The Theory and Politics of Contemporary Social Movements

Politics (1994) 14(2) pp. 59-65

The Theory and Politics of Contemporary Social Movements Maree Gladwin

Social movements of the 1960s have given rise to new theoretical perspectives such as Resource Mobilization 7beo y and theories of New Social Movements Resource Mobiliza- tion meory analyses the dynamics of mobilization: the gective organisation of social movements and their influence on muin- stream political institutions. By contrast, New Social Movement theories seek to explain the anti-institutional nature of contemporary movements which are said to pursue radical social transformation through mainly cultural means. In this article, both theoretical approaches are examined but @und to be inadequate explanations of the complexities of contemporary movements and their relationship with the political environment.

Introduction Social movements which have come to pro- minence in Western societies since the 1960s have destabilized social and political theories of collective action and social change. Efforts to understand the origins, nature and implica- tions of contemporary social movements, such as the women’s movement, the peace and ecology movements, have led to a renais- sance of social movement theory and research spanning a variety of academic ds-

ciplines. This article examines two main theoretical perspectives for understanding contemporary social movements: Resource Mobilization Theoty and theories of New Social Movements. The major claims of these perspectives will be outlined and the key cri- ticisms noted. In conclusion, the adequacy of each approach will be assessed.

Theories of social movements

1. Resource mobilization theory

Resource Mobilization Theory has provided the predominant approach to social movements within the North American context from the 1970s to the 1990s (Morris and Her- ring, 1987, p.178). By emphasising the rationality and high level of social integration of social movement actors, Resource Mobiliza- tion Theory overturned the ‘classical’ theories of social movements such as the Mass Society theories of Hoffner, Le Bon, Fromm and Arendt who explained their negative images of massification in terms of the disintegration of traditional society and the resultant chaotic influence wrought by fanatical, psychopatho- logical and alienated individuals (Pakulski, 1990, p.8). More importantly, however,

Maree Gladwin, University of Southampton

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Contemporary Social Movements 0 Maree Gladwin Politics (1994) 14(2) pp. 59-65

Resource Mobilization Theory, influenced by conflict theorists such as Mills and Dahren- dorf, challenged the basic assumptions of functionalism which dominated North Amer- ican social sciences in the 1950s and 60s (Canel, 1992, p.24). Resource Mobilization Theory therefore, is described by Morris and Herring as a ‘major theoretical shift’ in the study of social movements in North America (1987, p.138). As a challenge to pre-existing theories,

Resource Mobilization Theory can be seen in its historical context to have grown out of the insurgencies of the 1960s and 70s: the Civil Rights Movement, the New Left and student movements, the women’s movement, the anti- Vietnam and peace movements, the ecology movement and movements of indigenous peoples, disabled people and the poor. From their experience as participants in social movements of the period, Resource Mobiliza- tion theorists rejected the ideologically biased ‘classical’ social movement theories which were based on socio-psychological interpreta- tions of collective behaviour and analyses of social disequilibrium and civilization disease (Marwell and Oliver, 1984, p.2). Instead, they proposed a theory whose units of analysis are the social movement itself and the structural variables which govern the rational organisation of collective action through the mobilization of human and material resources.

From the perspective of Resource Mobiliza- tion Theory as expressed in the work of its well-known protagonists, McCarthy and Zald (1973, 1987), social movements are said to emerge when broad social conditions facil- itate their mobilization and the development of organisational structures. These functions are said to be carried out by reasoning and s u e d social actors for whom the mobilization of movements is instrumental in the achievement of specific social and political goals. While the existence of grievances which derive from forms of inequality and injustice may underlie the motives of social movement actors, for McCarthy and Zald, ‘there is always enough discontent in any

society to supply grass-roots support for a movement’ (1987, p.18). In themselves, therefore, the existence of grievances is not a suffi- cient explanation for the eruption of social movements in particular environments and at specific points in time. Resource Mobiliza- tion Theory thus focuses upon the processes by which social movement organisations are formed and are able to pursue their strategies for social and political change.

Rejecting negative and reactionary images of social movements as anarchic and chaotic, McCarthy and Zald provide a model of social movements as rational, instrumental and increasingly professionahsed as organisations mature and pursue their goals using a reper- toire of informal and unconventional means, as well as by negotiation with political parties, institutions and the state. This emphasis on the objective rationality of collective action, and hence, its scientific predictability, char- acterises much of the extensive research into social movements which has been undertaken by social scientists in North America. With the aim of generating a body of theoretical knowledge which informs the organisation of social movements, this research has largely relied upon positivist assumptions to explore ‘the nuts and bolts of social movements’ including factors such as recruitment, mem- bership, leadership, resources, goals and strategies, organisational structures and life cycles. For this reason, Resource Mobilization Theory has been described as an ‘intermediate’ level of theoretical analysis, dealing with ‘contextual’ or ‘micro processes’ (Canel, 1992, p.39) rather than seeking to explain the origins and characteristics of contemporary social movements in relation to broad structural and cultural change.

2. New Social Movement Theory: three perspectives

In 1969, Alain Touraine drew from the Paris student uprisings evidence of the arrival of ‘new’ social movements and the ‘post-industrial’ society (Touraine, 1969). Since then, the

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Politics (1994) 14(2) pp. 59-65 Contemporary Social Movements 0 Ma fee Gladwin

expansion of social movements such as the women’s movement, human rights movements, and the peace and ecology movements in Western Europe, has stimulated numerous contributions to what is broadly described by Cohen (1985), Dalton (19901, Epstein (19901, Scott (19901, Carroll (19921, Cane1 (1992) and others, as ‘New Social Movement Theory’. This section discusses three perspectives within the broad scope of New Social Move- ment Theory. These perspectives are best illu- strated in the work of Habermas and Offe, Touraine and Melucci, and Laclau and Mouffe.

With its roots in Marxism and the Frankfurt School, New Social Movement Theory can generally be contrasted with the positivism, utilitarianism and intermediate-level focus of Resource Mobilization Theory. By analysing changes in the economic and political nature of Western capitalism, New Social Movement theorists attempt to identify the conditions which have given rise to ‘new’ forms of collective action; forms which seem to question prior assumptions w i h n Marxism about the nature of the revolutionary subject’. For these theorists, new forms of protest seem to indi- cate that

the potentially revolutionary subject had been displaced ... and was no longer to be found in the efforts of the working class to organise itself but in protest movements centred around blacks, distinctly privileged and middle-class college students and women (Grossberg and Nelson, 1988, p.4).

Contemporary forms of struggle and protest are thus seen by New Social Movement theorists to suggest a more complex and fragmented society than that provided by Marx’s image of

a bi-polar world characterised by epochal struggle between two competing world- historical forces - wage labour and capital, proletariat and bourgeoisie, sociahsm and capitalism (Boggs, 1986, p.57).

This new historical reality, highlighted by social movements from the 1960s onwards,

has contributed to three dimensions of the crisis in Marxism. Firstly, as BOBS (1986) and Scott (1990) argue, the impact of non class- based mass movements has destabilised the philosophical foundation of classical Marxism with its commitment to ‘scientific materialism’ and a pre-determined historical logic which ‘effectively diminishes the space for human action and political initiative’ (Boggs, 1986, p.58). Secondly, orthodox Marxism provides a single-order system of explanation based on productivist theory. Within this logic, all aspects of social existence are analytically reducible to material forces and controlled by the overarchmg rhythm of capital. Thirdly, for Boggs, like the New Social Movement theorists under discussion, this dialectic of production and class relations means that orthodox Marxism is ill-equipped to confront the pro- blem of multiple forms of domination and hence, to provide a framework for analysing the development of new movements themselves (1986, p.59).

In seeking an alternative explanation to traditional Marxism, Habermas (1981) and Offe (1985) place new movements within the context of late industrial capitalism racked by legitimation crises, problems of system integration and control, economic restructuring, increased bureaucratization (e.g the Welfare State) and the growing intervention of the state and market into what they see as the previously private realm of the ‘life-world (Habermas, 1981, p.35). The result of these negative effects of late capidst moderniza- tion, says Offe, is that

established modes of economic and political rationality are no longer concentrated and class specific, but dspersed in time, space and kind so as to effect virtually every member of society in a broad variety of ways (1985, p.844).

In this analysis, the work role, as the exclu- sive or basic focus of the experience of deprivation, is replaced by social and cultural forms of deprivation brought about, for instance, by the expansion of state regulatory

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powers into civil society and the increased commodification of everyday life.

Rather than the result of capitalism in crisis, Touraine (1969; 1981; 1985; 1988) and Melucci (1980; 1985; 1988; 1989) relate new social movements to the development of a ‘post-industrial’ capitalism which is seen by Touraine as a ‘new societal type’ and a ‘new stage of history’. Here, the transformation from industrial capitalism to an ‘informational‘ or ‘programmed society is explained in terms of growing complexity and the technological production of symbolic goods. Unrestrained by any laws of human nature, divine law or meta-social guarantees of social order, thls ‘post-industrial’ society is one which has an almost boundless capacity to influence its own reproduction through cultural and symbolic means (Touraine, 1985, p.781).

In the more post-modernist and post-structuralist conceptions of Touraine and Melucci (Carroll, 1992, p.61, society is an ‘ensemble of systems of action’ (Touraine, 1981, p.30) wherein power is dispersed and relocated to the field of symbolic struggles over the control of ‘historicity’: that is, the cultural, cogni- tive, economic and ethical models by which a collectivity produces a culture (Touraine, 1988, p.40). Efforts to control the internal contradictions of the post-industrial society which arise, for instance, from the need for largely autonomous and highly skilled work- ers, have led to a diversification in the forms of power, to include, for instance, Foucault’s ‘power microphysics’ - and forms which af€ect everyday life, the deep motivation of individual action and the processes by which people give meaning to things (Melucci, 1985, p.796). For Touraine, new social movements are located at the ‘synchronic level’, within civil society, where the ‘stakes’ of ‘class conflict’ now involve the contestation of the main cultural patterns and not, for example, the acquisition of political power or acheving transformation at the level of the state. In Melucci’s terms, movements raise questions to the ‘rationalizing apparatus which are not allowed‘, and in so doing, they ‘make power

visible’ and show that the social contract, is negotiable (1985, p.808).

For Habermas, Offe, Touraine and Melucci, therefore, new social movements are funda- mentally different from pre-existing, class- based movements which operate in conven- tional ways and within political institutions. This perception of new movements is most clearly represented by Offe through his model of ‘old and new political paradigms’ (1985, p.820). According to this schema, the movements of the ‘old political paradigm’ include the formal and hierarchically organised trade unions, left parties and groups which are engaged in ‘distributive conflict’ over issues such as economic growth, military and social security and social control. Movements adopt- ing the ‘new political paradigm’, however, struggle over issues such as peace, the environment, human rights and the preservation of identity, and are said to be based upon infor- mally organised, loosely connected groups which are spontaneous, affective, decen- tralised, egalitarian, and pre-figurative. Because they aim to resist the increased bureaucratization and institutionalization of everyday life and the colonization of the life- world, movements of the ‘new political paradigm’, says Offe, adopt autonomous and extra-parliamentary forms of struggle which take place within civil society - in an ‘intermediate space’ between the public and the private sphere, where they challenge both the boundaries of state-sanctioned politics and liberal ideology (Offe, 1985, p.820).

From a neo-Gramscian perspective, Laclau (1990) and MouEe (1988) (1985; 1987) share many of the perceptions of the crisis within late capitalism held by Habermas and Offe. By contrast, however, new social movements are analysed in terms of struggles which have arisen in response to the ‘new hegemonic formation’ which was established after World War I1 and which introduced new forms of oppression and subordination into contemporary capitalist societies (Mouffe, 1988, p.91). While the forms of protest and many of the issues may be new, nevertheless, for


Politics (1994) 14(2) p p . 59-65 Contemporary Social Movements 0 Maree Gladwin

Laclau and Mode, new social movements have their oppositional roots in the ‘democratic imaginary’ of the 18th century. Hence, they are linked by means of a ‘democratic discourse’ with pre-existing forms of social protest and struggle. Like that of Touraine and Melucci, therefore, h s analysis seeks to provide an alternative explanation for the origin of contemporary forms of social conflict to that provided in classical Marxist theory.

Rejecting the economic reductionism, determinism, structuralism, essentialism and totalitarianism of orthodox Marxist theory, Laclau and Mouffe argue for a view of contemporary capitaltsm wherein power is dispersed and fragmentary; always already present in the social (Osbome, 1991, p.219) rather than determined by the economic base or concentrated in the state and other institutions. For Laclau and Mode, power is said to be reproduced and contested through ‘dis- cursive practices’ that is, the totality of linguistic and non-linguistic articulatory practices which constitute and organise social relations (1987, pp.82-84). The struggles of new social movements, therefore, are evidence of the existence of these multiple forms of power in contemporary capitalism. Hence, while they strive for autonomy and to redress inequal- ities in civil society rather than seek the con- quest of political power (Mouffe, 1988, pp.96- 7), they are nevertheless essential elements, along with class-based movements, in Laclau and Mouffe’s new politics of ‘democratic plur- alism’.

Assessing theories of social movements In challenging pre-existing approaches to understanding social movements, both Resource Mobilization Theory and theories of New Social Movements emphasise the political nature of social movements and their struggles to achieve social change. Resource

Mobilization Theory, for instance, has argued for and demonstrated using empirical means, the rational-instrumental character of diverse social movement organisations which exert iduence within the liberal-democratic framework of the North American political system. This emphasis, however, has had the effect of normalising the anti-institutional and anti-sys- temic aspects of social movements and under-theorizing those goals which relate to thoroughgoing social and cultural transformation. By contrast, New Social Movement Theory problematises the development of ‘new’ social movements which redehe and extend the boundaries of the ‘political’ and engage in struggles to rearrange all areas of social life through mainly unconventional and cultural means. Nevertheless, this emphasis on the innovatory nature of new social movements, a claim which for New Social Move- ment theorists is contingent upon the analysis of crisis or rupture at the macro-social level, fails to recognise or explore the many con- tinuities between old and new movements. For Scott (1990), Plotke (1990) Cane1 (1992) and others, the claim is clearly historically inaccurate and empirically unsustainable. Rather than concentrating upon anti-institutional and cultural strategies, new social movements such as the women’s movement and the anti-racism movement, have adopted a ‘multi-layered political practice’ which ‘places significant emphasis on the public sphere and the institutional underpinnings of power, while exponentially increasing the possible sites of political control and political struggle’ (Kauf€man, 1990, p.73).

The need to sustain the discontinuity thesis suggests that New Social Movement theorists, while recognising the challenge that new social movements offer to Marxist orthodoxy, have continued to frame their analysis within a broadly Marxist problematic. Old dualisms and assumptions, therefore, are not over- come, but incorporated and inverted. Wihn the ‘pluralistic’ environment of late capitalism identified by Offe, Laclau and Mode, for instance, class-based movements continue to

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co-exist alongside movements of the ‘new political paradigm’, while for Touraine and Melucci, ‘class conflict’ is removed from its basis in the means of production and rede- fined as the struggle for control over cultural codes and meaning within the post-industrial, informational society. This apparent reluc- tance to move beyond the Marxist problematic and to respond to the far-reaching critiques offered by social movements themselves (critiques which question the gendered and racially-biased foundations of knowledge and power) have caused feminists such as Pringle and Watson to question the nature of the political standards upon which the new, ‘radical democratic’ politics of contemporary social action is to be based (1992, p.70). To the extent that New Social Movement Theory seems to place ‘new’ movements on the anti- institutional and cultural sidelines of main- stream political practice, in an unclear relationship to traditional movements of the ‘old paradigm, it seems reasonable to wonder whether such a perspective is indeed ‘(male), socialist hegemony back in a more sophisti- cated form’ (Pringle and Watson, 1 9 2 , p.70).

Conclusion While both Resource Mobilization Theory and theories of New Social Movements have contributed to our understanding of contemporary social movements in important ways, neither adequately represents both the ongoing historical and empirical complexities of social movements themselves and their inter-relationship with the political, social and cultural environment of the 1990s. Never- theless, the persistence and revitalisation within Britain of the women’s movement, the lesbian and gay movement, and the anti- racism movement, along with the emergence of the AIDS Movement and a broadly-based equal opportunities movement, continue to require a theoretical response which ‘addres- ses social phenomena in a way which con- verges with recent political history’ (Osbome,

1991, p.202). Given their limitations, however, it seems that neither Resource Mobilization Theory nor New Social Movement Theory could adequately perform that task.

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The Theory and Politics of Contemporary Social Movements