Page 105 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

Social Movements 91

a feature of at least some aspects of feminist activities. Furthermore, it is
evident that social policy and the law are important agents of social
change, so that it is unlikely that any movement concerned with social
transformation would ignore the state altogether. Again, it is perhaps not
so much that new social movements have introduced new forms of politics
since the 1960s, but rather that those forms that did not easily fi t the
modern sociological paradigm have been overlooked so that they are now
taken to represent a radical departure from the norm. New social move-
ments might more reasonably be seen as marking a change of emphasis,
both of orientation and in terms of organization and activities, rather than
a completely new form of politics.
Social movements have, then, required and contributed to the re -
thinking of political sociology as a result both of actual changes in politics
and also because they have drawn attention to forms previously neglected
by the traditional focus on politics at the level of the nation - state. As we
will see in section 3.1 , this re - thinking is evident in the development of
social movement research, even in the case of Resource Mobilization
Theory (RMT) which began from very rationalist, instrumental premises.
In section 3.2 , we look at the competing framework of social movement
research, that of New Social Movement Theory (NSMT), which began
with an understanding of the centrality of cultural politics to social move-
1
ments. The work of Alberto Melucci has been especially important in
this tradition, dropping the vestiges of determinism which kept it tied to
old sociological models. Although RMT and NSMT began from quite
different premises, the former in liberal individualism, the latter in
Marxism, they have converged in their focus on cultural politics to the
point where it is now possible to synthesize the two traditions around a
common core of research interests. In section 3.3 , we discuss Mario
Diani ’ s synthesis of RMT and NSMT in the light of our concern with
cultural politics. In section 3.4 , we look at what is an increasingly impor-
tant aspect of social movement studies, their growth and transformation
in relation to globalization.

3.1 Resource Mobilization Theory and Beyond

Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT) is based on the liberal view that
social phenomena are the result of individual decisions and actions. It was
explicitly developed on the premises of rational choice theory, to oppose
previous explanations of social movements in American sociology in
which they were seen as psychologically motivated, as a more or less