Four Core Questions for Social Movement Analysis

Social movements may be approached in reference to very diverse intellectual questions. The first set of questions refers to the relationship between structural change and transformations in patterns of social conflict. Can we see social movements as expressions of conflict? And what conflicts? Have there been changes in the main conflicts addressed by social movements? And what conflicts? Another set of question has to do with the role of cultural representations in social conflict. How are social problems identified as potential objects of collective action? How do certain social actors come to develop a sense of commonality and to identify with the same “collective we”? And how can specific protest events come to be perceived as part of the same conflict? Where do social movement cultures and values originate from? A third set of questions addresses the process through which values, interests, and ideas get turned into collective action. How does it become possible to mobilize and face the risks and costs of protest activity? What are the roles of identities and symbols, emotions and organizations, and networks, in explaining the start and persistence of collective action? What forms do organizations take in their attempts to maximize the strength of collective challenges and their outcomes?  Finally, it has frequently been asked how a certain social, political, and/or cultural context affects social movements ‘chances of success, and the forms they take. What does explain the varying intensity over time of collective violence and other types of public challenges against power holders? Do the traits of political systems and their attitudes towards citizens’ demands influence challengers’ impact in the political arena? How do protest tactics and strategies change over time, and why?

The 1960s were important because they saw not only an increase in new forms of political participation, but also a change in the main conflictual issues. Traditionally, social movements had focus mainly on issues of labor and nations: since the 1960s, “new social movements” have emerged instead centered on concerns such as women’s liberation, environmental protection, etc. These changes in the quantity and quality of protest prompted significant innovations in social scientists’ approach to those questions. Lets us critically analyze those diverse intellectual questions to approach social movements.

Is social change creating the conditions for the emergence of new movements?

Scholars of new movements agreed that conflict among the industrial classes is of decreasing relevance, and similarly the representation of movements as largely homogeneous subjects is no longer feasible. According to Alain Touraine, “Social movements are not a marginal rejection of order, they are the central forces fighting one against the other to control the production of society by itself and the action of classes for the shaping of historicity (i.e., the overall system of meaning which sets dominant rules in a given society)” (Touraine 1981: 29). In the industrial society, the ruling class and the popular class oppose each other, as they did in the agrarian and the mercantile societies, and as they will do, according to Touraine, in the programmed society, where new classes will replace capitalists and the working class as the central actors of the conflict.

Another contribution to the definition of the characteristics of new movements in the programmed society came from Alberto Melucci (1982, 1989, 1996). He described contemporary societies as highly differentiated systems, which invest increasingly in the creation of individual autonomous centers of action, at the same time requiring closer integration and extending control over the motives for human action. In his view, new social movements try to oppose the intrusion of the state and the market into social life, reclaiming individuals’ right to define their identities and to determine their private and affective lives against the omnipresent and comprehensive manipulation of the system. Unlike the workers’ movement, new social movements do not, in Melucci’s view, limit themselves to seeking material gain, but challenge the diffuse notions of politics and of society themselves. New actors do not so much ask for an increase in state intervention, to guarantee security and well-being, but especially resist the expansion of political-administrative intervention in daily life and defend personal autonomy. Other important attempt to relate social-structural change to mass collective action has come from Manuel Castells (1983, 1996). In an earlier phase of his work, Castells has contributed to our understanding of the emergence of urban social movements by stressing the importance of consumption processes (in particular of collective consumption of public services and public goods) for class relations, by moving the focus of class analysis from capitalist relations within the workplace to social relations in the urban community (Castell 1983). Later Castells linked the growing relevance of conflicts on identity both in the West- e.g. the women’s movement- and in the South- e.g. Zapatistas, religious fundamentalists, etc – to the emergence of a “network society,” where new information technologies play a central role.