Sociological Understandings of Social Movements: A North American Perspective

Abstract

This review traces how sociologists study movement emergence and participation. Proceeding in a roughly chronological fashion, we begin by reviewing the “structural” approaches to the study of social movements, and specifically discuss resource mobilization theory and political process theory. Then, after outlining the critiques of structural approaches, we consider the “cultural turn” in the study of social movements. We focus on three avenues of inquiry that animate the cultural approach—research on framing and frames, emotion, and collective identity. Before concluding the chapter with a brief assessment of the contributions of sociologists to the study of social movements, we turn our attention to new directions in social movement research. Here, we discuss two areas of research which have attracted a lot of attention over the last decade—the movement-media relationship and social movement strategy—and highlight the contributions of European scholars to sociological understandings of social movements.