SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
There is no precise definition for the term ‘social movement.’ Like many other terms such as democracy and equality, people like social activists political leaders, and scholars who have written on ‘movements’ often use the term ‘movement’ differently. Some people use the term ‘movement’ interchangeably with organization or union. Some others use it to mean a historical trend or tendency such as ‘renaissance.’ Some claim to launch movements by issuing press statements on public issues.
Anyway, every social movement has certain objectives e.g. a trade union wants to achieve what its workers want. Women movements want to achieve what women want, etc. Followings are some components of social movements.
Objectives: Emancipation of human beings and creation of a new society; either to promote or resist the social change, thus it has both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary aspects; to gain control over the system of knowledge and ideas; to protect the interest of the excluded or marginalized groups in the society; and to change the existing patterns of resources. Social movements can also modify their objectives. They have both short term and long-term objectives. Some times a movement that begins with broad objectives in the process may get bogged down to one or two particular issues.
Ideology: An ideology links action to the aim. It also justifies action taken by social movement. An ideology may be adopted from another existing ideology or may be a new one. It is possible that an ideology may replace a movement. Ideology keeps the participants together by developing feeling of ‘we-ness.’
Program: Various strategies and programs are evolved to mobilize the people. They sustain the movements for a long period. No social movement without collective action. We have organized group action and non-organized group action. We have to have a balance between expressive and instrumental.
Leadership: No movement without leader. Movements can be successful when leaders are successful. Social movements want interpretation of ideology from their leaders. The other function of leadership is symbolic function.
Organization: No movement without organization. Movements should be institutionalized. Organization is useful because one can relate oneself to it. Organization requires training and maintenance of the members. Oommen, a famous sociologist says that there are two different requirements: first, institutionalization that requires discipline, and second, mobilization that requires charisma. Social movements must try to have a balance between these two requirements. Neither of these components are static, rather they evolve and get changed in the course of the movements.
What is the difference between a political party, a pressure group, and a movement?
Political parties are those organizations that mobilize voters on behalf of a common set of interests, concerns, and goals. In many nations, parties play a crucial role in the democratic process. They formulate political and policy agendas, select candidates, conduct election campaigns, and monitor the work of their elected representatives. Political parties link citizens and the government, providing a means by which people can have a voice in their government.
Generally, pressure groups are those groups that try to influence the government and ordinary people’s opinions in order to achieve the action they want e.g. a change in law.
Any organization, which fulfils the requirements, may be considered part of a given movement. This may be true with political parties or even pressure groups. However, all movements are not political, but Political parties are political.
In fact, there is an overlap among political parties, pressure groups, and movements. A movement may become a pressure group. It may turn into a political party. And, at times a movement may go even beyond that.
Why social movements, and not political movements? Sociologists assume that social movements also can include those movements, which have a clear objective of bringing about political change. R. Heberle argues all movements have political implications even if their members do not strive for political power.
A. G. Frank and M. Fuentes make a distinction between social and political movements. According to them, social movements do not strive for state power. They say that the objective of social movement is social transformation and the participants get mobilized for attaining social justice, nonetheless, this idea is problematic. In fact, Frank and Fuentes are committed to a process of ‘depoliticization of the social realm.’ Thus, in this context, the difference between social movement and political movement is merely semantic.
The states look at many social movements as a challenge to their legitimacy of governance, and therefore use different methods to deal with such movements. Social movements can be cultural movements, whatever, social movements in many cases can be essentially political in nature.
What are the types of social movements? Movements are on the basis of ideology. In this case, social movements can be classified as: rightist, leftist, or neither rightist nor leftist.
Social movements can be on the basis of method. For example, ‘elitist’ and ‘mass based.’ And, ‘violence’, ‘non-violence’, ‘armed insurgency.’
Other system of classification of social movements is ‘particular’ versus ‘universal.’
Participation based classification is another type. Broadly, this is the revised version of self-regarding movement e.g. a movement by farmers for the farmers. And, issue-based movement e.g. human rights movement. Movements can be also classified into the following manner.
Reform: This does not challenge the political system per se. The attempt is to bring about changes in relation between different parts of a system so that make it more efficient and more responsive.
Rebellion: An attack on the existing authority without any intention to seize state power.
Revolt: A revolt is a challenge to political authority, aiming at overthrowing government.
Revolution: A section or sections of society launch an organized struggle to topple not only the established government and regime, but also to topple the socio-economic structure which sustains it, and replace the structure by an alternative social order e.g. the clergy and the people in
Some scholars offer more or less similar typologies of social movements such as reformist movement, transformatory movement, and revolutionary movement, or charismatic movement, ideological movement, and organizational movement. Anyhow, there can be various classifications that can remind us about the complexities of the situation.
