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Social Movements, Sociology Of

A good way of tracing the history of social movements is to first distinguish between the old social movements (the preindustrial age to mid-20th century) and the new social movements (the postindustrial age, or from the mid-20th century). Perhaps, the first documented social movements in human history were those associated with the French Revolution of 1759, the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791, and the proletarian revolution in Russia. These were all old social movements and emerged when such collective behavior patterns were seen as mainly aberrations and were subsequently viewed as violations of the social order.

To see social movements as representing a collective effort to effect a given change or avert a change from occurring may be very restrictive because social movements are varied in objectives, nature, and causative factors. Therefore, while not ignoring the change value of social movements especially when representative of the mass of civil society, one might analytically benefit more by looking at social movements as social phenomenon indicative of some significant need/aspirations in the social system. In other words, they should be perceived first as significant social agents before a change value is attributed to them. After all, a social movement may exist to promote an ideal or altruism that has no practical connection to change in the context of the present social order.

Toward a Sociology of Social Movements

The importance of the sociological study of social movements derives from a couple of reasons especially in the present postindustrial society characterized by a proliferation of social movements. Some of the reasons that have made sociology of social movements imperative include:

  • Far from being a marginal field or the attempt to capture the activities of social deviants and dissidents, social movements have become in postindustrial society very central in the reproduction and self-production of human society and values in contemporary times.
  • Social change and social transformation have become rampant in human society and social movements function as critical harbingers of change and social transformation.
  • The predictive value of sociology can only be furthered by a systematic study of agencies of change in human society. In this sense, as Bronislaw Misztal has argued, social movements can be successfully employed as intermediary and hitherto missing links in the analysis of action, structure, and agency, which is very critical in sociology.
  • Probably overriding the above reasons is the fact that social movements are increasingly becoming veritable intermediaries of social and political action.

From the aforementioned reasons, the sociology of social movements represents nothing but the systematic attempt to understand and interpret social movements as social phenomenon. In this exercise, social movements are seen as indicative of the rejection/dissatisfaction of the civil society with the social order or otherwise. In this analytical framework, social movements are not important only as agents of social change but as increasingly reflective of the participation of the civil society in legitimizing, disputing, and modifying the social order and structure of the society.

Types of Social Movements

Social movements can be analytically differentiated in so many ways. These include differentiation on the basis of degree or nature of change desired, the target of change, and type of change

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