This document discusses social movements and their origins. It addresses how social movements are organized through mobilization around common interests and opportunities for protest. Key factors in the rise of social movements include relative deprivation, organized groups seeking ideological change, and conflicts between classes that create tensions for change. Social movements aim to implement existing values through reform or replace existing systems through revolution, and they involve large numbers of people seeking purposeful, goal-oriented change rather than temporary collective behavior.

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3. 
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Marx and the utter deprivation of the working
class
Relative Deprivation
Rise and fall with Davies’s J-Curve
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5. Charles Tilly
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Organization
Mobilization
Common Interests
Opportunity
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6. Protest movements are organized in many ways:
 Spontaneous
 Diciplined revolutionary groups
 Consider the Weathermen Underground
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The acquisition of resources to make collective
action possible
Material goods
Political support
Weaponry
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What are the possible gains and losses?
Common goals.
(Ideology?)
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9. 
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Special events
History itself
Chance and luck
Other social movements
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10. 
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Global inequality and
international competition.
Clash of interests between
state and powerful groups.
Popular uprisings.
Production of a more
powerful, centralized
government than that which
existed.
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11. Marx again:
The dialectic, or,
dialectic materialism
progress to efficiency and
digress again
The conflict between opposites
Conflict as a major source of change
Thus, if social change is created out of conflict, social movements
would be the engine. (That’s what I think, anyway.)
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12. 
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Change is inevitable. There is a constant
struggle between classes such as the Proletariat
and the Bourgeoisie.
Change is violent and sudden from the strain
of conflicting forces. This will only end when
the Proletariat wins the final revolution and a
true socialist state is in place. Itself a social
movement.
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13. 1.
2.
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4.
While collective behavior is transitory (short
lived) social movements are longer lasting.
Mass hysteria and riots are spontaneous while
social movements are purposeful and goaloriented.
Social movements are structured rather than free
form.
Collective behavior may involve only a small
number of people, while social movements
involve large numbers.
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14. 
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Ideology
Revolutionary social movements
Reform movements
Resistance movements
Expressive movements
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15. An ideology is a set of beliefs and principles
that serve to form the glue for revolutionary
behavior. It then is a paradigm, a shared
view of the world.
It contains the group purpose and
motivation for reform or change. That is, an
ideology maintains what things “should”
be, not necessarily what they are.
An ideology unites people with a single
cause.
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16. Revolutionary social movements seek to
replace the existing value system with
something new (i.e. socialism for capitalism)
You do know what the Arab Spring was all
about? And Occupy Wall Street?
Reform movements, on the other hand, seek
changes that implement existing values
more adequately. (i.e. the civil rights
movement.)
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17. Resistance movements arise to either
implement change or to resist change itself.
Should a government swing too far to the
right or the left, a resistance movement may
arise to thwart its domination of existing
values.
Expressive movements are less concerned
with political change than with “change
from within” such as the Pentecostalism and
the need for “rebirth”.
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18. 
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Centralized power of the state
Military’s allegiance to the state is weakened
A political crisis occurs (i.e. a foreign war going
badly)
Uprisings by a substantial portion of the public
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19. What is going on right now? Why, of all
things, a social revolution.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the European Union
(EU) has been imposing what are called Austerity
Measures. This means a reduction in social services to
the majority of the populations in numerous countries,
most specifically Greece and Spain.
It does NOT mean that the wealthy contribute to
resolving the crisis through financial support, but it
DOES mean that the wealthy retain their wealth and
status.
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39. See slide shows on Arab
Spring and Occupy Wall
Street (OWS)
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Some of the material on social movements
comes from Gells and Levine, 1999.
Other comes from Hughes and Kroehler, 2005.
Still more from Macionis, 1995
And more from OpenStax
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