2 Introduction to Issues and Concepts of Social Movements

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Objective

3. Learning Outcome

4. Locating Social Movement with broad Social Processes

5. Conceptualizing Social Movements

6. Vital Elements of Social Movements

7. Origin of Social Movements

8. Transformation of Social Movements

9. Perspectives on Social Movements

9.1. Resource Mobilization Perspective

9.2. Identity Perspectives

9.3. Fluidity of identities

10. Social Movements in Contemporary Society

11. Summary

1.  Introduction

Social movement is a matter of every day discourse among the researchers and teachers, planners and politicians, administrators and law enforcing machineries, social activists and common people alike. It is interchangeably used with varieties of collective actions. However in social science social movement carries specific connotation as it has distinctive foundation and has got specific understanding. As against this backdrop the central aim of this module is to locate social movements within broad social processes, clarify its meaning conceptually, describe its basic features and origins, explain basic perspectives of social movement analysis and spell out some recent directions of social movements in the contemporary world.

2.   Objective

The central objectives of this module are to introduce the students with the dynamics of social movements in the society. Hence students are acquainted with the concepts vital elements, and origin of social movements at the very outset. The students are also acquainted with the facets of transformation of social movements and the various perspectives to study social movements. The emerging facets of social movement in the contemporary society are also discussed in the module

3.   Learning Outcome

After studying this module the students will be able to locate social movements within the broad social and political processes of the society. They will be able to describe social movements in terms of their vital elements, the reasons of their manifestations and the process of their transformation in the society. Over the years several sophisticated theoretical perspectives have emerged in explaining social movements. Hence students would be able to explain classical, resource mobilisation and the identity perspectives of social movements very clearly. They will also be able to develop critic of these perspectives in view of new facets of social movements as have emerged in the contemporary world.

4.   Locating Social movements within broad social processes

Social movements are widely considered to be exceptional phenomena in society as they challenge many of the established institutional arrangements and practices in the society and propagate for changes in the established order. They are also considered to be short lived and episodic. However, social movements have remained integral parts of social progression, these are manifested in diverse shape and are always there to preach for justice, equality and fraternity in one form or the other. Hence Touraine (1981) has observed that ‘social movements lie permanently at the heart of the social life. They 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’ (Touraine 1981: 29). They are in fact a sign and bring messages for change as prophets of the present (Melucci 1996: 9).

There are large varieties of collective initiatives, actions and interventions those are often described as social movements. Usually the terms like collective mobilization, collective action, protest and that of the social movement itself belong to everyday language and derive meaning from their diverse uses in specific contexts. Again what all movements share in common, many of them are shared by others. Even within the same movement we find diversity, and all movements change over time (Crossley 2002: 2). Hence there is a need to conceptualise social movements first.

5.   Conceptualizing Social Movements

Social movements have broadly been perceived as ‘organised’ or ‘collective effort’ to bring about changes in the thought, beliefs, values, attitudes, relationships and major institutions in society or to resist any change in the above societal arrangements. Blumer (1951 defines social movements as ‘collective enterprises to establish a new social order of life’. To Toch (1965) social movement is an ‘effort by a large number of people to solve collectively a problem they feel they have in common’. According to Haberle (1972), it is ‘a collective attempt to bring about a change in certain social institutions or to create entirely a new order’. J.R. Gusfield (1972) perceives a social movement as a socially shared demand for change in some aspect of the social order’. To Wilson (1973), social movements may either be for a change or resistance to change. Thus, to him, a social movement is an organised endeavour to bring about or to resist large-scale changes in the social order by non-institutionalized means.

6.   Vital Elements of Social Movements

Ideology, collective mobilisation, organization, leadership, interest articulation and identity formation are considered to be vital elements of social movements and are closely interrelated. Ideology provides a broad frame of action and collective mobilisation in the social movement. It also provides legitimacy to the process of interest articulation and organized collective action. There are different ways of formulating ideology in a social movement. However, in the context of new social movements, role of ideology has been a subject of close scrutiny.

Collective mobilization is again a central element of a social movement. The nature and direction of a social movement is widely shaped by the nature of collective mobilisation. Collective mobilisation may be radical, non-institutionalized, spontaneous, large scale or it may be non-violent, institutionalized, sporadic, restricted. It may also undergo a process of transformation from radical to reformative or institutionalized. Routinisation of charisma is an illustration to this point.

Leadership and organization are closely linked to the process of collective mobilisation. A leader can be charismatic figure or a democratically elected one. The organization provides an identified structure to social movements.

Interest articulation is an important aspect of social movement that is usually done by the leadership and the organization. They are not only to articulate the interests and the concerns of the movement participants but also to unite members based on these achievable interests.

Social movements form solidarity among the movement participants and bring new meaning for it by constructing a common identity. The common identity may be diverted against the others, that is the movement opponents, and is supported by the participants, and the sympathizers.

7.   Origin of Social Movements

There are several schools of thoughts on the origin of social movements. The classical model of thought is represented by the versions of mass society, collective behaviour, status inconsistency, raising expectations, and relative deprivation. In general it is argued that there are sequences leading to the manifestation of social movements. These sequences move from structural weakness due to the strain in society leading to psychological disturbances and ultimately to the manifestations of social movements. There are, however variety of reasons behind the structural strain. The mass society theorist, like Kornhauser (1959), is of the view that due to the lack of an intermediate structure people in the mass society are not integrated in the society. This leads to alienation, tension and ultimately social protest. The proponents of the theory of status inconsistency, like Broom (1959) and Lenski (1954), are of the view that the objective discrepancy between persons ranking and status generate subjective tensions in the society leading to cognitive dissonance, discontent and protest. The Theory of Collective Behaviour as propagated by Smelser, Lang and Lang, Turner and Killian suggests that any severe structural strain can help manifest social movements. To Smelser, the more and severe the strain, the more likelihood of social movements to occur.

Thus, the classical model has observed social movements as response to structural strain, it is concerned with the psychological effect that stain has on individual and that collective participation in the movement is guided by urgent psychological pressure and not by the aim to change the political structure (McAdam 1996: 135-143)

The Theory of Relative Deprivation has got a place of prominence in the social movement study. In the Marxian analysis economic deprivation has been identified to be the prime cause of social conflict among the two antagonistic classes i.e. the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. To Aberle (1966) deprivation has also non-material base, e.g. status, behaviour, worth etc. Relative deprivation, i.e., the discrepancy between legitimate expectations and the reality is the central point of social movement. Gurr (1970) has perceived deprivation as a gap between expectations and perceived capabilities involving three generalised sets of values: economic conditions, political power and social status.

In The Theory of Cultural Revitalization, Wallace (1956) is of the view that social movements are manifested out a deliberate, organised and conscious action of the member of the society to construct a more satisfying culture for themselves. To him, the revitalization movements undergo four phase of progression: from cultural stability to increased individual stress to cultural distortion and disillusionment to cultural revitalization.

It is to mention here that no element of strain and deprivation alone can produce a movement unless there is a subjective perception about this objective condition of deprivation. Ideology, organization and leadership play crucial role towards the manifestation and sustenance of social movements (For Further Details See, Rao 1984; SinghaRoy 2006).

8.   Transformation of Social Movements

Every social movement is having a life history and undergoes a process of transformation. The movement may emerge to be routinised accompanying a decline in support for a movement (Clark, Grayson & Grayson 1975: 19). Such process of transformation of the movement is indeed contextual and cultures, polity and economy specific. Zald studied transformation of social movements in the comparative frame. He finds that the process of transformation of social movements in the United States and Western Europe has been oriented to be reformist while in the Eastern Europe social movement transformed itself into regime challenges (Zald 1988: 19-24). It is observed in the developed societies that in the absence of a shared culture of popular opposition to the authorities and powerful groups, in the absence of a grass-roots organisation structure, lack of space for unconventional tactics and likely co-option of the dissidents and critics by the state, collective mobilization are not sustained for a larger time (Obserchall 1978; Gamson 1975; Walsh 1978). Here most of the social movements are institutionalized in nature.

A change in the components of ideology, organisation, leadership and orientation towards change of social movements brings tremendous change in the character of the social movements. Thus, social movements may also be categorized as “revolutionary movement” and “quasi-movement” based on the nature and direction of change initiated by the process of collective mobilization. To Mukherjee (1987), when a collective mobilization aims at effecting wide ranging and far reaching changes of a system, it may be called a revolutionary movement, and when it aims changes within a system only, it may be called a quasi-movement. Sociologists observing the life histories of various social movements point out that sooner or later a social movement becomes subject to the process of routinisation. Often a protest movement starts off with a radial ideology, but develops its own establishment in turn. To Rao (1985) when a movement with a defined ideology becomes well established political party, it ceases to be a movement (1985: 251).

In the developing parts of the world there have been numerous episodes of proliferation of radical or non institutionalized social movements and subsequently a process of their institutionalization. Many ‘radical movement’, those resorted to non-institutionalized large-scale collective mobilization initiated and guided by radical ideology for rapid structural change in the society, have got transformed into ‘reformative movement’ taking recourse to institutionalized mass mobilization initiated by recognized bodies for a gradual change in the selected institutional arrangement of society guided by reformative/modified ideology of social change. While the lifespan of radical movement, especially its extensive period of action and collective mobilization is short lived, the life span of institutionalized social movements is longer; it tries to get old institutions, norms, values and customs selectively redefined in a new context (SinghaRoy 1992: 27). The process of transformation of social movements from ‘radical’ to ‘reformative’ and the vice-versa directly affects not only the processes of formation and rejuvenation of new collective identity, but also articulation of new areas of collective action. In fast transitional societies collective mobilization has emerged as integral part of social progression. Here collective mobilization and institutionalization are not contradictory but complementary to each other that paves the way for persistent and renewed efforts towards a just society. T. K. Oommen (1994) points out that the processes of mobilization and institutionalization do co-exist, and that ‘institutionalization provides new possibilities of mobilization’ and that mobilization is not displaced by institutionalization but goes hand-in-hand to a large extent and often the later process accentuates the former’ (Oommen 1994: 251-53).

9.   Perspectives on Social Movements

In social science, a vast body of literature has emerged in the area of social movements with distinctive intellectual perspectives and theoretical traditions. One is to bear in mind that social movements are conceptualized in a given context of space and time. For decades the area of social movements’ studies was relegated to the margin by the dominant Functionalist and Marxist schools of thoughts. The Marxist social scientists have reduced all varieties of collective mobilizations and social movements to class conflicts as to them social classes are the sole agents of social transformation. The functionalist on the other hand considered social movements as the potential agency of disruptions to the social order. For example, in America, Haberle (1951) conceptualized social movements as the potentially dangerous forms of non-institutionalized collective political behaviour that threaten the stability of the established social order. Similarly the scholars of collective behaviour perspective, especially Turner and Killian (1957), Parsons (1969), Smelser (1963), and others viewed social movement as non-institutionalized collective actions, which are not guided by existing social norms, formed to meet undefined or unstructured situations and are understood in terms of a breakdown either in the organs of social control or normative integration, due to structural changes (Cohen 1995:71-2, cf. Jamison and Eyreman 1991: 14). However, symbolic interactionists like Blumer (1969) have identified the desire for new life in social movements (Blumer 1969: 99). Let me here discuss the major perspectives on social movement.

9.1. Resource Mobilization Perspective

Social movement studies have entered into a new trajectory of theorization with the resource mobilization theorists using the dimensions of entrepreneurship, cost and benefit in the analysis of social movements since the early 1970s. They study social movements as a political process of institutionalized protest or collective actions to get the share of political power by using various resources. Charles Tilly (1975) explained the occurrences of the popular protest in terms of the emerging the ‘political opportunities’ caused by the involvement of the state with the welfare activities and the increasing importance of parliamentary politics that accommodated collective mobilization and gave legitimacy to petitions, demonstrations, strikes, mass meetings, and so on as democratic process. He has explained the occurrences of collective action in terms of the pursuit of common interest and the rationality of human action, whereby the participants in the social movement calculate the costs and benefits of their participatory action in collective mobilization. Similar view has also been furthered to show that social movements are manifested when the required resources are pumped into it by the rich for their benefits (Jenkins and Perrow 1977), and that social movements generate a ‘demand’ similar to an economic demand, to which ‘political entrepreneurs’ respond by forming a counter-movement as business (McCarthy and Zald 1977). Hence, the social movements compete for resources within a broader movement industry and struggle for resources against the demands of the public, private and third sectors.

In recent years a shift is marked in resource mobilization theory to describe the emergence of social movements in terms of expanding political opportunities through indigenous organizational strength on the one hand and cognitive liberation on the other. It states that these cognitions ‘are overwhelmingly not based upon observation or empirical evidence available to participants, but rather upon cueing among groups of people who jointly create the meanings’ (McAdam 1982). In this context, the dimensions of ‘framing and contentious politics’ have emerged to be important issues in social movement analysis. According to Tarrow (1995) ‘movement organizations draw people into collective action through known repertoires of contention and by creating innovations around their margins. The organizers exploit political opportunities, create new collective identities, bring people together in organizations and mobilize them against more powerful opponents…’ (Tarrow 1995: 3). Thus, social movements construct meaning through interpretative schemata that signifies and condenses the ‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one’s present and past environment’ (David Snow and Robert Benford 1992). The movement entrepreneurs are also ‘effectively engaged in ‘naming’ grievances, connecting them to other grievances and constructing larger frames of meaning that will resonate with population’s cultural predispositions and communicate a uniform message to power holders and others’ (Marris and Mueller 136-7).

However, the resource mobilization theory has emerged to be very limited in its scope and analysis. Many scholars find it is simplistic, rigid and static (Goodin and Jasper 1999; McAdam 1999; McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001). To these scholars, the resource mobilization interpretation observes social structure as fixed entities through which political opportunities are drawn. Indeed ‘there may be no such things as objective political opportunities before or beneath interpretation – or at least none that matter; they are all interpreted through cultural filters’ (Goodin and Jasper 1999: 33). Hence, to overcome the structural bias or structural determinism, McAdam (1999) suggests to combine the structuralist, culturalist and rationalist tenets with the forms of contention to develop a complete understanding of the origins of movements (1999: XXXVii). Thus many scholars highlight the need of developing models of analysis that recognize identity as relational, contingent and socially constructed, as opposed to non-problematic resources to be mobilized and affirm that identities are not durable or encompassing attributes of persons or collective actors as such (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001: 133; Bevington and Dison 2005: 287-9).

9.2. Identity Perspective

It is now imperative for us to look into the nuances of the identity perspective that has been widely used in West European countries to study social movements since the early twentieth century. This intellectual tradition has emerged against the backdrop of proliferation of preponderant labour movements, development of industrial democracies, Fabian socialism and welfare state in the UK and other countries on the one hand, and mobilizations of nationalist feelings in countries like Germany on the other. Indeed institutionalization of reformist and social democratic labour movement in Western Europe affected the way social movements were conceived by social scientists in these countries (Eyerman and Jamison 1991: 17-18)

It was widely realized that not merely the empirical and the economic class position, but rather the issue of values, culture, subjectivity, morality, and empowerment have also played crucial roles towards the formation of new collective identities in these movements. Touraine (1981, 1983) observed ‘new social movement as potential bearers of new social interests’ and that social movements are characterized by the realization of historicity, by self-conscious awareness and collective identity. Bertaux (1990) has added the view that ‘subjectivity’ and ‘idealism’ are essential elements of social movement and that ‘subjectivity refers to the subject in its totality…it concerns with the drastic change in the fabric of social life that takes place when a new movement is born.’ (1990: 53).

Social movements help generate a sense of collective identity and new ideas that recognize the reality from a new perspective. Collective identities are formed as an achieved definition of a situation, constructed and negotiated through the constitution of social networks which then connect the members of a group or movement through collective action to provide distinctive meaning to collective action. Thus, social movements grow around relationship of new social identity that are voluntarily conceived ‘to empower’ members in defence of this identity (Melucci 1992, 1996). To Melucci, ‘newness of the new social movements is a relative concept and it had a temporary function to indicate the comparative difference between the historical forms of class conflict and today’s emergent form of collective action. The reality in which we live has in entirety become a cultural construct and our representations of it serve as filters for our relationship with the whole world… Social movements too seem to shift their focus from class, race, and other more traditional issues towards the cultural ground… (Melucci 1996: 8-9).

In the world of cultural interactivity and co-construction, social movement provides public spaces for generating new thoughts, activating new actors, and generating new ideas. ‘Thus by producing new knowledge, by reflecting on their own cognitive identity, by saying what they stand for, by challenging the dominant assumptions of the social order, social movements develop new ideas that are fundamental to the process of human creativity. Thus, social movements develop worldviews that restructure cognition, that recognize reality itself. The cognitive praxis of social movements is an important source of new social images and transformation of societal identities’ (Eyerman and Jamison 1991: 161-66). Hence, social movements involve actions for ‘doing’. ‘The involvement in an action is a matter of conscience and emotion, of responsibility and intention, of reflection and compassion, it is basically moral, global and individual’ (Hegedus 1990: 266).

Social movements are however linked not only to the understanding of common social identity but also of common interest (Scott 1991: 6). With the growing space for globalism and informationalism while the notion of identity has emerged to be idealistic and hegemonic at one end, it is also tending to be diluted, fragmented and self-oriented on the other. In view of the changes in the contemporary society, critiquing the domination of the identity theory has also been a possibility and necessity.

9.3. Fluidity of Identity

It is now recognised that the concept of collective identity has also become an obstacle to explore the forms of mobilizations increasingly taking place in the networks, scapes and flows. The fluid-like characteristics of the emerging society with increasingly unequal flows of people, information, money, images, risks, practices and emotions, with no clear beginning or end points have become the dominant phenomena. Within these emerging complexities social systems increasingly manifest fluid-like characteristics and become increasingly subject to shockwaves fluidity rather than solidarity; public experience of self rather than collective identity are the emerging paradigm of contemporary social movements (Urry 2000 cf. McDonald 2002).

These emerging phenomena have induced a good deal of complexities in comprehending social movement theoretically, and in understanding the nature of collectivities on which the very foundation of social movement is laid. A social movement group is understood as a variant of social collectivities and is usually understood within the conceptual formulation of ‘community’. Now it has also been understood as a collectivity of informal networks which mobilizes on conflictual issues through the frequent use of various forms of protest’ (della Porta and Diani 1999: 16). Social movement collectivities are loosely formed, many a times independent of geographical boundary. Their collective identity is formed based on temporarily perceived and articulated ideals and common interests, and that many participants tend to be members of more than one collectivities simultaneously. Significantly many of these collectivities do have contradictory interests and goals. Hence, it is possible that membership is fluid and is of varying strength. Thus, the fluid and the fuzzy membership and the emerging fluidity of identity make the social order of social movement communities very weak. The emergence of network society adds more odds to the concept of community.

10.   Social Movements in Contemporary Society: Globalization, Social Movement Society and Social Anti Movements

In the changing society while most of the social movements have remained institutionalized, working class movements are also on a decline and have emerged to be incapable of rising to the level of historicity to challenge the overall control of the major orientations of collective life. New forms of social movements are also in the making to articulate new forms of identity and interests. Significantly enough the end of Cold War and the emergence of the new phase of economy characterized by globalization has marked the proliferation of ‘global movements’ involving numerous struggles on the question of environment, human rights, vision of ‘another world’, demand of recognition of cultural identities, and so on (Wieviorka 2005). In the changing world, conflict is getting institutionalized and social movements becoming permanent component of political interest mediation and other legitimate factors in contemporary societies. All these are leading to the conspicuous formation of a ‘movement society’. All these indicate the trends of potential emergence and sustenance of plurality of social movements taking up long term and permanent positions in society on diverse issues and interests (Ruchet and Neidhardt 2002). With the emergence of multiplicity of social movements in the movement society, social movements are to encounter its inverted image—the social anti-movements which ‘instead of promoting a social or a cultural identity, champion of some abstract entity, essence or symbol, and speak in the name of a purity or homogeneity. Again instead of building relationships with other actors, agreeing on the principles of debates and negotiations, they champion absolutes, and adopt do or die attitudes. And if they appear in an arena where social movements also exist, they try to destroy these movements, and fight against them’ (Wieviorka 2005:18). In the wake of globalization and the emerging interplay of several new forces, a large part of the society is undergoing a profound process of socio-cultural de-contextualization. This has generated new varieties of social change and mobility and has led to the articulation of diverse interests and identities; and expression of diverse

varieties of protests, conflict, collective mobilization and social movements. Significantly many of the processes are intertwined with each other. Societies in India are experiencing fast processes of transformation caused by the proliferation of the service sector of the economy, penetration of information and communication technology, increasing flow of migration, introduction of new development initiatives, increasing literacy rates and fast economic growth rate on the one hand and sharp decline in the land-man ratio and decline of work participation in agriculture, stagnation of vast section on abject poverty, livelihood insecurity, unemployment and underemployment on the other. These phenomena have generated composite processes of vertical and horizontal social mobility; new forms of social conflicts have proliferated locally and globally, and concurrent radicalized and institutionalized social mobilizations and collective actions, and rejuvenations of several old forces in new forms have cropped up. The relationships between the state and social movements have acquired several new dimensions. In the emerging scenario while, on the one hand, there have been processes of cooption of collective mobilization by the state, and a decline of culture of collective protests, there have also been resurgence of people’s protest at the grassroots, which are looking for new mediums of expressions and societal recognition. In the changing context several new contradictions have emerged in shaping the essence of social movements and in comprehending them in totality. These contradictions can’t be explained simply by contra-positing and privileging one organizing principle of collective mobilization over the other, for example, interests vs. identities, subjectivity vs. objectivity, morality vs. rationality, solidarity vs. fludarity, structure vs. process, framing vs. cognition, singularity vs. plurality, social anti vs. social. Rather in view of historicity and contemporarility, resilience and resurgence of these social conflicts and collective mobilizations and their interface with emerging patterns of social mobility, these are required to be explained by understanding the broad processes of socio-economic transitions of the society and by juxtapositioning and combining many of the organizing principles of social movements together.

Though societies in India have long remained to be the breeding ground for range of tribal, Dalit (lower caste), peasant’s, worker’s, women’s, ethnic, regional, environmental, human rights, gay, animal rights, and many other social movements, in recent years especially in the wake of globalization, penetration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and fast transition of society, the socio-political facets of these social movements have under gone phenomenal changes. These have deeply impacted the organizational arrangements, ideological positions, leadership’s structures, patterns of mobilizations, processes of alignments and realignments with other social and political forces and framing connectivity of these movements with the other social movements and ultimately the processes of articulation of collective identities and interests through these movements.While the genesis of large sections of these movements have remained embedded in the historically inherited social and economic inequalities and traditional domination, for many these are linked to ecological degradation, corruption in the high places of power, forceful acquisition of agricultural lands etc.

Despite being emerged as a leading economic force, the socio-economic realities in India have remained embedded in declining land man-ratio, sustained poverty with more than two fifth of population living below poverty line, more than four-fifth earning less than $2 per day (World Bank 2010), one-fifth population remaining ever undernourished (Global Hunger Index 2007), protracted ignorance with one forth remaining illiterate, environmental degradation with fast declining in forest coverage and phenomenal increase in carbon emission, corruption in high places, increasing social divides and inequalities and lack of political commitment for social justice. In recent years these contradictions have been accentuated and the people who have been the victims of historical neglects and injustice have emerged to be bearers of brunt all deprivations and decadence. All these have paved the way for the emergence of varieties of social movements both within and outside the democratic framework of the Indian society (For Details See SinghaRoy 2012).

11. Summary

Social movements are integral parts of social change and transformation. These are parts of social processes. This module has located social movements with the broad processes of the society. For simplified understanding it has discussed the significance of organisation, collective mobilization, leadership, ideology and identity in social movements. There several reasons for the manifestation of social movements. Social movements are also discussed from several perspectives across the world. This module has discussed all the perspectives al length. The emerging facets of change and transformation in social movements and cotemporary facets of social movements are also discussed in this module.