New social movements and the state in Latin America

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 5 volumes, Bryan S. Turner (Editor),‎ Chang Kyung-Sup (Editor),‎ Cynthia F. Epstein (Editor),‎ Peter Kivisto (Editor),‎ J. Michael Ryan (Editor),‎ William Outhwaite (Editor), Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

While the term " social movement " was coined in the nineteenth century, " social movements " conceived as such only became a major object of research after social movements from the 1960s onwards became a major social phenomenon. One theorist treated these alone as social movements; another as " new social movements ". In each case, the unique characteristics of these have been understood in relation to recent transformations in technology and the global economy. Other theorists argued that social movements originated in the eighteenth century, but without being identified as such, had not been properly studied or appreciated as central to democracy. Tracing these debates, this entry describes the major theoretical work on this topic. From the perspective this provides, it is shown that the nature and diversity of the forms of social movement and their transformations from the eighteenth century to the present, and their successes and failures, can be understood.

Marxism and Social Movements, 2013

2011 was a good year for social movement researchers. The extraordinary events of the "Arab Spring" and the anti-austerity protests in Europe were widely covered in the mass media, noticed by students and even our colleagues. Of course the visibility or otherwise of social movements is historically conditioned, in academia as in popular awareness or in the media; within academia, the decades since 1968 have seen an increasingly institutionalised and systematic representation of collective action, and an increasingly established body of teachers, researchers, experts and otherwise "official" commentators on this pre-eminently unofficial activity. In this process, social movement studies have become a minor, but familiar, field of academia, routinely included in general textbooks. As students' first encounter is increasingly in the classroom rather than as participants, the academic field has become increasingly self-sufficient. New researchers read official (and remarkably uncritical) histories of its origins, and they are presented with an increasingly closed canonical literature. Dialogue with the outside world can come to seem irrelevant; 2 the outside world, whether movement participants or researchers in related fields, returns this lack of interest. 3 This paper steps back from this situation to explore a wider history of ideas and an alternative, and older, usage of the phrase "social movement", grounded in a broader awareness of historical possibility and a more dialectical sense of social development than contemporary "social movement studies" usage. It then explores one way this figure of thought has been developed, in EP Thompson's Making of the English Working Class. Here the alternative understanding is deployed to great effect, covering a wide range of historical phenomena, their interconnections and transformations. Enormously influential on "history from below", studies of popular culture, and discussions of social class, Thompson's work shows a different way of thinking "social movement". Lastly, the paper uses this alternative understanding to think aspects of contemporary workingclass self-organisation in Ireland, which-because they do not behave as proper social movements ought-are hard to understand within mainstream approaches. 1 This paper owes a great debt to Colin Barker, whose comradeship has been inspirational, and to long years of writing with the immensely rigorous Alf Nilsen. Neither, of course, are responsible for its weaknesses. Thanks are due to both and to John Krinsky for comments on an earlier draft. 2 Geoghegan and Cox 2001. 3 Bevington and Dixon 2005. This is quite an ambitious programme, and I'm not a specialist on nineteenth-century intellectual history, or the British Marxist historians. 4 I hope to be able at least to sketch out the area and perhaps provoke some discussion of whether-as researchers or participants-it is wise to allow the routine academic processes of field-construction to define the limits of our own understanding. Thinking "the Social Movement" The phrase "social movement" is sometimes ascribed to the German political economist Lorenz von Stein in the title of his Geschichte der socialen Bewegung in Frankreich: von 1789 bis auf unsere Tage-"History of the social movement in France from 1789 until the present". 5 In fact the term was already used in the 1840s; von Stein is nevertheless a good point to start the discussion. The book is a study of revolutionary France, in the period which saw the Great Revolution of 1789-1815, the July Revolution of 1830 and the 1848 Revolution. Its three volumes are (I) Der begriff der Gesellschaft und die sociale Geschichte der französischen Revolution bis zum Jahre 1830 (The concept of society and the social history of the French Revolution up to 1830); (II) Die industrielle Gesellschaft. Der socialismus und communismus Frankreichs von 1830 bis 1848 (Industrial society: French socialism and communism from 1830 to 1848); (III) Das Königthum, die Republik, und die Souveränetät der französischen Gesellschaft seit der Februarrevolution 1848 (The monarchy, the republic, and the sovereignty of French society since the February Revolution of 1848). 6 At first glance, this might not seem very surprising; the French Revolution is a defining moment of the modernity which social movements are said to characterize, sees classic developments in citizenship, the standardising of a particular repertoire of protest, and 4 The late great Dorothy Thompson was kind enough to indicate that she felt an earlier version of this paper had substantially captured her husband's thinking on this matter (pers. comm.) 5 Von Stein 1850-1855. 6 Von Stein's interests were very wide-ranging. He also wrote on Schleswig-Holstein (Denkschrift über die Zollverhältnisse der

2017

Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. We conceive of 'social movements' in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of 'social movement'. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the 'dynamics of contention'.

2014

In the early 1980s many social theorists claimed that the ‘New Social Move­ments’ (NSMs) were the authentic social movements of our time. This claim is discussed in relation to two traditions in the analysis of social movements. The ‘American’ tradition focuses on the single-issue movement of a protest and mobilizing character. The ‘European’ tradition focuses on the relation between major societal changes and processes of class formation, the labour movement being the classic case. In the article the women’s movement is discussed as a major cultural revolutionary movement, the different campaigns dealing with the new urban forms of socialized reproduction, housing, planning, etc., as movements for the defence of the ‘real consumption'; the green and environmentalist movements taking up the conflicting relation nature-society. Is the relation between the NSMs and the new and growing social strata of students, and employees within the welfare state, which make up their audience a...

Social Thought and Research, 1986

ISA Newsletter

The article published in Economic and Political Weekly is a critical review of Rajender Singh's book, "Social Movements: New and Old". It exposes the limitations of the post-modernist theorization of social movements and shows how so called Old and New Social Movements are still interlinked.

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2019

Social movements, as collective entities, develop to stand up against the existing institutional status quo with a view to its reformation or radical transformation, while the degree to which they are political depends on wider socio-political factors. The diverse action that evolved through their organized mobilization marked the radical transformation of political response, but also the type of state intervention. Social movements exactly because they constitute wider socio-political undertakings that aim to bring about changes in the social, political, economic but also cultural processes, which seek to annul or sideline established standardizations, are considered one of the most readily available ways to express political and social claims; here they are understood to be dynamic interventions in institutionally and structurally complete social systems as in the case of the social state. Within the context of political mobilization and collective social action, social movements functioned at two interrelated levels: the level of expansion, but also of redefinition of social intervention processes in order to achieve the goals of the social state, and the cultural level, a symbolic promotion, in order to establish a greater degree of social justice. Mobilization of resources, collective behaviour for making claims, even contentious action and transaction with institutions and authorities, constitute views of social transformation and political process in the context of the creation and development of the social state.