Social Movements
Sociology and types of movements
Explain why one event can be called a 'mutiny' or 'the first war of Independence'.
Sociologists have viewed movements in different ways. Emile Durkheim tended to see them as signs of disorder, a breakdown of society's norms. The historian E.P. Thompson disagreed: studying food riots in eighteenth-century England, he showed that the 'crowd' acted on a 'moral economy', a shared sense of what was right and wrong (such as a fair price for bread). Protest had its own logic.
Movements are classified by their aims:
| Type | Aim | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Redemptive | change the personal consciousness of members | Sri Narayana Guru's movement among the Ezhavas of Kerala, which changed their self-respect and practices |
| Reformist | change social and political arrangements gradually | the movement for linguistic states; the Right to Information campaign |
| Revolutionary | transform society completely, often by capturing state power | the Bolshevik revolution in Russia; the Naxalite movement in India |
Old and new movements:
- Old social movements were about class and power, and worked mostly through political parties (like workers' and peasants' movements linked to communist or socialist parties).
- New social movements focus on quality of life, identity and the environment: women's rights, ecology, human rights.
The political scientist Rajni Kothari argued that dissatisfaction with parliamentary democracy and party politics led to non-party movements in India from the 1970s: people organising outside parties.
Today, old and new movements often work together, as at the World Social Forum.
The same event can be named differently depending on viewpoint: the uprising of 1857 was called a 'mutiny' by the British and 'the first war of Independence' by Indian nationalists. Movements are judged differently by different sides.
Most movements mix types and change over time.
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