Critique of New Social Movement Theories

Social Movements in Times of Austerity. By Donatella della Porta. Cambridge: Polity, 2015. vii + 249 pp. £16.99 (pbk). ISBN 9780745688596. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. 2nd updated edition. By Manuel Castells. Cambridge: Polity, 2015. xix + 319 pp. £12.99 (pbk). ISBN 9780745695761. The first half of this decade has seen a tremendous wave of protest. The universally recognised spark of the Arab Spring was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010. Since then we’ve seen the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, protests turn to civil wars in Syria and Libya, the uprisings of the indignadas of Spain and the Occupiers of Wall Street (and passim), the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong, a range of new movements in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, and much else besides. If we understand this ‘movement of the streets and the squares’ as a coherent global wave of protest, what exactly does it signify? The two books under review offer interpretations of the most recent wave of protest that may help answer this most central question.

Why have social movement studies mostly ignored the concept of capitalism as an important factor explaining the rise, the decline, and even the absence of social mobilizations? Our thesis is that the silence of social movement research on capitalism is anything but strange. We contend that social movement studies have arisen and come out from the rejection of Marxist and capitalist explanations of societal transformations, which were relatively popular and relevant in the 1960s and 1970s. The institutionalization of the field of social movement research has been founded on a sort of “epistemological bias” vis-à-vis capitalist (and Marxist) analysis. The time seems ripe to broaden the scope of the analysis of movement studies to the macro-structural perspectives of (critical) political economy. The scarce scholarly attention devoted to the connection between the economic structures of society and the political conditions affecting the emergence of mobilizations has caused the diminished capacity of mainstream social movement research to fully understand the recent wave of protests. For us, the reception of some aspects of political economy may be helpful to grasp the variety and timing of the recent wave of protests, arisen in distinct regions of the world with different temporalities in opposition to the crisis of neoliberal capitalism. How can we interpret and translate these important intuitions for the study of capitalism into social movement research? The main lesson that we can derive from them is that it is not possible to come out with an explanation of the rise, development, and decline of social movements without taking seriously into consideration the dynamics of transformation implied in the never-ending process of capital accumulation.

Social Thought and Research, 1986

Politics, 1994

Social movements of the 1960s have given rise to new theoretical perspectives such as Resource Mobilization Theory and theories of New Social Movements. Resource Mobilization Theory analyses the dynamics of mobilization: the effective organisation of social movements and their influence on mainstream political institutions. By contrast, New Social Movement theories seek to explain the anti-institutional nature of contemporary movements which are said to pursue radical social transformation through mainly cultural means. In this article, both theoretical approaches are examined but found to be inadequate explanations of the complexities of contemporary movements and their relationship with the political environment.

Social Movements, 2017

Since the 1990s there has been a decline in class based movements and a retreat of class analysis as a theoretical perspective. This was the context within which New Social Movements arose followed by the idea that there is a fundamental break between the Old and New Social Movements. This article argues that class remains a fruitful analytical category to understand new social movements whether based on gender, caste or community those led by the 'middle class'.

International Journal of Engineering Research in Computer Science and Engineering

Social movement is one of the important manifestation of collective behaviour .In the contemporary years the study of social movements has devoted the attraction of large number of sociologists not only in India but also in West. Every social movement whether new or old is launched for one or other reason .This paper reviewed the various theories which conceptualise the beginning of social movements .This paper also examined the historical and social context about the social movements .The researcher has used the secondary sources like- published books, journals ,internet ,etc. for data collection. The knowledge of literature on social movements can help the researchers to develop insights about new ideology, leadership, theoretical orientation and organisations of social movements.

In contrast to other approaches, the new social movement (NSM) approach stands out, with its complicated language and yet less structured analytical categories. Because it is the first approach to pay extensive attention to the cultural dimension of contentious politics, it is an important theoretical tradition to consider in relation to political citizenship and social movements. It eschews the assumption that social movements are to be directed merely at (national) governments and institutional reform (even political revolution), by explicitly attempting directly to influence society and culture. First, this chapter presents the main arguments made by various contributors to the NSM approach. Second, I summarize the main critiques and debates it has unleashed. Third, I examine recent developments of this approach, specifically in the context of globalization. Fourth, this chapter identifies a number of challenges posed by these developments and makes suggestions for future research. Now, let me historically contextualize the emergence of the NSM approach.

2021

2.1 Theoretical Background of New Social Movements In a most general sense, social change is broadly understood as a philosophical idea, which refers to some sociocultural evolution, progress in a particular sphere, which moves the society forward compared to the previous state. Social change might refer to paradigmatic transformations in socioeconomic structures (