Strength in Motion: Social Movements and Political Struggle

Author: (USA) Tarrow (Tarrow/S.) / Wu Qinghong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: From the French Revolution, the American Revolution, to the democratic movements and workers' movements of the 19th century, and even to today's ethnic and religious movements, social movements have had a powerful impact on politics and society. This book examines the history of social movements and proposes a theory of collective action to explain the rise and fall of social movements, providing an interpretation of the forces that shape personal lives, policy reforms, and political systems. The book not only discusses the sources of movement forces in cultural, organizational, and individual aspects but also emphasizes the fluctuations of social movements as part of political struggles, as outcomes of changes in political opportunity structures, state strategies, and transnational diffusion.
[Preface]
After the completion of the second edition of Power in Movement in 1993, many events in the field of struggle politics and social movements occurred, surpassing the total number of events in any five-year period since the late 1960s. Although some socialist states disintegrated in 1989, their lessons were not immediately reflected in academic works. The peaceful movements that followed, however, led to instability in several countries, sometimes triggering volatile violent movements, and even in former Yugoslavia, resulting in a brutal domestic war. Therefore, in this edition, I have tried to incorporate the lessons learned from these transformations. While the events of 1989 and subsequent years did confirm some of the hints I made in the postscript of the second edition, they did not support the argument that transnational struggles would rapidly spread. I still remain cautious about my prediction of a borderless world of movement. However, especially in Western Europe, increasing evidence suggests that the European Union may trigger a new wave of transnational movements. Even beyond the Western world, transnational initiative networks have, in some respects, become similar to the primary objects of study in this book—ethnic social movements. These changes are so significant that a separate chapter has been added to this edition to discuss them.
In fact, since the publication of the second edition of Power in Movement, scholars studying social movements and struggle politics have been very active. In Europe, North America, and increasingly in other regions, new monographs and edited volumes have emerged at an extremely rapid pace. In this developing field of research, several new series have been launched, and a new journal entirely dedicated to the study of struggle politics, Mobilization, has also appeared. As a result, I have been able to draw on several recently published works in this edition, such as Donatella della Porta's Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State, Bert Klandermans's The Social Psychology of Protest, Hanspeter Kriesi and his co-authors's The Political Economy of New Social Movements in Western Europe, Alberto Melucci's Challenging Codes, and Charles Tilly's From Mobilization to Revolution.
The structure of the second chapter of this book is similar to a comparative political studies anthology titled Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, published by Cambridge University Press, thanks to the editors Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald. Are we living in a "movement society"? I have never claimed to know the answer to this question. However, in the new conclusion, I have raised several questions and explained their implications more thoroughly than I did five years ago. If this edition helps to clarify the issue of the "movement society" for scholars and experts in the study of social movements, it is largely due to my collaboration with David Meyer in publishing a new anthology titled Towards a Movement Society: Lessons for the Twenty-First Century.
Additionally, I would like to thank Mark Lichbach and Tom Rochon for providing insightful and culturally sensitive comments on the preliminary draft of this edition. As new social movements emerge around the world, scholars continue to explore new frontiers, and my own perspectives have evolved. Since the publication of the second edition of Power in Movement, I have tried to understand how social movement theory has been extended to general studies of struggle politics, beyond Western democracies, and to comprehensive research on revolutions. To this end, I joined a closely connected network of scholars and benefited greatly from it. Together with other scholars, under the support of the Mellon Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, we conducted collaborative research on struggle politics. Through shared reflections, whether young or old, we inspired and influenced each other, ultimately shaping my own ideas. Especially in this project, I would like to thank the two scholars, Mac and T2, for helping me further clarify the conceptual relationship between social movements and struggle politics. For this, I am deeply grateful.