Structural Approaches in the Sociology of Social Movements

Abstract

Sociological research emphasizes how social institutions, such as the family, religion, corporations, and governments influence people's choices about how they live.While acknowledging that individuals have some freedom to pursue different paths, sociologists argue that this freedom is limited in important ways by forces outside the control of individuals. Sociology, therefore, asks how these broader forces operate to affect the actions and beliefs of individuals and groups. As the editors have noted, sociological research on social movements can be classified as adopting either a structural or cultural emphasis. While the former focuses on the distribution of material resources and the organizations and institutions that govern such distribution, the latter approach emphasizes questions about how individuals and groups perceive and interpret these material conditions.In practice, distinguishing between actual material conditions and popular understandings of these can be difficult. For instance, categories of individuals such as gender, class, or ethnicity are structurally defined, but their sociological relevance grows not simply from their existence bur rather from the cultural work of individuals who help define group identities according to these structural categories. As Buechler observes, "[c]ollective identity and political consciousness are thus decisive factors mediating 2 structures of power and collective action " (2000:123). In other words, a group must somehow come to perceive itself as both distinct and subject to unjust material or social conditions. Such "collective identities" are far from automatic, because the "interlocking systems of domination" embedded in broader political and economic structures affect possibilities for social groups to articulate and mobilize around social movement identities. Thus, any attempt to understand social change requires attention to questions about how the resources and power needed to define and defend group interests are distributed within a society. Structural approaches recognize that inequalities are closely linked to macro-level factors such as a country's position in the world economy or to meso-level ones, such as class, race, and gender. Thus, any attempt to reduce inequalities in society must be mindful of how these broad structures are shaping broader power relations.A key starting point for much sociological work is the observation that virtually all societies experience inequality. The benefits and risks of society are nowhere near equally distributed, and therefore we would expect that particular clusterings of people would be more likely candidates for participation in social movements. In particular, more aggrieved groups might be expected to be engaged in protests against the status quo. Important debates have taken place among social movement scholars regarding the role of grievances in the generation of social movements. Early research in social movements saw political protest as emerging from groups that were relatively disadvantaged by the...

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