An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements Author(S): ALAIN TOURAINE Source: Social Research, Vol

An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements Author(s): ALAIN TOURAINE Source: Social Research, Vol. 52, No. 4, Social Movements (WINTER 1985), pp. 749-787 Published by: New School Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970397 Accessed: 23-02-2016 20:49 UTC

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This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions An Introductionto the Study of Social / Movements / byALAIN TOURAINE

A he notion of social movement,like most notionsin the social sciences,does not describepart of "reality"but is an elementof a specificmode of constructingsocial reality.Too manystudies of socialmovements are dangerouslynaive. Too often,authors, while they think they are describingcollective actionsor historicalevents, express verycrudely their own opinionsor ideologies.The limitedvalue of moststudies of socialmovements becomes even moreconspicuous if we compare differentperiods of intellectualand socialhistory. Social movementsin the postwarperiod were mainlyconsidered as disruptiveforces; even "liberals"like L. Coser1were readyat bestto grantthat conflicts can be functionalfor social integration.After the sixties, social movements, on thecontrary, were identifiedwith the counterculture, the searchfor "alternative" formsof social and culturallife. In the early eighties,the subjectmatter loses ground. How is it possibleto overcomethe obviousprejudices which so oftenmake discussionsabout social movementsuseless because theyinform us mainlyabout social opinionsof some limitedsectors of academia? To overcomethis naive and illusorypositivism, each social scientistmust make clear the meaningof the wordshe or she uses, situatingthem in a more general intellectualframe of reference.But to explain "whatI think"is not enough: it is

1 L. Coser, The Functionsof Social Conflict(Glencoe, 111.:Free Press, 1956).

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Winter 1985)

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 750 SOCIAL RESEARCH indispensableto compare one's own categorieswith other typesof constructionof social reality.The aim here is not to separate and define various Weltanschauungenbut, on the contrary,to integratevarious approaches into a generalrepre- sentationof sociallife which gives some amountof autonomy to each approach.It is truethat such an integratedand diver- sifiedview is itselfrelated to specific"theories" and is not entirelyobjective. The problem,however, is not to pursue an abstractpure objectivitybut to push backthe limits of ideology and to make discussionsamong social scientistsmore mean- ingful.If we eschewthis critical self-appraisal of our ideas and results,we fallinto pretentious and uselessexpressions of our personalor nationalpreferences and representations. Many staysin differentparts of the worldhave convinced me of the necessityto build an internationallytransferable knowledgewhich cannot be identifiedwith categories used by the actorsthemselves in any part of the world.The timehas gone when ideas correspondingto importantsectors of "ad- vanced"countries were able to spread all over the worldand to be transmittedby dependentor imitativesocial scientists. For thesereasons, and to help eliminatesuperficial critiques and artificialdiscussions, I willtry to identifywhat I mean by "'social movement"and to relate it to a broader frame of referencewhich should at the same time providespace for othernotions and otherapproaches.

Typesof Social Conflicts

There is an almostgeneral agreement that social movements should be conceivedas a special typeof socialconflict. Many typesof collectivebehavior are not social conflicts:panics, crazes,fashions, currents of opinion,cultural innovations are not conflicts,even if theydefine in a preciseway whatthey react to. A conflictpresupposes a clear definitionof oppo- nentsor competitingactors and of theresources they are fight-

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 751 ing foror negotiatingto take controlof. Such an elementary definitionleaves the wayopen to manydifferent approaches, but it alreadydraws two limits which should not be trespassed. A socialconflict cannot be analyzedentirely as a featureof a socialsystem. If a "society"feels threatened or even no longer wantsto survive- some exampleshave been describedin Af- rica in particular- the manifestationof thissocietal crisis cannotbe analyzedas a socialconflict. The agentsof thisconflict mustbe identifiedas specificsocial categories.On the other side, if a collectiveactor cannot define its goals in social terms- if for example a group wants its specificityto be recognized- its strugglefor freedomor identitycannot by itselfcreate a socialconflict. Even whenthe conflict is veryfar frombeing a zero-sumgame, it mustbe definedby a "field," thatis, by "stakes"which are valued and desired by two or more opponents.So all kindsof social conflictshave in common a referenceto "real"- thatis, organized- actorsand to ends which are valued by all competitorsor adversaries. Withinthis broad definition,it is necessaryto separatevarious kindsof social conflicts. (1) A firstand easilyperceived category of socialconflict is the competitivepursuit of collective interests. In its mostextreme form,it opposes individualsor groupswho wantto maximize theiradvantages on a market.In a more classicalsociological tradition,it is defined as the expressionof a relationship betweenactors' inputs and outputsin an organization,or of theirrelative deprivation. If employeesof a companybring high or low inputs(measured by skill,for example) and re- ceive highor low rewards(in termsof incomein particular), the hypothesishas been elaboratedthat four main typesof behaviorwill appear. The highestprobability of conflictexists when low rewardscorrespond to high inputs. When both inputand outputare high,competition will replace grievance. On the contrary,a low input associatedwith low rewardis likelyto producewithdrawal, and a low inputwhich receives highrewards leads to passiveconformity. The actorshere are

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 752 SOCIAL RESEARCH defined by their positions on a hierarchical scale, and the "stakes" of the conflictsare organizational rewards. This "rationalist"view of collective behavior has been well presented by A. Obserschall.2 (2) Both similar and opposed to the firsttype is the recon- structionof a social, cultural,or politicalidentity. Here the opponent is defined more as a foreigner or invader than as an upper class, a power elite, or management. The actor defines himselfas a communitywhose values are threatened by inva- sion or destruction.Messianic movementsin Brazil at the time of abolition of slavery,for example, expressed firstof all the defense of rural communitiesagainst the domination of trade and urban interests.C. Tilly, analyzing the Vendean counter- revolutionarymovement in France, instead of interpretingit as an aristocraticreaction, sees in it the communitarian defense of a rural societywhich is threatened by a rising urban bourgeoisie.3 During recent years, many strikes have expressed, in de- clining industries, or in sectors which are upset by new technologies,the resistance of occupational groups. This second type of conflictcan be called defensive, while the first one- the pursuit of collectiveinterests - is offensive.Smelser's idea that collective behavior corresponds to the crisis of an element of the social systemand effortsto reconstructit fits with the definitionof the second type of social conflict.4The Chicago school has analyzed gangs and ghettos as forms of defense of dominated social and ethnic groups. These two typesof conflictbehavior are located at the same level: they "respond" to an organizationalstatus and to organizational change. Their analysis is generally made in terms of "system"more than in terms of actors. But they are opposed in most ways to each other. The firstone can be called instru- mental,the second expressive. Both can easily driftout of the

2 A. Oberschall, Social Conflictand Social Movements(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973). 3 C. Tilly, La Vendée:Révolution et contre-révolution(Paris: Fayard, 1970). 4 N. Smelser, Theoryof CollectiveBehavior (New York: Macmillan, 1963).

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 753 limitsof definitionof socialconflict. If thefirst one is reduced to rationalbehavior, it stopsreferring itself to a socialconflict because the environmentis describedin nonrelational,purely competitiveterms, and actorsin competitionhave no common cultural or social orientationexcept their own interests. Sociologyhas constantlyreminded us thatHomo socius is not just a varietyoí Homooeconomicus. If the second one is reduced to a propheticdefense of values and communities,it equally stopsreferring to a social conflictbecause it opposes culture and barbarism,Good and Evil,in a purelymilitary way which excludesthe definition of anykind of referenceof bothcamps to commonvalues. (3) A politicalforce aims at changingthe rules of the game, not just the distributionof relativeadvantages in a given organization.In thiscase, the definitionof the actorsand of the stakes of their conflictseems easy, because either the conflictis stronglyorganized or it has a great capacityfor mobilization.In bothcases, each camp clearlydefines itself, its opponent,and theaspect of thedecision-making process or of therules of thegame which should be changedor maintained. Most studies of industrialrelations refer themselves,often explicitly,to such an imageof socialconflict. The sociologyof organizationshas analyzedin an even broaderway the efforts of variouscategories or individualsto controlwhat M. Crozier calls "zones of uncertainty"and act accordingto whatMarch and Simon have labeled "limitedrationality."5 These authors among othershave demonstratedthat manyconflicts which were considered "organizational"are in fact "political." Studyingstrikes, E. Shorterand C. Tillyfollow the same line: insteadof consideringstrikes as responsesto "relativedepri- vation,"they observe that they are closelyconnected with sharp progressesor declines in the politicalinfluence of unions.6

5J. G. March and H. Simon, Organizations(New York: Wiley, 1958). 6 E. Shorter and C. Tilly, Strikesin France, 1930-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1974).

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(4) In the same way,as the defenseof an identityis the oppositeside, the negativeequivalent, of thecollective pursuit of interest,the defenseof a statusor privilegesis the negative equivalentof a politicalpressure. P. Schmitter,following an idea introducedby J. Linz, has demonstratedthe importance in Europe and in Latin America of neocorporatistpolicies whichappear whenan interestgroup is incorporatedinto the State in which it defends its interestsby emphasizingits functionalimportance, its usefulnessfor nationallife.7 Farm- ers or teachers,instead of defendingtheir income directly, proclaimthat a high priorityshould be recognizedfor ag- ricultureor education.At a broaderlevel, political movements can expressthe fearof crisisand a call to a nationalintegra- tion whichdefends moral or communitarianvalues and de- nounces dangerous minorities.Since the end of the nineteenthcentury our politicaland intellectuallife has been re- peatedlyinfluenced by the fearof a mass societywhich often expressesthe protectionof normsand interestswhich can no longerbe efficientlydefended by usual institutionalchannels. In Latin America,the factthat manyimportant economic decisionsare takenby foreigncompanies or the international bankingand trade systementails as anvindirectconsequence theextreme autonomy of thepolitical and ideologicalforces in relationto economicinterests. This mechansim,which I call "disarticulation,"weakens representative democracy. The resultis thatpolitical movements are oftenoriented by a defensive nationalismwhich gives a priorityto the defenseof na- tionalintegration against foreign influence and "dualization" of the countryover the organizationof directlyconflicting politicalparties. (5) Abovethis political, institutional level of analysis,exists a differenttype of socialconflict, whose stake is thesocial control of themain cultural patterns, that is, of the patternsthrough

7 P. Schmitter, "Corporatism and Policy-Making in Contemporary Western Europe," ComparativePolitical Studies,April 1977, pp. 7-38.

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 755 whichour relationshipswith the environmentare normatively organized.These culturalpatterns are of threemain kinds:a modelof knowledge,a typeof investment,and ethicalprinci- ples. These representationsof truth,production, and morality depend on the capacityof achievement,of self-production,of a given society.Society is opposed to community,because a collectivitywhich has a highcapacity to act upon itselfand to transformitself is necessarilydivided between leaders or ruling groups,which impose savings,deferred gratification patterns,abstract ideas, and moral principlesand at the same timeidentify their own interestswith these universalprinci- ples, and "people" or "masses,"which are both subordinated to thecontrol of culturalvalues by rulinggroups and eager to eliminatethis domination and to identifythemselves with these culturalvalues. This centralconflict is endlessand cannotbe solved. If the masses win, they transforman active society into an immobile,reproductive community; if the elite im- poses its identificationwith values, it transformsthe "self- productionof society"into privateinterests and entrepre- neurshipinto speculationor privileges. (6) These lastremarks make clear how shortthe distanceis betweenthis "positive"conflict behavior and the "negative" ones whichcorrespond directly to them.Creation of a neworder is the oppositeof the conflict-loadedself-production of society. The most extremeform of such a "criticalaction" is revolution,which always aims at recreatinga community,es- tablishinga new socialorder, more rational or more national, but definedby its integrationand its capacityto eliminate conflicts,a capacitywhich is rapidly demonstratedby the police. The rulinggroup, in a parallelway, tends to impose orderas a preconditionfor economic development, but order oftenbecomes an end in itselfand an instrumentfor protect- ing privileges.The influenceof the Frenchand Russianrevo- lutionshas long imposed the idea that a revolutionwas the politicalexpression of a popular class movement.This continuityfrom social mobilizationto revolution,which is still

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acceptedby Tilly,has been efficientlycriticized by historical studies.While V. Bonnelldemonstrated that the development of labor movementin Russia before1914 was quite indepen- dentof revolutionarypolitical groups,8 T. Skocpolemphasized in an importantbook thatrevolutions are not directresults of a socialupheaval but mustbe explainedfirst of all bya break- downof theState and of thepolitical system.9 Earlier, F. Furet had criticizedthe traditionalimage of the FrenchRevolution and of its "natural"radicalization from 1789 to 1794.10This majortransformation of politicalanalysis is obviouslya consequence of the disenchantmentwith the politicalregime born fromthe 1917 revolution. The six typesof conflictbehavior which have been rapidly describedcorrespond on one side to three levels of social life- organizationalprocesses, political institutions, and cultural orientations- which cannot be separated from "class" conflicts,and, on the other side, to two opposed and com- plementarytypes of conflicts- offensiveand defensive.The firsttype distinguishes conflicting actors and impliesa some- whatautonomous expression of the stakesof thisconflict; the secondtends to identifyan actorwith social and culturalvalues and to exclude the opponentas an externalenemy or as a traitor. None of thesetypes should be confusedwith others which are no longerdefined by a certainlevel of sociallife but which manifestconflicting efforts to controla process of historical change,that is, the passage fromone culturaland societaltype to anotherone. In moreconcrete terms, we mustseparate the internalconflicts of an industrialsociety from conflicts which are linkedto the processof industrialization.This distinction is stillsomewhat difficult to accept for Westerncountries be-

8 V. Bonnell, Rootsof Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizationsin St. Petersburgand Moscow,1900-1914 (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1983). 9 T. Skocpol, Statesand Social Revolutions:A ComparativeAnalysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1979). 10F. Furet, Penser la révolutionfrançaise (Paris: Gallimard, 1978).

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cause theirspecific experience is thattheir own industrializa- tionhas been mainlyendogenous, rooted in science,technology,education, "achievement motive," and the open market, so thattheir central image of themselvesidentified function- ing and change, modernityand modernization.Modern societieswere defined,from the Enlightenmenton, by their capacityto destroytraditions, particularisms, and religionsand to open the way to Reason and its achievements. But aftera long centuryof developmentpolicies-- that is, of voluntaristicactions of States against the politicaland eco- nomicdomination exerted by foreigncountries and resulting in the growingdualization of society,actions that reinforce traditionalsocial and culturalcontrols and impede protest movements- the distancebetween internal endogenous processes of change and State-ledor foreign-ledmodernization has becomeobvious. We are even sometimestempted to give up the idea of internal,structural conflicts, and to consider that all social problemsshould be understoodas parts of processesof change.Such a viewis as erroneousas the opposite identificationof structuralproblems with modernization processes. A complete typology of conflicts should elaborate a classificationof "historical"conflicts, parallel with the one whichhas been presentedfor "social" conflicts.Diachronie conflictsbelong to the same categoriesas synchronieconflicts. They are locatedat a certainlevel of social life,and theyare offensiveor defensive.But it is sufficienthere to mentiononly the twotypes of "historical"conflicts which correspond to the highestlevel of socialconflicts, in bothits positive and negative aspects. (7) It is appropriateto give a veryconcrete name to the positivehistorical conflicts at theirhighest level: theyare na- tionalconflicts, because the identityand continuityof a changing,developing country cannot be based on social actorsand socialrelations which are preciselytransformed, destroyed, or createdby the processof historicalchange - for example,of

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 758 SOCIAL RESEARCH industrialization.State and nation are the only actors which can maintain their identity and proclaim their continuity throughout a process of change. In all countries, conflicts about the controlof change are conflictsabout the State. That indicates the necessityto separate the politicalsystem as representative of internal economic, social, or cultural interests from the State as central agent of historical transformation. Here again, the experience of "central" countries and especially of the hegemonic ones, like Britain in the nineteenth centuryand the United States in the twentieth,is misleading, or has been ideologically misrepresentedwhen the State was identified in these countries with a ruling class, with the people, or with the balance of social forces. The separation between highestlevel social and historicalconflicts can be rep- resented by the opposition between class conflictand national conflict which has dominated contemporary history since Austro-Marxists tried to combine them and the First World War demonstratedthe limitsof "proletarian"internationalism. (8) The negative equivalent of national conflictis neocom- munitarianism,the effortto reject a historical transformation which comes from abroad and destroystraditional values and formsof social organization. It could be called an antirevolu- tion, and it is as importantat the end of the twentiethcentury as the revolutionarymovements were a century ago. From limited Western neocommunitarian tendencies or sects to fundamentalist,nativist, indigenous ideologies and to the powerful Islamist movement, the planet is more dominated today by the opposition between social and democratic movements on one side and neocommunitarianStates or political groups on the other than by the internal social conflictbetween capitalismand socialism. The Leninist revolutioncorre- sponds to the hinge which permitted the passage from the central role of social conflictsand ideologies to the predomi- nance of historical,State-oriented conflicts. Behind this cold classification,it is easy to perceive hot ideological and political problems. For example, the verydefi-

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 759 nitionof the leftistintellectual, especially in France,since the Dreyfuscase, is one who proclaimsthe convergenceof liberal reforms,class conflicts,revolutions, and national liberation movements.Jean-Paul Sartre was the mostinfluential of these intellectuals:he definedhimself as a petitbourgeois - thatis, as a defenderof Westerndemocracy - but located himself withinthe untrespassablehorizon of Marxismand supported activelythe Algerian independence movement.These in- tellectualsopposed colonialismor "imperialist"wars, at the same timethat they were supportingleftist reforms in their own country.But it became more and more difficultfor people who approvedthe Vietnameseliberation movement to support the Hanoi regime,without mentioning Cambodia, and it is impossibleto considerStalinist regimes as expression of proletarianrevolutions. So the convergencebetween liber- ties and liberationappears more and more contradictedby historicalexperience. The separationof variouskinds of social and historicalconflicts help us to understandthe conflictsor tensionswhich oppose themto each otherand whichconfront each of us withdifficult, sometimes impossible choices. It is relativelyeasy to see that many analysesof "social movements"limit themselves to one typeof conflict,generally because thistype is predominantin a giventype of society.It is difficultin manyThird Worldnations to analyzeclass con- flictswhere anti-imperialismstruggles, neocommunitarian movements,and the creationof a "Statebourgeoisie" are the more visibleforces. In an opposite way, manyWestern ob- serversdiscovered "social movements"only in the sixtiesand weremainly preoccupied to understandhow socialintegration could be restoredeither by reformor by a neoconservaitve tide. But suchrelativist remarks can be misleading.It is necessary to proposea generalinterpretation of conflictsrather than to limitourselves to classifyingand separatingtypes. So we must nowproceed to a moredifficult task, which is to givea general analysisof the differencesand relationsamong varioustypes

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of conflicts.More concretely,that means thatwe mustnow introducethe notionof socialmovement, a term that we have until now carefullyavoided using in the strictsense. Two solutionsare possible.The easiestone is to considera social movementas a genericcategory which includes all kindsof socialand historicalconflicts. But whatis theuse of sucha wide notionwhich is only synonymouswith collective conflicts? To proposea more elaborateanalysis of conflicts,we must integratethe previousclassification into a generalhypothesis whichgives a differentimportance to variousconflicts. From the beginning,we actuallyhad to introducesuch a hierarchi- zationwhen we constructeda typologywhich opposes positive and negativemovement and threelevels of conflicts,an image whichclearly gives a priorityto the "highest"level, where conflictsare organizedaround the controlof centralcultural patternsand resources.

The Unityof Social Conflicts

To make my hypothesisquite clear, I willuse the concept "socialmovements" only to referto conflictsaround the social controlof themain cultural patterns, that is, type5. This is an arbitrarysemantic decision. Others may prefer to keep a much widerand morevague definitionof social movements,but, if theydo so, theyrun the riskof fallinginto the confusionwe criticizedat the beginning. (1) A privilegecan be given to a specifictype of social conflictif othertypes of conflictcan be consideredas disin- tegratedor partial formsof the centraltype. The type of conflictI willfrom now on call a "socialmovement" is defined by a clear interrelationbetween conflicting actors and the stakes of their conflict.These three components,which I identifiedlong ago as the definitionof the identity(i) of the actor,the definitionof the opponent(o), and the stakes,that is, the culturaltotality (t) whichdefines the fieldof conflict,

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 761 belongto the same universe;they express the centralconflict of a societaltype.11 For example,in an industrialsociety man- agementand workersare in conflictabout thesocial control of industry.These threecomponents, management, workers, industry,are homogeneous;moreover, they are interdependent: industrynever exists per se- thiscultural mode of investment is alwaysmanaged by a rulinggroup which has thecapacity to impose on workerssome formof divisionof labor. On the contrary,a politicalpressure represents a more limitedintegra- tion of its components:there is no directinterdependence betweenpolitical forces and politicaldecisions. Political parties are generallymultidimensional, particularly in representative democracies,and their aims are defined by strategiesand tacticsas muchas byprinciples or directlyexpressed demands. Competitiveparties do not representa permanentopposition like the couple management-workers does. That can be sym- bolizedby writingthat a socialmovement is i-o-t and a political strugglei-t, o-t, or i-o. The collectivepursuit of interests correspondsto an even lower level of integrationof these elements:the actorsare self-centeredand the field of their competitionor conflictcan even be definedas a market,which is definedindependently from actors. That correspondsto i, o, t,where each elementis separatedfrom the others. So political pressureand defenseof interestmust be definednot only by theirspecific nature but as nonintegratedand lower-level social movements. This hypothesishas an importantconsequence: political pressureand collectivepursuit of interestare always com- pletedby expressionsof a nonactualized,virtual social movement.A politicalpressure is notjust partof a politicalgame; it refersto interestand, at a higherlevel, to a social movement thatit represents,and it affirmsthat its own actionwill never entirelyreach its goal. Mostnegotiators refer to nonnegotiable

11A. Touraine,The S elf -Production ofSociety (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1977).

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 762 SOCIAL RESEARCH demands, to basic rightsof workers,or, on the other side, to superior interestsof the industryand of the nation. What a social movement expresses directly and practically appears here as principles, ideas, or convictions which are relatively separate fromactual practices.The same holds for the defense of interests.Before the First World War, in Western Europe and in the United States, business unionism was predominant, but its instrumentalorientation was completed by intellectual and political radical movementswhich created myths,like the Sorelian idea of the general strike.That does not mean that every form of defense of interest reveals a possible social movement,but rather that the defense of interestis always a combination between rational economic behavior and social movement.In a parallel way, a political pressure is intermedi- ate between a social movement and a strategy.Here we go much beyond our classification;we introduce the hypothesis that social movementsin a given societycan be observed not only directlybut indirectly,in partial,disintegrated forms, or, to put it more precisely,that some component of social movement must be found in all social conflicts.Theonly limithere of the penetrationof social movementis the territoryof Homo oeconomicus,but where this territorybegins, if it really exists, social conflictactually disappears, is displaced by the triumph of economic rationality. (2) "Negative" conflictbehavior, as has already been sug- gested, can be analyzed as overintegrated forms of social movements. Here the actor identifies himself with values, eliminatesthe idea of an internal structuralconflict, and pre- sents the image of an homogenized communityto opponents who are transformedinto enemies. A revolutionrefers first to an internal conflict which, after its triumph, builds a new social and political order, looks for purity, and wages war against external enemies and traitorswho undermine the new community.Thus every revolutionarycreation of a new order is led to destroythe social movementit is based on. Saturn ate his children,revolutions eat theirfathers. This self-destruction

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 763 mechanismis supportedby the ideal of a homogeneoussystem that we call sect at a microsociologicallevel and totalitarian regimeat a macrosociologicallevel. These systemsare notjust communities,precisely because theirmain logic is the destruc- tionof social conflicts,of all kindsof social relations,and, by way of consequence,of all actors.So social movementsare limitedon one side byHomo oeconomicus and, on the other,by Big Brother. (3) The subordinationof "historical"and particularlyna- tionalmovements to socialmovements is even morevisible and has been for a long time at the verycenter of the world's politicaltransformation. We are firsttempted to recognizethe separationand parallel importanceof what is generallyex- pressedas class and nationalmovements, because our century has been dominatedby nationalliberation movements which have dominatedor destroyedclass-oriented action. The Alge- rian example shows clearlythe defeat of Marxist-oriented MessaliHadj or even of revolutionarypopulist Ben Bella and the triumphof the armyheaded by Boumedienne.In a dif- ferentcontext, Fidel Castro,who was eventuallygoing to build a Marxist-Leninist regime, gave in the Sierraa totalpriority to guerrillawar oversocial demonstrations and strikesorganized by theJuly 26th movementwhich had a broad social basis in Havana. Communismand nationalismhave often joined forces,but neverhas a social movementdeveloped its auton- omousaction in a national-revolutionaryregime. Nevertheless, such a separation,which implies a totaldomination of social by nationalmovement, is nevercomplete. In manydependent countries, especially in Latin America, "mixed" three- dimensionalsociopolitical movements predominate with a class,an anticolonialistor anti-imperialist,and a nationalinte- grativedimension. There is no clear separationbetween social movements,political forces, and State intervention,so it is necessaryto analyze "national-popular"regimes as indirect expressionsof social movements.In countrieswith stronger Statetraditions, the movementsor warsof nationalliberation

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 764 SOCIAL RESEARCH are not just national; on the contrary,they are similarto revolutionarymovements. They create a new politicaland social order by rejectingwhat they call imperialism,colonialism,or decadentbourgeois life. In more generalterms, it is difficultto completelyseparate structuralconflicts and politicalprocesses of historicalchange. The processof indus- trializationis not independent of peasant, plebeian, or working-classsocial movements. So "historical"movements are alwayscontradictory mixtures of socialmovements and of the risingpower of a new State. Here appears a thirdand last limitof social movements:the interventionof an absolute State, "absolute"referring here to a pure definitionof the Stateas agentof historicaldevelopment and notas a centerof the institutionalsystem. (4) If we combinethese three lines of analysis,we are able to defineall typesof conflictby referenceto the centraltype whichhas been called social movement(Figure 1). This pre- sentationindicates the threeprocesses of transformationof a social movementinto more instrumentalaction, into more integrativeand communitarianmovement, and intohistorical,

Figure 1. HomoOEconomicus Totalitarian systems N, s»

Collective pursuit of Reconstruction of interests identity >v (Sub-movements) >j* Çanti-movements)

Political pressure Defense of privileges

National^ movements > Neo-communitari an movements H^torijCaLjßyjgmej3ti

Pure1 State

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especiallynational movements. And it drawsthe limits beyond whichthe influenceof a social movementis destroyed,in the firstcase by economicrationality, in the secondby the logicof a totalitariansystem, and in the thirdcase by a Statewhich is essentiallyan agent of economicdevelopment.

The CentralRole ofSocial Movementsin SociologicalAnalysis

The main meaningof thisreconstruction of the analysisof social conflictsis not to isolateand underlinethe importance of socialmovement as a specifictype of collectivebehavior but to reorganizeour representationof social life around the notionsof social movement,structural conflict, and cultural stakes. The best way to understandthe proposeduse of the term social movementis to compare the theoreticalapproach it implieswith others, each of whichactually corresponds to one of the formsof disorganizationof a socialmovement we have just encountered. (1) There is a clear opposition between a sociological analysiswhich is organizedaround the notion oí societyor even socialsystem and a sociologywhich gives a centralrole to social movements.The firstimplies that actors' behaviors are inter- pretedas indicatorsof the internalprocesses of differentia- tion,integration, and pattern-maintenanceof a social system. An absenceof correspondencebetween institutional rules and socializationagencies, asynchrony between sectorial changes, gaps betweencultural values and institutionalchannels, or more simplyinequality or upward and downwardcollective social mobilityproduce conflictsand crises which are both disruptiveand adaptative.The consciousnessof the actor is alwaysmisleading for this sociological school, simply because it interpretsin actor-centeredterms situationsand behavior whichmust be conceived,according to it,as elementsof a social systemand as effectsof its internalproblems.

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Nobodywill challenge the superiorityof such an approach to a "subjectivist"sociology which identifiesitself with the actors'opinions and is unable to explainthe visiblediscrepan- cies and contradictionsbetween various actors' representations.But who is temptedto defendsuch a naive sociology whichreduces the analyst to therole of a tape recorderor of a "historianof the king"?The conceptof social movementim- plies a differentview of social life. Instead of analyzingthe social systemas a set of transformationsand specificationsof culturalpatterns into institutionalnorms and formsof social and culturalorganization, it emphasizesthe structuralconflict in a given"society," especially when it has a highcapacity of modernizationand achievement,around the controlof the instrumentsof transformationand "production"of sociallife. Accordingly,all aspects of social and culturalorganization manifest,instead of generalvalues, both cultural patterns and power relations,and the social movementswhich express them.This antipositivistview of modernsocieties opposes to the image of a rationalized,integrated, and flexiblemodern societythe growing importance of socialmovements and, even more directly,the consequencesof an insufficientlevel of integrationof conflictsinto a centralsocial movement:wild conflicts of interests,pseudocommunitarian withdrawal, arbitrarypower, and violence,which is the oppositeof social conflict. Our approach is centeredon the representationof social actorsas both culturallyoriented and involvedin structural conflicts.Actors in a modern societythat is, in a society whichhas a highcapacity of achievement- are neitherpurely rationalnor identifiedwith communitarian values. None of themcan be identifiedwith modernity or, moreprecisely, with the set of cultural patterns- epistemic, economic, and ethical- thatI call historicity.Managers are not more rational than workers,professors than students. Differentsocial categoriescan participatemore or less in central cultural orientationsand organize social movementsbut can equally

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 767 developdefensive attitudes or createsubmovements and even antimovements. (2) In an opposite way, the structuralMarxist school has recentlydiffused the idea that actors,instead of being inte- gratedin a societyby internalizingits values, are submittedto a logic of dominationand are unable to be real actors.This idea was alreadypresent in Lenin'sWhat Is toBe Done} Work- ers cannotliberate themselves because theyare prisonersof a systemwhich limitstheir spontaneousaction to reformist negotiations.In the sixties and seventies, disenchanted Leninistsrecognized that the revolutionaryand scientificin- telligentsiawhich was supposed to build a new and liberated societyfor the workershad transformeditself into aparatchiki of a totalitarianState and thatthe sacrificedgeneration was followedby manyothers. So a new typeof Marxist,ex- or para-Marxists,built the image of a closed society,in which conflictsand protestsare no longer possiblebecause of the growingcapacity of interventionand manipulationof a central power.After the pioneeringwork of H. Marcuse,a group of French social thinkers,L. Althusserand N. Poulantzas,P. Bourdieuand M. Foucault,the latterwith great talent and a complexand changingintellectual personality, diffused a kind of criticalfunctionalism for which societyis dominatedby ideological apparatuses of the State or by omnipresent powerssymbolized by Bentham'sPanopticon or is identified with its mechanismsof reproduction.The decline of the labor movement,the transformationof Third Worldnational liberationmovements into oppressive or even fanaticregimes, the influence of Soviet dissidents, had destroyed the traditionaleschatological confidence in some movements whichwere supposed to be popular and libertarian.Disillu- sions withall kinds of revolutionaryforces led theoriststo substitutethe idea of an all-powerfullogic of dominationfor the abandoned hope of liberatingsocial movements.At the same time,these social philosophers refused to exchangetheir ancientcreeds for a neoliberalismmore and more satisfied

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withWestern countries which identified themselves with ra- tionalitywhile they were torturingin Algiersor dropping napalmon Vietnamesevillages. This double rejectioncreated a totallynegative image of social lifein whichalienation and heteronomousintegration could be challengedonly by margi- nal revoltsor by individualistaesthetic culture. Such a social philosophyplayed an importantrole in the historyof ideas and ideologies,but it has been highlydestructive of social analysis.The necessarycritique of a decliningor corrupted typeof socialmovement ended up arbitrarilyin theimage of a societywithout actors. The image of our societiesas entirely dominatedby systemsof controland manipulationis so far fromobservable fact that it lured manysociologists to replace fieldstudies by doctrinaireinterpretations. It transformeditself in some countriesinto the dominantideology of a self- destroyingintelligentsia. (3) A sociologyof social movementsand more generallya sociologyof actioncan be moreconcretely defined by opposition withanother sociological approach for whichany reference to "structural"problems or conflictsshould be deleted. We no longerlive in a social system,says thisschool, but in situationswhich cannot be definedexcept as a diversifiedflow of changes. They take so seriouslythe ideas of modernity, achievement,and developmentthat they define social actors entirelyby theirstrategies, by theirroles and relativeinflu- ence in the processof change.The mostconspicuous example of thisapproach is the critiquemade againstscientific management,as definedby Taylor,Ford, and businessschools, in the name of a strategicview of management.Symbolically, the Japanesemodel replaces the American model of management. This sociologyproposes a pragmaticview of actorsand conflictsand rejectsany referenceto a "center,"be it definedin termsof culturalvalues, of a logic of domination,or as a centralsocial movement. What is generallyknown as sociology of organizationshas been the strongholdof thistheory, which actuallydestroys the conceptof organizationand replacesit

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 769 withconcepts like decision and strategy.It recognizesas a centralvalue not reason and its general principlesbut the capacityto elaboratean efficientstrategy in a movingenvi- ronment.Like structuralMarxism, this political view of society deservescredit because it contributedefficiently to destroying both analysis of industrial conflict, which had been transformedinto ideologies or even myths,and the naive identificationof our own society with universal values. Moreover,when collective conflicts are stillloosely formulated and organized,the strategic approach is a kindof spontaneous naturalsociology of the elitegroups who are richor powerful enoughto elaboratecomplex strategies in a highlycompetitive world.But it does not correspondto the experienceof most people, who resistthe initiativeof the elite groups by withdrawinginto an individualistic,hedonistic search for identity or intomarginality or fightingback in the name of traditions, principles,or alternativeviews of social life. The notion of resource mobilizationhas been used to transformthe studyof social movementsinto a studyof strategies as if actorswere definedby theirgoals and not by the social relationshps- and especially power relationships- in whichthey are involved.Such a transformationis sometimes acceptablewhen apparently radical or ideologicalmovements are actuallyinstrumentally oriented interest groups. But in too manycases, this notion is used to eliminateenquiries about the meaningof collectiveaction as if resourcemobilization could be definedindependently from the natureof the goals and the social relations of the actor, as if all actors were finallyled by a logic of economicrationality. (4) If we considerthe world today, the mostdynamic representationof sociallife is neitheroptimistic functionalism, pes- simisticstructural Marxism, nor pragmaticstrategic concep- tionof social actionbut the call for identityand community. Througha seriesof meetingsand programsorganized by the United Nations Universityin Tokyo, especiallyunder the leadership of Anouar Abdel Malek, can be perceived a

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passionatedefense of the specificityof differentnational or regionalcivilizations,12 which is directlyopposed to a univer- salisticrationalist approach and the privilegesit givesto Zweck- rationalität.Of course wide differencesexist between in- tellectualswho givetotal priority to culturalpluralism - thatis, to thestruggle against cultural colonialism - and socialscientists who tryto combinethe universalisticvalues of development- science,technology, efficiency - with respect for or revivalof culturaland nationalspecificity. But all of them are linked withthe neocommunitarianmovements which are the "negative"form of nationalmovements and developan idealistand oftenreligious view of social life. (5) This reviewof fourschools of social thoughtwhich are differentfrom a sociologyof collectiveaction and social movementsraises the problemof the relationshipsbetween themand the sociologyof social movements.Here we must followthe same principleof analysisas before.Each of these sociologicalschools must be granteda certainautonomy, but at thesame timeit correspondsto a specificform of disorganizationof a sociologyof action,which deserves a centralplace preciselybecause of itscapacity to understandand reinterpret otherapproaches. The four schools we opposed to a sociologyof action- functionalism,structural Marxism, "strategic," and "civiliza- tional"schools - correspondto the formsof decompositionof socialmovements which have been representedin the schema alreadypresented. When we pass fromsocial movementsto submovements, beforecrossing the frontierof sociologicalanalysis and enter- ing the territoryof Homo oeconomicus,we tend to use a functionalistanalysis, because the actorsof a politicalpressure or of the defenseof collectiveinterests are definedno longer as "producers"of socialorganization but as "consumers"- that

12 A. Abdel Malek, Project on SocioculturalDevelopment Alternatives in a Changing World:Final Report(Tokyo: United Nations University,1985).

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 771 is, by theirlevel of participation.Instead of analyzinga form of social life as the result of a centralconflict and of its institutional,political consequences and solutions,functionalist approachesidentify values and normswith forms of organization and processes of integrationor disintegration.But a sociologyof actionobjects that no situationcan be reducedto institutionalrules and hierarchizedstatutes: there is alwaysa certain amount of uncertainty,negotiation, conflict, transformation. The structuralMarxist school rightly underlines the constant transformationof an open conflictbetween opposed social movementsinto a "closed" order whichhas a certaininertia reinforcedby mechanismsof socialand culturalcontrol. What we objectto is thatno societyis completelyclosed, and cer- tainlynot industrial and democraticsocieties, so thatthe main errorof thisapproach - whichcan transformitself into a self- fulfillingprophecy when it is predominant- is to deny and ignorethe ubiquitous existence of actors.When I metHerbert Marcusein thestreets of Parisin May 1968,near massdemon- strationsand barricades built by middle-classstudents in the heart of the city,I was entitledto express to him my misgivingsabout his idea thatour societiesmade movements of protestimpossible. At the same time,students and blacksin theUnited States, sometimes inspired by Marcuse's ideas, were demonstratinghis excessivepessimism. The "strategic"school is not directlyincluded in the general schema presentedabove because its representationof social lifeas a complexflow of changewithout any structural conflict is the directopposite of a sociologyof social movementsand cannot be consideredas one of its formsof decomposition. But social actorsare not orientedonly toward their environment;they are not only agentsof change; theybelong to a certaintype of sociallife, of productionand culture.A sociology of strategiesis rightlypredominant in the studyof inter- nationalrelations; it cannot be centralin the studyof social relationsin general.It is arbitraryto mergestructural prob-

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 772 SOCIAL RESEARCH lems and historicaltransformations into one central category, social change, and it is excessive to react against functionalist and structuralMarxist theories by isolating the actor from a systemwhich is reduced to an environmentin which the actor is oriented by his interest. Finally, the sociological school which gives priorityto na- tionalculture and the defense of the specificityof civilizations which are threatened by the cultural and economic im- perialismof universalist-orientedcountries, capitalist as well as communist,maintains the long traditionwhich was created by the German historical school of law and other forms of his- toricistthought. Our main critiqueagainst it is thatit identifies social life with ideologies and political philosophies and ne- glects the real social actors. It is dangerous to identifyEgyp- tian peasants or Moroccan workers with Islam or Japanese white-collaremployees with Buddhism, even if it is necessary to give the greatestimportance to the specificityof each civili- zation. Cultural orientationscannot be separated from social relations and in particular from relations of power or domination.

The Natureof Social Movements

Let's now present more directlysome principles of analysis of social movementswhich have been already implicitlyintro- duced. (1) Social movementsare always defined by a social conflict, that is, by clearly defined opponents. Actors often live their own actions firstof all as a rupture withpredominant cultural values or institutionalrules. Alberoni insisted on this opposition between institutionand movement.13But many revoltsor uprisings can be nothing but signs of an internal crisis and reorganizationof a social system.A social movementcannot be defined by its intensity, its emotions, or its "volcanic"

13F. Alberoni, Movimentoe istituzione(Bologna: II Mulino, 1977).

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 773 force- images whichcorrespond better to disruptionswhich can be betteranalyzed from a functionalistpoint of view. (2) The mostcontroversial idea whichhas been defended here is thatin a givensocietal type there is onlyone central couple of conflictingsocial movements.This idea seemsvery near to the Marxistconcept of class struggleand is constantly challengedby observerswho describea greatvariety of conflictswhich cannot be consideredas specific"fronts" of a general war. These observersreject the ideologicalor even eschatologicalconnotation of such a view, which seems to express a religiousbelief in the end of the prehistoryof mankind. I share thesecriticisms and agree thatit is indispensableto eliminate the eschatologicalaspects of many nineteenth- centurytheories. But theconcept of socialmovement has very littlein commonwith the ideas whichare here rightlycrit- icized.Social movementsare not positiveor negativeagents of history,of modernization,or of the liberationof mankind. They act in a giventype of socialproduction and organization. This is the reason whywe emphasizethe priorityof social, structuralconflicts over historicalmovements. Once thismis- understandinghas been eliminated,it becomesclear thatthe multiplicityof socialconflicts or, moreprecisely, the idea that thereis no centralconflict corresponds to a system-centered analysis.In the same wayas a car can breakdown fora series of reasonsand as thereis nothingin commonbetween a flat tire,a lack of gas, and a brokengearbox, many people are satisfiedwith observing that there is apparentlynothing in commonbetween ethnic minorities protest, women's lib, in- dustrialunions, urban crisis, and antiwarmovements. Who is going to deny thatthese conflicts are largelyseparated from each other?But thispedestrian observation is no argumentto rejectthe idea thata centralconflict exists in a giventype of society.And even in industrialsocieties, it was easy to observe greatdistances between unions, socialist parties, cooperatives, popular culturemovements, municipal action, and so on.

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If I devotedthe precedingpages to a ratherlong definition of a givenapproach in relationwith others, my purpose was to get rid of a primitivetype of social thoughtwhich identifies analyticalcategories with historical facts. We have no rightto say that the United States is an industrialor postindustrial, democraticor capitalistcountry, as if all aspectsof American life should be consideredas attributesof one of these defi- nitions.Only concrete research and discussionscan definethe degree of integrationof specificconflicts into a generalsocial movement. I devoteda seriesof researchprojects to theanalysis of what is oftencalled new social movements,that is, more precisely, new socialconflicts. My goal was and stillis to detectwhether or notthere are somecommon elements in someof them, if there is somesocial movement in conflictswhich have obviouslyother components.What is strikingtoday is thatthis hypothesis is often accepted, even if it is in rathervague terms.Many observersare aware of the factthat central conflicts deal less with labor and economic problemsthan with culturaland especiallyethical problems, because the dominationwhich is challengedcontrols not only "means of production"but the productionof symbolicgoods, that is, of informationand images,of cultureitself. These briefremarks do not intendto demonstratesuch a generalhypothesis but onlyto makeclear that the precedingpages can help us to understandhow a centralconflict and social movementcan appear througha greatvariety of conflictsin whichother components can have more weightand be even predominant. (3) The reasonwhy so manypeople are spontaneouslycon- vincedof the pluralityof conflictsis thatthey identify social movementswith opposition or "popular" movementswhich challenge"social order." On the contrary,a popular social movementcannot be separatedfrom a socialmovement of the "rulingclass," and only theirconflict can be consideredas central.Holders of economicor politicalpower must be analyzed as a social movementinstead of being identifiedwith

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 775 centralcultural values and social norms.Referring to an industrialsociety, I would considermanagement a social move- mentexactly in the same way as labor,and Ford as a move- mentleader or an ideologistin the same wayas Gompersor Reuther.So the centralityof social movementsnever means their hegemony,their capacityto identifythemselves with socialorder, modernity, or rationality.Such an identificationis neverobtained, even by a "rulingclass," but onlyby an absolute State, which destroyssocial actors,both powerfuland powerless. (4) If we oftenfeel uncomfortable with the idea of a central socialmovement, it is because we are stillinfluenced by a long traditionwhich identifies social movementsand politicalaction, that is, organized action aiming at controllingState power.This confusionhas been centralin European thought wherethe labor movementhas oftenbeen consideredsynon- ymouswith socialism, both in Communistcircles and in social- democraticStates. American intellectual life has provedmore able to understandthe concept of social movementwhile Europeansand LatinAmericans for a long timespoke only of revolutionsor of State-ledreforms. It is typicalof evolutionistsocial thoughtnot to separate structureand change, "social" and "historical"movements. Classicalsociology defined Western society both as a system and as a processof modernization.Durkheim insisted more on one aspectand Weberon the other,but Parsonsreached an extremepoint of identificationof modernity,as a processof rationalizationand secularization,with principles of unityand integrationof modernWestern societies. In the same way,in Latin America and in other parts of the world today, sociologicalanalysis is still identifiedwith the studyof the formationof a nationalState. The noveltyof the conceptof social movementas I use it here is thatit opposes itselfto thistype of social thoughtand emphasizesthe analyticalseparation between social movementsand transformationsof the State. To put itin traditional

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terms,it is based on the eighteenth-centuryidea of the separationbetween civil society and State.That is whythe idea of social movementinterprets very powerfully the attemptsof "society"to liberateitself from "power," to use theexact words bywhich Solidarity defined its action against the party-statein Poland. It would be a mistaketo look todayin our countriesfor a politicalprinciple of unificationof social movements.For Lenin,the class in itselfwas transformedinto a class foritself onlyby a revolutionaryavant-garde party. The idea of social movementis clearlyanti-Leninist and impliesthat the nature of a socialmovement can be definedonly in termsof cultural stakesand conflictsbetween social, "civil"actors. That obvi- ouslysupposes that the whole of civilsociety is not"mobilized" or repressedby an absoluteState. (5) Three mainkinds of socialmovements should be distin- guished.Social movements, in a strictsense, represent conflicting effortsto controlcultural patterns (knowledge, investment,ethics) in a givensocietal type. Historical movements are organizedactions to controla processof passage fromone societaltype to anotherone. Here actorsare no longer definedin purelysocial termsbut firstof all by theirrelation- ships withthe State,which is the centralagent of such historical transformations.Nevertheless, historical movements, as I already mentioned,are not completelyseparated from socialmovements because they combine a classdimension with a nationaland modernizingone, as is visibleboth in Com- munist movementsand in national-popularregimes. The same complexitycharacterizes cultural movements. They cannot be reduced to cultural innovations,which are defined in purelycultural terms as a quarrelbetween ancients and mod- erns,to referto an episode in thehistory of Frenchliterature. A culturalmovement, on the contrary,is a type of social movementin whichthe transformation of culturalvalues plays a centralrole but in whichsocial conflictappears withinthis process of transformationof values. A good contemporary

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 777 exampleis thewomen's movement. It is centrallydefined by a critiqueand transformationof women'sstatus and image,and more broadlyby the emergenceof new ethicalvalues, but it is constantlydivided by a social conflictwhich opposes two waysof interpretingwomen's protest: a liberalaction, aiming at achievingequality of rightsand opportunitiesbetween men and women,and a more radical tendencywhich rejects an equalitywhich appears to be imitativeof the dominantmale model and assertsthe specificityof women'sculture, experience, and action.This internalconflict, which has been espe- ciallyvisible in the United Statesand France,draws a clear separationbetween cultural innovation and culturalmovement.

New Social Movements?

(1) The mostserious critique of the notionof social movement,as I use it here, is that it corresponds,like all mac- rosociologicalconcepts, to a specifictype of society.We cannot analyzeour societieswith the conceptsof caste or Standand less and less of class. In the same way,is not social movement an abstractname for labor movement,a generalizationof a giventype of industrialsociety? Some introducea more posi- tivecritique: let's substitute in our vocabulary"minorities" for socialmovements, let's abandon all referencesto a new society and recognizethat in our mass societyprotest movements do not pretendto becomea majorityand to get legitimatepower but definethemselves as minorities.They do not pretendto transformsociety; they are liberalor libertarian,and tryto lowerthe level of socialcontrol and integration.They fightfor a societydefined by its diversity,adding ethnic or moral pluralismto politicalpluralism and freeenterprise. The most extremeform of these critiquesasserts that all models of collectivelife should be respectedand the only paramount value is individualism:the onlypossible movement should be

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 778 SOCIAL RESEARCH antisocial,pushing back the invasionof collectivecontrols and organizations,destroying statuses and roles to free the indi- vidual,his desires,dreams, and imagination. (2) All thesecritiques, excessive as theysometimes are, help us to free ourselvesfrom social and politicalmodels which wereinherited from a decliningtype of society.I have already indicated some deep differencesbetween industrialsocial movementsand present-dayconflicts. We mustnow deepen our analysis. All social movementsin the past were limited,because the fieldof theiraction - thatis, the capacityof a societyto produce itselfwas limited, even in the most achievement- orientedsocieties. What I call historicity,the capacityto produce an historicalexperience through cultural patterns, that is, a new definitionof natureand man,was limitedby whatI call "metasocialguarantees of social order." Men thought theylived in a microcosmincluded in a macrocosmwhose laws imposeda definitionof human natureand legitimatedsocial norms.All social movements,at the same timeas theywere definingstakes and enemies,were referringto a metasocial principlewhich was called orderof things,divine rule, natural law,or historicalevolution (the idea of modernityis one of the last metasocialprinciples). In our times,we feel thatour ca- pacity of self-production,self-transformation, and self- destructionis boundless. Industrialsocieties were able to transform"means of production"to inventmechanical devices and systems of organization, but our society invents technologiesto produce symbolicgoods, languages,information. It produces not only means but ends of production, demands,and representations.It is alreadyable to transform our body,our sexuality,our mentallife. The resultis thatthe fieldof social movementsextends itself to all aspectsof social and cultural life. This conclusion is the opposite of the structuralMarxist idea accordingto whichsocial life is con- trolledby a centralagency. The publicspace - Öffentlichkeit- strictlylimited in a bourgeoissociety, was extendedto labor

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 779 problemsin an industrialsociety and now spreads over all fieldsof experience:private life becomes public and social scientistswho announced some years ago that,after a long period of public life,we were withdrawinginto privatelife, did notsee thatthe main political problems today deal directly with privatelife - fecundationand birth,reproduction and sexuality,illness and death, and, in a differentway, with home-consumedmass media. (3) This extraordinarytransformation, which makes all principlesand rulesproblematic, creates two main obstacles to the formationof socialmovements. The firstone is the disap- pearanceof metasociallimits which provided collective action witha principleof unitywhich was bothnegative and positive. Marcuseand othersraised the question:when gods are dead, when guiltand redemptionlose theirmeaning, what can we oppose to utilitarianismor hedonism?The Westernexperi- ence can be consideredas a shortand dramaticperiod of secularization,Entzauberung, which correspondsto the eco- nomictakeoff but rapidlyends up in a utilitarianconsumer society.Big Brotheris not a dangerous enemy for social movementsin democraticsocieties; egotism is. But here is exactlythe pointwhere new socialmovements enter the scene. Past social movementswere linked to metasocialprinciples, but theyopposed themselvesto the dominationof tradition and naturalprinciples; new social movementsare threatened by utilitarianism,but theydefend the self and its creativity againstinterest and pleasure. Dominationcan no longer be challengedby a call to metasocialprinciples; only a directcall to personaland collectivefreedom and responsibilitycan foster protestmovements. In a parallel way,ruling groups are no longermotivated by a Protestantethic or its equivalent;only self-realizationand creativitycan motivatethem as entrepre- neurs.Social movementsare no longerspurred by the images of an ideal societybut by the search of creativity.The utilitarian traditionis the main limitand obstacleto social movements todayas religionwas in more traditionalcultures.

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(4) New social movementsare less sociopoliticaland more sociocultural.The distancebetween civil society and State is increasingwhile the separationbetween private and publiclife is fadingaway. The continuityfrom social movement to political partyis disappearing;political life tends to be a depressed area betweena strongerState in a changinginternational environmentand, on the otherside, sociocultural movements. The main riskis no longerto see social movementsabsorbed by politicalparties, as in Communistregimes, but a complete separationbetween social movementsand State. In such a situation,social movementscan easily become segmented, transformthemselves into defense of minoritiesor searchfor identity,while public life becomes dominated by pro-or anti- Statemovements. That is whatis happeningtoday, especially in Germanyand the UnitedStates, with peace movements.It is possiblethat through such "historical"movements, new social movementswill eventuallyachieve a high capacityof politicalaction, progressing from Bürgeriniziativen to a Green partyand inventingnew formsof politicallife; but a different evolutionis equallypossible: the crystallizationof an anti-State movement,more and more distinctfrom scattered sociocul- turalmovements. This situationcorresponds to the beginning of manyindustrial societies when anarchist,communist, and Christiangroups were challenging State and churchwhile, far fromthem, weak unions, wildcat strikes, and riotsexpressed a confusedmixture of workers'grievances and of decline of preindustrialcrafts and cities. (5) The maincondition for social movementsto takeshape is the consciousnessthat we are enteringa new typeof social life.During the sixtiesand earlyseventies, the crisisof indus- trialvalues prevailed over the notionof postindustrialsociety. The firstnew social movements were so closelylinked with the counterculturethat theycollapsed when risingexpectations were replaced by shrinkingprospects. Thus, duringthe late seventiesand even,in Europe,the early eighties, our historical experiencehas been dominatedby the idea of crisis.Individ-

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 781 ual and nationallife seemed to be determinedby unforesee- able events,like changes in the dollar or the price of oil, Japanesecompetition or Sovietmilitary pressure. I criticized, as earlyas in 1969, the notionof postindustrialsociety, as it had been conceivedby D. Bell, thatis, as a hyperindustrial society.Fifteen years later, after a shortperiod of enthusiasm for the "thirdwave," few observers,especially in business circles,are ready to speak of a postindustrialrevolution. A new industrialrevolution or a new leap forwardin industrial productivityseems to be a more adequate expression.Ameri- cans in generalhave been verycautious in theirjudgments, whilemore voluntaristiccountries like Japan and France are still speaking of an electronicrevolution, in the firstcase becauseit is identifiedwith the pride of a Japanmade number one, in the second because Frenchgovernment agencies are filledwith anguish as theyconsider the advance of the United Statesand Japan in manyhigh-tech industries. Postindustrialsociety must be definedin a more globaland radicalway today, as a new cultureand a fieldfor new social conflictsand movements.A broad occupationaldefinition of an informationsociety is misleadingand cannotjustify the idea thata differentsociety is takingshape. On the contrary, postindustrialsociety must be defined more strictlyby the technologicalproduction of symbolicgoods whichshape or transformour representationof human nature and of the externalworld. For thesereasons, research and development, informationprocessing, biomedicai science and techniques, and mass media are the fourmain componentsof postindustrialsociety, while bureaucratic activities or productionof felec- tricaland electronicequipment are just growingsectors of an industrialsociety defined by productionof goods more than by new channelsof communicationsand thecreation of artifi- cial languages. Only the organizationof new social movementsand the developmentof differentcultural values can justify the idea of a new societythat I preferto call a programmedmore than just

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 782 SOCIAL RESEARCH a postindustrialsociety. The comparison with the historyof industrialsociety is once more useful: in the Western World, crises of old values and new economic challenges come first before new social actors and conflictstake shape; new formsof political life and new ideologies appear even later. This is a practical reason why sociology today must give a central importance to the concept of social movement- not only to separate itself from an old definitionof its object as the studyof society,which should be replaced by the studyof social action, but, more concretely,because the constructionof a new image of social life requires, right now, the concept of social movement as a bridge between the observationof new technologies and the idea of new formsof political life. This concept could not play a central role in previous formsof social thought; for the first time, it can become the keystone of sociological analysis. (6) The danger here is to be lured by voluntaristicassump- tions. The concept of social movementis useful when it helps one to rediscover social actors where they have been buried beneath either structural Marxist or rationalist theories of strategiesand decisions. During the seventies,the "dominant ideology" was that ethnic minorities, like all dominated groups, school students,hospital inmates,and othershad to be defined by the exclusion, labeling, and stigmatizationthey suffered,in other words, as victims.Only an analysisbased on the idea of social movement can challenge directlyand effi- cientlysuch a view and help rediscover that these alienated and excluded categories are neverthelessactors and are often more able than the "silent majority"to analyze their situation, define projects, and organize conflictswhich can transform themselves into an active social movement. In the same way, how many Jews today would accept to be defined without any referenceto Jewishculture or to Israel? A similaruse of the concept "social movement"can aid in the criticismof an image of the school system which emphasizes the impact of

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 783 social inequalityon academicresults and futureoccupational achievements.Instead of consideringteachers and pupils as determinedby social and culturalinequalities beyond their reach, the emphasis must be put on the autonomyof the schoolsystem, on itscapacity to increaseor decreaseinequality of opportunities,so thateducation can be conceivedas a field of debatesand projectswhich can probablynot be interpreted as directsocial movements but, in a morelimited and indirect way,as manifestationsof a tensionbetween education as so- cializationand as "individuation,"opposition which expresses a moregeneral conflict. In situationswhich are generallyinter- pretedin termsof participationor exclusion,of conformity and deviance,the idea of social movementintroduces a dif- ferentapproach because it triesto evaluate the capacityof variouscategories to transformthemselves into actors of their own situationand of its transformation. But we should distrusttoo simpleimages of social movementsas "consciousand organized"actions. Especially in our times:today, as at the beginningof the IndustrialRevolution, it is easierto describemasses, "dangerous classes," riots, or the formationof a new elitethan social movementswhich are not yetorganized. Cultural orientations and politicalconflicts are more visiblethan social problems,and these are too easily analyzedin termof marginalityand exclusion.It took some time in the nineteenthcentury to discoverthe "politicalca- pacityof the laboringclasses"; we are only approachingan analogous stage of evolutionof the new social movements. Let's considerthree more examplesof the complexnature of newsocial conflicts. The actionsagainst the industrial use of nuclearenergy have revealeda new kind of protest,against decisionmakers who have the powerto shape nationallife for a long periodof timein a "technocratic"way. This actiontries to fostera grass-rootsdemocracy. But at the same time,they are orientedby a defensiveand communitariancountercul- tureoften loaded withirrationalism. This dualitycan be com-

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 784 SOCIAL RESEARCH pared with the firststages of the labor movement when an- ticapitalist protest was mixed with the defense of semi- independent craftsmendisplaced by industry. The women's movement,beyond its equalitarian goals, has destroyed traditionalimages of the "feminine nature," but it has often been linked with an ideology which was inherited from the labor movement and which imposed upon it categoriesof analysis and protestwhich did not correspond to the motivationsof militantwomen. In a more general way, from the seventies until today, the displacement of protest from the economic to the cultural field has been linked withan opposite tendency,the privatiza- tion of social problems, an anxious search for identityand a new interest for the body, demands which can lead to the definitionof new social norms or, in an opposite way, to an individualism which excludes collective action. It takes few pages to define and defend the concept of social movement, but it should take many years for sociologiststo disentangle various components of complex social and cultural actions, and to identifythe presence of social movementsin collective behavior which has many more components.

Conclusion

The fact that many sociologistsare now interestedin "social movements,"even if this notion is too often used in a loose sense, reveals the end of a long period of sociological thought during which the concept of social system played a central role. This classical sociology is now challenged on one side by utilitarianswho try to discover economic rationalitybehind collective action and by analysts of strategies and "limited rationality"who are interested in processes of change which respond to transformationsof the environment; and on the otherside, not only by neocommunitariansocial thinkerswho oppose the specificityof each civilizationto a foreign-ledde- velopmentbut firstof all by sociologistswho refuse to separate

This content downloaded from 132.248.240.180 on Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:49:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 785 culturalorientations from social conflicts,and who give,as I do myself,a basic role to the notion of social movement, definedas an agent of conflictfor the social controlof the main culturalpatterns. These two divergentstreams of critiques attacknot only optimisticfunctionalism but, withthe same strength,pessimistic structural Marxism. Then the concept of social movement,as I used it here, is part of the general debate whichopposes the main sociologicalschools and whichcan be summedup by the schemain Figure 2. If we acceptthat economic rationalism and defenseof cul- turalspecificities, for opposite reasons, drift out of thefield of sociology,which is generallydefined as the studyof social relations- thatis, as the explanationof individualand collective behaviorby the social relationsin whichthe actorsare involved- the main debates in sociologycan be defined in moreconcentrated terms. Each mainsociological school can be defined by its emphasis on one of two main approaches: on one side,it putsthe emphasis more on theactors or, on the contrary,on the system,and, on theother side, it insistsmore on social integrationor on social conflicts.These two choices are by no meansparallel; on the contrary,their combinations definethe main choicesfor sociologists. A firstschool gives a priorityto the unityof the system;its main conceptis socialsystem. A second insistson the internal conflictof a system;structural Marxism is its mostinfluential expressiontoday, but it can be more broadlydefined by the centralrole it givesto inequality.A thirdschool gives a central importanceto the managementof change. The conceptsof

Figure 2. System Actor

Integration Social system Strategy ( functionalism ) ( neo-rat ionalism )

Conflict inequality Social movement (structuro-marxism) (Sociology of action)

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organizationand decisionhave generallycorresponded to this orientation,which is best definedtoday by the centralrole it givesto the studyof strategies.The last one emphasizesat the same timeactors and conflicts;its view of social life is organized around the concept of social movement.It should be added thatthese generalapproaches can be used directly or at a less global level. For example, the idea of social movement can be replaced by an analysis of political pressures- as it is the case in manyof Tilly'sworks - or even of public opinion transformations.The fact that an author locates himselfat a societal,political, or organizationallevel should not be confusedwith his generalorientation. I have tried in this paper to make clear how a sociology whichis organizedaround the concept of socialmovement can both recognizethe relativeautonomy of other schools and criticizethem. But, as a conclusion,it is moreuseful to recog- nize the existenceand strengthof the fourmain orientations of sociologyand maybeto suggestthat today the centraldebate opposes the conceptsof strategyand social movements while twentyyears ago the hottestdiscussions opposed the ideas of social systemand inequality.This transformationof the debatesshows that sociology as a wholehas movedfrom a studyof social systemand its principleof integrationto an analysisof social actionand social change.This fundamental transformationproduces deep intellectualcrises. We are probablystill in a periodof uncertaintyabout what is the most creative paradigm in sociologicalthought, and some are temptedto abandon not onlythe old functionalistmodel but thewhole of sociologyitself, by calling in nonsociologicalideas like Homo oeconomicusor Volksgeist(Figure 3).

Figure 3. of Economic Analysis of organizations, Functionalist?) Study of j Defense V systems I cultural , ." °f action I 'and ^ *^^s* y^ yS and flnational ' social mo-lspecif ici ty Rationalism Decisions and strategies Structuro-marxism vements ■

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The conceptof socialmovement is all the morenecessary to the extentto which it facilitatesthe transcendenceof the presentweakness and confusionof sociologyby offeringa directcritique of themodel of analysiswhich is in crisisand by introducinga new general approach,new debates,and new fieldsof concreteresearch. The worstpossible mistake would be to considersocial movementsas the object of one more chapterin bookswhose general design and orientationswould notbe changed,as if it wereuseful in certainperiods to insist on crises and conflictsand, in others,on institutionsand socialization. The maturityof a fieldof knowledgecan be measuredby its abilityto organizeits works and discussionsabout a fewcentral problems.Today, the central problem of sociology,in a rapidlychanging world, is to understandthe productionand controlof change, and its centraldebate must oppose the conceptsof strategyand social movements.These concepts representto some extentcomplementary approaches, but it is indispensablefor students of each schoolto trybuilding com- petitivegeneral theories. Only the debate betweenthese con- flictingimages of social life can give back to sociologythe vitalityit seems to have lost.

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