Social movement

About: Social movement is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 23103 publications have been published within this topic receiving 653076 citations. The topic is also known as: movement & syndical movement.

On the Fault-Line: The Politics of AIDS Policy in Contemporary South Africa

Abstract: In a context where the state has had the power to implement major policy initiatives such as the macro-economic Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy why has conflict around AIDS policy persisted as "high politics"? What explains the apparent inability of the state to exercise effective leadership and deal decisively with AIDS the particular strategies it has adopted in relation to AIDS activists and scientists and the ability of these activists and scientists to apply ongoing pressure and even precipitate a political crisis at the centre of power in the new state? This paper attempts to answer these questions through a closer examination of the various responses to AIDS in South Africa as a distinct set of social relations within the post-apartheid landscape. The particularity of the AIDS world or field is partly explained by the emergence of a fatal disease that has crossed and generated responses that cross many conventional social boundaries involving a wide variety of actors; and partly by the fact that it has spawned both local and global social movements. (excerpt)

From social movements to cloud protesting: The evolution of collective identity

Abstract: This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding collective action in the age of social media, focusing on the role of collective identity and the process of its making. It is grounded on an interactionist approach that considers organized collective action as a social construct with communicative action at its core [Melucci, A. 1996. Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press]. It explains how micromobilization is mediated by social media, and argues that social media play a novel broker role in the activists' meaning construction processes. Social media impose precise material constraints on their social affordances, which have profound implications in both the symbolic production and organizational dynamics of social action. The materiality of social media deeply affects identity building, in two ways: firstly, it amplifies the ‘interactive and shared’ elements of collective identity (Melucci, 1996), and secondly, it sets in moti...

The Psychology of Social Movements.

Abstract: Hadley Cantril looked beyond the surface of social movements to examine the psychology behind them. What motivates people to follow an untried leader? What does the social environment do to make people suggestible? What are people thinking about, puzzled about, and hoping for when they lose themselves in some cause that seems strange or esoteric to the observer? Part I gives a systematic framework for interpretation of social movements. Part II examines specific social movements: the lynching mob, the kingdom of Father Divine, the Oxford Group, the Townsend Plan, and the Nazl Party. Cantril uses the technique of phenomenological analysis to straighten out the tangle of mental context and motivation found in the individual who is adjusting to the social world. He notes that \"the principles of some social movements are 'wrong,' those of others are more nearly 'right.' Some are cruel illusions accepted by bewildered people who follow false prophets; others uncompromisingly base policies on assumptions which the psychologist knows are untrue; some would completely prohibit the search for an understanding of man and his social world; some unnecessarily destory the capacity and talent of man in obtaining his objectives.\" The Psychology of Social Movements sets forth an outline by which social movements can be judged and their outcomes predicted. Cantril lays the responsibility for making these evaluations at the feet of social scientists who are best equipped to do so based on knowledge rather than ignorance or bias. This volume will be of continuing importance to sociologists and political scientists as well as psychologists and anyone interested in the mechanisms that drive social movements. Before his death in 1969, Hadley Cantril was chairman of the Institute for International Social Research. Earlier he was Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. He was the author of 19 books, an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and taught at Columbia, Dartmouth, and Harvard.

Introduction: Comparative Perspectives on the Indigenous Rights Movement in Africa and the Americas

Abstract: Using ethnographic case studies, these "In Focus" articles explore the indigenous rights movements in two regions, Africa and the Americas, where the histories, agendas, and dynamics of the movements are at once similar and different. They consider a range of relevant questions about the politics of representation, recognition, resources, and rights as these movements engage shifting political and economic landscapes; transnational discourses, alliances, and organizations; and the complicated cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion invoked by the term indigenous. As such, they offer a critical, comparative perspective on the issues of culture, power, representation, and difference inherent in the complicated alliances, articulations, and tensions that have produced and transformed the transnational indigenous rights movement. This introduction provides a brief history of the movement, highlights some major themes in previous anthropological work, reviews the insights of the section articles, and explores some of the ways in which anthropologists have engaged with the movement. [Keywords: indigenous peoples, social movements, cultural politics, ethnography]

New Jersey Dreaming

Abstract: Sherry B. Ortner, New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of '58. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003.In New Jersey Dreaming Sherry Ortner describes and analyzes the life courses of her classmates from Weequahic High School in Newark. The story that is told is for the most part a common American tale of postwar upward mobility and success. With a few exceptions, the children of the mostly Jewish workers and small independent business people that comprised the class of '58 have fared very well. The majority of them are now part of the professional middle class and have moved far beyond their childhood neighbourhood in New Jersey. Raised in a culture that celebrated self-improvement and getting ahead, it appears most students internalized these values and have lived them out. There are a few rebels in the mix who have lived what Ortner refers to as "counterlives," dropping out of the competitive race to success, and not everyone discussed in the book has lived a charmed existence, but the overall picture is one of success.Ortner explains the upward mobility of her subjects in terms of the interplay of the internalization of relevant values by individuals and the broader social movements (feminism, civil rights) and structural changes in the economy (growth of the service sector, growth of the new middle class) that were part of the postwar American experience. She carefully tries to keep class-based cultural issues in focus without ignoring the ethnic, racial and gendered dimension of social experience. Indeed, she explicitly critiques the tendency to ignore class in favour of race, ethnicity and gender in much social science.As one of a relatively few efforts to "bring class back in" at a time when class has been abandoned as a useful analytical category by many, this book deserves the high praise which George Marcus bestows in a book jacket quote. But his claim that the book "makes one of the most important sociological arguments in recent years on the dynamics of class in postWorld War II American society" is arguable. Perhaps, it is more a statement about the impoverished state of such analysis in the U.S. While the book is certainly an enjoyable and interesting read, the argument itself is rather flat. True to her anthropological roots, Ortner prefers native class categories over those imposed by social scientists. In opting to employ the concepts of her research subjects, Ortner reflects the natives' point of view. This certainly has the advantage of helping us understand the world as they do. This approach, however, also leaves us stuck in middle-class common sense thinking and as such, limits a more critical understanding of American society. …