INTRODUCTION
A social movement is a form of
collective behaviour in which a large number of people ,ir; united in an
attempt to promote or resist social change. For most people, participation ia a
social movement is only informal and indirect. Usually, a shared sense of
dissatisfaction brings people together. They feel concerted action is necessary
to change the situation perceived to be undesirable. But many of them who
participate in various activities of the movement may not necessarily join the
organization which sponsors it.
CONCEPT AND CHARACTERISTICS OF
SOCIAL MOVEMENT:
Neil J. smelser:defines social movements” as an
organised group effort to generate or to resist social change”
In the words of M.S.A RAO:social movement” as an
organised attempt on the part of a section of society to bring about either
partial or total change in society through collective mobilization based on
ideology”
Sociologists have agreed upon the following as the
characteristics of social movements:.
(1)Collective Effort:-social movements undoubtedly
involves collective action.however,this collective action,takes the form of a
movement only when it is sustained for a long time.This collection action need
not be formally organised. It could be an informal attempt also.But it should
be able to create an interest and awakening in relatively large number of
people.
(2)oriented towards social change:-A social movement
is generally oriented towards bringing about social changeThis change could
either be partial or total.Though the movement is aimed at bringing about a
change in the values norms,ideologies of the existing system,efforts also made
by some other forces to resist the changes and to maintain the status quo.
(3)Ideology –According to M.S.A. Rao, An important
component of social movement that distinguishes
it from general category of collective movilization,is the presence of
an ideology.example:a student strike
involves collective movillzaition and is oriented towards change.But in
the absence of an ideology . Ideology
refers to collectivised opinion expressed by movement protagonists that justifies their collective action
involving violence or nonviolence.
(4)Leadership_it means representation of
collectivity.It consists of organizing the opinion and resources within
group.In the popular stage the movement begins to rally around a figire or a
leader who promises to alleviate the sufferings of the people.This leader may
be a charismatic leader . Leadership may
b
(5)Goal:The
goal is the objective of a movement. It
is an aim of the group. It is the collective demand for a desired result such
as freedom, justice and so on.
(6)organizational frame work-As paul Wilkinson
has pointed out that a social movement requires a minimum of organizational
framework to achieve success or alteast to maintain the tempo of the
movement.To make the distinction clear between the leaders and followers,to
make clear the purposes of the movement,to persuade people to take part in it
or to support it,to adopt different technquies to achieve the goals-a social
movement must have some amount of organizational framework.
(7)The techniques and the results of_a social
movement may adopt its own techniques or method to achieve its goal.There is no
certainty regarding it. It may follow peaceful or conflicting,violonce or
non-violont,compulsive or persuasive,democratic or undemocratic means or
methods to achieve its goal.The same thing is true of the result.It may
successful or it may fail;it may become partial success or atleast it may
create a general awakening in the public regarding the issue.
THEORIES
OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Theoretical
perspective or approach guides the selection of facts, their arrangement,
classification and interpretation. The same movements can be constructed and
interpreted in many different ways, depending upon theoretical perspective from
which one looks at the phenomena. There are different approaches to study
social movements. But at the same time we should remember that empirical
processes are not neat to fit into any one approach. Social and political
processes are complex and have their own logic. Moreover, no approach is in
pure form. There are variations among the followers of the same theoretical
perspective. There are different perspectives among the Marxists and also among
the liberals. What is provided here is a broad framework, as guide of a
particular approach.
Theories Relative
Deprivation
The
term relative deprivation refers to deprivation or disadvantage which a group
experiences, not in absolute objective terms, but in comparison with a
reference group. Relative deprivation is not measured by objective standards
but always in reference to another group.
For example, the economic situation of
school teachers may be improving. However, regardless of how much they are paid
and how big a pay raise they get, they might still feel deprived if they
perceive other non-gazetted government officials to be doing better. Therefore,
relative deprivation is not to be understood in terms of the actual situation
of a group of people but in terms of how they judge their situation relative to
another group.
There is also a gap between people's
aspirations and their achievement. For example, in many agrarian societies
which won freedom from colonial rule, people's expectations shot up. In fact,
exposure to mass media, political participation, and the spirit of nationalism
led to a revolution of rising expectations. But Where was no corresponding
improvement in their standard of living. This leads to frustration and call for
concerted action.
James Davies (1992) proposed a strain
theory which is based on the gap between expectations and the capacity to
achieve those expectations. If people's expectations continue to rise and their
levels of satisfaction decline, or if they perceive that the opportunities to
achieve them are somehow blocked, there will be considerable social strain
leading to collective action. Anti-untouchability movements and women's
movements are explained in part by variants of strain theory or relative
deprivation theory.
Resource
Mobilization Theory
Structural
strain and relative deprivation may spread discontent in society. But
widespread discontent is not enough to launch a movement. There must be a
leader or leaders who can mobilize the resources—people, money, channels of
communication, and commitment of time. Leaders formulate specific goals,
provide the ideology, and deliver their messages in such an effective manner
that they resonate with the right people. Sometimes an organizational format
also becomes necessary to recruit large numbers of people, to assign duties and
responsibilities, and to allocate resources.
Resource mobilization theory is helpful
in explaining several contemporary social movements. The women's movement,
student movements in Assam, the Narmada Andolan, and various religious
revivalist movements demonstrate the importance of resource mobilization.
MARXIAN THEORY
Scholars following the Marxist approach
to analyse various social movements and those who are involved in social
movements claiming to be Marxist are primarily interested in bringing about
revolutionary change in society. According to the Marxist approach conflict is
the central core of social movements. There are different kinds of conflicts in
society. Some conflicts are between individuals for personal power, style of
functioning, between the communities—social, ethnic, religious, regional etc.—
and other conflicts are around material interest and domination of one over the
others. The nature of the Dnon-class conflict varies from society to society
and can be resolved through negotiations and institutional mechanism. Sometimes
though not always such conflict is in a garb of ‘class’/economic conflict. That
is, economic conflict of different classes belonging to separate communities
take the form of ethnic conflict. Class conflict is located in economic
structure of society, in-built in the production and distribution system. It is
around domination and subjugation between the classes. Those who own means of
production dominate social and political system. In all forms of class society
specific form of production predominates, which influences other forms of
social relations. Ralph Miliband observes, ” Class domination can never be
purely ‘economic’, or purely ‘cultural’: it must always have a strong and
pervasive ‘political’ content, not least because the law is crystallized form
which politics assumes in providing the necessary sanction and legitimation of
all forms of domination. In this sense, ‘politics’ sanctions what is
‘permitted’, and therefore ‘permits’ the relations between the members of
different and conflicting classes, inside and outside their ‘relation of
production’.”
Those
who own and control the means of production take away the surplus from those
who produce. They accumulate surplus for their end and expand and perpetuate
their control over the society. The former may be feudal lord in feudal system
or industrial bourgeois in capitalist system. Antagonistic interests between
the propertied and labour classes are inherent in a class-based society that
generates contradictions. The former use the coercive as well as persuasive
power of the state, and also other institutions, including religion, culture,
education, mass media etc, to perpetuate their hegemony in society and to
control the exploited classes. The latter resist, protest and occasionally
revolt or launch organised and collective action against the dominance of the
propertied classes. It is their effort to bring about revolutionary political
change by overthrowing the dominant classes in power. In short, class struggle
is the central driving force for resistance. Such collective actions take the
form of social movements.
Though
to Marxists, structural causes of conflicting economic interests are central,
number of Marxist scholars have begun to pay attention to ethnic, religious and
other cultural factors. Some of them have begun to analyse the nature of the consciousness
of exploited classes. According to Marxist scholars, members of the same class
not only have common interests vis-a-vis other classes, but also share a common
consciousness regarding their position in society that they share common
interests. This facilitates their collective action against the ruling classes
and state.
They assert that the parliamentary
democracy in capitalist state protects the interests of the haves and
facilitates exploitation of the labour. Hence the conflict between the haves
and have-nots cannot be resolved through institutional mechanism. A.R. Desai
argued in the 1960s that civil and democratic rights of the underprivileged
were increasingly violated in capitalist system. The state failed to provide
basic human rights of the vast majority of the exploited classes. The have-nots
in rural areas were deprived of their livelihood natural resources of land,
forest and water. People resist against anti-people measures of the state and
dominant classes. Through various organised and unorganised struggles the poor
demand for the protection of their basic rights. He asserted, “The
parliamentary form of government, as a political institutional device, has
proved to be inadequate to continue or expand concrete democratic rights of the
people. This form, either operates as a shell within which the authority of
capital perpetuates itself, obstructing or reducing the opportunities for
people to consciously participate in the process of society, or is increasingly
transforming itself into a dictatorship, where capital sheds some of its
democratic pretensions and rules by open, ruthless dictatorial means. Public
protests will continue till people have ended the rule of capital in those
countries where it still persists. They will also continue against those
bureaucratic totalitarian political regimes where the rule of capital has
ended, but where due to certain peculiar historical circumstances Stalinist
bureaucratic, terrorist political regimes have emerged. The movements and
protests of people will continue till adequate political institutional forms
for the realisation and exercise of concrete democratic rights are found
(1965).”
For Marxists, social movements are just
not a protest and expression of the grievances. The exploited classes are not
interested in reforming this or that institutions though they do fight for
incremental rights to strengthen their strength. For instance working class
fights for more wages, regulation of work, social security and also
participation in management. Through this they build up solidarity among the
workers and expand their struggles. Ultimately their attempt is to crack the
dominant political system so that in the process the struggles move in the
direction of revolutionary changes in the ownership of means of production and
over through the dominant state structure. The struggles of the oppressed are
both violent and non-violent depending upon the strength and means adopted by
the state and propertied classes for the oppression. They are not averse to violent
path but it does not mean that they always follow the violent means. For them
the means is not that important as the ends. They often highlight the violence
and oppression of the state and the dominant classes against the exploited
classes. In such a situation the latter are left with no choice to counter the
adversaries with the same method.
There is a good deal of debate among
Marxist scholars on theoretical and methodological issues. Recently a group of
Marxist historians, the ‘Subaltern Studies’ group, has begun to study ‘history from below’. They criticise
the ‘traditional’ Marxist historians for ignoring the history of the masses, as
if the ‘subaltern’ classes do not make history of their own, depending solely
on the advanced classes or the elite for organisation and guidance. It is
argued that the traditional Marxist scholars have undermined cultural factors
and viewed a linear development of class consciousness (Guha 1983). On the
other hand, the Subaltern Studies historians are strongly criticised by other
Marxist scholars for ignoring structural factors and viewing ‘consciousness’ as
independent of structural contradictions. They are accused of being Hegelian
‘idealists’.
STRUCTURAL—
FUNCTIONAL THEORY
There
is a great deal of variation amongst the non-Marxist scholars, in their
approach to the analysis of social movements. The ideological positions
regarding a need for social and/or political change, and the role of movements
therein differ. It is argued by several liberal scholars such as William
Kornhauser, Robert Nisbet, Edward Shils and others that mass movements are the
product of mass societies which are extremist and anti-democratic. These
scholars are in favour of excluding the masses from day-to-day participation in
politics, which hampers the efficient functioning of the government. Some
Indian scholars who approved of the agitation for independence from foreign
rule, did not favour agitation by people in the post-independence period. They
condemned them outright as ‘dangerous’ and ‘dysfunctional’ for ‘civilised
society’. Though some other liberals do not favour revolutionary change in the
political and economic structure, they advocate ‘political change’ which is
confined to change in government and political institutions. A few are for
‘revolutionary’ change but they differ from Marxist scholars in class analysis.
They lay emphasis on political institutions and culture. In their analysis
of the movements, some do not inquire into social and economic causes
of conflict and collective struggles. Others differ in their emphasis on the
causes responsible for the movements. Some emphasise individual psychological
traits, some focus on elite power struggles and their manipulation; and some
others emphasise the importance of cultural rather than economic factors.
The
scholars who adhere to the theory of political development consider that the
rising aspirations of the people are not adequately met by existing political
institutions which are rigid or incompetent. As the gap between the
expectations of the people and performance of the system widens, ‘political
instability and disorder’ leading to mass upsurge increases (Huntington 1968).
Rajni Kothari argued that ‘direct action’ is inevitable in the context of
India’s present-day ‘parliamentary democracy’. ‘The general climate of
frustration, the ineffectiveness of known channels of communication, the
alienation and atomisation of the individual, the tendency towards
regimentation and the continuous state of conflict (which may remain latent and
suppressed for a time) between the rulers and the ruled—all these make the
ideal of self-government more and more remote and render parliamentary
government an unstable form of political organisation’ (1960).
It is also argued by some that that
public protests have a certain ‘functional utility’ even in a parliamentary
form of government. David Bayley (1962) observes that before and after
independence, a large number of the people felt that the institutional means of
redress for grievances, frustrations and wrongs—actual or fancied—were
inadequate.
RESOURCE MOBILISATION THEORY
Resource Mobilisation theory is an
outcome of rational choice theory. It is based on the assumption that
individuals’ actions are motivated by goals that express their preferences.
They act within the given constrains and available choices. It is not possible
for all individuals to get all that they want; they must make choices within
the available possibilities at a given point of time. Rational choice theories
argue that individuals must make a rational choice regarding what is the best
for them in a situation; and accordingly anticipate and calculate the outcome
of their actions. “Rational individuals choose the alternatives that is likely to
give them the greatest satisafaction”.
Some of the proponents of this theory
argue that social movements for revolutionary changes by the marginal sections
is out of impulse and emotion. Therefore, they do not sustain for long and
fail. It was called resource mobilisation theory because the theory purported
to show that the success of a movement depended on the resources available to
be used. These resources arose from inducing individuals to participate and
contribute to the cost. Individuals participate because they see the benefits
to be derived from joining. Success also depends on the movement being able to
link to other networks of groups and organisations. The resource mobilisation
theory’s stress was wholly on the strategy to make the movement succeed
in demanding for a change in government policies or legislation. Thus it is
sometimes said that the theory focused on political action, or the realm of
politics rather than on civil society.
Jenkins and Perrow argued that protest
and movement formation only occurs when the necessary resources are pumped into
it. According to them struggles by powerless and poor groups only take place
when rich benefactors take an interest in their struggle and pump resources
into it. In the case of the farm workers, Jenkins and Perrow argue that their
struggle only got going, properly, when middle class liberals (in the 60s)
decided to champion their cause.
Resource mobilisation theory (RMT)
• Reacts
against the older view of social movements (e.g. Communism, Nazism) as an
irrational protest of the marginalised and as tending to “extremism” (and so
illegitimate and “not really political”)
(e.g.
black civil rights, environmentalism) as individually rational attempts to
mobilise resources in pursuit of “politics by other means” hence driven by people with resources, embedded in
stable networks (and so legitimate political actors!)
• Tends to reproduce professional
organiser’s perspective (e.g. Greenpeace, Amnesty): tackling the “free rider” problem
to build strong and effective movements (Freeman) through organisation and
selective incentives for participation
The
theory emphasises entrepreneurial skill of the leaders of the movements. They
mobilise resources — professional, finances, moral support and networking- from
within and outside to sustain their struggles. The leaders of the succesful
movements have skill to create organisation and mobilise people. In the process
common goals are articulated and consensus is created so that all the
participants accept the goals.
Rajendra Singh summarises the major
assumptions of RMT. They are:
a) social
movements must be understood in terms of conflict model of collective action;
b) there
is no basic difference between institutional and non-institutional collective
actions;
c) both
institutional and non-institutional collective actions contain conflicts of
interests built in the system of institutionalised power relations;
d) social movements involve the rational
pursuit of interests by competing groups;
e) goals
and grievances, conflicts and contestations are inherently present in all
relations of power, and as such, they themselves cannot explain the formation
of social movements;
f) the formation of social movements, therefore,
is determined by the changes in resources, organisation and opportunities for
collective action;
g) success
and effectiveness of collective action is understood in terms of material
benefit or the actor being recognised as a political person; and
h)
finally, as Jenkins visualises, the mobilisation of men in contemporary social
movements involves the use of large-scale, advanced communication techniques,
bureaucratised organisation and utilitarian drives and initiatives. (2001)
RELATIVE DEPRIVATION THEORY
The
theory of relative deprivation developed by American scholars (Gurr 1970) has
also guided some studies on agitation and mass movements.
Relative
deprivation is defined as actors’ perception of discrepancy between their value
expectations and their environment’s apparent value capabilities. Value
expectations are the goods and conditions of life to which people believe they
are justifiably entitled. The referents of value capabilities are to be found
largely in the social and physical environment; they are the conditions that
determine people’s perceived chances of getting or keeping the values they
legitimately expect to attain. Gurr writes: “The frustration- aggression and
the related threat-aggression mechanisms provide the basic motivational link
between Relative Deprivation and the potential for collective violence”. Gurr
also links three other concepts to relative deprivation, namely dissonance,
anomie and conflict. The second of these, anomie is important in its effect to
value opportunities. There are three models as to how the differentiation of
value expectations and value capabilities has impact on relative deprivation.
Decremental deprivation model describes the situation where the expectations
are stable but capabilities declines. In aspirational model the capabilities
remain the same but the expectations increase. The last model, J-curve or
progressive deprivation model, fits to the situations when expectations and
capabilities first increase hand in hand but then capabilities stop to increase
or decrease while expectations still go on.
Those who perceive deprivation and as a
result experience a feeling of frustration become aggressive. They are
‘jealous’ of those who have more. They protest or revolt against those who have
more. They do not deal with the sources of deprivation. For Gurr, ‘deprivation’
is primarily psychological; therefore, he does not deal with the socio-economic
structure which is the source of deprivation. If such sense of deprivation is
confined to an individual against another individual it leads to crime. When it
becomes collective perception - deprivation of region, community or caste - it
takes the form of collective action. But it is not accompanied with ideology
for the social system, it remains a protest or rebellion and hardly takes a
form of social movement. They become ‘temporary aberrations’ rather than as
‘ongoing processes of change’. Relative deprivation is a necessary but not a
sufficient condition for protest movements. M.S. A. Rao argues, ‘a sufficient
level of understanding and reflection is required on the part of the
participants, and they must be able to observe and perceive the contrast between
the social and cultural conditions of the privileged and those of the deprived,
and must realise that it is possible to do something about it’ (1979: 207).
CLASSIFICATION
OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Generally those who follow Marxist
framework examine social movements in terms of their potentialities for
revolutionary transformation in society. They characterise the movements in
reference to not only of the participants and leaders’ ideology as well as
their immediate and long term objectives but also the scholars’ own
expectations from social movements. In this framework the movements are
classified on the basis of what they attain or likely to attain and the
objectives of the collective action against the political system. According to
this theoretical perspective social movements are of three types: revolt or
rebellion, reform, and revolution. Revolt or rebellion protests against the
political system or regime and may also make attempts to change in the
authority government and/or ruling
elite/ rulers. But it does not question nor it aims at changing the political
system. In short, the movement is against the regime rather than the system. A
revolt is a challenge to political authority, aimed at overthrowing the
government. A rebellion is an attack on existing authority without any
intention of seizing state power to change the system.
The
social movement which aims at bringing certain changes in the system and not
transforming the system completely is called reformist movement. Such movements
question the functioning of political institutions and build pressure on the
government to introduce certain changes in their structure and procedures.
While doing so they do not question the political system as a whole; nor do
they relate a political institution with the larger political structure. In
other words they focus on reforming a particular part of an institution or the
system. For example, the movement that primarily aims at changing election
rules and procedures does not relate elections with the economic structure and
power relationship in society. In that sense it is reformist movement. Or,
various social reform movements try to reform certain customs like child
marriage or dowry, norms such as animal sacrifice, untouchability; or social
arrangements such as hierarchical order in status and social mobility rather
than challenging the whole social order based on pollution and purity around
the principles of inequality. When women’s movements struggle to have
reservation for women in the parliament it is reformist movement aiming at
changing the representation system. Reform does not challenge the political
system per se. It attempts to bring about changes in the relations between the
parts of the system in order to make it more efficient, responsive and
workable.In a revolution, a section or sections of society launch an organised
struggle to overthrow not only the established government and regime but also
the socio-economic structure which sustains it, and replace the structure by an
alternative social order. For instance the Naxalite movement is not only
challenging the particular government but aims at over-throwing the state which
is feudal/semi-feudal and desires to establish communist state. Or the dalit
movement aims at transforming social order based on caste system and desires to
create egalitarian social system. In the same way when women movement
challenges patriarchy in society and attempts its abolition then it becomes
revolutionary movement.
Nature
of social movements often overlaps. Many movements undergo change in the course
of time. Some apparently reformist movements may take revolutionary course; and
some which begin with revolutionary agenda become reformist also. All social
movements do not necessarily begin with clear objectives in terms of the
maintenance or the transformation of the system. They often get shaped in the
process through the leaders, participants and ideology.
New
Social Movements:
Since
last five decades, especially after the proliferation of the Black Civil Rights
Movement in the West in 1950s and 1960s, students movements in 1960s and 1970s,
Women's Movement, anti-nuclear protests, gay rights, animal rights, minority
nationalism etc. ethnic movements in 1970s and thereafter, social movements has
emerged to be an area of special attention. There have been sincere efforts by
the social scientists to redefine social movements from a critical and
cognitive perspective. In this effort the prevalent schemes of analysis were
questioned and many of the elements were identified in these social movement
and at times several marginal issues were emphasized in a new contexts. The
emergence of new forms of collective action especially in Western Europe and
North America posed serious challenges to the social movement theorists to
conceptualize this phenomena in terms of the prevailing discourse on social
movement studies
Till
1950s the workers movements, peasants and tribal movements, at times caste,
race, or linguistic and ethnic movements or other varieties of collective
mobilisations are mostly explained within the Marxian framework of class
struggle and the functionalist framework of mal functioning of the social
order.
Since
the middle of the last century 'social movements have moved from non-
institutionalized margins of society to its very core'. The manifestation of
new forms of organised collective actions since 1950s has added several new
dimensions to the issues of social movement.
Social
movements were analyzed mostly in terms of the ideological and organizational
orientations. these perspectives of studying social movements were
deterministic.
The
Marxist scholars highlighted the class ideology of the collective mobilization.
It emphasized on the role ideology that provided the legitimacy to such
mobilizations. It focused on the unequal access to and control over the means
of production between the two antagonistic classes that led to conflict in the
society. In the functional analysis on the other, the organizational aspect of
social movement articulated. For the Functionalist social movements were sources
of potential disruption to an organisation. Organized collective actions are
viewed as dysfunctional aspect of the society. Here only by assigning a
marginal position to social movement 'integrity of the functional theoretical
system was ensured. On the other hand, though the Marxist analysis is concerned
with social transformation, this has identified the 'classes' to be the sole
agents of social transformation. Non-class movements are viewed critically, and
sometimes with contempt or hostility' (Scott, A. 1990: 2).
Significantly both the Marxism and
Functionalism provided single order explanation of the social movement. However
the proliferation of social movements in the 50s and 60s asked for a new
perspective for analysis as there were new orientations.
Some of the contemporary social movements
are oriented to achieve in some form or the other materialistic goal. The new
social movements on the other, are oriented to be non-materialistic, resort to
plural, multiple and wide varieties of collective mobilisation, highlight the
issues which cut across the boundaries of state, class, societies, culture and
the nation.
It was indeed difficult to conceptualize
the essence of all new forms of collective action within the paradigm of
ideology or the rationally organised interest group. The practices of these new
form of collective actions social movements are essentially non-violent,
pragmatic, non-integrated, non-hierarchical, non- coercive, cross-class,
cross-ideology, cross age in their constituencies (Hegedus, 1990: 63).
Larana, Johnston and Guesfield (1994)
suggest that the analysis of new social movements be advanced cross-culturally
and by contrasting them with the class based movements of the past. Larana, Johnston and Guesfield (1994) suggest
the following characteristic features of the new social movement:
a) There
is no clear structural role of the participants of the new social movement as,
very often than not, they have diffuse social status as youth, student, women,
minority, professional groups etc.
b) Ideologically
these movements posited in sharp contrast to the Marxian concept of ideology of
the working class movement. It is difficult to characterize new social
movements as conservative or liberal, right or left, capitalist or socialist.
These movements exhibit plural ideas and values.
c) Mobilisations
are linked to issues of symbolic and cultural identities than to economic
issues.
d) Action
within these movements is a complex mix of the collective and individual
confirmation of identity. Indeed the relation between the individual and the
collective is blurred in these movements.
e) These
movements involve personal and intimate aspects of human life, e.g. eating,
dressing enjoying, loving etc habits and patterns.
f) Non-violence
and civil disobedience etc. are the dominant patterns of collective
mobilisation to challenge the dominant-norms of conduct.
g) The
proliferation of these movements are caused by the credibility crisis of the
conventional channels for political participation.
h) The
new social movements are segmented diffused and decentralized (Ibid. :6-15).
Alan Scott identified the following
prominent characteristics of these movements:
a)
These movements are primarily social and are more concerned with cultural
sphere and mobilisation of civil society on socio-cultural issues, than with
the political issues like seizure of power.
b) These movements are to be located
within civil society and these are little concerned to challenge the state
directly. These movements rather defend the civil societies against
encroachment from increasingly technocratic state or from 'inner
colonialisation' by society's technocratic sub-structure.
c) These social movements attempt to
bring about change through changing values and developing alternative
life-styles. These social movements are concerned with cultural innovations and
creation of new life-styles. These also pose a challenge to the traditional
values. 'The focus on symbols and identities is viewed as the source of new
social movement's significance'. The new social movements bring about changes
by challenging values and identities of the social actors rather than by more
conventional and direct political actions. The processes of transformation of
values, personal identities and symbols can be achieved through creation of
alternative life-style and the discursive reformation of individual and
collective wills.
The main characteristics of new social
movements organization are summarized by Scott as follows:
i)
locally based or centered on small groups
ii)
organised around specific, often local and
single issue
iii)
cycle of movement activity and
mobilisation; i.e. vacillation between periods of high and low activity,
iv)
often loose systems of authority,
v)
shifting membership,
vi)
'common social critique' as the
ideological frame of reference (Scott, 1990: 18).
In
the process of globalisation when the state is emerging to be more and more
technocratic and all-powerful the voices and views of the individual citizen
against the discontent of various forms remain mostly unheard. Again in the
countries where the state represent the dominant section of the population, and
the state machinery is involved in the corrupt practices, the access of the
marginalised people even to the minimum need of the life remained unrealized.
Social movements provide a framework to develop a critic of the society. It
brings the institutional arrangements of the society under close scrutiny. The
organising mechanisms, collective activism and the leadership of social
movement provide the required space not only to develop a critic of the society
but also for a transformative politics within the given structure. It also
provides the space for the emergence of plural social structure with
representative civil bodies to function as watchdog in a liberal democracy.
Through this critic social movement produces a new collective identity. Eyerman
and Jamison (1991) have tried to define social movements as processes in the
formation by which individuals create new kind of social identity. To them all
social life can be seen as a combination of action and construction whose
meaning is deprived from the context and the understanding of the actors derive
form it. They emphasize the creative role of consciousness and cognition in
human action, what they call the cognitive praxis, which transforms groups of
individual into social movement. Thus the cognitive praxis gives social
movement particular meaning and consciousness.
