Social Movements

Even though discussions of contemporary social problems rarely take up the topics of social movements, protest campaigns, strikes, riots, insurgencies, and other forms of collective action, in fact, a close relationship exists between these phenomena and social problems. Often precipitating riots, for example, is police violence, which is commonly identified as a high-priority social problem in poor urban communities. Also, given the statistic of several million U.S. homeless, one does not have to look far to find social movement organizations bringing the claims of the homeless to the public forum and offering solutions. Numerous environmental problems come to the public's attention and get on the political agenda through the protest and lobbying campaigns of environmental movement organizations.

Yet the social problem-social movement relationship is neither straightforward (a view that might propose that social problems automatically give rise to social movements) nor simplistic (that is to say, that social movements articulate practicable solutions to social problems). Social movements are complex phenomena made up of numerous and often very different social actors that propose variant—and sometimes conflicting—solutions to perceived injustices. Some social problems link more closely to social movements than others, and some widely recognized social problems would not have come into public consciousness at all if not for the efforts of social movement activism. For example, drunk driving legislation passed in many states largely through the efforts of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a particularly effective social movement organization. On the other hand, social problems do not always have social movements associated with them. For example, no groundswell of citizen protest against smoking tobacco or the corporations that produce tobacco products evolved, despite the huge social costs of tobacco-related illness. Rather, policy [Page 881]change has come slowly and mostly through institutional channels rather than popular mobilization.

Although formal organizations (such as MADD) often play important—sometimes central—roles in social movements, they are not social movements per se. A social movement is a much broader phenomenon that typically encompasses many groups and organizations. Much like a social problem, a movement is a complex and diverse social phenomenon that includes various perspectives, strategies, and foci. For example, the environmental movement embraces numerous ways of thinking about environmental problems. Within the movement, constituent organizations and individuals focus on different facets of environmental claims, solutions, and activist strategies: degradation of rainforests versus alternative fuels, direct action versus lifestyle choices, Greenpeace versus the Sierra Club or World Wildlife Federation. The definitive characteristic of a social movement is that numerous and variegated actors—individuals, groups, and formal organizations—engage in collective actions over time to bring about social change. This recognition of a need for social change lies at the heart of the social problem-social movement relationship. To put this observation somewhat differently: Why change an aspect of society if there is not a problem?

Implicit in the idea that social movements represent efforts to bring about social change (or prevent it—although this is less common in practice) are three basic themes. First, social movements are organized attempts to solve social problems. This view must consider whether the assessments of the aggrieved population adequately provide solutions to social problems they face. It must also factor in the intermediate political and media-related processes by which a population's claims are negotiated and practically translated into policy decisions, thereby introducing other actors into the equation, such as politicians, interest groups, countermovements, and media gatekeepers. Second, social movements affect social problems by defining them in certain ways. This topic is related to the first, because how a movement defines a problem—or frames it—has much to do with how successful the movement will be in achieving its goals. Third, sometimes the state labels social movements as social problems and makes them the focus of repression or eradication. Although in the West, movements and protests are standard fare in the political process, elsewhere they pose challenges to the state—the most powerful and most salient arbiter of what is a social problem and what is not.

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