Page 128 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

114 Social Movements

the health food shops, walking groups, conservationists, and self - help
building programs of the green movement. Although movements may be
invisible to the point where it seems as if they have altogether collapsed,
the practices of networks of groups and individuals nevertheless develop
alternative ways of living and thinking that quietly challenge society ’ s
dominant codes and which are ready to be mobilized for public protest
if the occasion arises.
Despite these crucial disagreements with Touraine ’ s work, Melucci
does build on his understanding of social movements. Most importantly,
like Touraine, he sees social movements as primarily engaged in cultural
challenges to the logic of “ post - industrial ” society. Information is the key

resource in contemporary society, the reflexivity of individuals and the
society as a whole has been massively increased as a result, and global
processes impinge on individual awareness in an unprecedented way. In
view of this new social situation, social movements should also be seen
as “ new, ” in Melucci ’ s opinion, because the problems to which they
respond are different from those of the social movements of the nineteenth
and early twentieth century – the main point of comparison being, of
course, the labor movement – and so, too, are the responses they make
to those problems (Melucci, 1995a ).
For Melucci, post - industrial societies are above all concerned with
“ signs ” ; even the production and distribution of economic goods are
symbolically mediated, through design, advertising, the media, and so on.
As a result, according to Melucci, unlike their nineteenth - century coun-
terparts, “ new social movements ” are not concerned with struggles over
the production of material resources, or with their distribution or control
through the state in citizenship rights, but rather with access to informa-
tion (about the hazards of nuclear testing, for example) and the contesta-
tion of symbolic resources (such as sexist advertising or the aestheticization
of violence in the media). This is also the case, according to Melucci,
because, again unlike working - class politics, contemporary movements
are concerned with forms of organization and lifestyle which are ends in
themselves rather than the means to realize an end in the future. In par-
ticular, the split between public and private spheres is lived more as a
complementarity than an opposition, as it was in the past: the experiences
and meanings of private life are directly linked to publicly expressed com-
mitments and vice versa. The women ’ s movement would again be a good
example of Melucci ’ s point here because of the way in which it has pro-
voked the revolutionizing of relations between men and women in the
private, domestic sphere and, to a lesser extent, in the private realm of
the economy, as well as in legislation and social policy.