Social Movements

Question 1

What are social movements?

Answer 1

Social movements are enduring, organized attempts to encourage or discourage social change. They challenge the established order or status quo, may be violent or non-violent, and operate outside of established institutions.

Question 2

What are the four typologies David Aberle created for social movements?

Answer 2

1. Alternative
2. Redemptive
3. Reformative
   - partial change of society
   - target some sort of social injustice or social inequality; change laws or legislation
   - e.g. civil rights movement
4. Transformative (revolutionary)
   - radical change of society
   - often violent, but force is often necessary
   - e.g. French Revolution

Question 3

What is Relative Deprivation Theory? (Davies)

Answer 3

A comparative basis for people to measure inequalities gives people reason to mobilize. “Intolerable gap between the social rewards people think they deserve and the social rewards they expect to receive.”

Question 4

What is the critique of Relative Deprivation Theory?

Answer 4

There is a lack in empirical proof, not all relatively deprived people mobilize.
Why do the relatively affluent people mobilize?

Question 5

What are the 6 factors of Smelser’s Structural Strain Theory?

Answer 5

1. Structural conduciveness
2. Structural strain
3. Growth and Spread of an Explanation
4. Precipitating factors
5. Mobilization for action
6. (lack of/failure of) Social control

Question 6

What is Resource Mobilization Theory?

Answer 6

A dominant North-American paradigm, arose during the 1970s-1980s, by McCarthy & Zald.

Why do non-aggrieved parties also support social movements?

it is a critique of a previous theory: did not acknowledge that outsiders to social movements are often just as important as insiders to social movements.

Question 7

What are the focuses of RMT?

Answer 7

shift from “WHY do people want to change; WHEN will a movement be formed” to “HOW can people organize, pool resources, and wield them accordingly?”

• organization of resources is key
• practical/tactical basis
• utilitarian logic: cost/benefit analysis

Question 8

What are the components of membership/recruitment according to RMT?

Answer 8

Bloc recruitment:
- recruit existing groups as a whole, making organizing easier

Framing and frame alignment:
- form of marketing to the potential/wanted members of the group

Professionalism:
- fundraising & bureaucratization

Question 9

What is the “free-rider problem”, and the goal concerning it? (RMT)

Answer 9

A free-rider is a person/people who benefit from the movement’s success but do not directly mobilize or work for it directly. The goal is to transform riders and others to members through:

• coercion (force or guilt)
• incentives to join
• selective incentives to movements entrepreneurs (paid staff)

Question 10

What are New Social Movements?

Answer 10

Dominant European paradigm, 1960s onward.
Not working class people participating, but relatively educated, affluent populations. Focus on universalistic goals (e.g. anti-war).
Identity-oriented - contrasted by the movements studied by RMT that are strategy oriented?