Social movements in the three worlds: a comparative perspective

A.) As he quoted from Touraine’s works; Social Movements are…

a. “An action carried out by particular social groups in order to take over control of social
change. Its objectives and meanings are political and must be understood not in terms
of the consciousness of the participants nor of the crisis of the university organization,
but in terms of conflicts and contradictions of society and its social political system
(Touraine 1971 [b]: 91). But’… a social movement only exists when the conflict is placed
on the level of the cultural model central to the society in question’ (Touraine 1977:
312). Further, a social movement is a collective, organized action through which a class
actor battles for the control of historicity in a given and identifiable historical context’
(Touraine 1981: 31-32)… Finally, A social movement is the action, both culturally
oriented and socially conflictual, of a social class defined by its position of domination or
dependency in the mode of appropriation of historicity, of the cultural models of
investment, knowledge, morality, toward which the social movement itself is oriented
(Touraine, 1988: 68)” (p. 195)
B.) 1.) “I suggest that while social movements do share a set of features – ideology, an elementary
organization, leadership and an event structure – which vary in their permutations and
combinations, these features are conditioned by the property of the situation in which they
originate and crystallize… What I call property of the situation has three interrelated elements:
the core institutional order of the society, the vanguard and the chief adversary of the
movement.” (p. 196-197)

2.) “A categorical movement is concerned with the issues specific to that category and is led by a
vanguard internal to that category – students, women, peasantry, industrial workers. But when
a categorical movement transcends the interests of its constituency and and addresses the
central issues of the society it becomes a central social movement, and the category, as a whole
or usually a part, becomes the vanguard” (p. 200)

3.) “For him the relationship between sociological analysis, the analysis of social movements and
society itself is inseparable. He writes, ‘the concept of social movement cannot be separated
from the concepts of system of historical action and social classes hence from the historical
situation that makes possible the formation of a specifically sociological analysis’ (Touraine
1977: 333)” (p.212)

C.) 1.) “(a) that social movements can emerge only in some types of societies, for example, industrial
and programmed societies, (b) that they are always and necessarily class movements, and (c) that they
are not directed against the state” (p. 195)

2.) “Touraine insists that social movement (as conceptualized by him) ‘… cannot exist except in
so far as the political institutions possess a certain autonomy (1981: 335)” (p. 196)

3.) For large scale collective actions to take place, the adversary of the movement will have to
be demonized. Demonization of the enemy and sacralization of the movement participants are two
sides of the same coin (see Oomen, 1990[b]: 272-290)” (p. 201)
 4.) Therefore, Touraine’s contention that ‘…the action of social movements is not fundamentally
directed toward that state and cannot be identified with political action for the ‘conquest of power’
(1981: 80) is not sustainable. This is because in those societies where the state has the monopoly (as in
communist countries) or the state has substantial control (as in several Third world countries) over the
means of production, the state constitutes the ruling class. Admittedly, the chief adversity of those
societies is the state.” (p. 209)

5.) “First, by insisting that social movements cannot arise outside capitalist democracies,
Touraine is implying, perhaps unintentionally, that totalitarian and colonized societies are incapable of
self-production because social movements are the agencies of self-production. Second, given the great
emphasis that he bestows on the inextricable interlinkage between the analysis of social movements
and the discipline of Sociology. Touraine is unwittingly denying the existence of Sociology in most parts
of the world”. (p. 212-213)