed structure and a hierarchy. This type of a hierarchy is necessary for any institutionalized movement. Social movements on the other hand, will not have any of the above features. The two features of social movements, namely, sustained action and spontaneity operate simultaneously. These together distinguish a social movement from other movements.
5. Social movements in the beginning do not follow a fixed pattern of hierarchy. They are thus able to innovate new features of organisation. Institutionalization would prevent any form of innovation because of its fixed structures.
6. A social movement constitutes a collective attempt not only to promote change but also to resist change e.g. Sati movement.

Types of social movements:

1. Reform movements: Collective attempt to change some parts of a society without completely transforming it. It accepts the basic pattern of the social order of that society and orients itself around an ideal. It makes use of those institutions such as the press, the government, the school, the church and so on to support its programme. These usually rise on behalf of some distressed or exploited group. Reform movements are almost impossible in an authoritarian society. Such movements are mainly possible in democratic societies where people tolerate criticism.
2. Revolutionary movements: Such a movement seeks to overthrow the existing system and replace it with a totally different one. Revolutionary movements aim at reconstructing the entire social order. They Challenge the existing norms and propose a new scheme of values.
3. Resistance of reactionary movements: These arise among people who are dissatisfied with certain aspects of change. The movement seeks to recapture or reinstate old values.
4. Migratory movements: When a large number of people migrate due to discontent and or due to shared hope for a better future in some other land.
5. Revitalization movement:

Functions of social movements:

According to Touraine social movements have three important functions:

1. Mediation: Help to relate the individual to the larger society. Give each person a chance to participate, to express his ideas and to play a role in the process of social change.
2. Pressure: Social movements stimulate the formation of organized group that work systematically to see that their plans and policies are implemented.
3. Clarification of collective consciousness: Social movements generate and develop ideas which spread throughout society. As a result group consciousness arises and grows.

Theoretical strands for origins of social movements:

1. Deprivation theory: Deprivation theory argues that Social movements have their foundations among people who feel deprived of some good(s) or resource(s). According to this approach, individuals who are lacking some good, service, or comfort are more likely to organize a social movement to improve (or defend) their conditions. There are two significant problems with this theory.
   • First, since most people feel deprived at one level or another almost all the time, the theory has a hard time explaining why the groups that form social movements do when other people are also deprived.
   • Second, the reasoning behind this theory is circular – often the only evidence for deprivation is the social movement. If deprivation is claimed to be the cause but the only evidence for such is the movement, the reasoning is circular.
2. Marxist theory: (for detail refer thinkers) Derived from Karl Marx, Marxism as an ideology and theory of social change has had an immense impact on the practice and the analysis of social movements. Marxism arose from an analysis of movements structured by conflicts between industrial workers and their capitalist employers in the 19th century. In the twentieth century a variety of neo Marxist theories have been developed that have opened themselves to adding questions of race, gender, environment, and other issues to an analysis centered in (shifting) political economic conditions. Class based movements, both revolutionary and labor-reformist, have always been stronger in Europe than in the US and so has Marxist theory as a tool for understanding social movements, but important Marxist movements and theories have also evolved in the US. Marxist approaches have been and remain influential ways of understanding the role of political economy and class differences as key forces in many historical and current social movements, and they continue to challenge approaches that are limited by their inability to imagine serious alternatives to consumer capitalist social structures.
3. Mass society theory: Mass society theory argues that Social movements are made up of individuals in large societies who feel their identity insignificant or socially detached. Social movements, according to this theory, Provide a sense of empowerment and belonging that the members would otherwise not have felt. However, Very little support has been found for this theory. AHO (1990), in his study of Idaho Christian Patriotism, did not find that members of that movement were more likely to have been socially detached. In fact, the key to joining the movement was having a friend or associate who was a member of the movement.
4. Social strain theory: Social strain theory, also known as “value-added theory”, proposes six factors that encourage social movement:
   • structural conduciveness – people come to believe their society has problems
   • structural strain – people experience deprivation
   • growth and spread of a solution – a solution to the problems people are experiencing is proposed and spreads
   • precipitating factors – discontent usually requires a catalyst (often a specific event) to turn it into a social movement
   • lack of social control – the entity that is to be changed must be at least somewhat open to the change; if the social movement is quickly and powerfully repressed, it may never materialize
   • mobilization – this is the actual organizing and active component of the movement; people do what needs to be done
     • This theory is also subject to circular reasoning as it incorporates, at least in part, deprivation theory and relies upon it, and social/structural strain for the underlying motivation of social movement activism. However, social movement activism is, like in the case of deprivation theory, often the only indication that there was strain or deprivation.
5. Resource mobilization theory: Resource mobilization theory emphasizes the importance of resources in Social movement and it’s success. Resources are understood here to include: Knowledge, money, media, labour, solidarity, legitimacy, and internal and external support from power elite.. The theory argues that Social movement develop when individuals with grievances are able to mobilize sufficient resources to take action. The emphasis on resources offers an explanation why some discontented/deprived individuals are able to organize while others are not. Some of the assumptions of the theory include:
   • there will always be grounds for protest in modern, politically pluralistic societies because there is constant discontent among members of society (i.e., grievances or deprivation);
   • Members weigh the costs and benefits from movement’s participation; members are recruited through networks; commitment is maintained by building a collective identity and continuing to nurture interpersonal relationships
   • movement organization is contingent upon the aggregation of resources
   • social movement organizations require resources and continuity of leadership
   • social movement entrepreneurs and protest organizers are the catalysts which transform
     collective discontent into social movements;
   • the form of the resources shapes the activities of the movement (e.g., access to a TV
     station will result in the extensive use TV media)
   • movements develop in contingent opportunity structures that influence their efforts to
     mobilize; as each movement’s response to the opportunity structures depends on the
     movement’s organization and resources, there is no clear pattern of movement
     development nor are specific movement techniques or methods universal
     • Critics of this theory argue that there is too much of an emphasize on resources, especially financial resources. Some movements are effective without an influx of money and are more dependent upon the movement members for time and labor (e.g., the civil rights movement in the U.S.).

M.S.A. RAO had done a great deal of research on Social movement and he Identified three factors relating to the origins of Social movement

1. Relative deprivation: People feel that they are deprived of something. The Naxalite movement would have this as a cause. Deprivation is relative and not absolute. Social movements can arise out of relative expectations and not necessarily out of extreme or absolute conditions.
2. Structural strain: When the prevailing value system and the normative structure do not meet the aspirations of the people, the society faces strain. A new value system is sought so as to replace the old leads to conflicts and tension causing social movement. Usually individuals in such a situation violate the social norms.
3. Revitalization: Offer a positive alternative. Movements are started for revitalizing the existing system which is undergoing structural strain. Urge for revitalization can generate a movement which promotes patriotism and national pride could be caused by youth movements which encourage young people to help and organize the oppressed or the literacy movements are other examples. Movements are started in order to solve a problem collectively. Not merely protest against what they define as wrong but also try to provide an alternative.

Conditions for origin of social movements:

1. Social movement represents an effort by a large number of people to solve collectively a problem or problems.
2. The people must understand the problem.
3. The problem must be observable.
4. Problem must be objective i.e. it exists even if people are not aware of it.
5. Consciousness of the problem: When people become aware of the problem it means that their consciousness of the problem is real. They are now subjectively aware of the objective situation.
   • Problems are not created by people out of nothing. Problems exist in reality but it is only when people actually understand a problem that they try to find out means to overcome it.• Social movements are not eternal. They have a life cycle: they are created, they grow, they achieve successes or failures and eventually, they dissolve and cease to exist.
6. Social movements are more likely to evolve in the time and place which is friendly to the social movements: hence their evident symbiosis with the 19th century proliferation of ideas like individual rights, freedom of speech and civil disobedience.
7. Social movements occur in both liberal and authoritarian societies but in different forms. However, there must always be polarizing differences between groups of people, for example in case of ‘old movements’, they were the poverty and wealth gaps. In case of the ‘new movements’, they are more likely to be the differences in customs, ethics and values.
8. Finally, the birth of a social movement needs what sociologist Neil Smelser calls an initiating event: a particular, individual event that will begin a chain reaction of events in the given society leading to the creation of a social movement. For example, American Civil Rights movement grew on the reaction to black woman, Rosa Parks, riding in the whites only section of the bus (although she was not acting alone or spontaneously—typically activist Leaders lay the groundwork behind the scenes of interventions designed to spark a movement). The Polish Solidarity movement, which eventually toppled the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, developed after trade union activist Anna Walentynowicz was fired from work. The South African shack dwellers’ movement grew out of a road blockade in response to the sudden selling off of a small piece of land promised for housing to a developer. Such an event is also described as a “volcanic model” – a social movement is often created after a large number of people realize that there are others sharing the same value and desire for a particular social change.

Sources of problems in social movement:

1. One of the main difficulties facing the emerging social movement is ‘spreading the very knowledge that it exists’. Second is overcoming the ‘free rider problem’ – convincing people to join it, instead of following the mentality ‘why should I trouble myself when others can do it and I can just reap the benefits after their hard work’.
2. Many social movements are created around some charismatic leader, i.e. one possessing charismatic authority. After the social movement is created, there are two likely phases of recruitment. The first phase will gather the people deeply interested in the ‘primary goal’ and ideal of the movement. The second phase, which will usually come after the given movement had some successes and is trendy; it would look good on a résumé. People who join in this second phase will likely be the first to leave when the movement suffers any setbacks and failures.
3. Eventually, the social crisis can be encouraged by outside elements, like opposition from government or other movements. However, many movements had survived a failure crisis, being revived by some hardcore activists even after several decades.

Role of leadership and ideology in social movements:

Social movements constitute people’s efforts to organize themselves to light against inequalities, discrimination and deprivation. Widespread collective mobilization has led to organized movements with defined ideologies and leaders who have brought important changes in the societies from which they originate.

• Leaders are important for movements because They help clarify the issues and thus shape the movement.
• Provide guidance to a movement.
• Prevent it from becoming a desperate, unruly collection of people.
• Leadership is expected to Reflect the views of the people..
• Leaders Articulate the views of the participants.
• They Present peoples view in an organized manner.
• How the participant attempt to achieve the stated objectives will be largely determined by the leadership the movement can throw up.