Social Movements

Social movements may be seen as networks of sustained collaborations over time between a plurality of actors interested in a given cause. Movement actors are linked not only by tactical and [Page 1569]instrumental considerations but by deeper social bonds and by shared identities; they frame their action and their cause in adversarial terms (i.e., by identifying specific social groups as responsible for the grievances they are addressing).

The large-scale processes associated with globalization have created both opportunities for social movements and problems in analyzing them. Globalization has helped to revitalize the agenda of Western new social movements of the 1980s and 1990s. It has given a more dramatic dimension to key themes, such as women's oppression, environmental degradation, and human rights. It has also brought back to the core of social movement mobilization issues such as social inequality and discrimination, thus launching a bridge between new social movements and labor movements.

The renewed attention of social movements also stems from their adapting better than traditional political parties and unions to a changing political environment. Whereas the former had grown accustomed to operate mostly within the boundaries of national polities, social movements' more flexible organizational format has made them more effective at the kind of coalition work that is essential to link different actors in different countries in pursuit of common causes. They have also been considered by many to be better suited to operate within systems of multilevel governance that operate differently in reference to different issues, or at least with a different set of relevant stakeholders in each context. The fact that the same flexible format also allowed more easily for different levels of individual involvement have made some social movement organizations, such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, particularly attractive for those interested in participating only through financial contributions; it has also enabled them to attract a widely dispersed constituency, unified by shared personal values rather than by social class or territorial location.

At the same time, the growing relevance of globalization processes and the spread of forms of collective action, associated with global issues and actors, have also raised a number of analytical issues. The concept of social movement has developed in an intellectual context in which the social sciences were territorially bound, the boundary being the borders of nation-states. As Charles Tilly noted, the social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries were characterized by three elements: the centrality of campaigns implying sustained conflictual interactions between challengers and power holders; a “modular” (i.e., usable in different contexts) repertoire of collective action, supporting the public expression of claims on behalf of aggrieved (sectors of) populations; public representations by challengers of their worth, unity, numbers, and commitment.

Currently, it is far more difficult for the combination of these criteria to materialize on the global scale than in specific national polities. Although the diffusion of computer-mediated communication is facilitating challengers' tasks, and although we are not short of historical counterexamples (such as the antislavery movements of the 19th century), global campaigns are still difficult to sustain over time, as the classic mobilizing structures such as networks and organizations are largely organized on a national basis. Moreover, several aspects of the traditional repertoire based on the national demonstration and related tactics are difficult to implement on a transnational scale and difficult to explain. (Opportunity structures—e.g., partisan alignments, government policies, levels of repression—have been largely theorized in reference to national politics.) Public representations are also difficult to elaborate, and the definition of “us” and “them” in particular is problematic, again because framing draws on symbols and ideas of politics and society, rooted mainly in national traditions.

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