bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Age and Social Movements
Authors: Fillieule Olivier
Published: September 2022

The notion of lifecycle was first used in the social sciences in the 1930s and remained prominent until the end of the 1960s in political behavior studies, despite its lack of empirical consistency. The basic idea is that stage‐specific needs result in the adoption of particular political attitudes. Based largely on Freudian psychodynamic theory, the lifecycle approach has mainly been interested in explaining adolescent rebellion (and, more rarely, the conservatism of the elderly) and attempted to attribute social protest in the 1960s to young people's lifecycle characteristics and needs, and to deep‐seated emotional conflicts between youth and adults. In a more structuro‐functionalist perspective, lifecycle theory has given birth to a cohort‐generational perspective, in which youth unrest is viewed as a product of a rapidly changing social order and unique growing‐up experiences that exacerbate age‐group relations, and may generate organized protest behaviors. However, contemporary research has found no clear diminution with age in the number of left‐oriented attitudes nor any rush to conservatism more generally, as lifecycle theories would suggest. Here, the main result is that social unrest is not causally linked to chronological age and that people do not seem to become more conservative with age.
Bloc Recruitment
Authors: Diani Mario
Published: September 2022

Bloc recruitment refers to the process through which sets of people, already organized for other purposes, get attracted to a new collective enterprise. This is basically a reformulation of the classic argument about the role of networks in facilitating mobilization. The additional advantage offered by bloc recruitment is that the recruitment effort is considerably lower, inasmuch as it builds upon the trust relations, mutual obligations, and consolidated routines that exist between the members of an already established and operative group.
Civil Disobedience
Authors: Tescione Sara
Published: September 2022

Civil disobedience refers to a public, nonviolent, contentious yet political act contrary to law, usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of a government.
Cognitive Liberation
Authors: McAdam Doug
Published: September 2022

The concept of cognitive liberation was introduced by McAdam as one of the three central causal factors in his formulation of “political process theory.” The term refers to the process by which members of some aggrieved group fashion the specific combination of shared understandings that are thought to undergird emergent collective action. In particular, McAdam argues that before collective action can get under way, people must collectively define their situations as unjust and subject to change through group action. Thus it is the combination of perceived injustice and collective efficacy that is held to be the subjective linchpin of movement activity. Indeed, McAdam suggests that, notwithstanding the importance of the two more structural components of the model (e.g. political opportunities and established organizations), it is these shared understandings that are the key to movement emergence. While important, expanding political opportunities and indigenous organizations do not, in any simple sense, produce a social movement. Together they only offer insurgents a certain objective “structural potential” for collective political action. Mediating between opportunity and action are people and the subjective meanings they attach to their situations. So while the political process model has been roundly criticized for its “structural bias,” in its original formulation, McAdam assigned central causal importance to processes of social construction and collective attribution. On the other hand, in using the term “
cognitive
liberation” to describe these processes, McAdam was clearly ignoring the emotional dimensions of collective action.
Collective Identity
Authors: van Stekelenburg Jacquelien
Published: September 2022

From the 1980s onward movement scholars have increasingly emphasized the significance of collective identity as a factor stimulating protest participation. Sociologists were among the first to emphasize the importance of collective identity in protest participation. They argued that the generation of a collective identity is crucial for a movement to emerge. Similarly, social psychological studies report consistently that the more people identify with a group the more they are inclined to protest on behalf of that group. Apparently, identification with a group is an important reason why people participate in protest on behalf of that group. In order to understand why, we must elaborate the identity concept.
Democracy and Social Movements
Authors: della Porta Donatella
Published: September 2022

Democracy is usually defined as a specific method of decision‐making, in which elected representatives are accountable to the citizens through regular elections. Social movements have always been concerned with democracy, keeping those who govern accountable, but also in many cases advocating and practicing alternative conceptions of democracy than the dominant, representative ones.
Discursive Fields
Authors: Snow David A.
Published: September 2022

This entry explores the concept of “discursive fields,” which is used to conceptualize an aspect of the context in which discourse and meaning‐making processes, such as framing and narration, are generally embedded. Discursive fields, like the kindred concepts of multiorganizational fields and identity fields, are constitutive of the genre of concepts in the social sciences that can be thought of as “embedding” concepts in that they reference broader enveloping contexts in which discussions, decisions, and actions take place.
Dual Identity
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: September 2022

The concept of dual identity originates in the identity family of theories. Identity, more specifically collective identity, became an important concept in the social movement literature during the last decade of the twentieth century. Cohen and Melucci were among the first to emphasize the significance of collective identity formation in social movements, and the concept gained importance in the years after. Coming from a social psychological perspective, Simon and his colleagues proposed the existence of an identity pathway to collective action in addition to the instrumental pathway. These authors reasoned that people do not participate in social movements for instrumental reasons only, but also to fulfill identity needs. Meanwhile, social psychologists had begun to explore the role of group identification in movement participation and concluded that the more one identifies with the group that is involved in a protest activity, the more likely one is to take part in that activity. Applied in the context of identity theories of social movement participation the concept of dual identity introduces a dynamic element in that it recognizes that individuals hold multiple identities at the same time that do not necessarily work in the same direction.
Experimental Methods
Authors: Oliver Pamela
Published: September 2022

Although “experiments” are popularly understood as research done in a laboratory, for social scientists the key element of an experiment is at least one manipulated independent variable. A variable is manipulated if the researcher can determine who experiences each category (or treatment) of the variable. A “true” experiment is one in which the researcher randomly assigns subjects to different categories (treatments) of the independent variable. This random assignment (randomization) can yield high internal validity in assessing the causal effect of the independent variable on the dependent (outcome) variable. There have been important randomized field experiments in policy areas such as education, welfare provision, population control, or medical treatments. Market researchers may use randomized field experiments to test the impact of different advertising campaigns and some professionalized social movement organizations have used this kind of field experiment to test the impact of various ways of “marketing” their issues. Smaller voluntary groups might also find it valuable to use rigorous experimental methods to test their persuasive tactics, although they rarely do.
Feminism and Social Movements
Authors: Rupp Leila J. , Taylor Verta
Published: September 2022

Feminist movements, in the broadest sense, are collective efforts to improve the situation of women, and they have emerged in most parts of the world, beginning in the mid‐nineteenth century and continuing into the present. Most contemporary feminist movements are intersectional, linking gender to racial/ethnic, class, and other categories of difference. Feminism has influenced other social movements, such as the civil rights, Chicano, peace, environmental, global justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ, Occupy, and Black Lives Matter movements, through its ideologies, collective identities, tactics, and organizational forms. Scholarship on feminist movements has focused on their origins; different waves or cycles; feminist ideologies, collective identities, tactics, and organizational forms across time and place; and the impact of feminism on other social movements, on political and cultural change, and on the structure of gender relations.
Fields of Contention
Authors: Crossley Nick
Published: September 2022

Contentious politics, in Tilly's sense, involves multiple relays of interaction. Activists interact amongst themselves, both within and between “social movement organizations” (SMOs); they interact with opponents and elites; with police and other security forces; and often also with journalists and even academics. The outcome of contentious politics is generated by these interactions and the concept of “fields of contention,” as coined by Crossley, is intended to capture the network which they form.
Ideology
Authors: Beck Colin J.
Published: September 2022

Ideology is an important aspect of social and political movements. The most basic and commonly held view of ideology is that it is a system of multiple beliefs, ideas, values, principles, ethics, morals, goals, and so on, that overlap, shape, and reinforce one another. Ideology can be analyzed as a feature of group processes, a product of interaction during mobilization, an aspect of movement strategy, or part of the social order itself.
Instrumental versus Expressive Action
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: September 2022

Instrumental action refers to action as an attempt to influence the social and political environment; expressive action refers to action as an expression of people's views.
Journalism and Social Movements
Authors: Mattoni Alice
Published: September 2022

Throughout their history, social movements have interacted with journalism in several ways, depending on the type of journalists involved. First, mainstream professional journalists working for legacy media usually act as gatekeepers who can grant or deny media coverage to social movements. Activists often develop challenging relationships with this type of journalist, positioned outside the social movement milieu. Second, investigative journalists might become allies for social movements. Investigative journalism is part of an emerging hybrid space of news‐making that blurs the usual boundaries between journalists and activists, with the investigative journalism not necessarily performed within traditional newsrooms. Third, activists might engage in journalistic activities themselves, hence reporting on their mobilizations from a grassroots perspective. These forms of citizen journalism often combine with alternative media, which has always accompanied social movements' struggles throughout history.
Master Frame
Authors: Benford Robert D.
Published: September 2022

The term “master frame” was originally conceptualized in order to account for the empirical observation that
cycles of protest
occasionally emerge in the absence of a favorable political opportunity structure (POS). Given that POS had been theorized as the engine driving cycles of protest, an alternative explanation was sought from the social movement framing perspective to account for those instances when a number of movements clustered together during a period even though the structural conditions did not appear conducive for widespread mobilization. Under such conditions a cycle of protest could be attributed in part to the development of a
resonant
master frame. A master frame refers to a generic type of
collective action frame
that is wider in scope and influence than run‐of‐the‐mill social movement frames. Whereas most collective action frames are context specific (e.g. drunk driver frame, cold war frame, exploited worker frame, environmental justice frame, etc.), a master frame's articulations and attributions are sufficiently elastic, flexible, and inclusive enough so that any number of other social movements can successfully adopt and deploy it in their campaigns. Typically, once a social movement fashions and espouses a highly resonant frame that is broad in interpretive scope, other social movements within a cycle of protest will modify that frame and apply it to their own cause. For example, once the US civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s experienced a number of successes based on an equal rights and opportunities frame, several other movements, including the American Indian, women's, gay and lesbian, Chicano/a, and Gray Panthers, adopted and proffered a similar frame to their specific movement campaigns.
Multiorganizational Fields
Authors: Klandermans Bert
Published: September 2022

Movement organizations are embedded in multiorganizational fields. Multiorganizational fields can be defined as the total possible number of organizations with which the movement organization might establish specific links. A social movement organization's multiorganizational field can be broken down into sectors that are supportive, antagonistic, or indifferent. The first is described as the movement organization's alliance system, consisting of groups and organizations that support it; the second as the organization's conflict system, consisting of groups and organizations that oppose it – including countermovement organizations. Alliance systems provide resources and create political opportunities; conflict systems drain resources and restrict opportunities. The boundaries between the two systems remain fluid and may change in the course of events. Organizations that try to keep aloof from the controversy may choose or be forced to take sides. Coalitions can fall apart and former allies can become opponents.
Political Generation
Authors: Braungart Richard G.
Published: September 2022

A political generation is an age‐conscious group that mobilizes for social and political change. The term also refers to political age groups or segments of age groups that experience extraordinary historical events that have lasting effects on its members' lives. Inspired by Enlightenment values, the Age of Nationalism, and the American and French Revolutions, political generations first appeared in Europe in the early nineteenth century, spread to other continents, and, by the 1960s, became worldwide. Generational theory provides a useful framework for understanding the dynamics of inter‐ and intragenerational conflict that characterize eras of heightened political unrest and reform. Political generations are now global in scope and predicted to increase in the future.
Resistance
Authors: Trom Danny , Cefaï Daniel
Published: September 2022

The uses of the concept of “resistance” have multiplied in the printed literature, even if without success in the attempts to define it in an unequivocal way. That notion implies the dimensions of habit, imagination, and judgment. It lies
short of
any organized action, collective and public, of any obvious social unrest. Being infrapolitical, resistance expresses a will to elude a power, a predominant norm, or a social control. It deploys in the background of everyday life. It does not form a consistent repertoire of action, but rather shows itself by means of such practices as trickery, concealment, smartness, double meaning, humor, feigned ignorance, work‐to‐rule, and absenteeism. It comes with all the dynamics of contention.
Social Movement Organization (SMO)
Authors: McCarthy John D.
Published: September 2022

Traditional approaches to understanding the emergence and mobilization of social movements focused primarily upon fluctuations in the hearts and minds of aggrieved individuals. Analysts of social movements inspired by the accelerated founding rates of more or less bureaucratically organized groups of citizens in the 1960s – joining early risers in the organizational field, some of which, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), had emerged in the nineteenth century – began to focus more directly upon the central mediating role that social movement organizations (SMOs) play in mobilizing social movement activity. Zald and Ash first systematically deployed the concept in their classic paper published in 1966 that effectively challenged the universality of Roberto Michels's “iron law of oligarchy” (1949). Denotatively bounding the SMO, their analyses referenced civil rights movement organizations of the 1960s, including the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the NAACP, as well as the American Communist Party and the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The concept was later more clearly specified by McCarthy and Zald in 1973: A
social movement organization
(SMO) is one which identifies its preferences with a social movement or a counter‐movement and makes efforts to implement those goals. In subsequent years, the term and its acronym, SMO, have come into widespread use as scholars have sought to understand patterns of SMO emergence, variations in SMO structure, and functioning.
Social Movement Sector
Authors: McCarthy John D.
Published: September 2022

Many social movements at varying stages of mobilization may exist in a nation's society at any time, or there may be very few struggling to exist. Understanding that variation in social movement mobilization across national societies remains a relatively unexplored arena of social science research. Social movements in most nations are importantly defined by the social movement organizations (SMOs) that identify with their goals, even though much collective action by social movement actors is not directly associated with SMOs. Nations differ dramatically in the extent to which they encourage and facilitate or discourage and repress SMOs. All the SMOs in a nation with roughly comparable goals, issue orientations, or ideological congruity constitute its social movement industry (SMI). All the SMIs in a nation constitute its social movement sector (SMS). The size and orientation of a nation's SMS is a function of the amount of resources devoted to social change (whatever its substantive focus across the ideological spectrum), the associational supports provided by the larger society, the democratic or authoritarian orientation of its state, and the relationship of the movement sector to the political party space. The size and shape, or configuration, of the SMS varies between nation‐states and over time within them.
Strategy
Authors: Jasper James M.
Published: September 2022

Derived from the ancient Greek word for a military commander, “strategy” has two common meanings. In business it is a broad plan, and in military terms, similarly, it is what is done before the battle begins (in contrast to the tactics that lower officers use to implement the commander's strategy during the battle). In contrast, as an adjective, strategic and strategic action refer to interactions among players who have both ends and means, and who each realize that the others are also acting strategically to get what they want. In this latter sense, strategy covers almost everything that social movements do.
Tactical Interaction and Innovation
Authors: McAdam Doug
Published: September 2022

The concepts of
tactical interaction, tactical innovation
, and
tactical adaptation
were introduced by McAdam in a 1983 article in
American Sociological Review. Tactical innovation
refers to the introduction of new and novel tactics by movement actors.
Tactical adaptation
can be defined as the ability of movement opponents to neutralize innovative movement tactics by means of effective tactical responses. Taken together these two actions constitute an ongoing process of
tactical interaction
in which insurgents and opponents seek, in chess‐like fashion, to offset the moves of the other. How well each succeeds at this task crucially affects the pace and outcome of movement activity. In the aforementioned article, McAdam demonstrates the utility of these concepts by showing empirically that the pace of insurgency in the US civil rights movement waxed and waned in accordance with these two processes. Peaks in protest activity correspond to the introduction and spread of tactical innovations (e.g. bus boycott, sit‐in, Freedom Rides, etc.), while valleys reflect the gradual development of effective tactical counters by social control forces.
Violence Against Oneself
Authors: Grojean Olivier
Published: September 2022

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, self‐injury or self‐harm that is not related to cultural or religious norms has been distinguished from suicidal practices and associated with various pathologies. Thus, following Durkheim's work, suicide became a social fact that sociology could not ignore, but deliberate self‐inflicted violence without suicidal intent (e.g. cuttings and burns, body modifications) remained until recently mainly a concern for psychiatry. This probably explains the rarity of sociological research on self‐inflicted violence with a political dimension, such as hunger strikes, self‐mutilation, or immolation, while there have been dozens of publications on suicide bombings, especially since 2001.
Anti‐Apartheid Movement (South Africa)
Authors: van Kessel Ineke
Published: September 2022

The origins of nationwide organized protest against first segregation and then apartheid in South Africa can be traced back to the founding of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in 1912. After the Union of South Africa was established in 1910, the political rights and economic security of black people came under increasing attack. Following the defeat of the Boer Republics in the Anglo‐Boer War (1899–1902) reconciliation with the defeated Afrikaners was achieved at the expense of black South Africans. Laws restricting African landownership and African mobility underpinned a system of racial segregation devised to compel Africans to become wage laborers on white farms or in white‐owned mines and industries.
Falun Gong (China)
Authors: Sun Yanfei
Published: September 2022

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, started as a qigong movement but increasingly acquired a stronger religious character. It organized the largest demonstration since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which precipitated the Chinese state's crackdown on Falun Gong. However, Falun Gong activists inside China persisted in protests over the years. Meanwhile, Falun Gong groups outside China have used diverse means to publicize their cause and attack the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Fascist Movements
Authors: Reichardt Sven
Published: September 2022

Fascism belongs to the “family” of right‐wing authoritarian and radical nationalist movements and regimes. Fascist movements regard the state as an organic whole and omnipotent principle transcending class interests, economic tensions, and ethnic conflicts. Fascism and authoritarianism rejected and repressed Marxist socialism, liberalism, ethnic minorities, and laissez‐faire capitalism. One may distinguish between authoritarian, reactionary, corporatist, and fascist movements and regimes according to the degree of mass support used to mobilize society and the forms of violence and murder used to dominate society.
Human Rights Movements
Authors: Brysk Alison
Published: September 2022

Millions of human rights activists around the world have crafted a new way of doing politics, based on bringing principle into practice. These principles are summarized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are free and equal in rights and dignity.” It begins by using global communications to capture the hearts and minds of global publics. Coalitions of local and global activists pressure governments “from above and below,” and put new issues on the agenda – from forced disappearance to female genital mutilation. Human rights campaigns provide information on global suffering, affecting images that promote identification with victims, the formation of solidarity networks, and explanations that trace international connections.
Indian Independence Movement
Authors: Crist John T.
Published: September 2022

Until Gandhi's return to India from South Africa in 1915, protest against the British had been episodic and mostly localized. The era of the Indian independence movement (1917–1947) emerged as Gandhi assumed the leadership of the Indian National Congress (INC) – the principal vehicle for nationalist opposition – and radically altered its composition and tactics. Through the INC and his own independent cadres of nonviolent activists, Gandhi forged a popular nationalist coalition of urban elites and rural masses against foreign occupation. Under his guidance, Congress adopted the tactics of nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience, and noncooperation in loosely structured national campaigns that challenged colonial occupation over three decades.
Indigenous Movements (Latin America)
Authors: Richards Patricia , Gardner Jeffrey A.
Published: September 2022

Indigenous resistance has been a central aspect of Latin American history since the Spanish invasion and, in the late twentieth century, Indigenous movements emerged as some of the most significant social actors in the region. This was related to the collapse of Leftist class‐based politics as well as the use of extreme state violence against the Indigenous in the context of civil wars and other struggles. Correspondingly, scholarship on the Indigenous has shifted in focus from issues of cultural extinction and survival to the relationship of Indigenous movements to nation‐states, transnational networks, issues internal to Indigenous movements, decolonization, and new methodological approaches.
Irish Republican Movement
Authors: White Robert W. , White Francis K.
Published: September 2022

The Irish Republican Movement has its origins in eighteenth‐century republican political philosophy, which also inspired the American (1776) and French revolutions (1789). In the 1790s, the United Irishmen tried to unite “Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter” and create an Irish Republic independent of England. Unlike their American and French counterparts, the United Irishmen's rebellion of 1798 failed. However, they remained an inspiration for rebellions against the British in 1803, 1848, 1867, and 1916, and insurgent actions by Fenians (including armed campaigns against the British in Canada and a bombing campaign in England) in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. Contemporary Irish Republicanism has organizational antecedents that date from the 1840s: Irish Republicans active as “Young Irelanders” in 1848 became Fenians; Fenians participated in the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence (1919–1923); veterans of 1916–1923 were active in Irish Republican organizations into the 1990s; and, contemporary “dissident” organizations were formed by veterans from the 1950s and later.
Landless Workers Movement (MST) (Brazil)
Authors: Hammond John L. , Rossi Federico M.
Published: September 2022

The Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra, or MST), for many years the largest and most active social movement in Brazil, challenges landowners and authorities and agitates for a broad agrarian reform. It organizes unemployed and landless farmworkers to take over idle farmland and turn it into productive farms. It grew out of land occupations beginning in 1978 in Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, led by activists from the Catholic Church's Christian base communities and some Protestant churches under the inspiration of liberation theology. The movement was formally founded in 1984, near the end of a 21‐year military dictatorship. It acts nationwide across Brazil's vast continental expanse, spanning a great variety of local social, economic, and environmental conditions, so its practice varies from place to place. Focusing during its early years on occupying farmland to force the government to undertake a broad agrarian reform, it has shifted in the twenty‐first century to strengthening communities of farmers by consolidating production and political power on the properties it has occupied.
Liberation Theology/Base Communities (South America)
Authors: Mackin Robert Sean
Published: September 2022

Liberation theology is a radical, predominately Catholic movement of theologians, bishops, priests, nuns, and laity that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s across Latin America. Bishops, gathering in regional conferences, called for the church to abandon long‐standing alliances with the rich and powerful and instead take the side of the poor and oppressed. Theologians, who wrote books and presented papers using Marxian concepts, put forward a new way of doing theology – from the perspective of the poor. It was the poor, gathering in small groups to discuss the Bible, known as base ecclesial communities (CEBs), which offered a new interpretation of scripture based on their experiences, leading to unprecedented grassroots activism. In the 1970s and 1980s CEB members were actively involved in revolutionary movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and in other parts of Latin America they played important roles in democratization movements.
Mao Zedong
Authors: Blecher Marc
Published: September 2022

More than any other political figure in history, Mao Zedong (1893–1976) led his state in many ways as if it were still a revolutionary social and political movement. And his leadership did indeed kindle such movements as significant social and political forces, promoting genuine “uninterrupted revolution” even after the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
Mau Mau Revolt (Africa)
Authors: Brinkman Inge
Published: September 2022

At the end of the 1940s central Kenya experienced the growth of a movement that came to be known as Mau Mau. People were initiated into the movement through pledging an oath, a fact interpreted as “traditional” by the British colonial authorities. Yet, people in central Kenya saw it as a novelty, since for the first time women and children were also allowed to take this oath. Initially Mau Mau received much support amongst Kikuyu squatters working on the farms of white settlers in the White Highlands. Later the movement expanded into the Kikuyu Reserve, an area designed by the colonial authorities as the homeland of the Kikuyu and into Nairobi, Kenya's buzzing capital. Much of the support came from people with little hope of a better future: poor people with little to lose.
Mexican Revolution
Authors: Matute Álvaro
Published: September 2022

The Mexican Revolution started in the early years of the twentieth century and consisted of a set of events involving a number of social actors. Accordingly, the deeds and misdeeds that occurred as part of it served a variety of purposes. Some historians argue there were several rebellions, as opposed to only one revolution, and that all of them simultaneously converged in a major event referred to as the Mexican Revolution. The numerous geographical locations where actions unfolded highlight the diversity of the movement.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (US)
Authors: Parker Christopher
Published: September 2022

Barely a decade into the twentieth century, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. Its principal charge, issued by the cadre of white reformers, in addition to W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells‐Barnett, was to secure for Blacks the rights guaranteed them by the Constitution. More concretely, the organization was originally intended to help Black Southerners overcome what Aldon Morris calls the “tripartite system of domination” in which whites subjected them to social, political, and economic oppression. The NAACP did so in manifold ways, most of which rested upon appealing to federal authorities for legislative and legal redress.
Neo‐Nazi Movements (Europe and the United States)
Authors: Simi Pete , Futrell Robert
Published: September 2022

Neo‐Nazis emerged shortly after World War II and the fall of Hitler's Third Reich as a type of fascist movement espousing a white supremacist ideology emphasizing anti‐Semitism, racial purity, and national socialism. More specifically, neo‐Nazis often embrace traditional Nazi symbolism, such as the swastika, and various other fascist‐themed symbols, while describing themselves as national socialists and/or fascists, revere Adolf Hitler, and promote eugenics to ensure the existence of a pure Aryan race. Some neo‐Nazis, however, emphasize the need to conceal overt references to Hitler, swastikas, and other obvious associations as part of a front‐stage effort to downplay their extremism, while openly displaying their continued allegiance to Nazi Germany behind the scenes.
Red Brigades (Italy)
Authors: Bosi Lorenzo
Published: September 2022

The Red Brigades emerged in October 1970. Among other left‐wing armed groups operating in Italy since the early 1970s the BR was the largest, the leading organization in terms of degree of political violence deployed, claiming 145 killings, and most long‐lived, lasting, despite splitting up into various groups and wings, until the end of the 1980s. It was Marxist‐Leninist in its ideology and organizational structure. Over the 1970s and the 1980s it was estimated as being composed of over 400 full‐time members, plus an unknown number of supporters.
Red Shirt Anti‐Corruption Movement (Taiwan)
Authors: Chang Mau‐Kuei
Published: September 2022

The Red shirt anti‐corruption movement emerged in mid‐2006 in Taiwan, with mass rallies and mobilizations in September and early October of that year. However, enthusiasm languished very quickly. It was originally called the “one‐million people down
Bian
movement.” The word
Bian
stands for the then president of the country, Chen Shui‐bian, the first pro‐Taiwan independence president representing the Democratic Progressive Party (the DPP). Chen was first elected in 2000, and reelected in 2004. Because of his consecutive victories, the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang, or KMT), which had ruled Taiwan for over 50 years, was forced to yield administrative power to the DPP.
San Salvador Atenco Farmers' Movement (Mexico)
Authors: Lomelí Carla Beatriz Zamora
Published: September 2022

Atenco represents one of the most important contemporary social movements in Mexico, not only because of its historical importance in defense of the collective ownership of the land, but because of the actions that followed this territorial defense. These included conflict with the state, including state repression, growing alliances at regional, national, and international levels, and variation in the structure of political opportunities. The Atenco farmers are defined as collective actors, because of the social and historical particularity of their community, with high social density and communitarian relations in which collective identity is built up, with the land as the axis of the farmers' identity.
Self‐help Movements
Authors: Lessor Roberta G.
Published: September 2022

Self‐help groups are a distinctive feature of social life in the United States and elsewhere that emerged on the scale of a social movement during the last four decades of the twentieth century. The term “self‐help” applies to a wide variety of groups in which members offer each other social support, seek personal changes, and, in some cases, seek to challenge existing institutions that are not meeting their needs. Self‐help groups can generally be characterized as “lay” rather than “professional” in that they propose new practices to address shortcomings and discontent with traditional (institutionalized) means of dealing with a variety of physical and mental problems from which individuals suffer. The proposed strategies include the promotion of personal, individual growth and, in some cases, the betterment or improvement of the health or wellbeing of an entire affected group. The rapid expansion of self‐help in the 1960s and 1970s coincides with larger human rights movements of the time (the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the women's health movement). “Self‐help” continues to evolve in the twenty‐first century, albeit in new forms and with different emphases.
Separatist Movements
Authors: Gupta Devashree
Published: September 2022

Separatist movements advocate for greater sovereignty for their members, who are often part of a common ethnic, religious, or territorial group, and who resist further incorporation into the larger polity, believing instead that they should exercise more control over their political, economic, or cultural affairs than the national states in which they live. While some separatist movements may attempt to achieve their goals within the confines of existing state boundaries, seeking to increase group autonomy or gain more power in local governance structures, such movements can also challenge existing state boundaries and call for the formation of entirely new or reconstituted territorial units. Since World War II, separatist movements in Europe, Asia, and Africa have nearly quadrupled the number of independent countries in the international system and increased the number of United Nations members from 51 at its founding to 193 members today. By some counts, there are over 70 current separatist movements around the world, mostly concentrated in Europe and Asia. Not all of these involve ongoing, active mobilization, and fewer still feature violent resistance, though the violence that such movements engender can be particularly intense and intractable.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (United States)
Authors: Arnone Kyle , Bloom Joshua
Published: September 2022

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) grew out of the Montgomery bus boycott to become one of the leading organizations of the civil rights movement in the US. On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to relinquish her seat on a public bus to a white person. Local black clergy, activists, and the women's political council called a bus boycott. The boycott organization elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as its president. Tens of thousands participated in the nonviolent campaign, drawing violent reprisals from white supremacists and crippling Montgomery's bus system until they succeeded in integrating it in December 1956. Bayard Rustin wrote a series of working papers proposing a permanent organization to carry the movement to other cities. In January 1957, King, Rustin, Ella Baker, and 60 young black ministers met at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to form the SCLC. Coupling Christian ethics with activism, their goal was to “redeem the soul of America” through nonviolent resistance to Jim Crow. SCLC intentionally cultivated a principled but pragmatic image of King as a leader, capable of appealing to a wide range of interests. An association of organizations, with no individual members, the SCLC emphasized networking between black churches, supporting local action, and spreading civil rights struggle.
Stonewall Riots (United States)
Authors: Armstrong Elizabeth A. , Crage Suzanna M.
Published: September 2022

Around 1:20 a.m. on Saturday 28 June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a homosexual bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in New York City. Customers included homeless teens, drag queens, and others unwelcome elsewhere. Patrons initiated a riot that lasted into the night and resumed the next day. The Stonewall riots are often viewed as the spark of the gay liberation movement. This is not historically accurate: gay liberation was already well underway. The riots were not the first time gays fought back against police, nor were they the first raid to generate political organizing. The Stonewall riots are of interest because of their symbolic importance to gay movements in the US and around the globe. The processes through which the riots acquired this salience provide insight into the creation of collective memory within social movements.
Tiananmen Student Movement (China)
Authors: Zhao Dingxin
Published: September 2022

The Tiananmen student movement was triggered by the death of Hu Yaobang on 15 April 1989. Hu was the former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but was pressured to resign from the position in 1987 in part because of his lenient attitude toward the student protests in 1986. Hu became a widely respected figure among students and intellectuals after his resignation.
Unemployment Movements
Authors: Reiss Matthias
Published: September 2022

Movements of the unemployed have played a significant role in constituting the unwaged as a distinct social group in industrializing societies and have helped influence public perceptions of the unemployed. Unemployed protest – or the prospect of it – has fostered the introduction of measures for the workless and thereby contributed to shaping the welfare state. It acted as a deterrent against worsening the conditions of the unemployed and helped them to maintain a sense of agency, dignity, and community.
Emergent Norm Theory
Authors: Arthur Mikaila Mariel Lemonik
Published: September 2022

Emergent norm theory hypothesizes that nontraditional behavior (such as that associated with collective action) develops in crowds as a result of the emergence of new behavioral norms in response to a precipitating crisis. For proponents of emergent norm theory, collective action includes all types of social behavior in which the conventional norms stop functioning as guides to social action and instead people collectively overturn or go beyond the normal institutional practices and frameworks of society, and therefore new conventions must form as part of the collective action. The basic suppositions of emergent norm theory are that collective action is rational, that collective action is a response to an ambiguous precipitating event, and that new norms of behavior appropriate to the collective action situation emerge through group processes without prior coordination and planning. Originally proposed by Turner and Killian, emergent norm theory has grown out of two main traditions. First, the Le Bonian tradition of thinking of crowds as normless entities and collective action as irrational behavior led Turner and Killian to think about how norms are instituted in crowds. Second, symbolic interactionist perspectives and small‐group analysis contributed a model of norms as developing through interaction.
Outcomes, Political
Authors: Amenta Edwin , Andrews Kenneth T. , Caren Neal
Published: September 2022

Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the potential political consequences of social movements. These subjects include the influence of movements over political institutions, processes, and outcomes, including democratization, elections, political parties, public opinion, bureaucracies, courts, and policymaking. In comparison to mobilizing supporters and choosing strategies, political outcomes sought by challengers are not directly controlled by them. The question is fundamentally different from the norm in movement studies, because mobilization, strategies, and action are potential causal forces, rather than phenomena to be explained. Some scholars have isolated the influence of a variety of movement organizational forms and strategies, including mobilizing structures that encourage leadership and tactical diversity at the movement level. Others have found that movements have been most influential when engaged in assertive political action supplemented by political contexts favorable to political change. Most scholarship has been about the largest US social movements over policies they seek to influence.
Participatory Democracy in Social Movements
Authors: Polletta Francesca
Published: September 2022

Participatory democracy refers to an organizational form in which decision‐making is decentralized, nonhierarchical, and consensus oriented. It can be contrasted with bureaucracy, in which decision‐making is centralized, hierarchical, and based on a formal division of labor, as well as with representative democracy. Participatory democratic organizations have been a prominent feature of many progressive movements, including radical pacifism, the civil rights movement, the New Left, feminism, environmentalism, anti‐nuclear activism, gay and lesbian movements, the global justice movement, Occupy, anti‐austerity protests, and movements against racist policing.
Relative Deprivation
Authors: Arthur Mikaila Mariel Lemonik
Published: September 2022

The relative deprivation model aims to explain individuals' decisions to join or start social movements and is based on a certain set of psychological ideas. Relative deprivation itself refers to the gap between what one has and what one expects, particularly in comparison to some specific reference group. The concept of relative deprivation has its roots in the early “frustration‐aggression hypothesis” of John Dollard, which suggested that when individuals respond to frustration and do not receive a response that relieves their frustration, such individuals will respond with aggression. Relative deprivation has been used as the mechanism to explain where this frustration emerges from.
Resource Mobilization Theory
Authors: Edwards Bob , Gillham Patrick F.
Published: September 2022

Resource mobilization theory (RMT) developed during the 1970s and evolved as a new generation of scholars sought to understand the emergence, significance, and effects of the social movements of the 1960s. Rejecting both the previously dominant functionalist view that social movement actors were deviant or anomic, and the pluralist assumption that all parties willing to engage in the political process have a reasonable chance that their grievances will be heard and addressed, resource mobilization scholars sought to understand how rational and often marginalized social actors mobilized effectively to pursue their desired social change goals.
Arab Spring
Authors: Moss Dana M.
Published: September 2022

Over the past several decades, few puzzles have captivated academic imaginations more than the persistence of authoritarianism in the Middle East. Scholars have dedicated volumes to exploring possible causal factors, including the role of oil rents, the “robustness” of coercive apparatuses, Islamist movements, civil society, elite fragmentation, and other such political processes and characteristics. However, the eruption of what has been dubbed the “Arab Spring” in late 2010 sent shockwaves through the world, decimating myths about Arab sociopolitical gridlock. Sweeping social change in the region appeared largely “unthinkable” until an unprecedented series of popular movements turned streets into occupied protest zones across the region.