Chapter 16 - Social Movements and Social Change Flashcards
Social Movement
Forms when people who want social change create an organization that is collaborative, organized and sustained and challenges authorities, powerholders or cultural beliefs and practises
Protest
An individual or group act or challenging, resisting, or making demands towards social change
Often most visible part of social movements
Beneficiary constituents
People who stand to benefit directly from the social change being sought.
Conscience constituents
People who care about the cause but do not benefit directly from the changes
Mobilizing
Means or spreading the word and bringing people together to support the goal of the social movement
Ex. the internet, social media
Community-based organizing
Individual activists become involved in a movement because of an issue directly affecting their community
Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)
One of the oldest national community organizations in the US
Founded in 1940 by activist Saul Alinsky, the IAF was developed to foster and support community-based groups, by training local-level leaders and organizers so that they can make change in their local communities. Some of the organization’s work includes successfully advocating for a living wage for workers in Baltimore and New York City. West and Southwest IAF advocate to bring people out of poverty-level jobs and to provide educational opportunities for workers.
Four Types of Movements
Alternative
Redemptive
Reformative Revolutionary
Alternative social movements
Advocate for limited societal change but do not ask individuals to change their personal beliefs.
target a narrow group of people and focus on a single concern. Friends of Cats is an example of an alternative social movement. Their goal was to change animal control policy in their city.
Redemptive social movements
Seek radical change in individual behavior
Ex. temperance movement in the 1800s advocated for individuals to stop drinking
Reformative social movements
work for specific change across society. In working for an end to racism and racial injustice, the civil rights movement and the more recent Black Lives Matter movement fit this type of movement.
aimed to change one aspect of society
Can be conservative - ex, antimarriage equality, attempts to stop illegal immigration
Revolutionary social
radical reorganization of society. The American Revolution is an example of a revolutionary social movement. The Communist Party in the United States and around the world challenges capitalism and government policies that exploit workers. It advocates for environmental protection, living wages for workers, the rights of labor unions, and shared ownership of resources.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theorists focus on how social movements develop out of systematic inequality. According to conflict theorists, social movements arise when goods and services are distributed unevenly. One of the most well-known conflict theories used in the arena of social movements is resource mobilization.
Resource mobilization
Focuses on the resources needed to mobilize and sustain a social movement
The presence of resources—followers, money, political connections, and so on—predicts whether a movement will be successful. Resource mobilization theorists believe all social movements need resources to mobilize, and without these resources, mobilization is much more difficult, if not impossible
focusing on resources does not help us understand how individuals and groups with little to no resources (poor people, marginalized people) form a successful social movement
Symbolic Interactionist Theory
Focus on how people interactively construct meaning through shared symbols and language.
Theorize that collective behavior develops when established institutions no longer provide meaning that aligns with the views of a majority of its constituents
Ex. marriage as an institution between a man and a woman
Social movement framing
Another way to understand social movements under symbolic interactionism
Focus on how social movements use images and language to frame their causes
leaders influence how people think about an issue by highlighting certain facts and themes while making other invisible
Master frames
appeal nearly universally
ex. freedom, love
Frame competition
when an organization uses another group’s frames to discredit or ridicule its position
1848 - 1920 Women’s Movement
First wave
Suffrage movement
Right to vote
Difference feminism
used images of women as caring, nurturing mothers to argue that women would bring an end to war and poverty if they could vote and serve office
1960s and 70s feminist movement
2nd wave
after working in factories during WWII women expected to go back to being full time wives and mothers once the war ended
wave advocated for an end to gender discrimination in the workplace and reproductive right for women
Social Movement Tasks
Identify an issue
Form a group - of both beneficiary and consciousness constituents that believe change is necessary
Create a strategy - Strategic research and planning
Mobilize resources - Constituents are every social movement’s most important resource. Other resources include money, access to media, and supplies. Organizations must assess what resources they have and organize to gain those they need.
Organize actions - Specific actions, or tactics, might include protesting, marching, boycotting, and so on.
Gaining power and success
Feminist
committed to gender equality
1990s Feminism
third wave
focused on inclusiveness and intersectionality
drew from a diverse group of women to advocate around various issues, including sexual violence, gat rights and reproductive justice
riot grrrls - developed out of the feminist hardcare punk music scene
Riot grrls
developed out of the hardcore punk music scene
Activists, musicians, and writers in the movement covered everything from body-positive messages to surviving sexual violence.
Marginalization of members
Social movements can limit participation by marginalizing some members within the organization. For example, despite playing important roles in civil rights efforts, women were marginalized in the civil rights movement
often assigned clerical work instead of on-the-ground organizing work.
Civil Right Movement Succeses
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made it illegal for states and local governments to block individuals from voting and created a system to monitor states and counties with low voter turnout among minorities; and
the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination in renting, selling, or financing housing based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
Women’s Movement Victories
Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, granting women legal access to abortion. T
he women’s movement also became an influential part of mainstream political institutions.
Started as an organization targeting politicians for social change, the National Organization for Women now has hundreds of thousands of members, chapters in every state
Repression
takes place when people and/or institutions with power use that power to control or destroy a movement.
Countries that can protests
Russia, the Ukraine, and Egypt.
Co-optation
Can happen when the leadership of the movement begins to identify with the targets of social change and starts to work more for them than for the original movement goals.
Social movements can also end up taking on the values and actions they are trying to change. For example, the environmental movement seeking corporate responsibility in growing and selling coffee found its language of “fair trade” co-opted by some coffee sellers to appeal to a high-end niche consumer, without much concern about whether the coffee was actually fairly traded.
watered down or changed
The Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969.
During the 1950s and 1960s, it was illegal for bars to serve gays and lesbians, and they could lose their liquor licenses for letting gay people congregate. The riots broke out in the Stonewall
Inn, a bar in New York City frequented by gay men and lesbians. Police raids on known gay and lesbian bars were commonplace, but when police raided the Stonewall Inn, patrons decided they had enough and fought back
The riots served to galvanize the gay and lesbian community to organize into activist groups and push for equal treatment.
The following year, to commemorate the anniversary of the riots, gay and lesbian rights activists held a march in New York City running from Greenwich Village up Fifth Avenue to Central Park. This was the first Pride March, now an annual event
Independent power
Francis Fox Piven’s (2006)
Helps explain how social change can come from the organized efforts of relatively poor and powerless individuals because of the ties that bind institutions and individuals together. Individuals are connected to one another through institutions that organize our lives
Participatory Action Research (PAR)
starts with the idea that people are the experts in their own lives and can participate in the research process. Instead of the typical model of a researcher coming into a community to study it, the people who live in that community participate in the research process and help produce the knowledge collectively
especially useful technique in disadvantaged communities where members may not trust outsider researchers and are more likely to talk to one another.
