Niña Lavado Belas BSSW 2B Sicial Change and Development

I. List the major types of Social Movement.

1. Reform Movement - seeks limited, though still significant, changes in

some aspect of a nation’s political, economic, or social systems. It does
not try to overthrow the existing government but rather works to improve
conditions within the existing regime. Some of the most important social
movements in U.S. history have been reform movements. These include
the abolitionist movement preceding the Civil War, the women’s suffrage
movement that followed the Civil War, the labor movement, the Southern
civil rights movement, the Vietnam era’s antiwar movement, the
contemporary women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and the
environmental movement. Reform movements are often referred to as
political movements because the change they seek is political in nature.
2. Revolutionary Movement - goes one large step further than a reform
movement in seeking to overthrow the existing government and to bring
about a new one and even a new way of life. Revolutionary movements
were common in the past and were responsible for the world’s great
revolutions in Russia, China, and several other nations. Revolutionary
movements is often referred to as political movements because the
changes they seek are political in nature.
3. Reactionary Movement - another type of political movement, so named
because it tries to block social change or to reverse social changes that
have already been achieved. The anti-abortion movement is a
contemporary example of a reactionary movement, as it arose after the
U.S. Supreme Court legalized most abortions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and
seeks to limit or eliminate the legality of abortion.
4. Self-help Movements - As their name implies, self-help movements
involve people trying to improve aspects of their personal lives; examples
of self-help groups include Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers.
5. Religious movements - aim to reinforce religious beliefs among their
members and to convert other people to these beliefs. Early Christianity
was certainly a momentous religious movement, and other groups that are
part of a more general religious movement today include the various
religious cults.
Sometimes self-help and religious movements are difficult to distinguish
from each other because some self-help groups emphasize religious faith
as a vehicle for achieving personal transformation.
II. Provide evidence against the assumption that discontent always leads to
social movement activity.

Whatever the condition is, the dissatisfaction it generates leads to shared

discontent (also called shared grievances) among some or most of the
population that then may give rise to a social movement. This discontent
arises in part because people feel deprived relative to some other group or to
some ideal state they have not reached. This feeling is called relative
deprivation.
Relative deprivation theory was initially very popular, but scholars later
pointed out that frustration often does not lead to protest, as people can
instead blame themselves for the deprivation they feel and thus, not protest.
Scholars who favor the theory point out that people will ordinarily not take part
in social movements unless they feel deprived, even if many who do feel
deprived do not take part.
Although discontent may be an essential condition for social movements (as
well as for riots and other collective behavior that are political in nature),
discontent does not always lead to a social movement or other form of
collective behavior.
For example, it might be tempting to think that a prison riot occurred because
conditions in the prison were awful, but some prisons with awful conditions do
not experience riots. Thus, although discontent may be an essential condition
for social movements (and other collective behavior) to arise, discontent by
itself does not guarantee that a social movement will begin and that
discontented people will take part in the movement once it has begun. An
often-cited study that documented this fundamental point concerned the
peace movement in the Netherlands during the 1980s.
The movement was trying to prevent the deployment of cruise missiles, and a
survey of a town near Amsterdam revealed that about 75% of the town’s
residents were opposed to the deployment. However, only about 5% of these
residents took part in a protest that the peace movement organized against
the deployment. Thus, there is a huge drop-off from the number of potential
social movement participants (sympathizers), in terms of their discontent with
an existing problem or concern about an issue, to the number of actual social
movement participants (activists).
This huge drop-off from sympathizers to activists underscores another
fundamental point of social movement scholarship: people are much more
likely to participate in social movement activity when they are asked or urged
to do so by friends, acquaintances, and family members.
As David S. Meyer observes, “[T]he best predictor of why anyone takes on
any political action is whether that person has been asked to do so. Issues do
not automatically drive people into the streets.”
Social movement participants tend to have many friends and to belong to
several organizations and other sorts of social networks, and these social
network ties help “pull” or recruit them into social movements. This process
of recruitment is an essential fact of social movement life, as movements
usually cannot succeed if sufficient numbers of people are not recruited into
the movement.
Resource mobilization theory is a general name given to several related
views of social movements that arose in the 1970s. This theory assumes that
social movement activity is a rational response to unsatisfactory conditions in
society. Because these conditions always exist, so does discontent with them.
Despite such constant discontent, people protest only rarely. If this is so,
these conditions and associated discontent cannot easily explain why people
turn to social movements. What is crucial instead are efforts by social
movement leaders to mobilize the resources—most notably, time, money,
and energy—of the population and to direct them into effective political action.
Resource mobilization theory has been very influential since its inception in
the 1970s. However, critics say it underestimates the importance of harsh
social conditions and discontent for the rise of social movement activity.
Conditions can and do worsen, and when they do so, they prompt people to
engage in collective behavior.
As just one example, cuts in higher education spending and steep increases
in tuition prompted students to protest on campuses in California and several
other states in late 2009 and early 2010. Critics also say that resource
mobilization theory neglects the importance of emotions in social movement
activity by depicting social movement actors as cold, calculated, and
unemotional. This picture is simply not true, critics say, and they further argue
that social movement actors can be both emotional and rational at the same
time, just as people are in many other kinds of pursuits.
Another influential perspective is political opportunity theory. According to
this view, social movements are more likely to arise and succeed
when political opportunities for their emergence exist or develop, as when a
government that previously was repressive becomes more democratic or
when a government weakens because of an economic or foreign crisis. When
political opportunities of this kind exist, discontented people perceive a
greater chance of success if they take political action, and so they decide to
take such action. As Snow and Soule explain, “Whether individuals will act
collectively to address their grievances depends in part on whether they have
the political opportunity to do so.” Applying a political opportunity perspective,
one important reason that social movements are so much more common in
democracies than in authoritarian societies is that activists feel more free to
be active without fearing arbitrary arrests, beatings, and other repressive
responses by the government.
III. Describe the stages of the life cycle of social movements.

Many past and present social movements around the world differ from each other in
many ways. They all generally go through a life cycle marked by several stages that
have long been recognized.

Stage 1: Emergence
This is the stage when social movements begin for one or more of the
reasons indicated in the previous section.

Stage 2: Coalescence
At this stage, a movement and its leaders must decide how they will recruit
new members and they must determine the strategies they will use to achieve
their goals. They also may use the news media to win favorable publicity and
to convince the public of the justness of their cause.

Stage 3: Institutionalization or Bureaucratization

As a movement grows, it often tends to become bureaucratized, as paid
leaders and a paid staff replace the volunteers that began the movement. It
also means that clear lines of authority develop, as they do in any
bureaucracy. More attention is also devoted to fund-raising. As movement
organizations bureaucratize, they may well reduce their effectiveness by
turning from the disruptive activities that succeeded in the movement’s earlier
stages to more conventional activity by working within the system instead of
outside it. At the same time, if movements do not bureaucratize to at least
some degree, they may lose their focus and not have enough money to keep
on going.

Stage 4: Decline of a Social Movement

Social movements eventually decline for one or more of many reasons.
Sometimes they achieve their goals and naturally cease because there is no
more reason to continue. More often, however, they decline because they fail.
Both the lack of money and loss of enthusiasm among a movement’s
members may lead to a movement’s decline, and so might factionalism, or
strong divisions of opinion within a movement

IV. Discuss examples of how social movements have made a positive difference.

By definition, social movements often operate outside the political system by

engaging in protest. Their rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, and silent vigils are
often difficult to ignore. With the aid of news media coverage, these events
often throw much attention on the problem or grievance at the center of the
protest and bring pressure to bear on the government agencies, corporations,
or other targets of the protest.
There are many examples of profound changes brought about by social
movements throughout U.S. history.
•The abolitionist movement called attention to the evils of slavery and
increased public abhorrence for that “peculiar institution.”
•The women’s suffrage movement after the Civil War eventually won women
the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
•The labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries established the
minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, and the right to strike.
•The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s ended legal segregation in
the South, while the Vietnam antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s
helped increase public opposition to that war and bring it to a close. •The
contemporary women’s movement has won many rights in social institutions
throughout American society, while the gay rights movement has done the
same for gays and lesbians.
•The contemporary movement is the environmental movement, which has
helped win legislation and other policies that have reduced air, water, and
ground pollution.
•Social movements can affect values and beliefs, and they can affect cultural
practices such as music, literature, and even fashion.
•Movements may also have biographical consequences. Several studies find
that people who take part in social movements during their formative years
(teens and early 20s) are often transformed by their participation. Their
political views change or are at least reinforced, and they are more likely to
continue to be involved in political activity and to enter social change
occupations.

In this manner, writes one scholar, “people who have been involved in social
movement activities, even at a lower level of commitment, carry the
consequences of that involvement throughout their life.”