The Frames And Their Goals And Beliefs Into Collective Action

In history, there have been many social changes that have occurred like the industrial revolution, the abolition of slavery and the Civil Right Movement. The less powerful not having enough voices to overcome the obstacles being erected by the powerful and many more examples. These voices play a major role when it comes to making big political and social changes. In “Return to Hayneville,” Gregory Orr recounts his experience and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He argues that vocal campaigns and movements in public discourse and deep connections within people, help bring about change in today’s society. Whereas, In Vivian Yee, Alan Blinder and Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Parkland Students Start a Social Movement” they bring

Social movements are not spontaneous events, and they must build towards their goals over time on a series of phases and preconditions. Successful social movements rely on a number of micro and macro factors including efficient organizational structures, the ability to mobilize human and material resources, as well as effective leadership and rapid diffusion of ideas. As it will be shown, the presence of mobilizing structures, movement frames as well as suitable political opportunities combined with reactionary incentives during the Civil Rights Movement helped culminate both short and long term societal changes.

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

In light of the recent presidential election, many people fear for their freedom as restrictions on immigration, religion, and abortion rights have been proposed. As a result of this, on January 20th, countless citizens banded together across America in “Women’s Marches”, the largest of about 400,000 people at Washington, D.C. (10 Actions). At these protests, advocating for people of all genders, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations, zero arrests were made. These peaceful gatherings gained the attention and unification of many people across the country and motivated citizens to continue to organize events. At the Women’s March on San Francisco, it was said by a speaker that we are “on the right side of history”. As people continue to vocalize their disagreements with the government, change will always be made, though it may be

Social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s have been interpreted and written about in varying ways. While contemporary scholarship disagrees with past analyses and offer fresh perspectives, past research can also provide a pathway for defining important questions for future research on social movements in America.

Social movements typically concern institutions that serve explicit and implicit purposes, including “perpetuation of cultural norms, value maintenance, policy making, and enforcement of statutes and doctrines”. The significance of this is that institutions frame situations to their benefit by definitions and interpretations. Protesters challenge this definitional authority by offering counter frames that portray institutions negatively. In attempt to sustain power, credibility, and legitimacy, institutions will implement four strategies when responding to these challenges: evasion, counter-persuasion, coercive persuasion, and adjustment. For example, during the Selma to Montgomery marches law enforcement institutions strategically used the evasion strategy in order to place a frame that the social movements do not exist and that their preexisting laws were constitutional. During this time the government and media did not acknowledge black Americans as equals let alone citizens of the United States. Thus, were seen as unworthy of institutional response. The institutional strategy, counter-persuasion, deals with the notion of “challenge a social movement’s vision of reality and attempt to discredit its leaders, members, and demands”. During the Selma to Montgomery marches, ideas were framed as “ill advised, poorly informed, and lacking merit”. This then relates to the third strategy, coercive persuasion, where there was an “enhancing of fear appeals or a method to resist change due to the appeal to basic fear”. Coercive persuasion is formed in order to persuade target audiences that force will follow non-compliance. For example, law enforcement institutions of the Selma to Montgomery marches threatened protesters through fear that if they participated in any uncivil uproar that they would be incarcerated or

For many years, deferent social organization groups and activist have used different tactics to resolves different issues such as race. These claimants have dependent on tactics such as marchers, protests, sit-ins and even gone to extreme lengths in order to change and create policies. A policy is meant to address to address a particular troubling condition; however, there are many critiques of policies. A policy can be critiqued for being insufficient because it does not quite go far enough to actually resolve the issue. Secondly, a policy can be critiqued for to excessive by going too far, which could make the current situation worse or even potentially resulting for a new problem. Thirdly, policy are often criticized for being misguided

The act of framing is without a doubt a tactical strategy. During the organization of a social movement, framing was as a way to “assign meaning” (McAdam, 339) or look at events in ways that could inspire support from both group members and the common people while subjugating the opposing party. McAdam (339) states, “Mediating between opportunity and action are people and the... meanings they attach to their situations.” The events that occur during the rise of a social movement all present opportunities to help members achieve their goal but in order to even act upon these opportunities, the people involved must frame their situation in a way that will draw support to their cause. During the Civil Rights movement, the use of framing, on both sides, greatly influenced the outcome of social reform.

Lydia Mason is 57 years old and lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She took a Women’s Studies class in 1979 at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. At the time, Women’s Studies was the most interesting class out there. It was very popular amongst young people. “Everybody took it,” she said “girls and boys. Everyone wanted to know more about it.” This positive attitude towards the history of women’s suffrage continued until around fifteen years later. Then, the term feminist started to become something with which people did not want to associate themselves. “In the late eighties I would start to hear people say ‘You know, I’m not a feminist, but…’ and then follow it up with something that I personally believed to be a feminist thought. And I still hear that today.”

What determines a movement? Malcolm Gladwell defines what pushes a movement to make a difference. He analyzes the concept of “strong ties” and “weak ties” and how these relationships affect an individual’s willpower and determination to help a cause. Gregory Orr puts these ideas into context in his memoir, “Return to Hayneville”, in which he recounts his experience and involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”, focuses, in particular, on the civil rights movement concentrates to the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina. Gladwell’s ideas and opinions of social and political emancipations are given a real world setting, as

Social movements shed light to social issues present in communities and harvest social change in political, religious, educational, health, government, and other institutional matters. Social movements give individuals a clear outlet to concerns about the rights and well-being of themselves and others, mostly through public protest and conversation, in order to promote social justice and democracy. Throughout history, humans naturally ended up starting movements to simply improve their way of life and movements have continually aided in a remarkable change in communities. In the essay “From Civil Rights to Megachurches,” Charles Duhigg explains the three critical steps that initiative successful social movements. Social movements must

“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’?”

Social movements have a tremendous impact on our society and it is important that we understand how those movements are shaped. As individuals we are all part of a greater society and could be called upon to stand up for human rights. Understanding how to shape social movements so they have better chances of succeeding could mean the difference between a society that guides improved human rights and one that loses sight. There is a great deal of literature on social movements and it has become increasing popular since the Vietnam Era of social protest. The literature typically

Above definition revealed that social action is used as tool for mobilizing people. And it has the scope of change within society with respect to a planned strategy. However such a mobilization can never be taken to its logical conclusion as the contradiction can never be brought and a stage of a

The second characteristic of NSM’s is tied to the first, in that groups no longer tend to share an over-arching ideological framework, whereas in Marxist discourse, such a shared frame was the “unifying and totalizing element for collective action” (Buechler & Cylke 277). Ideological unity has been supplanted by “pragmatic orientations” where movement members seek “institutional reform” to attain greater power in decision making processes, promoting a “‘democratizing dynamic’” in social movement discourse.