Social Movement Studies

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The Importance of Social Movements

Alain Touraine

To cite this article: Alain Touraine (2002) The Importance of Social Movements, Social Movement
Studies, 1:1, 89-95, DOI: 10.1080/14742830120118918

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Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2002

The Importance of Social Movements

Professor Alain Touraine, CADIS/EHESS, 54, boulevard Raspail, 75006

Paris, France

Editors Note: This discussion was conducted with Professor Alain Touraine by Tim
Jordan on 20 September in Paris. The discussion has been divided into headings that
correspond to the areas of questions that were asked. The social context for the
discussion is important in understanding Professor Touraine’s comments because the
discussion occurred 9 days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks but
before the bombing of Afghanistan began and with no chance of knowing what would
follow.

The Idea of a Social Movement

The idea of social movement was conceived, at least in my mind, in opposition to the
traditional concept of class con ict. Not opposition in the sense of being reformist. Instead,
when we speak about class con ict we refer, basically, to a process of capitalist development
or a process of social and economic crisis in objective terms. When we began speaking, a long
time ago now, about social movements, we tried to elaborate a new approach and to pass on
the actors’ side.
To put it in simple terms, we tried to analyse con icts in terms of the actors and not to see
the actor simply as the result of objective forces. To refer to my Ž rst piece of work when I
studied working-class consciousness in the 1950s and 1960s, I tried to understand under what
conditions this collective actor was able to or was prone to developing a class consciousness.
My conclusion was that class consciousness was not linked with any particularly difŽ cult
economic situation but was closely linked to the attack on or the destruction of the autonomy
of craft workers at the beginning of the last century, when the ‘scientiŽ c management’ of
Fordism and Taylorism was introduced into factories. Comparing various groups, I observed
that the highest point of class consciousness was reached by skilled workers in those industries
that were invaded by the occupational and social transformations induced by these new
methods of factory organization.
I consider a social movement to be an answer either to a threat or a hope that is directly
linked to the control that a social group has over its capacity to make decisions, to control
changes and so on. My main initial interest in social movements came from trying to rescue
these kinds of studies from an economic determinism. It was important to incorporate them
or to rebuild them as part of a sociology of action, in the broadest sense of the word.
ISSN 1474-2837 print/ISSN 1474-2829 online/ 02/010089-07 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/ 14742830120118918
90 Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1

My point of view, my effort, has always been to go down as near to the actor, as near or
as close as possible, and to avoid analyses of the transformation of the world that are too
general. The idea was that, even in very difŽ cult situations, it is possible to observe a social
group develop a certain representation of its situation and a certain capacity to act. An
example, which was psychologically important for me, occurred when I met a sociologist from
Sri Lanka who had conducted research in India among a group of lower-class people called the
Adhivasi. This social group was living in the forest about 100 kilometres from Bombay and
was in con ict with money lenders. The Adhivasi were very poor, illiterate, at the bottom of
the caste system. When I read about the group interviews that had been done with these
people, I discovered that their responses were extremely elaborate. The Adhivasi were able not
only to express their views but, in a certain sense, to theorize them. That was important for
me and I have always said that I do not believe that people living in extremely adverse
situations have no autonomy.
In a certain sense, I would like to say the same, but I am not sure of that, about people who
live in the upper tiers of society. That is one of my dreams, which will never be realized, to
study upper-class or privileged people. I remember once I thought of studying members of the
Central Committee of a Communist Party or the directors of Mitsubishi or General Motors!
I would think, in a kind of Schumpeterian way if you like, that these people are not only
Ž nancial agents but entrepreneurs with original views about society, about social con ict and
so on. Again, the idea would be to be as near as possible to social actors and to discover their
capacity for autonomous action.

Social Movement Studies

I like to deŽ ne social movements, basically, as organized con icts or as con icts between
organized actors over the social use of common cultural values. For example, both the working
class and entrepreneurs accept industrial progress and rationalization but conceive it in
different social terms. They share the same values but disagree about the social use of these
resources and cultural orientations. The point is to concentrate the study onto social con ict
and social initiatives within a given social situation, such as industrial society or, today,
information society. This deŽ nition privileges inner studies of a socio-economic system or a
societal type or a mode of production, call it as you like. Once that has been said, it is obvious
that this view can and must be developed in two opposite ways.
The Ž rst way starts with the assumption that the aim of people who are involved in a
con ict is to defend their interests. This is a kind of ‘rational choice’ orientation and what is
most important for it is questions like: how do the social actors do that? How do people defend
their interests? This is the theory of resource mobilization. Here you go back to an economic
study but link it with some sociological studies such as: how do you get support? How do you
get material resources? How do you build alliances at the political or social level? What are
the conditions for good leadership? I am not going to make any further reference to these
studies; they exist, they are very active and their interest from my point of view is very limited
because they start with an hypothesis which it is very difŽ cult for any sociologist to accept.
This hypothesis, the idea, is that concrete collective action is led by or is based on rational
choice. But even when people go on strike, for example, do they know if they are going to lose
or to get something from such a con ict? And when we vote in an election, do we know if our
 Touraine: The Importance of Social Movements 91

choice will be favourable to our interest? No. All studies demonstrate that we vote for people
like us or people who defend our ideas. We make decisions in social terms far more than in
economic terms. That is why this Ž rst kind of study, it seems to me, is very limited. Today,
because we must refer to the present-day situation, I do not think that this view or school of
thought is really challenging studies on social movements.
To understand the opposite approach we must separate, we must distinguish, social
movements from something else that I generally call historical movements. One thing is to
study movements or collective actions within a societal type. Something else is to study forms
of actions or reactions as parts of a process of historical change. Generally, in the past, the two
Ž elds of social reality and social study have been confused. The Ž rst one is social movements
within an industrial society; the second one is ‘what are the reactions and actions in a process
of industrialization?’. Here, I should not speak in terms of industrial society but in terms of
processes of industrialization; for example, capitalism, socialism, colonialism, dependency, are
all forms of realizing or trying to realize a process of industrialization. Very often capitalist
society and industrial society, as two notions, have been considered as synonymous. For me,
they are absolutely not. Not just because there are some non-capitalist forms of industrializa-
tion (this is not a good objection because it generally fails). Rather, we must not consider these
two terms synonymous because they do not refer to the same reality. On the one hand,
attention must be centred around the actors themselves, at the low level, on the factory,
company, the shop sector of industry and so on. On the other hand, we deal with general
societal processes and here we give priority to political movements, as we know by experience.
Let us consider the case of the industrial period. In some countries—Britain is the most
important example but also in some countries in Northern Europe—priority was given to the
labour movement. In Britain, the Labour Party was created by the Trade Union Congress
(TUC) and a similar thing occurred in Sweden. In many countries the contrary is true. Priority
was given to political processes. This was true to a large extent in France, where the
predominance of a labour movement over socialist action lasted only for 10 or 15 years before
the First World War. It was obviously more true in Germany, in Italy and in the rest of the
world where there was a kind of voluntaristic state-led policy which involved, for example,
mobilizing national feelings and not only social interests.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was then a tendency to give priority to the
labour movement, to the class movement. In this period, the labour movement was, in a sense,
divided into two parts. A very important part, the most important part historically speaking,
gave priority to political action in Leninism, Maoism and so on. On the other side, it was very
difŽ cult to Ž nd a solution, but the British developed the idea of industrial democracy as part
of a Fabian type of thought. Here people tried to draw some political consequences from a
social mobilization, a class mobilization. It looks a bit strange to say, but it is true, that the
moderate wing of the Second International was much more class oriented—for example the
Mensheviks who had control of the unions in Russia—than the extreme left wing. This
extreme left gave priority to Leninism, which is exactly the contrary of a class movement and
is, in a sense, a kind of putsch.
After the Second World War, and even very recently—especially in the 1960s—many people,
including myself, tried to discover new forms of collective action in a so-called, at that time,
post-industrial society and what we call now an information society. I was interested in
studying the formation of cultural movements. I mean here social movements based on cultural
claims, like the women’s movement, the ecological movement and so on. We were convinced
92 Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1

that at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-Ž rst century, the social
and political scene would be dominated by the growing role of these new social and cultural
movements. I was also interested in small movements that were created, for example, in Ž elds
such as public health, education or the mass media. Many people were convinced that priority
should be given to the formation of what I had myself called ‘new social movements’. But at
the beginning of the 1980s, I had to recognize the failure of these social movements. Partly
because they were still dominated by an old ideology, a Marxist ideology or even a Leninist
ideology, but the fact is that these movements did not play the central role as I thought they
would. Today, referring really to the present situation, what we observe is the contrary of what
we expected in the early 1970s—I say this as a self-criticism. A growing importance has been
given by everybody to new con icts about processes of historical change, the processes of
industrialization, post-industrialization or, as people say, about globalization.

Globalization and Anti-globalization

If you consider the present day, many observers and analysts would say the main countries, the
main collective actions and the main production of ideas are located around the idea of
globalization. By this I mean a transformation of capitalism and not the transformation of civil
society or economic society. What we have observed Ž rst in the USA and then in various
countries is the predominance of types of con ict which are organized against people who have
power at the global level, but we observe—in a right or wrong way, it is difŽ cult to say
now—opposition to the effects of globalization that are entirely independent from different
strictly social movements. These really new movements certainly cannot be lumped together.
We cannot say that the anti-globalization movements—Seattle, Genoa and so on—are linked
with the Taliban regime. Obviously not. However, the reference is the same. The reference is
not to a certain type of civil society, but to a process of social transformation, to a process of
globalization. Referring to what is happening now, what is most visible at the world level is
no longer the predominance of Leninism or social democracy but the predominance of a
cultural fundamentalism against modernism and capitalism together. We are in a ‘super-Lenin-
ist’ period and we are as far as possible from rank-and-Ž le action, from the autonomy of social
actors. It is a worldwide view, a philosophy of history based on the idea of a general con ict
between two opposite camps which is natural and unavoidable. We again Ž nd in the world
today the language of the Cold War, a crusade on one side or on the other.
The main problem now for sociologists and social movement studies today is ‘to what extent
should we give social movements the central role in building a social theory?’. Or, should we
accept a very different view of social processes, which is that political and ideological con icts
are becoming more and more important while strictly social con icts are becoming less and less
important? If you consider the Western world, what do we observe? The main social movement
which was characteristics of industrial society, the labour or union movement, is in decay
everywhere, more or less depending on the country. In all countries, the in uence and strength
of unions and the labour movement is much inferior to what it was 20 or 30 years ago. In
France, the labour movement is particularly weak. In Britain, union membership is larger than
in France but the in uence of unions is not very large and that can be said for most of Europe.
There are some exceptions, of course, Germany, Italy, Sweden to a certain extent, but even in
such countries the strength of labour organizations has decreased very much.
 Touraine: The Importance of Social Movements 93

This is, I think, the main question. The concept of social movements is not challenged by
studies on resource mobilization and rational choice. We all observe that the end of the
twentieth century was not dominated by a secularization of economic interests but, on the
contrary, by cultural con icts. Is it possible to maintain the central importance of the concept
of social movements as I deŽ ned it? Or should we consider that these social movements were
typical of rich countries, of a very limited part of the world and that we were forgetting the
large majority of the world’s population?
No: the existence of social movements has to be considered as something fundamentally
positive and necessary. We have to choose between con ict and violence, between social
con ict and war. I would like to maintain the central importance of social movements because,
if we instead give an analytic priority to the kind of world con icts which are so important
today, then I think we accept a twenty-Ž rst century which will go further than the twentieth
century in terms of totalitarianism, of violence and of wars. The main problem is: is it possible
to extend the concept of social movements to the whole world? The problem is not to start
with a kind of concrete fact that social movements exist but to be much more interrogative and
to ask the question: under what conditions is it possible for present wars and war-oriented
con icts to be transformed or to give birth to social movements?
In this context, let us consider the anti-globalization movement. Is it possible to discover in
it a certain social content? This is actually a political movement which has no clear concrete
social content. The Zapatistas are a contrary example, because the Indian or indigenous
people’s movements in Mexico and elsewhere do have a social content. But the question
remains: is there any convergence between the ideological and political anti-globalization
movement and its related social movements? Roughly speaking, I would say today that I do
not think things are going in that direction. I think we still have an enormous gap between
social movements, like the Indian people’s movements, and the political anti-globalization or
anti-capitalist movement. In many cases, like the Palestinian case, the groups or movements
that were centred around social problems have been eliminated. The Marxist groups have been
eliminated by nationalist groups or have themselves adopted a kind of terrorist programme
which has marginalized them.
It would be difŽ cult for me to identify cases in which we could say that there is some process
of transformation of this type of anti-globalization movement into social movements. But this
is the main interest of the concept of social movement today. It is a problematic concept, based
on my conviction that the absence of social movements and the total predominance of political
over social con icts creates a highly dangerous situation. The state of war is much more
dangerous than any kind of social con ict, which, from my point of view, has essentially
positive functions, because in social con icts we debate the social use of cultural and economic
resources which are accepted by opposite camps.

Subjects and Social Movements

I devoted the 1990s to studying the possibility of new social movements appearing, especially
in Latin America. But the balance of facts is very negative. If I take the example of the
movement of poor peasants in Brazil, MST or the Landless Workers’ Movement, it was a
social movement which has been rapidly transformed into an anti-capitalist movement and a
new generation of liberation theology. Political aspects have won over social aspects. That is
94 Social Movement Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1

why I was so enthusiastic about the indigenous movement in the north of the continent or even
in the south of Chile because here were social groups deŽ ning themselves as autonomous
agents of action. They tried to deŽ ne a social process of change in terms of the growing role
of independent autonomous action. I must recognize that right now it is a failure; the
movement has been defeated. It has lost a large part of its in uence. I hope it will recover it
but, frankly speaking, I do not see how. In Latin America today, I am extremely pessimistic
because, after all, the most important con ict that we observe is the armed con ict in
Colombia and this con ict is by no means a social movement.
Twenty or Ž fty years ago, I could describe some social movements, in the Central and South
American continent, but, during the last 10 years, the social scene has been empty. There are
no social actors in this part of the world. Maybe if I were more competent to speak about
different parts of the world I would be more optimistic. But even if I take a second example
I know something about, though in a much more limited way, the answer is the same. If you
take the post-communist countries in Eastern Europe, we had and we still have some social
movements, but, on the whole, they are very limited. If you take Poland or the Czech Republic,
there is practically nothing right now. There are some political disputes or the coming back to
power of the so-called post-communists. Michel Wieviorka and I prepared a study of various
Eastern European countries—especially in Russia, but in Poland and Hungary too—looking at
the formation of new activists and the conclusions, especially for Russia, were extremely
negative: no new actors. We were interested, for example, in the coal miners, Siberian,
Ukrainian and Russian coal miners, and that was Ž nally a failure. It is very interesting to
observe that social actors are far fewer, and the capacity for social agency in the present
situation is much lower than we expected. It is a sad observation! And one which questions
seriously the interests of the work that people like me are trying to do.
However, to combat somewhat my current pessimism I should mention that there is one
central social movement in our society, comparable to the labour movement in industrial
society. This is the women’s movement. This assertion requires an explanation. Centuries of
progress, success and domination by Europe, or the West, have been made possible by the
polarization of society and the concentration of ideas, resources and power on one side. During
the nineteenth century, many countries tried to reintegrate forces that had been considered
inferior or that had been repressed and dominated. It began with the labour movement, the
working class. After that the emphasis was put on national liberation movements and the
destruction of the colonial system. More or less at the same time the women’s movement
began. And this latter movement questions not economic interests but fundamental orienta-
tions, the social meaning and the social interpretation of modern individualism. The women’s
movement is so important that if there are some places in the world where elements of social
movements exist it is everywhere, in all countries and parts of the world, where the women’s
movement exists, where the status of women appears to be the most important reason for
opposing some trends. That is why, in relation to parts of the Muslim world, it is in some
senses impossible for many of us to act or to react on the basis of a shared opposition to
capitalist domination. Yet we cannot forget that in, for example, Algeria, Afghanistan and
many parts of the world, the recognition of not only women’s rights but of women existing
as social subjects is already a central aspect of social problems. There is a con ict between
some Muslim forces and Western interests but, at the same time, there is a cultural component
which is centred in the status of women. Maybe it is not a movement yet but at least it is a
problem, which has a very important role.
 Touraine: The Importance of Social Movements 95

The Importance of Social Movements

It is in a very pessimistic way that I defend the importance of the concept of social movement.
It is not possible to say just now that social movements play a central role in our processes of
social change. I accept the idea that social movements have been wiped out in many parts of
the world, because either economic progress has incorporated new categories of people into
mass consumption or because movements of political and ideological rupture have taken over.
But we can and we must ask the question: is it possible to transform opposition movements
into the autonomous action of dominated groups? Or, on the contrary, are we already involved
in a worldwide civil war? And are we still able to create, strengthen and remobilize social
movements in many different parts of the world? This is a main interrogation and it should
be a very wide and important research programme for sociologists and other social and
cultural thinkers.
We need to ask these questions exactly in the same way as in the past, especially in the
mid-nineteenth century, many people were interested in understanding whether it was possible
to build a labour movement and autonomous working-class action. Because at the beginning
of the labour movement, political action was predominant, for example with Chartism in
Britain or the Republican movement in France. It was with great difŽ culty that the labour
movement was created, both in an independent way in Britain and in a non-independent way
in Germany. But now, can we hope or can we expect that something similar will happen? Will
the equivalent of the trade union movement become more independent from the equivalent of
the socialist or communist or anarchist revolutionary movement? Is it possible to hope that
civil society will again conquer a certain independence from the state? Or, on the contrary, will
the state, either as such or as an instrument for religious or economic movements, dominate
social life more and more totally?
If I maintain the central importance of the concept of social movements in a strict sense, it
is because the future of democracy, of freedom, of justice, depends on the world’s or different
parts of the world’s capacity to transform at least part of the present-day anti-globalization
movement, or anti-capitalist movement, into social movements. This is a very strong reason for
studying social movements. We must consider the revival of civil society as absolutely
necessary to avoid a totalitarian world. That explains the necessity to study the conditions of
formation of new social movements. We have, I repeat, to choose between social con ict and
international war.
I think we must defend the idea of social movements in a dramatic way. We are trying to
avoid the necessity of choosing between a so-called globalization process, which means a total
absence of actors, and an anti-globalization movement, which, as such, is a negation of social
actors too because it is Ž ghting against top decision makers and economic networks. I refuse
the state of war. The main way of moving out of this terrible situation of a worldwide civil
war is to develop, to study, to identify social movements and to prepare a movement back to
civil society.