Download Social Movements Foundations of Collective Action?

Social Movements
Foundations of Collective Action?
What is a Social Movement?
What is a Social Movement?
• …Collectivities acting with organizational coherence outside institutional
channels with the aim of challenging, resisting or overturning such systems.
Snow / Soule, 2011: 6
• …an organized effort to change laws, policies, or practices by people without
power to make change through conventional channels.
Francesca Polleta
• …an effort by individual / group actors to confront a perceived injustice by
mobilizing political, economic, and cultural power collectively in order to
remedy the injustice and chanage the values of society.
Marshall Ganz
• …an organized effort to redefine society’s cultural values in order to promote
change.
Touraine, 2002: 90
What is Necessary for Collective Action?
What is Necessary for Collective Action?
• Injustice
• Trigger that amplifies Injustice.
• Claim (Story) that explains why is it necessary to
correct Injustice, and seeks to attract people to the
cause by projecting a vision of something better.
• Communications Infrastructure that spreads the
story about Injustice, the Trigger, and the Claim.
• Repertoires (practices) that challenge structures of
power that elicit consent.