What Are The Differences Of The Characteristic Between Social Movements And New Social Movements?

The difference between social movement and new social movement.
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The difference between social movement and new social movement
When society develops and evolves the repertoires of their action that accompany some of the debatable actions also develops. In the end, members of the society react against the formal institutions resulting in protests (Almeida, 2014). These actions come about when people share common problems and want their concerns to be addressed. People come together to form social movements because these movements allow those unhappy citizens to air out their grievances in an organized way. As a result, the social movement has become an important part of the society because social movements provide a platform for people’s grievances to be heard and addressed (Bosi, Giugni and Katrin 2016).
Social movements are institutions apart from the traditional political systems that people use to work through their grievances. Many people do not understand social movements. Several social groups are associated with social movements. Hence, many questions surrounding social movements are yet to be addressed (Almeida, 2010). This paper presents the meaning, and the nature of social movements describing how social movements have evolved to form new social movements. The paper presents the difference of the characteristics between a social movement and new social movements presenting two examples where social movements have made significant changes.
Understanding social movements
There are several definitions of the social movement, in simple terms; social movements are more organized groups whereby people come together to work and achieve a common goal. Social movements are established to fight, force changes, to resist change or have a political voice. In summary social movement are created to bring about social changes in the society (Brancati, 2014). The social movement involves activities that take place outside the traditional government structures with three main characteristics these include individuals who sustain the movement, people fighting for ongoing challenges against their opponent, most social movements rely on a network of support and the groups work against some powerful opponents (Ondrej and Vrablikova, 2016). The main characteristics can be summarized as sustained resistance, support network, and fighting against an opponent. In modern times, social movements have evolved out of its original definition (Ondrej and Vrablikova, 2016). Some movement has developed levels of complexity; hence new social movements have emerged.
The new social movements
The new social movements have come up in various societies, especially during the post-industrial economy that have different characteristics from conventional social movement. New social movements have emerged due to two main reasons. First, the rise of new social movements has been necessitated by the changes during the post- industrial economy. The new movement focuses on materialistic issues like economic well-being, human rights and democracy (Almeida, 2010). Today, the new social movements are global movements that transcend in many parts of the world and focuses mainly on global issues like the environment; terrorism among others modern issues (Almeida, 2010). The new social movement also strives for cultural and social change with much support coming from the middle class, unlike the earlier social movement, which was strongly supported by the working class (Almeida, 2010).
Characteristics of social movements
In any social movement, structures give then motivation; this is the underlying condition that favors social movements .Social movement characteristics include people who feel deprived are willing to take action to restore order citizenship (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014). One of the notable characteristics of social movement involves the collective action; collective action takes the form of a movement when it is sustained for a long time citizenship (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014). The collection action is not formally organized, but it creates interest and awakens a relatively large number of people to take action citizenship (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014).
The social movement is oriented towards social changes; these changes can be achieved but through concerted efforts. Other social movements try to resist the changes and want to maintain the status quo. An important component of social movement that makes it different from other collective mobilization groups its shared ideologies (Amenta et al. 2010). Social movements require some organized framework to achieve its goals; there is a clear distinction between leaders and followers the clear purpose of the movement is well stipulated and it meant to persuade people to support it (Amenta et al. 2010).
Social movements adapt suitable techniques to achieve its goals, social movements might use peaceful protests or violent, persuasive, democratic to undemocratic ways to ensure that their grievances are addressed. Some social movement may succeed in achieving its goals by creating a general awakening of the public regarding various issues (Amenta et al. 2010). A social movement is not merely a huge crowd; it possesses organizational and motivational mechanisms that can sustain its membership throughout its actions. The main feature of a social movement is to bring about social change, however in many situations social movements does not include the rich (Amenta et al. 2010).
A social movement is established based on faith that people collectively can bring about or prevent social changes if only they are dedicated towards pursuing a specific goal (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015). Since social movements are a collective enterprise, members have a sense of identity because they share one thing in common that is dissatisfaction with the present state of affairs; they have a vision of making necessary changes to bring order (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015). Like other social groups, the social movement strong values are the main attraction. Having a sense of membership means an individual is following specific requirement (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015).
Social movements have some norms and members are expected to prescribe to specific behavior that symbolizes members’ loyalty to the movement, setting members apart from non-members (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015). The norms usually prohibit any behavior that may cause embarrassment to the movement or bring about an excuse to attack the opponents. The commitment of membership is strengthened by participating in the group activities collectively with other members (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015).
The Spanish indignados is an example of a social movement that possesses most of the characteristics discussed above. The famous Spanish movement known as the 15 M or the movement of the indignados was established through demonstration and city square occupation that later transformed to advocate or other social injustices like lack of political expression and other issues like citizen based legislative initiatives, social centers in occupied houses or privately organized handing out food ratio to malnourished people (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014). The 15M movement aimed at changing the national political agenda by fighting for transparency, fighting against corruption and rejecting those responsible for the economic and political crisis in Spain (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014).
When the financial crisis hit Spain in 2007 after a decade of a building booms that was caused by several factors. The Spanish real estate boom resulted in insolvencies, stagnated the economy and resulted in high rates of unemployment in Spain (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014). The government reduced spending in public sector resulting in cuts in social welfare and education system. Such policies led to a widespread social and economic crisis that affected it citizens (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014).
The Spanish indignados emerged by then and still active all over Spain. It consists s of young people who have mobilized themselves to protests against other injustices. Since the rise of 15m the economic crisis, the social problem corruption and political agenda have been the focus for discussion in Spain. The movement had led to changes in attitude where before e the creation of 15 m, poverty and unemployment was viewed, as an individual failure. Poverty was politicized thus had a negative effect on the way citizens viewed the government institutions (Ancelovici, Dufour and Héloïse, 2016).
In Spain, people had become increasingly frustrated by many problems in Spain these include unemployment and incompetent politicians who could not deal with the effects of the economic crisis. The citizen's experiences extreme high housing prices. The youths viewed European institutions as mafia and criminal without weapons whom they disliked, hence came out in large numbers to protests against their policies (Ancelovici, Dufour and Héloïse, 2016).
The social movement in Spanish resulted in positive changes that have been witnessed in Spain, because of the 15 m movement, public order was restored when various forms of legislatives being enacted, including the activist the protection of public safety bill in 2014(Ondrej and Navratil, 2015). The Spanish revolution started by leading figures on the internet like top bloggers and internet entrepreneurs to connect the distress of Spanish people into action ahead of the election. The supports of the movement moved from the internet were enormous as it went into the street, people gather in various places like camps and Spanish cities (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015).
The movement did not start as a unified movement, but because of different movement with small goals. More than 80,000 people took to the streets to protest against the government since citizens were not included in policies, they also protested against corruption (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015). In the end what started with few individual ideas and different initiatives on the internet became a huge movement in the street that brought positive changes in Spain (Ancelovici, Dufour and Héloïse, 2016).
The 15m movement was launched with a gathering a week before an election that resulted in a Spanish movement of 2011. It started as a small group that was youth driven, but it eventually transformed itself into what was considered as the most powerful social movement (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015). The Spanish movement made positive changes in Spain by revealing the resilient side of people who were willing to fight to bring about necessary changes in the government (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014). Like another social movement, the 15 m movement has become the biggest social movement with thousands of people taking to the streets and squares in Spain with the aim of not interfering with the election outcome but to demand the role of citizenship (Sampedro & Lobera, 2014). The movement has challenged the government to improve its democratic representation the 15 m movement had been become visible almost after every five years in the past decades making it one of the strongest social movements (Ondrej and Navratil, 2015).
New social movement
Even though the social movement has been in existence for a long time, with many examples across the world where organized groups advocate for more democratic voting system among other important issues. However, a set of the new social movement has developed across the western world as a result of the need for social and political changes (Gerbaudo & Treré, 2015). The new social movements have different characteristics from the old social movement that consisted of trade union movements. New social movement's advocate for democracy, feminist, human rights and environment campaigns and modern issues affecting the common people (Gerbaudo & Treré, 2015).
New social movement stress on similar elements that have been represented in social movements, but new social movements differ from old social movements in that new social movement represent new forms of middle-class discrimination that are unique from the economy. The new special movement emphasizes on identity and citizen roles in the civic area (Gingrich and Häusermann, 2015). One of the most notable features of new social movement is that they are primarily social, cultural with politics as its secondary agenda (Gingrich and Häusermann, 2015). New social movements aim at increasing citizen representation for the working class (Gingrich and Hausermann, 2015).
New social movement focus on bringing about the transformation of identities, which is more about improving the quality of life and individual, promotes self-realization and...