There are no singular description of social
movements. The following definitions advanced by different political theorists confirm the veracity of the statement.
Paul Wilkinson interprets social movement as“ a deliberate
collective endeavour to promote
change in any direction and by any means, not excluding violence, illegality, revolution or withdrawal into ‘utopian’ community. Social movements are in this sense, obviously distinct form historical movements, upheavals or waves. It is obligatory to remember, in this connexion, however that such proper sites and inclinations and the effect of the material or insensible factors in human behavior, may be of vital significance in enlightening the problems of exploring and explaining social movement.”
According to Herbert Blumer, “Social movements can be viewed as collective enterprises to establish a new order of life. They have their inception in the condition of unrest, and derive their motive power on the one hand from dissatisfaction with the current form of life, and on the other hand, from wishes and hopes for a new scheme or system of living.”
Dong McAdam defines social movements as “those organized efforts, on the part of excluded groups, to promote or resist changes in the structure of society that involve recourse to non institutional forms of political participation.”
In the words of Sidney Tarrow, “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities.”
Three crucial factors concurrent in the above definitions are noteworthy. They include (1) collective initiative, (2) social transformation and (3) common purpose.
Hence, in the strict sense, agitation or protests are quite different from social movements. Since, they recurrently do not seek to bring about social change, they do not interpret that. There is recoil to a certain state of conditions.
Components of Social Movements
Social movements possess five ingredients: Objectives,
ideology, programmes, leadership and
organization. They are interdependent and interrelated. Repulsive public protest in an unorganized manner does not resemble social movement. Social movement is associated with social and political change. Therefore, it has a direct and persistent
Objective. The urgent objective may be to handle a particular issue or remonstration contrary to the decision of the authority. But such a collective initiative does not terminate there. It undertakes a number of concerns and continues towards a consistent objective of altering authority, power relationship, dominance and political system. The movement originates policy for the long-term objective. It assigns precedence to specific course of actions over the rest and also concentrates onto a selected direction, energizes several groups. The course of initiative is closely connected to or get dimension with the perception of the desired social transformation. It engages certain parameters, premises and standards, endowed to contemplate in a pre-ordained manner of social reality. The parameters and ideals constitute ideology. The ideology is not necessarily systematic or preconceived. In some cases ideology champions the movement and in other cases ideology gets to be molded and authorizes the movement. Leadership plays dominant part in the formulation of ideology and construction strategies for action.
Social movements entail activation f people who duly get involved with the objective of the movement. They interchange values and start to interchange impression of common realization of social reality. This too needs some or other form of organization. The organization may be loose or compact with the centralized or decentralized decision making system for introducing programmess.
None of these components are deductive and stationary. They gradually change. Their nature and function differ between movements. They are found to be elementa
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