It can also mean that the social movement has only achieved a more diluted version of its goals that is more consistent with the existing power relations of the dominant instutitional matrix operating in society. For instance, the recent movement to fight homelessness has succeeded in socially constructing homelessness as a social problem but over time its successes have largely been manifested in the form of creating homeless shelters which are at best temporary, stop-gap responses that many homeless individuals and especially families find inadequate. They are being adopted in ways the maintain the hegemony of the dominant approach to social policy and housing policy that rely on the market to supply needed housing. Yet, housing markets continue to lag behind in building enough low-cost, affordable housing. Social movements can be defined as mass behavior or collective action that promotes change in social relations and practices .
Some people suggest that suburbanization has been a social movement.
Others would say no because it has not been a conscious effort to reorganize residential patterns. As people overcome their isolation, talk to each other, see that their personal troubles are not unique to the, they create the conditions to mobilize, work in concert and seek to change structural conditions in society that are working to perpetuate their problems and their inability to address them. Also subject to debate is how organized does the collective effort need to be for it to qualify as a social movement. Was the welfare explosion in the the 1960s a social movement. Resource mobilization theory was originally proposed as an alternative to older theories of Neil Smelser and others that saw social movements as largely irrational spasms of collective action.