From Social Movement Studies to Socio-Material Movement Studies: New Materialism-Based Methodology of Social Movement Case Studies

The case study methodology of SMs has developed in order to address the concrete local situation and to clarify the locally embedded causal mechanisms of SMs. Since the emotional turn of the Social Movement theory emerged through criticizing the ‘macro-structural bias’ of SM Theory, there is alternative theory being able to investigate situated cultural perspectives of SMs. It is, however, not enough to investigate only the human behavior that comprise the organization of the social movement and its process. Because the local and individual materiality as well as the material things (or non-humans) plays also the crucial role of SM identity-creating and continuity. This point of view is strongly influenced by the emerging currents of New Materialism-based sociological investigation (Fox and Alldred, 2017) and thus a turn from Social Movement to Socio-Material Movement investigation (Rieger and Wagonner (eds.) , 2016）.

Therefore in this presentation, I will show the theoretical as well as methodological application of investigating both the cultural and the natural object of SM as a specific assemblage of the human-nonhuman relations. First, I will show what the New Materialism and New Materialism-based sociological investigation signifies. Second, I will demonstrate how it is methodologically applicable in SM studies that opens up the Socio-Material Movement Studies.