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Future Research
Social Movements
Future Studies
• Our goal is not to forsee the future, but to
map out alternatives (Tepperman et al,
2008)
• Wendal Bell (1997) four key assumptions
about the future
Four Assumptions (Bell, 1997)
• 1. Time is continuous, linear,
unidirectional and irreversable
• 2. The future will bring novel events-not
everything has existed or will exist
• 3. Future thinking is about human actionactions need anticipation and future goals
• 4. In making our way in the world, the most
useful knowledge is `future knowledge’.
The Social Movements of the
21st Century
• What will they look like?
• To whom will it appeal?
• What focus will it have…
P MARCUSE - 2005
• Collective behavior portion of Collective
Behavior/Social Movement (CBSM)
studies may be revitalized in the near
future. The revitalization will occur
because repertoires of extrainstitutional challenge emerging in the
postmodern age seem to fall outside the
way social movements have been
theorized in the last twenty-five years.
Today's postmodern trends
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Increasing consumerism and affluence,
individualism,
demographic complexity, I
ideological diversity,
global migration,
constant innovation in communications
technology—
Have proliferated new social identities and
deconstructed social identities imposed
by the Other.
• As a result, postmodernity's complexities are
multiplying the number of small, diverse, and
diffuse groupings defining themselves in
challenging ways outside the corridors of
politics. Indeed these groupings may in the
years to come recast what some see as a
social movement society into a CBSM Society
of diverse challenges to the institutional
order. ///
• Social movements often attempt to bring
about a future forged from an incomplete
present.
• Alain Badiou (2008) has provided a theory
that could help us to understand this
mediation between a desired utopian political
future and a flawed present. He argues that
new ethical positions begin from an 'event'
or break.
•
Charles Tilley
• The focus on the internationalization and
inclusiveness are very foundation social
movements of the 21st century.
•
The principal difficulty is how to establish
a causal relationship between a series of
events that we can reasonably classify:
1. as social movement actions
2. and an observed changes in society,
3. fundamental, durable or temporary.
Mass Movements and Success
• Mass actions and street demonstrations
in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary,
Poland, and Romania,
• Brought about the fall of the Communist
regimes in those countries
and, together with popular
mobilizations
• Resulted in the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991
• These occurred in the Baltic
Republics and later on, USSR
fell…
• These movements must have played a
significant role can be seen in the
impressive growth of popular
mobilizations in those countries
Feminist Movements
• Eisenstein, Hester 1996. Inside
Agitators: Australian Femocrats and
the State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press
• Hester Eisenstein's detailed study of the
movement of Australian feminists
into the state government bureaucracy
is one of the first studies in the
current wave of research into insider
activism
TODAY’s Movements
• Social Movements can appear in all
spheres of life.
• Naturally, social movements could hardly
fail to resist to the impact of global forces
How successful are Social
Movements
• Even when social movements never place
a toe in transnational waters…
• … the fact that their societies are affected
by globalization makes their domestic
actions part of global civil society.
Examples
• Some of have begun to posit the
development of a whole new
spectrum of transnational social
movements;
Some focus on human rights
• Others have focused on one particular
movement women, race, sexuality…
• Or on human rights, the environment, or
the concerns of indigenous peoples;
Post modernism
• Still others focus on cultural forms,
deducing from the collapse of extinct
meta-narratives
• A groping across borders towards new
cultural codes and connections.
Currently , such networks continue to grow.
• It is quite possible to presuppose that in the
future the social movement that is focused
on the inclusion into the international
network will have the greatest impact…
• Thus social movements today have larger
opportunities to gain the wide public
recognition and to be supported by larger
masses of people…
• It seems to be obvious that, among the
variety of movements existing at the
moment, the social movement that has
better perspectives in the future will…
• … be based on the ideology which is
equally acceptable to representatives of
different countries with their unique
culture, traditions and standards.
Globalization forces
•
Three forces Drive Globalization:
1. UNIVERSALISM
2. IMPERIALISM
3. CAPITALISM
Universalism•
•
Universalism- universalism seeks truths
that apply to all times and places.
Interest in global expansion is based upon
a material products that can be made and
distributed on a global basis….Products
made to a universal standard. See
McDonaldization
Imperialism
• Imperialism -the notion that developed
nations can help and exploit less nations.
Inclusiveness leaves nothing untouched.
This notion has an embedded militarism.
•
The Koran and the semitar, the Bible
and the Sword, Communist manifesto and
tanks.
Capitalism
• C. Capitalism-Profit or surplus value.
• The search for suplus value-as the market
continues there exist a drive to find cheaper
and more efficient ways of producing goods
for sale and consumption.
• Capitalism is characterized
by systematic consumption,
exchange, wealth
accumulation.
Clearly
• The recent trend is towards the
internationalization of social movements
• This fact has been already noticed by
specialists and often such movements are
often referred to as "transnational social
movements" (Smith, Chatfield and
Pagnucco 1997),
The Future
•
In other words, the ideal social
movement of the future will:
1. overcome national frontiers
2. work toward improving modern socioeconomic relations
3. And improve cultural interaction.
To be transnational,…
• A social movement ought to have social
and political bases outside its target
society;
• .. but to be a social movement, it needs
grassroots appeal…
It ought to be:
•
clearly seen to be rooted within domestic
social networks
1. and engage in contentious politics
2. But least one is a party to the interaction
must be focused internationally.
• This ideology of future movements
implies the popularization of
basic and universal principles
common to representatives of
different nations (Williams
2002:194).
For instance,
if a movement seeks
1.
2.
3.
•
Basic democratic principles,
Human rights
Humanistic values
This would be a good ideological basis
of a social movement that can really unite
people throughout the world.
• At the same time, social movements must
have networks spread worldwide
• These networks cannot appear
spontaneously.
• Internet is a great tool for vertical
community
• They should be based on the existing
movements
• They are most likely to take root among
pre-existing social networks …
• Where relations of trust, reciprocity, and
cultural learning are stored.
• This is the thesis that Tilly developed when
he placed “organization” in a triangular
relationship with interest and collective
action in his “mobilization model”
(1978:57).
• In examining what kinds of groups are
likely to mobilize,
• Tilly paid attention to both:
• (1)the categories of people who recognize
their common characteristics,
• And (2) to networks of people who are
linked to each other by a specific
interpersonal bond, than to formal
organization (62).
• The resulting idea of “catnets”
stressed a group’s inclusiveness as
“the main aspect of group structure
which affects the ability to
mobilize” (64).
.
NGOs
• As a great example, one non-profit
organization in San Francisco Bay
Area,The Bay Area Center for Independent
Culture (BACIC),, had enlarged their social
network in their unique way
• They focused on the youth is very
important since it is the youth that is the
most perspective part of population for any
social movement.
• The reason is quite obvious: the youth is
the most active part of the population
• And, at the same time, young people are the
most susceptible to the perception of new
and progressive ideas.
Perspective social
movements…
• In the second decade of the 21st century
may be focused on different fields and
goals.
• For instance, conceived by the philosopher
Dr. Fred Newman and the developmental
psychologist Dr. Lenora Fulani, the BACIC,
• as a nonprofit organization,
• Provides talent show opportunities
• Leadership training through two
supplementary education programs: the
All Stars
• The president of the BACIC, L. Kurlander,
says;
Over 25 years, we have discerned that
“development” is what is needed to move
our young people and our communities
from chronic poverty and all of its effects.
a “new kind of community
• To create this development, we built a “new kind
of community” that includes tens of thousands of
• young people,
• donors,
• volunteers,
• parents, artists,
• performers
• and business professionals.
• Talent Show Network (ASTSN) and the
Joseph A. Forgone Development School for
Youth (DSY).
• This overarching organization links ASTSN
and DSY with other organizations that
share both resources and goals, including
the Castillo Theatre and the Talented
Volunteers Program.
• This constellation of organizations
enhances the success of each component by
encouraging mutual support and providing
further access to resources.
• They form a larger community that
encompasses:
• a creative theater-based community,
• a youth development community,
• and a therapeutic community.
• There are also strong connections to
progressive political activism within all of
these communities.
• Thus the theatrical, youth development, and
therapeutic communities were functionally
related to each other,
• And all three were philosophically related
to the progressive political community.
• Important to the program was to:
• 1. appeal the vibrancy of a city’s many
cultures and languages,
• And (2 ) to the pride residents take in the
diversity of their city.
• Equally diverse are the social and
economic divides that position the
very rich alongside the very
poor.
• The affluence of the city’s business life does
not necessarily extend to more marginal,
under-resourced communities.
• It is these communities that the All Stars Project
has selected as its target population.
• The stark contrasts between the cosmopolitan
corporate world
• and the circumscribed and underdeveloped
experiences of many young people from the
surrounding boroughs are the cultural dissonance
on which the ASTSN/DSY programs are based.
• .
Another key role of interpersonal networks
in movement aggregation and
mobilization has obvious implications for
the likelihood that social movements can
form across transnational space.
Note:
• The “objective conditions” (eg.,
economic interdependence, cultural
integration or hegemony, or institutional
diffusion) produce the preconditions for
the appearance of similar movements in a
variety of countries,
• The transaction costs of linking them into
integrated networks are difficult for any
social movement to accomplish
• Especially in the absence of activists
whose ties cross national boundaries on a
regular basis and exhibit the mutual trust
and reciprocity of domestic social networks
• In conclusion, international institutions
can thus play a facilitating role in all
processes but are particularly important as
targets for internationalization.
• This leads to the paradox that international
institutions can be the arenas in which
transnational contention forms.
• States of course do not create international
institutions in order to encourage
contention;
• States are more likely to delegate than to
fuse sovereignty, (Moravcsek 1998).
• But because the norms and practices of
international institutions mediate among
the interests of competing states,
• they can provide political opportunities
for weak domestic social actors,
encouraging their connections with others
like themselves and offering resources that
can be used in intra-national and
transnational conflict.
• At the same time, the focus on the
internationalization and inclusiveness are
very perspective to social movements of the
21st century.
is partial, selective and vertical,
and can create a split between
domestic and transnational
activists. Internationalization, in
contrast, forges horizontal links
among activists with similar
claims and is most likely to
produce transnational social
movements.
Basically, such the orientation on