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Chapter 3






                      Social Movements

















                              Social movements play a very important role in contemporary political
                    sociology. First, they have been directly influential in its development

                    within the university. That social movements have such a central place in
                    the understanding of new forms of politics in the field is largely due to

                    the way in which they have been placed on the research agenda by those
                    sympathetic to, or actively involved in, those politics. In particular, in the
                    1970s, it was those who identified with social movements who worked

                    to make dimensions of inequality and exclusion other than class signifi -
                    cant. Similarly, debates in the 1980s and  ‘ 90s over how identity formation
                    should be understood were closely related to the  “ identity politics ”  of
                    social movements. In the  ‘ 00s, issues of global justice brought to our
                    attention by social movements have become prominent in contemporary
                    political sociology. Second, the understanding that members of social
                    movements bring to bear on social life has been important. Where society

                    is seen in terms of struggle and conflict, sociological explanations that
                    treat the reproduction of the social order as practically inevitable are
                    likely to be discredited, even to be seen as complicit with the  status quo .
                    This has been the fate of Marxism, now seen as over - deterministic and

                    insufficiently sensitive to the possibilities of radical change at the micro -
                      political level. Third, as a topic of study, social movements problematize
                    older models of sociological explanation insofar as they see politics as
                    organized solely around the nation - state. Social movements see them-
                    selves, and they are analyzed in contemporary political sociology, as
                    involved in struggles over the defi nition of meanings and the construction
                    of new identities and lifestyles, as well as addressing formal political
                    institutions. They, therefore, bring the consideration of cultural politics
                    to the center of sociological concerns with social change.
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