Social Movements: Characteristics, Categories and Stages

Judge a movement by its aim, not its noise

A social movement is one of the main ways a society changes from below, and this unit gives you three tools for describing one: its CHARACTERISTICS, its CATEGORY and its STAGE. Each tool answers a different question, and mixing them up is where answers go wrong. The idea to carry through this module: classify a movement by what it wants to change, never by how it behaves. A movement that marches, blocks roads and makes headlines every week can be asking for one small change to one rule. A movement that only ever writes letters and holds quiet meetings can be asking for the whole of society to be organised differently. How loud a movement is tells you about its methods. It tells you nothing at all about its category. The same caution applies to the stages. A movement that is shrinking has not necessarily failed, and a movement with an office and paid staff is not simply stronger than one run from kitchen tables. Each stage gains something and gives something up. Two things are deliberately left out. Methods of campaigning and taking action belong to the social action unit. The impact of particular named movements, and the change makers from Wales linked to them, belong to a module of their own. Every movement in this one is invented, so the three tools are all you need.

What makes it a movement

The specification lists six characteristics. A group needs to show them together to count as a social movement rather than an organisation, a crowd or a single campaign. Learn them precisely; deciding which situations have them comes next.

Two of these are social movements

Five invented situations. Tap the TWO that show all six characteristics of a social movement.

• Residents in many different towns form their own local groups, link up through a loose network with no single leader, and press together for years for the same change to how their region is run.
• A large crowd gathers outside a stadium one evening to complain about ticket prices, then goes home and never meets again.
• A national advisory body is set up by the government, with a chief executive and paid staff, to recommend changes to ministers.
• Neighbourhood groups across a region, started by residents themselves, coordinate through a shared network to keep a local tradition from disappearing, each believing that together they can save it.
• A company runs an expensive advertising campaign to persuade people to switch to its new product.

Keep it or change it

An invented movement grows among parents across a region. Its groups coordinate to stop small village schools being closed and merged into larger ones. Which description fits it best?

• A conservative movement, because its shared aim is to stop a change and keep what already exists
• An innovative movement, because any movement that organises itself is trying to create something new
• Not a social movement at all, because it is not asking for anything to change
• A revolutionary movement, because closing the schools would change a whole region

Two questions, four categories

Aberle sorted social movements by asking two questions about their GOAL, and only about their goal. Who is meant to change? Either particular individuals, or society as a whole. How much change is wanted? Either a limited, partial change, or a total, radical one. Put the two answers together and you get four categories. Neither question asks what the movement does, how many supporters it has, how angry it is, or whether it ever wins.

Which Aberle category

Five invented movements. For each, answer the two questions, who and how much, then choose its category. Three lives.

Loud is not the same as revolutionary

An invented movement uses only peaceful methods: public meetings, letters and silent marches. Its stated aim is to replace the entire way its society is governed. Select every statement that is right.

• In the Aberle scheme it is a revolutionary movement
• Its peaceful methods make it a reformative movement instead
• Its category comes from the scale and target of its aim, so its methods do not decide it
• It could only be called revolutionary if it were prepared to use force
• Whether it ever achieves its aim makes no difference to which category it belongs in
• It needs a very large membership before it can be placed in any category

Four stages, and what each one costs

The model on this specification describes four stages a movement can pass through. Preliminary. Discontent exists and spreads, but nothing is organised yet. People share a sense that something is wrong without acting together. Coalescence. Groups form, find each other, agree what they want and choose people to speak for them. This is where a shared aim and real coordination first appear. Institutionalization. The movement gains a formal organisation: offices, paid staff, rules, regular contact with those in power. It can now keep going for years. Decline. The movement winds down as a movement. That can follow defeat or lost support, and it can equally follow success, when what it wanted has been achieved and the pressure is no longer needed. The stage worth thinking hardest about is the third. A formal organisation lets a movement last, and it also moves the movement away from two of the characteristics that defined it: it becomes less bottom-up and less semiformal. So a strong answer never treats a later stage as simply better. For top marks, do three things with any case: name the stage, give the evidence from the case that puts it there, and say what the movement has gained and lost by reaching it.

Put one movement story in order

An invented movement campaigning for safer routes for children walking and cycling to school. Put the six moments of its life in the order the four-stage model predicts.

• Parents in different towns separately complain that the roads outside schools are unsafe
• Local parent groups start meeting and discover that others elsewhere feel the same
• The groups agree one shared aim and choose people to speak for all of them
• A registered organisation is set up, with paid staff and regular meetings with the council
• Safe routes become a normal requirement for every new school
• Most local groups stop meeting, because the thing they wanted is now routine

Match each moment to its movement stage

The band that signed a contract

Four friends start a band in a garage. Nobody is in charge. They decide everything together round a kitchen table, they play wherever they are asked, and the music changes whenever one of them has a new idea. Then they sign a contract. Now there is a manager, a tour schedule, a lawyer and a budget. They can keep playing for years, to far bigger crowds, and they could never have managed that on their own. But notice what they gave up. Decisions that used to be made round the table are now made in meetings they are not always invited to. New ideas have to fit the schedule. Some early fans say the band has changed, and in one sense they are right: it has become a business that employs the four friends, rather than four friends who happen to play together. Neither version is simply better. The contract bought staying power and cost them control. Keep that trade in mind whenever you meet a campaign that has grown an office.

Complete the social movement facts

A social movement grows from the _____, among ordinary members of society rather than those already in power. Its groups share one _____, and a belief that acting together can succeed, which the specification calls collective faith. When a movement gains offices, paid staff and rules, it has reached the stage called _____. In the Aberle scheme, a movement seeking a limited change to one part of society is _____, while one seeking total change to society as a whole is _____, whatever methods it uses. A movement that shrinks because its aim has been achieved is in _____, and that is not the same as failing.

Build the categorisation sentence

An invented movement holds silent marches and wants to replace the entire way its country is governed. It has just set up a formal organisation with paid staff. Assemble the sentence that would earn most.

Four arguments about one movement

A class is studying an invented movement that campaigned for better access to health services in rural areas. At each stage somebody makes a claim, and you decide how to answer. The movement and everyone in it are invented.

• The movement has become a registered organisation with paid staff and a seat on a health board. A classmate says it has stopped being a social movement and is now just an organisation. Decide how to answer.
• A long-standing member argues that the movement should never have taken on any formal structure, so that it stayed true to where it began. Decide what the trade-off was.
• Rural health access becomes a standard requirement, and most of the local groups in the movement stop meeting. A news summary calls the movement a failure because it has shrunk. Decide.
• Another group in the same area campaigns to stop the local hospital being merged into a larger one further away. A classmate says it cannot be a social movement, because movements are always about progress. Decide.

Analyse a social movement

Choose a social movement you have studied, or invent one. Analyse it using all three tools from this module: its characteristics, its category and its stage.

• Show which of the six characteristics it has, with evidence for each one
• Say whether its goal is conservative or innovative
• Answer who should change and how much, then name its Aberle category
• Explain why its methods do not decide that category
• Name its stage, and say what reaching it has gained and cost