Limit of “Social Movement” and Its Relativization: In the Case of Late-Touraine Theory

This presentation addresses one of the session-organizer’s questions: what is the “limits” in “the application of social movement concepts and tools to a specific context or case” and how to response to those. It discusses the concept of “social movement” (SM) itself.

There are two definition in SM studies. The first is the original definition that SM is the movement of society as a whole, Society’s movement, which was firstly suggested by Stein (1850) assuming French Revolution and Socialist revolutions, and is succeeded by European social theorists like Touraine, Giddens. It is often useful for Interpretation approach which has interest to interpret and evaluate the meanings and significances of various practices from macro-historical perspective. But the normative definition is mainly based on histories and experiences of western societies, therefore it cannot be directly introduced in non-western societies.

The second is the now-dominant definition of SM as a kind of collective behavior / action directed to changes, which was developed in US, by Heberle, Vander-Zanden and collective behavior / action theorists. It is useful for Explanation approach which has interest to explain the causal mechanism of SM, like theories of Resource Mobilization, Political Opportunity, Framing... The definition is based on empirical object and it is only premise for explaining causal mechanisms, so there is no obstacle to directly apply itself to non-western.

Although the explanation approach based on the second definition of SM is dominant, now we see alt-right violent movements and crowd-like movements in the world, therefore interpretation approach to evaluate these should be needed more. Therefore, for application of interpretation approach to the non-western, we need to relativize the first definition in it.

In this presentation, Touraine’s concepts can be relativized through comparative political theories like Welfare Regimes theory. This procedure could be applied to relativize critical theories.