New Social Movements vs. Older Movements: Key Distinctions
New Social Movements (NSMs) differ significantly from older, traditional movements in their focus and organizational strategies. Understanding these differences is crucial for analyzing contemporary social and political activism.
Core Differences of NSMs
The primary ways NSMs distinguish themselves are:
- Focus on Non-Class Identities: NSMs often center their struggles around identities other than social class. This includes issues related to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, environmentalism, and lifestyle choices. Older movements were typically more focused on class conflict and economic exploitation.
- Inherent Link to Democratic Politics: NSMs are characteristically intertwined with democratic political systems and the ongoing process of democratization. They tend to operate within, and seek to expand or reform, democratic frameworks rather than aiming to dismantle them entirely.
Why Other Options Are Less Accurate
- Class-Based Exploitation: This is a defining feature of older movements (e.g., labor movements) but not the primary driver for most NSMs.
- Capture of Political Power: While NSMs seek social transformation, their main strategy is often not the direct seizure of state power, which was more common in older revolutionary movements.
Important Questions from Globalization & Social Movements
- Fill in the blank with the CORRECT option.
The ____________ opposed deforestation in the northern Indian tracts. This movement started in the early 1970s to prevent destruction of the forest by timber contractors and was carried forward by women, who were traditionally responsible for fuel, food and water in the family. - Which of the following aspect(s) is/are CORRECT about Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra?
Fill in the blank with the correct option.
__________ argued for a shift in social movements post-1968 towards questions of self-management and technologies of rule as central driving concerns, analyzing these movements as struggles over the self-production of society.
Fill in the blank with the correct option.
The movement against __________ dam in India has contributed significantly to the formation of the World Commission on Dams.
- Select the option that has the correct pairing of book title and key contribution.
Book Title Key Contribution Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India L Distinction between social and political movements Q The Non-Party Political Process M Critique of nationalist and Marxist historiography R Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India N New arenas of counter-action in the wake of diminishing legitimacy of the state in the project of social transformation S Nine Theses on Social Movements O Emergence of movements based in identities other than social class T
