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Social Movements 107

individuals, it takes the collective nature of that confl ict as given. In par-

ticular, due to the influence of Alain Touraine, the activity of social move-

ments is seen as involving conflict between dominators and dominated
which is inherent in all societies and which provides the motor of social
change. Theorists of new social movements in this tradition emphasize,
therefore, the revolutionary dimension of social movement activity, even
if revolution is not seen in Marxist terms. The aim of a true social move-
ment is not to infl uence the political process, as in the RMT tradition,
but to break the limits of the current system and to lead the transforma-
tion of society. New Social Movement theorists are often criticized, as we
will see, for their utopian ideals, particularly where they are inconsistent
with other aspects of their work. However, it is their understanding of

cultural contestation as a vital element of social conflict that makes the
contribution of this tradition so important.

A lain T ouraine: s ocial m ovements and the s ociology
of a ction

According to Alain Touraine, social movements are the central topic in
sociology. Since the ordering of social relations is the product of social
action, and social movements are the collective agents of social action,
social movements are not exceptional and dramatic events, as they are
for Resource Mobilization theorists: “ they lie permanently at the heart of
social life ” (Touraine, 1981 : 29).
Touraine explicitly develops his view of social movements in opposition
to the structural determinism of Marxism and functionalism dominant in
European and American sociology respectively in the 1950s and 1960s.
According to Touraine, functionalism ’ s neglect of social action means that
it suffers from an uncritical acceptance of social institutions and values
as they happen to have solidifi ed at any particular moment; functionalists
fail to see how the apparent unity of a social system is nothing more than
the imposition of a dominant movement over the dominated (Touraine,

1981 : 34 – 5). Similarly, Marxism is flawed insofar as it shares the deter-
minism of structural - functionalism. Although conflict is central to

Marxism, it is attributed to underlying structural conditions; a contingent
social formation is explained in terms of evolutionary laws of history
which again fail to acknowledge the role of social action in the production
of society. While Marxism imputes interests and motives to class actors
which they themselves might not recognize but which Marxists see as
produced by socio - economic structures from which they cannot escape,
Touraine argues that the terms in which social movements present