Social Movements and Social Inequality: Toward a More Balanced Assessment of the Relationship

Abstract

The orienting premise of this chapter is that almost all social movements, conservative and reactionary as well as progressive movements, are oriented, in one fashion or another, toward combating, constructing, or sustaining actual or perceived systems of inequality. Whatever their aims or goals, the grievances and motivations that mobilize individuals to engage in collective action on the basis of inequalities are never mechanistically derived from existing social conditions. Perceptions of inequality are much more widespread than the mobilizing grievances that prod individuals to engage in ameliorative collective action. Because of this, collective actors must engage in various forms of meaning and identity work, and the generation of incentives for action, in order for social movement mobilization to become possible. These social-psychological processes, which the chapter elaborates, help to account for perceptions of various social arrangements as unequal and unjust, and spur social movement mobilization as a means of corrective action.