Definitions
- Political Power: In Mann, power held by a centralized, institutionalized, regulative body, in control of an associated territory.
- Economic Power: In Mann, power derived from the satisfaction of human needs through the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of resources.
- Military Power: In Mann, power derived from the necessity of defence and the social organization of military force.
- Ideological Power: In Mann, power derived from the human need to find meaning. Ideological power involves control over meaning, ritual, symbolism, and values.
- Pluralism: A political theory which argues that power resources are distributed throughout society, and are used by various groups to compete for influence.
- Iron Law of Oligarchy: The idea that an elite group of individuals will eventually take control within any democratic organization.
- Power-elite: In Mills, a term used to describe the leaders of military, corporate, and political groups, each of which are thought to share similar political interests.
- Discourse: In Foucault, sets of widely accepted norms or ways of thinking about particular topics which are taken for granted in a particular time period or locale.
- Disciplinary Power: In Foucault, a kind of power, characteristic of modern societies, in which social control is maintained by means of surveillance, socialization, and the instilling of routines and disciplines on the body.
- Biopower: In Foucault, a term used to describe the way that modern nation states regulate the bodily behaviours and life processes of their citizens. Biopower involves the control of population through practices of public health, risk regulation, control of reproduction, and so on.
- Governmentality: In Foucault, techniques of governing (broadly not just by ‘the government’) using practices aimed at shaping the conduct, beliefs and identities of people.
- Necro-politics: A term used by Mbembe to describe the power to dictate who will live and who will die.
- Ironic Spectator: A term used by Chouliaraki to describe the detached, uninvested way that people may respond to human suffering in the current media environment. Ironic spectatorship involves outward gestures of solidarity and compassion that are more about benefiting one’s own identity than genuinely helping others.
- Gore Capitalism: A term used by Valencia to describe the idea that violence has become a commodity in the contemporary economy.
- Disruptive Power: In Piven, a form of political influence based on disruptive actions, such as strikes, boycotts, and sit-ins.
- Resistance: a refusal to accept or comply with the power of another.
- Cultural Dupes: A term used to criticize theories which are seen as treating the individual as a blind follower or consumer of cultural trends or products. Such theories are thought to see individuals as cultural dupes.
- Micropolitics: small-scale political actions
- Making-do: A term used by de Certeau to describe the tactics by which everyday people adapt to the strategies of control used by the powerful, often in innovative and resisting ways.
- Revolution: A forcible overthrow of an existing government or social organization. In Marxism, revolution specifically refers to the overthrow of a ruling class by a ruled class.
- Revolt: An uprising in which subordinate groups challenge an established authority.
- Social movement: a sustained effort by a group of people to achieve some social goal – typically to create or prevent social change.
- Political party: an organized group of people, sharing similar political positions, who field candidates for elections and attempt to gain access to institutional political power.
- Emergence: The first stage of a social movement, in which the movement begins to form around a particular issue or source of inspiration. Movements in this stage have little organization; instead there are simply feelings of discontent.
- Coalescence: The second stage of a social movement, in which people begin to organize around the issue identified.
- Bureaucratization: The third stage of a social movement, in which the social movement becomes an established organization, often with a formal hierarchy and a paid staff.
- Decline: The final stage of a social movement, which occurs when change is successfully brought about or resisted or when the movement fails due to repression, co-optation, or a lack of support.
- New social movements: A term used to describe the kinds of social movements that have emerged in western societies from the mid-1960s onwards. New social movements are thought to be fundamentally different from conventional social movements.
- Emancipatory movement: A type of social movement concerned with freeing groups from oppression, discrimination, and exploitation.
- Lifestyle movement: A type of social movement concerned with achieving recognition or acceptance of new kinds of identity. In contrast to emancipatory movements, lifestyle movements are typically concerned with self-actualization.
- Legitimizing identities: In Castells, forms of collective identity that are promoted by the dominant institutions of society in order to protect and reproduce the current social hierarchy.
- Resistance identities: In Castells, forms of collective identity that emerge when individuals feel disenfranchised or marginalized by social changes. Resistance identities entrench individuals against social change.
- Project identities: In Castells, forms of collective identity that allow individuals to redefine their social positions and to seek a transformation of the overall social structure.
- Social constructivist approach: An approach to the study of social problems which focuses on how problems are ‘constructed’ by society, or how problems come to be recognized and thought of as problems.
- Realist approach: An approach to the study of social problems which argues that social problems are objective challenges which exist regardless of whether they are recognized as such.
- Risk societies: societies that are increasingly dominated by a concern over risk and a desire to regulate and control risk.
- New Materialism: A theoretical perspective which argues that scholars should consider how material objects and other non-human elements shape social life.
- Actor Network Theory: A theoretical perspective which holds that reality is made up of networks of interrelated, interacting elements, including non-human elements such as objects and ideas. Actor network theorists seek to trace the associations between these various elements.
- Civil society: A term given to the sector of society which lies outside of the state or the market. Civil society is typically thought to consist of families and the private sphere.
- Public sociology: A style of sociology which is explicitly concerned with engaging non-academic audiences and with addressing social problems.
- Critical Theory: A style of social theory which is explicitly concerned with discovering and critiquing social injustices.
- Social Action: An action that takes into account or is influenced by the actions of other individuals.
- Generation: Interaction of changing social conditions, the life course ad people’s actions that create new experiences for youth cohorts that shape the unfolding of their adult lives. Generational change is created by both by how young people navigate and how they create social change when older patterns of action and though seem difficult, inappropriate or impossible in the changing context.
- Generational units: In Mannheim, subgroups within generations that form on the basis of different responses to the particular historical situation.
- Co-constituted: The view that two processes or outcomes are co-creating or reinforcing of each other – in the context of structure and agency in sociology, not separate or opposed forces, but as structures enabling agency and agency recreating structures.
Books on the General Topic
Burawoy, M. 2021. Public Sociology. Polity Press.
McRobbie, A. 2020. Feminism and the Politics of Resilience. Polity Press.
Reger, J. 2021. Gender and Social Movements. Polity Press.
Meyer, D. 2021. Why Social Movements (Sometimes) Matter. Polity Press.
Holmes, M. 2016. Sociology for Optimists. Sage.
McMichael, P. and Weber, H., 2020. Development and social change. SAGE.
Korgen, K., White, J. and White, S., 2013. Sociologists in action. SAGE.
Contemporary Research Monographs on this Topic
Graeber, D. 2014. The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. London: Penguin.
Clarke, J., 2004. Changing welfare, changing states. London: SAGE.
Contemporary Articles
Merlan, F 2005, ‘Indigenous movements in Australia’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 34, pp. 473-494.
- Discusses a variety of indigenous social movements in Australia. Also examines the complexities of applying the ‘social movement’ term to indigenous actions/societies.
- Examines tensions between the discourse of individual human rights and indigenous ideas of collective rights. Especially concerned with resistance against neoliberalism.
- Interesting quantitative study looking at the overlap of elites in various sectors. Based on Mills’ theory of a ‘power-elite’.
- This is a fun study looking at the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ in the context of Wikipedia. It examines factors that can help prevent the emergence of an oligarchical structure in organizations.
- Study which deploys the concept of necro-politics in a clear and relevant way.
- This is an older piece that gives an excellent overview of theories about new social movements. Would be good further reading for those interested in Castells, Touraine, Melucci, and so on.
- Article on the #MeToo movement: discusses the nature and challenges of online activism.
- Article compares the patterns of the Occupy movement in two different cities. Useful for thinking about the links between globalization and social movements and for considering the various stages of social movements.
- Content analysis of tweets about Black Lives Matter movement – examines the importance of ‘framing’ in social movements.
- This is an empirical paper that demonstrates an ANT/new materialism type approach. It examines the ‘assemblage’ of wool production, and discusses material/natural impacts on production.
- Provides a good illustration of what public sociology might mean in practice, using the example of medical sociology. It discusses the history of public sociology and the debates surrounding it, before connecting it to a clear empirical example.
- Article challenging the notion of youth apathy and discussing the complexities of youth political participation using three empirical case studies.
Discussion Questions
- Pluralists argue that resources and power are widely distributed in society, while elite theorists argue that resources and power are concentrated in the hands of certain privileged groups. Which perspective do you think is more accurate, and why?
- Many sociologists have focused on how people can resist power or authority in everyday life practices. Can you think of any examples from your own life?
- Can you list some contemporary ‘new social movements’? Which of the four stages of social movements do you think these movements are currently in?
- Sociologists disagree on what factors make social movements likely to succeed. What do you think determines success in social movements?
- What do you think of the idea of ‘public sociology’? Should sociology be tied to certain political ideas or projects, or should it try to be objective and value free?
Chapter References
- Abbott, A (2001) Chaos of Disciplines. University of Chicago Press.
- Aberle, DF (1966) The Peyote Religion among the Navaho. Aldine.
- Back, L (2016) Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters. Goldsmiths Press.
- Banet-Weiser, S (2018) Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Duke University Press.
- Beck, U (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage.
- Blumer, H (1969) ‘Collective Behaviour’, in Lee, AM (ed.) Principles of Sociology, 3rd edn. Barnes and Noble Books, pp. 165–221.
- Burawoy, M (2005) ‘For Public Sociology’, American Sociological Review, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 4–28.
- Callon, M (1986) ‘Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’, in Law, J (ed.) Power, Action, and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? Routledge, pp. 196–223.
- Castells, M (1997) The Power of Identity. Blackwell.
- Castells, M (2015) Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, 2nd edn. Polity Press.
- Chouliaraki, L (2012) The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism. Polity Press.
- Dahl, RA (1961) Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City. Yale University Press.
- De Certeau, M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S Rendall. University of California Press.
- Fanon, F (1965) The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.
- Foucault, M (1998) The History of Sexuality, 3 vols., trans. R Hurley. Penguin Books.
- Gamson, WA (1975) The Strategy of Social Protest. The Dorsey Press.
- Giddens, A (1991) Modernity and Self-identity. Stanford University Press.
- Gouldner, AW (1970) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. Basic Books.
- Habermas, J (1981) ‘New Social Movements’, Telos, vol. 1981, no. 49, pp. 33–37.
- Holmes, M (2016) Sociology for Optimists. SAGE.
- Latour, B (2004) ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 225–248.
- Latour, B (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford University Press.
- Law, J (2009) ‘Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics’, in Turner, BS (ed.) The New Blackwell Companion to Social Rheory. Blackwell, pp. 141–158.
- Mann, M (1986) The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.
- Mannheim, K (1952) ‘The Problem of Generations’, in Kecskemeti, P (ed.) Karl Mannheim: Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 276–320.
- Mbembe, A (2016) Necropolitics, Duke University Press.
- Melucci, A (1980) ‘The New Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach’, Social Science Information, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 199–226.
- Michels, R (1915) Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Hearst’s International Library Co.
- Mills, CW (1956) The Power-Elite. Oxford University Press.
- Moore, B Jr. (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Beacon Press.
- Piven, FF (2006) Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America. Rowman and Littlefield.
- Skocpol, T (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge University Press.
- Tilly, C (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution. Addison-Wesley.
- Touraine, A (1992) ‘Beyond Social Movements’, Theory, Culture, & Society, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 125–145.
- Valencia, S (2018) Gore Capitalism, trans. J Pluecker. Semiotext(e).
- Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K (2010) The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone. Penguin.
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