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Social Movements
Social movements are collective, sustained challenges to state and nonstate systems of political, economic, or cultural governance. Prominent examples include the civil rights, peace, environmental, and antiglobalization movements. Social movement scholars examine why individuals join social movements; under which conditions movements emerge, flourish, and dissolve; how movements mobilize and use material, organizational, symbolic, and tactical resources; and what impact movements have on participants, public policies, and society at large. Although most social movement studies have focused on domestic struggles in Western Europe and North America, analyses of transnational movements and movements in developing and transition countries are increasingly common.
The study of social movements bears relevance for political theory because social movements around the world have influenced political developments in important ways for several centuries. Recent ...
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