Social Movements

Harinda Vidanage (PhD

director@bcis.edu.lk

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•        The First wave of these new social movements emerged in the 1960s in the form of civil rights, anti-war, and student movements. (South Asian context rise of Marxist movements and peasant movements)

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•       In the 1970s, came the peace, environmental, nuclear, and women’s movements.

•        Today, the New Age, animal rights, gay and lesbian movements, and most importantly the Green movement, complete the picture of this new species of social movements (Dalton and Kuechler 1990; Scott 1990).

 Features of NSMs

1. Members and sympathizers are usually young and belong to the new middle class (Muller-Rommel 1982, 1990).

2. Ideologically, NSMs stand in sharp contrast to traditional, or Old, labor movements, thus transcending the left–right distinctions (Scott 1990).

3. They tend to focus on issues of identity, stressing cultural and symbolic issues rather than economic demands (Altman 1989).

Features of NSMs (contd)

4. The distinction between individual and group boundaries is blurred. Instead, group action derives from, and is an extension of individual behaviors and lifestyles (Gus.eld 1994).

5. The mode of mobilization usually takes unconventional and radical forms quite different from the tactics practiced by working-class movements. Civil disobedience, direct action, and colorful protests are the usual tactics these movements use to attract public, and, above all, media attention (Doherty 1999).

6. Organizationally, these movements are decentralized and lack the hierarchical structure that conventional social movements and parties usually have. Local sections have certain autonomy, and decisions are made through open debates (Papadakis 1989).

Object of contention

•       NSMs question the wealth-oriented materialistic goals of industrial societies. They also call into question the structures of representative democracies that limit citizen input and participation in governance, instead advocating direct democracy, self-help groups, and cooperative styles of social organization.

 Civil Disobedience

•       Civil disobedience is a form of social action with the purpose to change and improve social problems. Civil disobedience is a contentious form of social action as it defies the law as a means of achieving change in the legal and political system.

•       John Rawls represents civil disobedience as a “public, non-violent, conscientious act contrary to law usually done with the intent to bring about change in the policies or laws of the government…where arrest and punishment are expected and accepted without resistance.”

 Swarming

•       When dispersed nodes of a network converge on a target (as human rights NGOs did in Chiapas), and “sustainable pulsing,” when “swarmers” coalesce, disperse, and recombine for attacks on new targets (as in anti-Maastricht marches in Europe and, one supposes, more recent demonstrations in Seattle and elsewhere).

Case Studies

                                                                               

Naxalite Movement

•       The Naxalite movement takes its name from a peasant uprising which took place in May 1967 at Naxalbari – a place on the north-eastern tip of India situated in the state of West Bengal. It was led by armed Communist revolutionaries, who two years later were to form a party – the CPI (M-L), or the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). Under the leadership of their ideologue, a 49-year old Communist, Charu Mazumdar, they defined the objective of the new movement as 'seizure of power through an agrarian revolution'.(AsiaMedia)

•        By the early 1970s, the Naxalite movement had spread from far-flung areas like Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in the south, to Bihar in the east, and Uttar Pradesh and Punjab in the north. Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh in particular became a mini-`liberated zone' for a brief spell, when Naxalite guerrillas drove out the landlords, and set up alternative institutions of administration in several hundreds of villages.

•       In parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the Naxalites succeeded in mobilizing the peasantry to recover lands that they had lost to the moneylender-cum-landlord class (to whom they had mortgaged their properties in lieu of money) and carry their harvested crops to their homes.

 Seattle protests

•       In the last days of November and the first days of December in 1999, over forty thousand people blocked the streets of downtown Seattle, Washington, to protest against the WTO and corporate globalization. That protest was triggered in large part by mobilizations on the Internet resulting from a controversy two years earlier over a proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)

•       Angered by the secretive nature of the IGOs and their enacted and proposed treaties, INGOs and NGOs such as Public Citizen, The Preamble Center for Public Policy, Jubilee 2000, Friends of the Earth, the Council of Canadians, The International Forum on Globalization, Mobilization for Global Justice, Citizens Global Trade Watch, Transparency International, and over eight hundred others from over 75 countries called in Seattle for “resistance to the growing power of corporate greed” and the “social degradation of the process of globalization withoutsocial control” engendered by the IGOs.

 Seattle 1999

•       Participants were concerned about the current course of globalization and wanted change,

1. There was great support for the importance of strengthening local communities, but not for isolationism
2. Many participants supported the value of competition in stimulating innovation and excellence, but expressed concerns that the current playing field is not level
3. Participants expressed a strong desire for more education about globalization and its impacts, and for better consumer information
4. People do not accept that government is “powerless” to act in the face of globalization

5.  There was a common view that government is not listening to the people, and that more citizen participation is needed
6. Participants saw a need for broader accountability on the part of corporations, as well as governments and individuals
7. There was considerable concern about the environment and the impacts of the current pattern of globalization on prospects for sustainable development
8. There was support for the idea of a “fairer” global economy. But there was also confusion and skepticism about how a fairer system could be brought about.

•        In Seattle the tactics of the protesters were straightforwardly based on principles of civil disobedience coupled with well-targeted media campaigns. Not only were full-page ads taken out in newspapers across the country attacking “global monoculture” and “invisible government,” not only were protesters’ speeches aired live on C-Span, and not only were Internet websites mobilized to spread the word about the protest, protesters also peacefully assembled to block downtown streets, coordinated activities using cell phones and pagers, dressed up in costumes, played music, chanted, sang, and generally turned the streets of Seattle into a protest party.

•       Conversely, the Seattle police and the National Security Agency first responded by physically confronting the protesters, then by attacking them with pepper spray and rubber bullets. This response led a number of self-proclaimed anarchists to begin vandalizing the property of transnational corporations such as Nike, the Gap, and Starbucks (which was later misleadingly picked up by the corporate media as representative of the protest in general). Later on, after the Seattle police were joined by National Guard troops, tear gas was launched to clear the streets.  (Bruner 2004)

 Media and Protest

•       Gamson (1995, 85) noted that “movements are media junkies.” Social movements need and use all sorts of media to do their work. Of all existing media, the Web is the newest and, probably, the most underestimated.

 Indymedia

•       During the Seattle protests the Indymedia Centre (IMC) and website were inundated with journalists seeking information about the protesters.

•       Similarly, during the protests in 2003 against George W. Bush’s visit to England, the UK Indymedia server recorded hundreds of thousands of unique ‘hits’, more than any of the mainstream media sites, making it a significant resource for the activist community, the public and reporters alike. (Chesters and Welsh 2009)

 Narmada Dam project Facts

                Project began in 1979

3,200 dams to be built along the 1,200 km Narmada River

Said to benefit Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat Opponents say it will displace 200,000 people and damage ecology

World Bank withdrew funding in 1993

Expected to be fully complete by 2025

 Narmada Dam protest

•       For years the government has simply tossed the aside the protests "like garbage," commented Arundhati Roy in her interview with Mishal Husain in 2003, reflecting on the struggles since the Save Narmada Movement (NBA) was formed in the late 1980's. She said there has been "15 years of the most spectacular non-violent resistance movement" a country like India has ever seen; that the NBA used "every single democratic institution it could. It has put forward the most reasoned, moderate arguments that you can find, and it's been just thrown aside like garbage, even by an institution like the Supreme Court of India, even in the face of evidence that you cannot argue with.

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•        So, I keep saying this that if we don't respect non-violence, then violence becomes the only option for people. If governments do not show themselves to respect reasoned, non-violent resistance then by default they respect violence." Despite this heart-wrenching truth, non-violent resistance has of course continued.

Post 9/11

•       The increasing securitization politically and ideologically

•       Protest Vs National Security

•       Issues of transnational mobilization

•       War on terror