Social Movements

Social Movements
Name
Course
Instructor
Date
Social Movements
The term social movement emerged in the eightieth century and was first used by Saint Simon in France to characterize the movements of social protests that emerged at the time. The protests could later spill over to other countries and the term being interpreted as new political forces opposed to the status quo. Kumar (2015) defines social movement as an organized effort by a significant number of people to change (or resist change in) some major aspect or aspects of society. Kumar further says that such movements must be purposeful, organized and working together towards a common goal. With the growth and advancement in technologies, social movements have taken different dimensions not only in terms of coming up but also on the major agenda that they push for or they are opposing. Most importantly, they have become a major source of political and governance change. Notably, they have changed in terms of their leadership and membership structure with a significant change in their characteristics and mode of operation.
Stages in the formation of social movements
Unlike other organizations and movements, social movements do not have uniform or a systematic way in which they come up. Take for instance the Arab Spring that was started off by protests in Egypt following a wave of civil unrest in countries like Tunisia. The protests could later see the end President Hosni Mubarak’s term. The civil unrest later extended to countries like Libya, Syria and throughout the Middle East.
Although social movements have no particular format or protocol they go through when starting, most sociologists agree on major stages that social movements go through before they become a great force of change in society (Little, 2014). The first stage is the unrest or the preliminary stage that is characterized by civil unrest among the populace. The unrest starts off with a discontentment among people who challenge the existing order in society. Kumar (2015) says discontentment in society is always a relationship between objective conditions and how people view those conditions. Sociologists argue that without discontentment then there could be no social movements as majority of them come up with the aim of pushing for an agenda or against a policy that they are dissatisfied with.
The second stage in social movements is the popular stage in which the movement gets its identity by rallying behind a specific goal. At this stage the movement identifies itself with a specific ideology and have a leading figure for that movement. Notably, there are no official ways of appointing or coming up with the leader, they just pop up or those who were the originators of the idea or original opposers of the idea assume the role of leadership (Ergun & Erdogmus, 2017). At this stage, the movement is likely to rally behind a popular charismatic leader who becomes the face of the group in terms of identifying with their goal. After it has emerged as a strong group with a leader, then the number of people also increases after realizing it has a possibility of leading to a brighter future or in opposing specific issues that they are not satisfied with.
The third stage is the for...