the spark of new social movements

8/13/2019 The Spark of New Social Movements

1/4

The Spark of New Social Movements:

Why do New Social Movements appear? What is new about them and what do theyhave in common with traditional social movements?

New Social Movements appear and develop due to a shift in mentality in western societies during

in the 20th century. Society moved from the chase of just economic welfare to the conquest of

intangible values.

These NSM are no longer class-based as traditional ones, but have a diversified social base and a non-

material motivation fueled by values such as quality of life, cultural issues, direct participation in

democracy, liberty and human rights. In addition, as a result of increasing globalization, most recent

social movements expand beyond national borders all throughout the world.

However, just like the former social movements, they emerge in a time of general cultural crisis,they are a reaction against an established social order, a response to an unfair and unbearable

situation which they struggle to change.

In the beginning, the first notion of what we consider Social Movements comes into view at the

end of the 18th century. Together with the French Revolution, a new sentiment of rebellion against

the autocracies arose in favor of libertarian ideals.1

Later on came the Industrial Revolution and with it, the rural migration, and they brought along

the emergence of a new social estate: the working class.

In the newly industrialized society, the workforce was cheap and had to earn a living in lousy

conditions: long hours, small salaries, women and children doing hard work, no safety measures..

Factory owners had no obligation to change this circumstances and the government would not

intervene because it was not its responsibility, therefore some kind of mobilization had to appear to

try and improve their situation: the labor movement and labor unions. Influenced by Marxism,

Anarchism and Socialism, these movements achieved the granting of fundamental workers rights

and substantial improvements in their working conditions.

This movement, along with the agrarian movement of peasants living in poverty, are considered

the traditional social movements, the old ones, as opposed to the New Social Movements that would

appear afterwards.

During the course of the 20th century, the Economy dimension shifted and focused beyond

merely production and manufacturing towards a service economy and the knowledge industry.2

After two World Wars and a Great Recession period, the economic boom made social

frameworks change, also in politics, and brought a reorganization of the relationship between

society, state, and economy.

Irene Garca HernndezHistory of the Modern World and Social Movements

1

1Juan Roger Riviere, Historia de los movimientos sociales (Confederacin Espaola de Cajas de Ahorros,1970), 19.

2Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach(Polity Press, 1991), 146.


2/4

Western governments turned to Keynesian policies and mixed-economies and people began to

make them responsible for issues that they were not addressing before. The old negative equality

had to be substituted by positive equality. Social Democracy was rising and the concepts of welfare

state and social services had never been so strong; although there was still a conflict between the

Old Politics, which were directed at material issues, and the New Politics, based on pos-materialist

priorities.3

In this post-industrialist society, with the boost of affluence and wealth, the so called middle-

class augmented exponentially and consumer society surfaced anew. The decades of 1950s and

1960s, within a stable economic growth, were the gold age for advertising and mass consumer

goods. This materialistic standard of living was the perfect breeding ground for the appearance of a

wave of critical views about the dark side of the prosperous society.

A new generation was gaining presence, a generation with higher needs, like self-fulfillment and

life-style concerns. Because of being brought up in economically comfortable homes, they soughtmore altruistic goals, connected to way and quality of life.

The younger generation, in contrast with all modernisms promises of happiness, found life

empty, boring and alienating, in an environment focused on acquisition and functionality.4

Within this context, a new wave of mobilizations was bound to take place, essentially different

from the previous ones, which is why they are analyzed as New Social Movements.

New Social Movements bring much more complexity and heterogeneity on social mobilizations,

in comparison with the apparent simplicity of class-conflict or class-struggle that outlined

traditional workers movements. These movements do not march against a perfectly identified and

common adversary; their motivation is much wider and their goals diverse.

At that point, the NSM implied a rise of non-material values and new ways of individual

conscience and collective identity. Those values and ideals achieved the mobilization of hundreds of

thousands of people all throughout the world, because of their universality and also, due tothe role

of mass media. For instance, the televised March on Washington and Martin Luther Kings speech

brought the civil rights movement to worldwide attention.

The Civil Rights Movement is considered by some authors not as a NSM, but as the transition

from the traditional movements. It is a racial-based movement, because the post-World War II

American society was divided along racial lines, just as the Europe was divided along class lines.

In its beginning, this specific movement had the same desire for inclusion into the modern

industrial welfare state as the working-class movement, but it overcame that role when it demanded

new needs and desires that carried on into the actual NSM in the 1960s and 70s. 5


2

3Russell J. Dalton and Manfred Kuechler. Challenging the Political Order: New Social and PoliticalMovements in Western Democracies(Polity Press, 1990), 23.

4Ibid., 31.

5Eyerman and Jamison, Social Movements, 6.


3/4

In United States and France in the 1960s, the student movement was at its height.

Demonstrations, occupations and strikes were almost daily events; the youth started to act as main

advocates of social change. These protests confounded sociology scholars back then, because

university was one of the most integral institutions and university students were the elite of modern

society and despite that, they were attracted to beliefs and forms of political behavior that could

threat their own careers.6They were moved by higher motives, they were protesting against the

goals of western society and the functioning of the democratic system and claimed the right of free

speech and respect for civil rights.7

We can find NSM in other countries as well, like the environmental movement in West Germany,

the student movement in Denmark, and the Dutch peace movement, which was on of the most

effective groups in the opposition of NATO nuclear missiles stationing in the 1980s.

As said before, the main difference between New Social Movements and traditional socialmovements, is their motivation, although they have also different ideology, origin, structure and

participation. Sometimes they even had to face the opposition of the labor movement.

While the main motivation of the workers and peasants movements was economic redistribution,

wellbeing and self-interest, the NSM had collective and ideological goals in relation to cultural and

quality of life issues, civil and human rights, libertarian concepts and a new form of direct

participation in the democratic process.

Equally important is the social base of these movements. The early social movements entered the

picture to represent a clearly defined social group, a well delimited class and their interests.

The NSMs base of support does not come from the socio-economically disadvantaged. Theirbase is made of a group of individuals, mostly from the well-educated post war generation, but what

they have in common are shared values and goals. Even the womens movement social base

eventually crossed gender lines and the civil rights movement in its mature stages was no longer

racial-based.

Additionally, the organizational structure is also contrary; whereas the old movements had a

centralized, hierarchical organizational structure as appeared in labor unions, the structure of NSM

is completely open an decentralized, composed by networks created by individuals but not

controlled by any kind of organizational leadership; they had a fluid structure that worked well in

small-sized groups.8

Although some of these movements had intellectual leaders that the othermember looked up to, they did not have any kind of formal organization.

It is clear now that New Social Movement essentially differ in many aspects from traditional

social movements. Nevertheless, all of them engage in mobilization because there is something

about the social order they seek to change and that is what makes them both social movements.


3

6Eyerman and Jamison, Social Movements, 19.

7Dalton and Kuechler, Challenging the Political Order, 23

8Ibid.,13


4/4

Even though some authors maintained that the NSM were only variations of the old ones,

looking back now and analyzing their origin, their members and participants, their goals, their

development and their effect in society, we can affirm that they are fundamentally different.

All in all, they may share some common aspects in their form, but at the core their principles are

inherently opposed.

Bibliography

Primary sources:

1. Dalton, Russel J., and Manfred Kuechler. Challenging the Political Order: New Social and PoliticalMovements in Western Democracies. Polity Press, 1990.

2. Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach. Polity Press, 1991.

3. Roger Riviere, Juan. Historia de los movimientos sociales. Confederacin Espaola de Cajas de Ahorros,1970.

Secondary Sources:

1. Klandermans, Bert. "A Theoretical Framework for Comparisons of Social Movement Participation."Sociological Forum8, no. 3 (1993): 383-40. JSTOR (684567)

2. Pichardo, Nelson A. "New Social Movements: A Critical Review." Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997):

411-430. JSTOR (2952558)


4

the spark of new social movements

Documents