The Current Social and Political Arena - Coursework Example

Sociology: Literature Trace due: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 a.Classical theory 4 i) Mass society theory 4 ii) Collective behavior 4 iii) Relative deprivation 5 b.Resource mobilization theory 6 c.Political process model 8 d.New Social Movements 10 Conclusion 12 References 14 Introduction The current social and political arena has been shaped by numerous social movements that have occurred in the past, triggered by various factors and involving various participants. Collective action, according to Ostrom (1998), is considered the principal subject of political science, although it is more connected to sociologists than political scientists (p. 3). Contemporary societies experience emergence and decline of social movements on an almost daily basis. This goes hand-in-hand with research which shows that indeed social movements have been on the rise, especially in Western countries after the 80s (Norris, 2002). The now normal way of explaining such instances is the assumption that people demonstrate to seek answers to specific grievances that they might be facing in their daily lives. This is further reinforced by the media who in their reports only seek to answer ‘why’ the demonstration is happening whereas it is clear from decades of research into social movements that grievances alone are not sufficient to explain mobilizations. The need to understand social movements has resulted to theories being made explaining various aspects of the movements, dating back to the 19th century. However, the changing nature of social movements has led to new theories being proposed, and older ones being disputed. Four theories standout in the history of social movements developed chronologically based on the dynamicity of social movements and addition of new knowledge in the area. These are classical theories (which include mass society theory, collective behavior and relative deprivation); resource mobilization theory, political process theory and new social movement theory. The following is a critical analysis of all of these theories in chronological order and the changes that have taken effect until now. a. Classical theory This theory consists of three separate theoretical stands all of which attempt to explain mobilization from a psychological and affective point of view. It explains that the genesis of protests is usually from an increase in individual grievances which lead to social strain and transitions to irrational behavior at a mass level (Jenkins, 1983). Theorists in this period focused so much on trying to explain why social movements occurred so that they could be avoided (Oliver, Cadena-Roa & Strawn, 2003). i) Mass society theory Mass society theory views social conflict as an outcome of social disorganization brought about by strains from the rapid process of industrialization that leads to a destabilization of the social identities. This abnormal collective behavior is just the outcome of social breakdown that results from a change in social function where new concepts are being introduced at a fast rate. Movements, riots, protests and the like are the final manifestations of this social breakdown which is a continual process that involves several interrelated factors. Examples include the Marxist interpretation of mass action based on social class conflicts. This theory also proposes that people are drawn to collective action in social movements due to the fact that they feel marginalized or alienated by the social and political structure thus find mass action as a way of alleviating these negative feelings (McAdam, 1982). The major weakness in this theory is the assumption that people who participate in collective action are marginalized, socially atomized persons (Buechler, 1993) which is obviously subject to criticism. ii) Collective behavior In this theory, there is much insistence on crowd mentality where it is argued that while, in the crowd, individuals lose their personalities and identity. Collective action was, therefore, viewed as an unorganized, spontaneous and contagious emotional reaction to rumors, riots, and other unstructured attitudes. Just like in the case of mass society theory, mobilization is the end result of social breakdown which occurs as a result of rapid unprecedented change to the societal structure and thus marginalizes certain members of the same society. Once again, protests and riots are carried out by dissatisfied, alienated individuals just like in the previous theory, and this conclusion is highly debatable. iii) Relative deprivation It was proposed by Gurr (1970) and came close to the realm of modern psychology. The focus is shifted from a macro to the micro level of analysis and tries to find out the individual incentives to participate in political violence (Brush, 1996). Once again, dissatisfaction is the main idea, but this time it is not caused by sudden social change. The theory suggests that the discontent arises from the increasing discrepancy between the perceived appropriate, expected, or deserved level of wellbeing and what the people actually experience in their daily lives. The difference between this theory and the other two is the way they characterize the participants of the riots and protests. Relative deprivation postulates that these people are actually well-to-do individuals (Snow & Oliver, 1995) who have become accustomed to a consistent increase in their level of wellbeing and when deprivation is experienced, they are more likely to be the ones to demonstrate as opposed to the poor in the society who have nothing to lose. The theory goes a step further into analyzing the causes of social movement by first discussing the particular social psychological mechanisms that lead to discontent. Although relative deprivation is still being learned today, it has severe limitations that make it less applicable in modern societies. The major limitation however is the fact that relative deprivation relies majorly on the correlations between statistical figures (decline in GDP per capita, income inequality) that may lead to deprivation and subsequently feelings of frustration as an explanation of the links between the two. However, correlation does not necessarily bring about causation and, therefore, for this theory to be more applicable, and a detailed explanation of the role of mediating mechanisms that occur in between is required. Classical theories of social movement have therefore being critiqued based on three major assumptions they make: the fact that they focus more on answering why movements and protests occur, ignoring how the underlying mechanisms eventually culminated to mobilization, their ignorance of the role of agencies in the organization of social movement and also their claim that participants of riots consisted mainly of marginalized populations. b. Resource mobilization theory According to McCarthy & Zald (1987) this theory attempts to explain emergence of social movements by viewing the participants as rational actors engaged in actions that make use of formal organizations to secure resources and hence facilitate mobilization. It can be subdivided into two major parts. First, it seeks to explain the people who join social movements and second, the role of the social movement organizations by viewing them as organizations whose main aims are self-preservation and marketing of their products. The arguments of the resource mobilization theory are based on the rational actor theory which suggests that people join social movements because the benefit of joining outweighs the cost to that particular person. The benefit to the person may not necessarily be the same as the goal of the social movement which is to achieve a collective good. Since the benefit is collective and can be achieved by only a few individuals yet benefit the rest, not all individuals will have the motivation to join and some may only be joy-riders. This possibility of free-riding, therefore, means that individuals will join social movements for other purposes other than just the collective good of the persons involved. This is explained through an analysis of the incentives, cost-reducing mechanisms and also the career benefits of collective action (McCarthy & Zald, 1987). This means that individuals, therefore, join social movements for resource gain in addition to what is promised by the social movement’s goals. That being said, and it is, therefore, clear that a cost/benefits analysis of resources, as opposed to grievances and discontent, is the deciding factor for when social movements will arise. Grievances are also known always to be present in a society and therefore act only as a background factor (Beuchler, 1993) and cannot provide a valid explanation for predicting social movements. Availability of resources is a major determining factor in the rising of social movements. Since the elite class possesses the majority of the resources in a society, they also play a part in the emergence of social movements by providing resources for mobilization of groups. Individual members of the groups also join to incur personal resource, and a social movement is created. Aggregation of these resources requires a level of organization by the group and so the resource mobilization theory also focuses on understanding the social movement organizations that are formed. Every social movement organization is part of the industry and therefore has a product (the alleged target goal of the organization). Purchase of this product by adherents to the organization contributes to the flow of resources into the organization. The perceived product quality, usually based on the success of the organization, influences an individual’s decision to purchase it (McCarthy & Zald, 1987), and this is largely determined by the media. Since a social movement organization focuses primarily on the selling of its products to get resources to sustain itself, its first priority becomes self-preservation and this is achieved through maintaining and increasing membership and resource flow as opposed to clashing with authorities with the aim of implementing social change (McCarthy & Zald, 1987). These organizations are, therefore, better explained by a look into what they have to do to survive. Resource mobilization brought a new perspective to social movements. It emphasized the important role of resources in the propagation of social movements and not just the presence of grievances like the previous theories stated. Resources in terms of money, labor and time, were necessary but also included social networks, media, government connections and many others. Oberschall (1973) defined resources as “anything from material resources–jobs, income, savings, and the right to material goods and services–to nonmaterial resources–authority". The flexibility of resources according to this theory however poses danger since anything can be labeled as a resource, therefore, creating misunderstandings (Aslanidis, 2012). Resource mobilization also brought agencies into the picture and changed the way social movements were regarded as mere violent reactions to social change. Presence of social movement organizations was largely accepted and filled in knowledge gaps in explaining contemporary social movements. However, the entrepreneurial and econometric portrayal of these organizations largely resembled them to companies out to make a profit by vying for a stake in people’s hearts and minds. Individual participation was also largely linked to the perceived cost/benefit of the person and therefore insisting on the need for incentives and or coercion for mobilization to take place (Aslanidis, 2012). c. Political process model This theory (and also the related political opportunity structure) emerged as a response to the deficiencies of the resource mobilization theory, specifically its exaggeration of the importance of resources, its bias in support of the power of the elite class in shaping collective action and most importantly, its failure in recognizing the central role of political factors in the wider environment that ultimately influence grievances, resources and opportunities (McAdam, 1982; Meyer, 1999). Unlike previous theories which identify mobilizations as irrational mobs or outcomes of entrepreneurial resource calculations, this theory provides a link between the society and political institutions (McCarthy & Zaid, 1996) by showing that social movements are actually politics. This theory is built around two main areas of interest. First is the notion of political opportunity which also distinguishes it from the previous approaches. The political system is responsible for creating an environment in which movement actors interact, and this either allows or restrains collective action (Jenkins, 1983; McCarthy & Zaid, 1996; Lichbach 1998). Expanding political opportunities as well as shifts in their threats and constraints provide the necessary signals to the society for either moving forward or not (Sidney, 1998; Tilly, 1978; Giugni, 2011) based on their chances of achieving their goals. This implies a causality flow from political systems to expanding opportunities to mobilization. The second area of interest is the so-called cognitive liberation and emanates from a micro-analysis perspective. It shows the importance of individual awareness rising of potential participants. For instance, when the inhabitants of the city come to discover that the quality of their drinking water threatens their health, then it can be considered a first step towards starting a social movement. Cognitive liberation establishes the social movements which then develop further depending on the strength of the individual members of the group. The political situation then will provide support or inhibit the progress of the group. Due to a shift of attention from a meso to a macro level of analysis, the political process theory considers three independent variables (insurgent consciousness, organizational strength and political opportunities) as the main determinants of social movements, as opposed to the approach the resource mobilization theory applies. However, both the resource mobilization and political process theories fail to provide clear definitions of terms (Khattra, Jasper & Goodwin, 1999) and it is therefore easy to confuse these variables, as McAdam (1996) warns. He warns against arguing that political opportunities can be classified as resources whose availability will contribute to the emergence and advancement of social movements. This lack of clear and concise definitions of variables has been the main cause of criticism for both theories. The political process theory however focuses too much on portraying movements as independent of the state and therefore fails to provide an insight into movements that are formed outside the political realm such as religious or subcultural movements. As Koopmans (1999) observes, criticism of this theory based on its overly political approach is indeed fair since “opportunity is not always political opportunity, and political opportunity is not always structural” (p. 93-105). These shortcomings have resulted to the development of a comprehensive theory which surprisingly considers the emotions proposed by the classical theory and that the political process and resource mobilization theories have largely ignored. d. New Social Movements This theory takes a different approach and instead of focusing on the structural bias of the previous theories as has been the trend, it postulates that the major shortcoming of the resource mobilization and political process theory is not so much in their structure but their insistence on determinism. In the case of the political process theory, determinism flows from outside (the assumption that collective action will automatically occur as long as the opportunities are favorable) while in resource mobilization, it flows from within (as long as resources are there, mobilization will follow). Neither of them leaves much room for individual choice, agency or failure (Aslandis, 2012). After realization of the deficits, several scholars tried to incorporate these insights into their models (Morris & Mueller, 1992). The need for reincorporation of social psychology was based on two lines of criticism. First, the causal significance of political systems and its effect on social movements was exaggerated to a point of determinism (Benford ,1997), forgetting the important role of subjective perceptions (Snow & Oliver, 1995). Second, there is rampant neglect of non-cognitive features of mobilization such as emotions and culture (Morris, 2000). New social movement paradigm stresses on both the macro and micro elements of social movements. On a macro level, it focuses on identifying the relationship between the increased emergences of contemporary social movements and the wider economic structure, and the role of culture in these movements. On a micro level, attention shifts to how identity and personal behavior are related to social movements. This theory makes two central claims. First, it claims that contemporary social movements are as a result of the economic shift to a postindustrial economy and second, these social movements are unique and therefore, different from the social movements of the industrial age. These movements are seen as being different from those in the industrial times since they focus more on the quality of life issues of post-materialism unlike the conventional working class movements which had economic interests as their primary goals. New social movements only differ on their goals i.e. they are qualitatively different. Criticism of this theory has been based on several reasons which were majorly identified by Pichardo (1997). First, the theory claims that non-materialistic movements did not exist in the industrial period which is erroneous. Also, movements concerned with economic well-being are still occurring even today. Furthermore, there are differences between traditional and contemporary movements that the theory suggests having been explained by previous theories hence it cannot be said to be a new one. These new social movements are however not exactly different from the older ones as the theory suggests and the fact that they focus exclusively on movements that are liberal, ignoring the conservative side hence does not provide an all-inclusive approach. Conclusion A recap of the theories shows significant progress has been made gradually as emerging scholars look at the theories critically and suggests other approaches in explaining social movements. The classic theory explains social movements as results of social strain. The strain occurs since the perceived desired or acceptable level of satisfaction by the people is not yet achieved and this makes people engage in social movements in an effort to avert the negative feelings. The main participants, according to the theory, are marginalized communities. The conclusion this theory makes is that social movements are simply violent reactions to abrupt social change. The resource mobilization theory builds on the shortcomings of the classical theories and makes some progress, first by acknowledging the fact that participants of social movements are not the poor, alienated members of the society and second, by confirming that social movements are actually planned events that are mediated through social movement organizations. The effect of the environment on social movements is introduced for the first time through this theory. The main focus of the theory is the importance of resources in social movements. Resources, both material and nonmaterial are required to run social movements; the more the resources, the higher the chances of success of the movement. The political process theory is very similar to the resource mobilization theory, only that it focuses on the political opportunities that enable the success or failure of social movements. The political system is influential to a great extent and cannot be ignored (Meyer & Minkoff, 2004). For instance, a study done to find the reasons for the emergence of many social movements showed that if the political system was favorable, it gave people the opportunity to form these movements (Eisinger, 1973), regardless of the presence – or lack of – resources and social class of the participants. This theory brings in another important variable in assessing the nature of social movements’ i.e. political influence. The new social movement theory also makes its claims based on the previous theories. It however makes it clear that the role social psychology that was largely ignored by the two previous theories is still important since not all movements are aimed at economic benefits as the principal goal. Most (though not all) movements today are based on social wellbeing as opposed to the industrial period where the majority of the movements stemmed from the working class. Even though it is the most recent theory to be developed, it does not stand out as the best since it is also marred by several shortcomings. Therefore, the fourth theory is not sufficient. We cannot conclude that there exists a single theory in the field of sociology that gives all the answers to the question of why and how social movements occur. A different approach however can provide an insight into the nature of these movements since they are varied in terms of participants, goals and variables of interest. Classifying social movements into several categories can provide a clearer explanation of why and how they occur. This is because when one takes a closer look, all those theories differ in terms of the inadequacy of the specific paradigm to encompass all the social movements but still acknowledge that some social movements fit perfectly in each theory, including the classical theories. References Aslandis, P. (2012). Critical Review of Social Movement Literature [WIP]. Retrieved November 14, 2014, from https://www.academia.edu/2381793/Critical_Review_of_Social_Movement_Literature_ WIP_ Benford, R. D. (1997). An Insiders Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective*. Sociological Inquiry, 67(4), 409-430. Buechler, S. M. (1993). Beyond resource mobilization?. The Sociological Quarterly, 34(2), 217-235. Eisinger, P. K. (1973). The conditions of protest behavior in American cities. The American Political Science Review, 11-28. Giugni, M. (2011). 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