Social movements Lecture Notes PDF

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SOCIAL CHANGE AND COLLECTIVE MOVEMENTS 

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Social Change o Transformation of a culture over time o Some deliberate or intended; others unplanned or unintentional Caused by:  Physical event (hurricanes, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions  Demographics (for example, the aging of baby boomers)  Discoveries and innovations (fire or the wheel)  Auto-mass transportation for individuals  Led to creation of suburbs, creation and pavement of roads, rubber, oil, and steel industry boomed, infrastructure  Sexual norms changed- young people started having sex in cars, affected dating  Collective action (the Civil Rights Movement) Collective Behavior o Behavior that emerges from the formation of a group or crowd of people who together take action toward a shared goal  Often organized and maintains a certain amount of order o Forms  Crowd Behavior  Mass Behavior  Social Movements o Crowd Behavior  Crowd  Temporary gathering of individuals, whether spontaneous or planned, who share a common focus  Riot  Continuous disorderly behavior by a group of people that disturbs the peace and is directed toward other people and/or property  Panic  Massive flight from something feared (often technology)  Ex: radio broadcast of H.G. Wells's War of the World, Y2K  Thomas Theorem  Contagion Theory  One of the earliest theories of collective action  Suggests that individuals who join a crowd or mob become "infected" by a mob mentality and lose the ability to reason  Chemistry involved- adrenaline o Mass Behavior

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When large group of people engage in similar behaviors without necessarily being in the same place Fads  Temporary; highly imitated outbreaks of mildly unconventional behavior  e: hipsters, Crocs Fashion  Somewhat long-lasting (in relation to fads) style of imitative behavior or appearance  Success undermines attractiveness  Well-organized efforts of design, manufacturing, marketing, and media  Ex: chic or classic style Social Dilemma  Mass behavior that's caused when behavior that's rational for the individual can, when practiced by many people, lead to collective disaster  Ex: Tragedy of the Commons  When many individuals overexploit a public resource and depletes or degrades that resource  Leaving trash on the beach, carving names into trees  Ex: Public Goods Dilemma  When individuals must incur a cost to contribute to a collective resource, though they might not benefit from that resource  Hard for people to put more money into taxes to go toward education if someone doesn't have kids

Social Movements  Large, organized efforts to bring about or resist social change  Non-institutionalized action:  Marches, boycotts, demonstrations, civil disobedience  Institutionalized Action: funding court cases to make changes  Oriented toward longer-term goals with supporting set of beliefs and opinions  Traditionally lack access to political power o Types of Social Movements o

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Reformist 

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Seek change within existing economic and political system; address legal institutions  Civil Rights Movement, March for Our Lives

Utopian

Withdraw from dominant society and create own ideal communities  Jonestown started Utopian  Revolutionary/ Radical  Seek to fundamentally alter existing economic, political, social system, vision of a new social order  Radical- from the roots  Rebellions  Seek to overthrow existing system but lack plan for new social order  Effective mobilization difficult  Slave rebellions  Reactionary Movements  Seek to restore an earlier social system  Often based on a mythical past  Arise in reaction to social change that threatens or replaces old order o Why Join a Social Movement?  Mass society theory  Satisfy a psychological need to belong to something large than themselves  Relative deprivation theory  Gain rights or opportunities already enjoyed by others in society  Might be offended by mass society theory  Resource mobilization theory  Focuses on the practical constraints that help or hinder social movements' action o Why Do Social Movements Arise?  Come to identify with others similarly afflicted  Activism likely if:  Had prior contact with movements  Social networks support movements  Personal family or history of activism  Lack of practical constraints  Sense of moral righteousness  Free Rider Problem  People avoid costs of activism (time, energy, and resources) and still benefit from its success 

Resource mobilization theory  Ability to generate money, membership, political support o New Social Movements  Fundamentally concerned with quality of private life, advocate large-scale change  Relationship between personal experiences and larger social forces  Four distinct characteristics  Address control of symbols and information  Value participation for its own sake  Day-to-day networks of people  Social media  Interconnectedness: Think globally, act locally Evolutionary Theory o Assumes societies develop linearly from "simple" and "primitive" into more "complicated" and "civilized" forms  Social change=progress o Modern European societies believed "more evolved" than earlier "primitive" ones o Used to justify colonization and imperialism Functionalist Perspective o Occurs as societies develop o Differentiation  Development of increasing complexity (and interdependence) though specialized social roles and institutions  From mechanical to organic solidarity  Can also lead to greater independence  De-differentiation Conflict Theories of Social Change o Social change is inevitable o Marx:  Conscious working class will rise and overthrow capitalism Technology o Technological determinism  Technology plays a defining role in shaping society o Cultural lag  Time between changes in technology and the resulting changes in the broader culture's relevant norms, values, meanings, and laws  It starts changing us instead of us changing with how we're using it o Cultural diffusion  Spread of material and non-material culture to new cultural groups regardless of the movement of people o Cultural Imperialism 

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Cultural influence caused by adopting another culture's products rather than by an imposing military force o Cultural leveling  Process by which societies lose their uniqueness and become increasingly similar  Part of globalization ...