FREE ESSAY ON SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

The definition of social movements cannot easily be summarized into one concise sentence.
A social movement is an attempt to intentionally intervene in the process of social
change. A social movement is a creation of modern society. A social movement is a
collection of people engaging in practices and discourses designed to challenge and
change society as they define it. A social movement takes on and challenges the authority
of the ruling political system. As you can see, social movements involve various
different aspects that can be somewhat summarized by stating that they seek to change
society in one aspect or another.
The most active period of social movement in the 20th century were the 1960's. This
period roughly begins with a build-up from the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Supreme Court Decision of 1954. This desegregation decision began the Civil Rights
movement. By 1960, multiple movements are gathering steam in the United States. After
1970 and the Kent State killings, social movements began to decline and by the fall of
Saigon that ended the Vietnam War in 1975 the most active period was over. Of course,
movements continue to our day just as there have always been some active reform movements
in America. But the most active period was over.
There were various reasons for the social movements that occurred in the 60's. Despite
the ending of slavery in 1865, American culture- particularly in the South- had
reestablished a cultural system based on racial superiority. In 1960, one in five
Americans lived in conditions described by the federal government as "poverty." In the
midst of the Cold War, large amounts of resources went into building military power.
Materialism in the United States only helped to fuel the cries for social movements. The
children of the American middle and even upper classes were eager participants and often
the leaders of these movements. They found that the material satisfactions of their
wealthy status did not produce satisfaction with their lives. 
The movements succeeded in countering the cooperation and suppression strategies of the
dominant order through three categories. Physical confrontation, in both violent and
non-violent ways, challenged the legitimacy of the established orders. Peaceful lunch
hour sit-ins challenged white power, threatened vigilante violence from resisting white
citizens, and would lead to police violence. In the process, the laws kept people from
the simple act of eating at a lunch counter were demonstrated. The Black Panthers created
such fear in law enforcement that they would routinely invade an apartment in the middle
of the night and kill panthers lying asleep in their beds. Such actions not only
prevented cooperation of members of the movement who felt under siege, they also served a
proof that the movement's charges of militarism and violence against the dominant order
were given validity in the images. 
Rhetorical confrontation included strategies such as name calling (calling officers
"pigs"), polemic rhetoric (a construction of the established order as the "enemy"), and a
totalizing rhetoric of exaggeration (painting the enemy with a broad brush as if there
were no variations of opinions within the dominant order) polarized agents of the
dominant order and those in the social movement. Rhetorical confrontation made compromise
with the dominant order unthinkable for those in the movement, and inflamed the agents of
the dominant order thus inducing the over-response of the dominant order in physical
confrontation.
The last of the three tactics used by the members of the social movement was moralistic
identity. The moral rhetoric characteristic of American social movements when combined
with rhetorical confrontation and the violence of the dominant order created a moral
distinction between movement and dominant order. Such a dramatic drawing or moral
distinction, ofttimes with the dominant order's own values, gave fervent commitment to
those in the movement. It also made the compromise appropriate in cooperation seem
irresponsible and even wicked. The perfection of all of these three strategies of
confrontation in the sixties was a great power of the movement.