Social movements are essentially fluid and informal, characterized by what Victor Turner called ‘communitas’. As a result they cannot last very long in his form. Some of them wither away while others are transformed by their own success. Growth leads to the ‘routinization of ‘communitas’-as Turner adapting Weber’s ‘routinization of charisma, described it or more prosaically, to the development of permanent institution such as the Franciscan order, the Lutheran Church and the communist and the Communist Party. The ‘movement’ ceases to move (U. Turner 1969: Biff). Later, when successful organizations commission official histories of themselves, these histories generally give the impression that these bodies were consciously planned and institutionalized right from the start. It is prudent to be skeptical of such claims.
The Concept of Social Movements
Social movements are a distinct social process, consisting of the mechanisms through which actors engaged in collective action:
- are involved in conflictual relations with clearly identified opponents;
- are linked by dense informal networks;
- share a distinct collective action.
Conflictual Collective Action: Social movement actors are engaged in political and/or cultural conflicts meant to promote or oppose social change. By conflict we mean an oppositional relationship between actors who seek control of the same stake- be it political, economic or cultural power- and in the process make negative claims on each other- i.e., demands which, if realized, would damage the interests of the other actors (Tilly 1978; Touraine 1981: 80-4). Accordingly, addressing collective problems, producing public goods, or expressing support for some moral values or principles does not automatically correspond to social movement action; the latter requires the identification of targets for collective efforts, specifically articulated in social or political terms. In contrast, when collective action focuses exclusively on the behavior and/or the legitimacy of specific individuals, or blames problem on humankind as a whole, on natural disasters or divine will, then it is difficult to speak of social movement processes (Gamson 1992; Melucci 1996). For example, collective action on globalization issues is conflictual to the extent that organizations like the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund are blamed not because of their officials’ misconduct or specific policy mistakes, but as representatives of distinct coalitions of interests.
Dense Informal Networks: Dense informal networks differentiate social movement processes from the innumerable instances in which collective action takes place and is coordinated mostly within the boundaries of specific organizations. A social movement process is in place to the extent that both individual and organized actors, while keeping their autonomy and independence, engage in sustained exchanges of resources in pursuit of common goals. The coordination of specific initiatives, the regulation of individual actors’ conduct, and the definition of strategies all depend on permanent negotiations between the individuals and organizations involved in collective action. No single organized actor, no matter how powerful, can claim to represent a movement as a whole. It follows that more opportunities arise for highly committed and/or skilled individuals to play an independent role in the political process than would be the case when action is concentrated within formal organizations.
Collective Identity: Social movements are not merely the sum of protest events on certain issues, or even of specific campaigns. On the contrary, a social movement process is in place only when collective identities develop, which go beyond specific events and initiatives. Collective identity is strongly associated with recognition and the creation of connectedness (Pizzorno 1996). It brings with it a sense of common purpose and shared commitment to a cause, which enables single activists and/or organizations to regard themselves as inextricably linked to other actors, not necessarily identical but surely compatible, in a broader collective mobilization (Touraine 1981). Within social movements, membership criteria are extremely unstable and ultimately dependent on mutual recognition between actors; the activity of boundary definition- i.e., of defining who is and who not part of the network- is indeed plays a central role in the emergence and shaping of collective action (Melucci 1996, ch.3). For example, recent research on environmentalism suggests that animal rights activism be more distinctive and less identified with environmentalism in Britain than in Italy: as a result, it makes much more sense to regard the two as involved in the same movement process in the latter than in the former (Rootes 2003; Diani &Forno 2003).