Criticising the Neoliberal within Us. Beyond the Economic-Utilitarian Perspective in Social Movement Studies and the Subordination of Sociology to Economics

The study of collective action and social movements have been one of the area of strongest criticism against neoliberalism. However, it is often overlooked how this area of analysis has ended unwittingly absorbing many typical tenets of neoliberalism, starting from an economicist and utilitarian view of people’s motivation to participate in protest. An example is the strong influence acquired by Mancur Olson theory of collective action (1965), which posits that people participate in protest movements because of “selective incentives” which justify what otherwise would appear as altruistic and colletivistic behaviour. A similar tendency is seen in the language of the enterprise introduced by resource mobilisation theorists authors, describing social movements as an industry of sort and their organisers as “social movement entrepreneurs”. In this context, social movements have come to be understood as companies of sort, thus profoundly misunderstanding the specificity of social movements vis-a-vis the economic field. Counter to this distortion of social movements, and the subordination of sociology to economic thinking, it will be argued that social movement studies need to go beyond this neoliberal worldview, and the idea of individuals as egotistical actors who are participating in protest only to satifsfy individual motives. Instead, what current movements demonstrate is the primacy of collective motivations, the fact that people participate in protest movements, because of their commitment to collective aspirations, and the sense of identity, belonging and recognition that springs from them. The paper will conclude looking at some of the implications of this proposed shift in the way to approach social movements, and the need to use a different terminology and frame of analysis in the study of social movements.