Social Movements & Culture
A Resource Site
This site provides a space for the study of social movements in the US, including those movements as linked to transnational and global movements. Our emphasis is on recent and contemporary movements, but we also aim to provide materials on earlier movements. We seek to bring together the best insights of sociology, political science, anthropology, history, cultural studies, American studies, ethnic studies, women's studies, and other fields of social movement analysis, as well as the insights of movement activists inside and outside of academia.
We are particularly interested in helping develop work on the cultural dimension of social movements. We believe that, despite some excellent work, the specifically cultural study of social movements remains relatively undeveloped. We hope to keep a rather open definition of what cultural approaches to movement analysis might entail, but one key element is the further refinement of the concept of movement cultures, a term meant to include all those practices and meaning-making processes by which those within a given movement express their distinctiveness vis-à-vis the surrounding culture(s) with which they interact. These practices and processes include, but are not limited to: rituals and symbolically charged actions; movement-specific ideologies; idiolects, jargons, and other special language forms; works of art and other expressive forms; unique value systems; material culture objects peculiar to the movement; and various other behaviors and expressions that enhance movement solidarity, strengthen movement-bred identities and communicate movement ideas, values, and goals. In studying these cultural forms we hope to link them up to, rather than see them as autonomous from, political economy, socio-cultural institutions, and other structural factors that have previously been privileged in movement analysis. We view culture neither as fully autonomous, nor as reducible to these other forces, but as in complex, mutually constructive interaction with them.
The site currently consists of links to on-line articles, bibliographies, course syllabi, conferences, a glossary of terms for movement analysis, and sets of links to historically-oriented and contemporary sites categorized by movement type.
Folk interested in social movements and culture should also visit the sister site based on my book, The Art of Protest. That site includes additional bibliographical materials and links. -- T.V. Reed.
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