Turbulence in the 1960s and 1970s renewed an interest in social movements and sparked a revolution in social movement theory. This paper stresses concern that modern scholars are blind to important changes that have taken place in recent decades in the nature and form of social movements. Since the ‘60s and ‘70s, social movements have been equated in literature with disruptive protests, loosely coordinated national struggles over political issues, urban and/or campus-based protest activity, and the avocation for disadvantaged minority groups – Civil Rights, antiwar, gender, and student related protests led to this ionic, stylized portrait of social movements.
The study in this paper analyzed protest events in Chicago between 1970-2000 to assess these stylizations and to address new questions. To identify events for the study, scholars defined protests as public, involving two or more individuals, and must not be initiated by state or commercial actors. What researchers found was that the most common form of disruption in the study was arrest, and that it only occurs in less than 5% of all events. Another finding is that 2% or less of all protest activity features injuries and property damage. This significantly contrasts the dominant narrative of protest features and proves that they are too deeply rooted in empirical work on the cluster of new-left movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The universal protest principles that have dominated social movement scholarship miss out on the subtle but clear changes in action, form, and claims of contemporary social movements.
It is imperative that scholars more thoroughly interrogate the changing nature of social movement form in the U.S. and assess the significance of these changes in light of social movement theory.
Read the original paper below:
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sampson/files/2005_mobilization.pdf
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