Social Movements

What is a social movement?

• collective + organized activity that attempts to bring about or resist social change

  • action taken outside social institutions based on popular discontent and dissent

What is a proactive vs reactive movement?

• proactive - intentionally initiating action to create advantages or prevent issues before they occur

• reactive - acting in response to an external threat after it occurs

What is an alternative social movement?

• alters a specific behaviour - individal/partial

What is a redemptive social movement

• total change of individual - individal/total

What is a reformative social movement?

• reforms specific aspect of society ; society/partial

What is a transformative social movement?

• transforms complete social order ; society/total

What is a coup d’etat?

• sudden violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group

What is rebellion?

• organized violent uprising by the public vs authority

What is terrorism?

• calculated unlawful use if physical force or threats of violence against persons or property in order to intimidate or coerce a government, organization, or individual for the purpose of gaining an objective (political, religious, economic, or social)

What are characteristics of a social movement?

• historical rise

• rational objective - rational means → end

• interaction w their social environment

What are the functions of social movements?

• mediation and mobilization of individuals

• clarification of collective consciousness

• source of social change

What is social change?

• the transformation of culture, social institutions, and patterns of social organization over time

What is the composition of social movements?

• the inner core - most committed

• committed - does grunt work + sacrifices

• less committed - agrees but doesn’t sacrifice

• sympathetic public - agrees

• hostile public - who you’re working against

• indifferent public - doesn’t care

• unaware public - doesn’t know

What are psychological motivations to social movements?

• deprivations

• aspirations

• moral obligations

• selective incentives

• collective incentives

• expectancies of success

What is absolute vs relative deprivation?

• absolute - objective circumstance - poverty/total oppression

• relative - subjective sense based on comparison to a reference group/ideal standard

What is hegemony?

• the capacity of elites to establish as common sense, systems of meanings that apparently justify inequalities

• the ability of dominant groups in society to exercise control over weaker groups, not be means of force or domination, but by gaining consent without awareness = unequal distribution of power seems natural and legit

What is a social network?

• web of relationships in which the individual is embedded

What is ideology?

• values + beliefs

• analysis of the problem

• proposed solutions

What factors are associated with movement success?

• demands which match societal values

• invested third party support

• concrete and focused demands

• direct pressure on responsible party

• using new techniques

• presence of neutral thirds parties

• negotiable demands

• stating the case positively

• optimum size of the movement

• overcoming external opposition

What are social movement problems?

• diverse organizations

• routinization

• inability to achieve goals

• achievement of goals

What are slacktivists?

• low-risk, low-cost activity via social media ; raise awareness / grant satisfaction to the person engaged in the activity

  • feel good online activism that has no real impact - clicktivism

  • often mixed with hipster consumerism - the commodification of social activism - “aWEARness”

What is performative activism?

• activism done to increase one’s social capital rather than because of devotion to a cause

What are social justice warriors?

• a term for someone promoting social justice but carries implications of pursuing personal validation vs deep-seated conviction, and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments to raise personal reputation

What are free-riders?

• people who passively support social movements to get the benefits but don’t actively participate in them