Social Movements And Identity By Alicia Jones Mills

People fighting against injustices are something that happens every day it is inevitable unless the injustices cease to exist. As stated before social movements happen because of a certain injustice. This can be from people feeling oppressed from their race, sex, or sexuality. They have had many contributions to society mainly helping those and they get rid of oppression. While inspiring others who are oppressed as well to set up and speak up again their oppressors. Mainly helping other groups use the same successful tactic that other social group has done in the past or present. Some of these groups that are looked back upon on how successful their tactics were are the early Women's movement, Africa American movement, Chicano Movement, and

The issues I focused on in my analysis of Cal students are marriage and parenthood. Specifically, I chose to compare how opinions on these issues differed by gender. Kathleen Gerson discusses the new generation’s expectations from marriage and families to a great degree in her book The Unfinished Revolution. As Gerson states, “Most of my interviewees hope to create lasting, egalitarian partnerships, but they are also doubtful about their chances of reaching this goal.” (10) This is a characteristic that also stood out in my analysis: the majority of the students interviewed hope to create an egalitarian relationship in which there is no strict enforcement of traditional gender roles. Or as Gerson says, “…the vast majority want a permanent bond, but they do not wish for that bond to be defined by rigid gender distinctions.” (104) I only encountered one exception to this trend: a female student who expressed the desire to become a full time stay-at-home mom after having children, thereby putting all financial responsibility on her spouse. One thing that was different in my findings was that with the exception of one or two, these Cal students do not think it will be difficult to find a suitable partner. This is likely because most students

Social movements are one of the primary means through which the public is able to collectively express their concerns about the rights and wellbeing of themselves and others. Under the proper conditions, social movements not only shed light on issues and open large scale public discourse, but they can also serve as a means of eliciting expedited societal change and progress. Due to their potential impact, studying the characteristics of both failed and successful social movements is important in order to ensure that issues between the public and the government are resolved to limit injustices and maintain societal progress.

Black Movements In America is written by Cedric J. Robinson, who is a professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robinson traces the emergence of Black political cultures in the United States from slave resistance in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the civil rights movement of the present. He also focuses on Black resistance which was forged from a succession of quests such as The return to Africa; escape and alliances with anti-colonial Native- American resistance; and eventually emigration. This is a historical primer whose subject matter is well-indicated by the title. The Narrative focuses on the chronological poles of robinson 's ranging, chronological and compelling narrative of movements in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries maroon societies, and urban community organized during the 'late ' years of black power movements.

Therefore, it is understandable that movement scholars tend to write from a rather activist stance. There is nothing wrong with this per se, however, as historians, we should critically assess in how far this positioning might limit our scholarship. At times, Payne tends to overemphasize the unity and the solidarity among the organizers and the local population and fails to mention the tensions among direct democratic groups like SNCC. Every social movement is made up of people, united under what they perceive as an urgent need to bring about change. This unity tends to suppress theoretical and practical differences for some time and can thus create a tremendous amount of communality and solidarity among its members. However, as history has shown over and over again, as soon as the external threat either diminishes or proves resistant to change, movements tend to disunite. This is what Baker and other activists wanted to prevent by modeling their training around local long-term strategies and individual

Social movements have many different definitions. In his paper, Social Movements, James Jasper defines them as “sustained and intentional efforts to foster or retard social changes, primarily outside the normal institutional channels encouraged by authorities”. (CITE) In simpler terms, a social movement is a movement created by people who want a social or political change. A big part of social movements is resource mobilization theory. Resource mobilization theory states that social movements “succeed through the effective mobilization of resources and the development of political opportunities for members” (CITE). This means that if a social movement wants to be successful, they need to organize themselves so they can do things such as collect funds from constituents and elites, receive volunteers and members, and get their

Social movements are large groups of people who are usually without political power and influence that decide to promote or resist social change through unconventional means (Monnier, 2010). Social movements begin when there is a problem identified by a certain group of people. The group finds out who is responsible for failing to appropriately address their issues and at that point proceed to take action themselves. These movements can be violent or nonviolent when addressing the responsible parties. There are many types of social movements that include but not limited to civil rights, animal rights and environmental rights movements. The basis of these movements would derive from the conflict theory. The conflict theory

“As they fathom injustice, organize to protest, craft a tactics, and engage in action, these bodies read what is happening and articulate their imaginative rebuttal. In so doing they demonstrate to themselves and all those watching that something can be done. Could this be why they are called political ‘movements’?”

The timeline can vary because social change depends on the people, their perception, and thrives on the problems festering in a society. A social movement is “defined as consciously organized attempts, outside of established institutions, to enhance or resist change through group action.” (Ballantine, Roberts, and Korgen) They are broken into different forms of movements, the most drastic being the one seen in The Handmaid’s Tale. A revolutionary social movement is an attempt to bring about a total change in society by overthrowing existing power structures and replacing them with new ones.

When starting a movement, it is vital to have something like a mission or ideology that defines what the movement is about. In the case of the Earth Day and the environmental movement it the mission is very simple which allows for many interpretations. Although the main goal is to help the environment, the ways in which everything was brought together for Earth Day had various angles. Woodhouse (2014) in the article After Earth Day the Modern Environmental Movement explains the mission as, “It was neither centralized nor focused on a specific message or political agenda; instead it was heterogeneous and intended to educate as much as to protest” p557. In the case of Earth Day, they were looking for a way to connect to communities without force and doing it through education is much more palatable especially when part of the goal is to convince someone that here is even an issue occurring. First fixing the ignorance then going for policy is a great move. I think it is similar to the feminist movements start with first talking to working women then challenging policy of the country. Also, when the mission of the movement is so simple like Earth Day it allows for many groups of people interested in the environment to be on board not just issues with pollution and air quality (Woodhouse 2014:557). When different groups of people work together using the idea of education as their mission there is really no path that

Start by narrowing the historical literature down into three main schools of thought so you can take a closer look at how social movements are born, why some succeed, and others fail. (Clearly, using a broad brush to paint a simplified scope of the topic, but this will help to centralize the data in a more digestible context.) The main schools of thought in this paper have been grouped in the following types of action: Collective Action, Economic/Political, and Leadership Centered.

Yet again participation in social events constructs a new identity, a voice. Voices are not just the right to vote or express belonging through the act of protest, as not all voices are intended to get acknowledged (Kahu, 2015). Being a union member I portray my identity in a different way. Participating in strikes is my way of conveying my rights. This participation concludes my idea of raising awareness of what is important to my identity, my sense of belonging in a community. Although an act of protest may not make a difference in an overall outcome, it can still leave the idea behind for future consideration. Not always we act on behalf of conveying the self-belonging but the belonging of a community as a whole. In the end my rights is my

Non- violent movements are a way for groups of people to achieve change and create an impact in the society. The labor, African American, and Vietnam anti-war peace movements were significantly successful in abolishing harsh working conditions, gaining civil rights for blacks, and withdrawing from the Vietnam War (Upchurch). Non-violent and violent movements have been used throughout history to evoke change in the society, obtain equality, civil rights, and peace. While violent protest result in the same changes, non-violent methods can ultimately go beyond local violent protest, spread nationally through movements, and protest without requiring violence. These events because of the non-violent

This essay will examine the factors which determine the success or failure of emerging social movements by looking in turn at the micro-level, the macro-level, then by analyzing how relationships with the state mediate this, and finally will argue that a closer look at the meso-level and at organizational and strategic capacity could shed light on many remaining areas of

Protests play a highly significant role in generating awareness of a certain topic, grievance or issue that may affect certain demographics or groups of people. The below essay aims to explore the connection between social and collective identity, and its influence and importance in protests. This will be done by discussing the “FeesMustFall” movement that was aimed at getting free tertiary education in South Africa. The protests were mainly student orientated and were highly documented.