This document discusses theories around social movements from the early 20th century through the 1960s-70s. It outlines how early theorists viewed movements as irrational responses to individual discontent rather than rational collective action. It then discusses how the social movements of the 1960s challenged these views, leading theorists to recognize movements as pursuing rational collective interests through organized political action. The document examines how these shifts helped establish social movement theory as a distinct field of study.

1. VIP “mini-course” on
Social Movements with
Case Studies About
Animal Advocacy.
January 2014.
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2. Elton Mayo (1920s/30s)
• Aspirations for a radically different order: seen as the
irrational fantasies of discontented individuals
• Bolshevism/Socialism/Fascism were ‘dreams’ / ‘reveries’
created by the monotony of industrial labour
• Counselling and social support needed
• The “needs” of society (speaking generally) are met be
prevailing relations
• “Discontent” was understood on an individual level
• a form of social pathology
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3. • Freeman & Johnson (1999) characterise pre-war movements as
‘extremist in nature’ -- this shaped the analysis of them
• In sociology, the main body of Western social theory in the 1940s and
1950s endorsed the structural functionalist type of analysis which said
• society handles its problems and tasks through a framework of
institutions which represent a stable ‘social order’
• System has mechanisms and devices for solving problems
• political parties
• government
• parties
• trade unions
• interest groups
• associations
• lobbies
• pressure groups
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4. • Buechler says that there is a ‘distinctive theoretical lens’ for
examining collective behaviour.
• core assumptions:
• unitary concept of ‘collective behaviour’ which will embrace
• panics
• crazes
• crowds
• movements
• CB is essentially non-institutional formless, shapeless, unpatterned, unpredictable
• Its primary causation is rooted in the individual
• Its meaning is psychological rather than political
• It is a reaction to societal stress, strain, or breakdown
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5. Buechler (2000: 26)
What distinguishes collective behaviour
from “normal” responses to change is that it
compresses or short-circuits levels of social
action, giving collective behaviour a
crude, excessive, eccentric, impatient
quality when compared to routine and
institutionalised social action
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6. • Chicago School of Sociology
• SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
• Herbert Blumer: influential essay on social movements
• Blumer’s def: ‘Collective enterprise to establish a new order of life’.
• Blumer’s ‘career’ of a social movement.....
The career of a social movement depicts the emergence of a new
order of life. In its beginning, a SM is amorphous, poorly
organised, and without form; collective behaviour is primitive and
the mechanisms of interaction are elementary and spontaneous. As a
social movement develops, it takes on the character of a society. It
acquires organisation and form, a body of customs and
traditions, established leadership, an enduring division of
labour, social rules and social values - in short, a culture, an
organisation and a new scheme of life
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7. The Movement is a melange of people, mostly young people;
organisations, mostly new; and ideas, mostly American...These
young people believe that they must make something
happen, that they are part of a movement stirring just below the
surface of life hitherto accepted...The Movement is
organisations plus unaffiliated supporters, who outnumber by
thousands and perhaps even hundreds of thousands, those
committed to specific groups. The movement’s strength rests on
those unaffiliated reserves...To be in the movement is to search
for a psychic community, in which one’s own identity can be
defined, social and personal relationships based on love can be
established and can grow, unfettered by the cramping pressures
of the careers and life styles so characteristic of America today
(Jacobs & Landau 1966: 14-5)
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8. BUECHLER (2000: 32)
‘the social and political activism
of the 1960s made the single
biggest contribution to changing
the intellectual and sociohistorical climate in which
sociology and social movement
theory existed’
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9. ‘theory’ and even ‘ideology’ are uncomfortable words. Most SDS
members are anti-ideological... not well read in Marxism or in
other radical literature (but) moved to action primarily by events
in their own lives. SDS is more than an organisation; it is a
community of friends...personal relationships are inseparable
from political life...the vocabulary and community life are part of
the SDS style...at group meetings their openness is apparent.
They exhibit great tolerance, and no speaker is silenced, no
matter how irrelevant or repetitious. And it is difficult to single
out those who hold authority... Leaders mean
organisation, organisation means hierarchy, and hierarchy is
undemocratic ...SDSers believe that the new movements are in
their infancy and a great amount of work has to be done at the
base...theory or long-run strategy is a fuzzy notion to them. The
question of how to link the various projects is unanswered...
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10. Scott:
• primarily social rather than political
• less concerned with achieving state power than transforming values
and life styles
• hence located in ‘civil society’ rather than the state
• attempting to bring about change through cultural innovations and
identities
• using grass roots and network types of organisation
Buechler (33-4):
• the theoretical ‘paradigm shift’ leading to sms being seen as...
• distinct from CB - worthy of analysis in own right
• showing their own enduring, patterned, and institutionalised elements
• being rooted in collective understandings/group interests
• having claims to be treated as rational phenomena
• constituting therefore political rather than psychological entities
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11. When a new wave of environmental
activism emerged in the 1970s, along with
other movements on issues such as
peace, women’s and human rights, it was
difficult for political analysts to relate it to
previously dominant conflicts. Such
difficulty has largely persisted to date
(Della Porta & Diani 1999: 25).
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12. Basic “conflict” view
• politics seen as revolving around a set of clearly defined
material interests
• these interests were distinct, and frequently
contradictory, between different social groupings
• each group tends to organise around the pursuit of its
material interest in opposition to others
• parties/political organisations represent interests
• political power [control of the state] contested to change the
structure of inequality
• economic concerns central [Other concerns could ‘wait’]
• a fully developed political challenge brings specific material
interests together in a general vision of an alternative society
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13. What is the social base of this
movement?
It is not w/c in any obvious sense;
but what kind of social position do
‘students’ occupy and in what
ways could this provide a stable
and alternative foundation for
organised social action, and for
what reasons?
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14. Who or what is ‘the enemy’?
Is there an opponent which somehow
represents the antagonist of students as a
social force? In their own perceptions, it is
not straightforwardly ‘capitalism’ or ‘the rich’
being targeted, but a much wider (and less
well defined?) notion of ‘authority’ or
‘domination’, which seems as much a matter
of generational as of class politics - the
student movement shades over into the
‘counterculture’ which is against everything
that is ‘square’ and ‘uptight’
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15. Whose interests are being
served?
The ‘movement’ appears to be neither class
based, nor organised within the framework of
standard national politics; it is not competing
for control of the state, as an alternative
potential ruling group or class, and to some
extent it claims to speak for ‘everyone’, for
universal rights and ‘participation’ or
‘liberation’, in a way which eludes
confinement within ordinary political limits is it a movement of all parties and none?
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16. For some time, a strong strand of
opinion existed on the political left
that feminism was a conservative
diversion from the pursuit of class
equality and that women’s rights
would be a natural by-product of
general social transformation
(Elizabeth Meehan, cited in Scott: 24).
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