SOC 100: Social Movements

Social Movements

• Definition: Social movements are sustained challenges to existing holders of power in the name of a wronged population.
• Key elements: • Commitment to challenge • Engagement with power holders • Representation of a wronged population • Disruption of daily routines • Worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment of members (WUNC)

The Collective Action Problem

• Developed by Mancur Olsen
• People will avoid participating in collective action because they still benefit from whatever is gained, whether they contribute or not.
• Suggests collective action is unlikely to occur even when large groups of people have common interests.

Trends in Social Movement Participation

• Participation varies along two dimensions: • Risk associated with the activity • Cost of engaging
• Different methods of engaging in social movements: • Joining social movement organizations • Attending events like protests • Supporting social movement causes

Participation Requires

• Four main elements: • Ideology • Resources • Biographical availability • Social ties and identity

Ideology

• Ideological commitment is important for participation
• Makes people cognitively available to participate in a movement

Resources

• Money helps translate beliefs into action
• Socio-economic status (SES) is an important predictor of an individual's propensity to protest

Biographical Availability

• Life changes make individuals more or less available to participate

Social Ties and Identity

• Social ties: having close friends involved in social movements increases participation
• Identity: a collective identity that comes from shared attributes or experiences among a group is a prerequisite for collective action

Political Context/Critical Events

• Social movement participation is shaped by the political context
• Facilitative contexts: free spaces, small-scale settings within a community, voluntary, and generate cultural challenges

Consequences of Participation

• Participating in social movements can have long-term transformative effects for individuals
• Activists tend to maintain their ideology and remain politically active over time

The Media and Social Movements

• Frames: • Diagnostic: identifying a problem and attributing blame • Prognostic: proposing solutions • Motivational: getting individuals to take action
• The media might pick up the activists' frames and make them available to the public
• Description bias: how the media depict activists and their actions
• Selection bias: media editors choose which events to cover

Types of Media Coverage

• Organizational models: media act as gatekeepers, favoring generalist reporters
• Ideological models: media coverage is shaped by broader power relationships in society

Success in Social Movements

• Challenges with measuring success: • Broad goals make it hard to determine success • Difficulty in quantifying outcomes### Success in Social Movements
• Groups with diverse goals often achieve only some of them.
• Politicians and leaders often hesitate to admit the influence of social movements on their decisions.

Measuring Social Movement Success

• William Gamson identifies two measures of success:
  • Acceptance and legitimacy of a group's concerns
  • Achieving concrete gains, such as laws, policies, or benefits

Everyday Resistance and Social Non-Movement

• James Scott coined the term "Everyday Resistance," focusing on small-scale, daily forms of resistance by lower-class groups.
• Scott argues that these forms of resistance are often overlooked in mainstream analysis, which focuses on violent political action.

Characteristics of Everyday Resistance

• Relatively safe and "beneath notice" due to its small scale
• Not considered "politics" or "group action" in the conventional sense

Quiet Encroachment

• Coined by Asef Bayat to describe the activities of urban subalterns
• Refers to non-collective, prolonged direct actions by individuals and families to acquire basic necessities of life
• Characterized by:
  • Episodic collective action
  • Lack of clear ideology, structured organization, or leadership
  • Gradual, discreet, and individual actions to fulfill needs and achieve autonomy

Differences from New Social Movements

• Quiet encroachment is distinct from new social movements, which are characterized by:
  • Active collective mobilization, lobbying, and street protests
  • Identity politics reflecting middle-class sentiments
• Quiet encroachment is more achievable in the Global South, where state control is weaker.