UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST

FACULTY OF SOCIOLOGY AND

SOCIAL WORK

PROJECT FOR ENGLISH

1ST YEAR

Student,

Cot Andreea –Nicoleta

1st Series, 2nd Group

2017-2018
 My choice of book is Social Movement: Key Concepts in Political Science by
Paul Wilkinson, written in London in 1971.

Introduction

The English word ꞌmovementꞌ derives from the old French and medieval Latin
words ꞌmovoirꞌ respectively ꞌmovimentumꞌ.

A different and now obsolete usage of the term was to denote some ꞌliberalꞌ,
ꞌinnovatoryꞌ or ꞌprogressiveꞌ parties or functions as in cases of ꞌparti du movementꞌ
in France or ꞌmovement partyꞌ in the early part of the nineteenth-century Britain.

Political concepts are a big part of our daily speech-we abuse 'bureaucracy'
and praise 'democracy', welcome or recoil from 'revolution'. Emotive words such
as 'equality', 'dictatorship', 'elite' or even 'power' can often, by the very passions
which they raise, obscure a proper understanding of the sense in which they are, or
should be, or should not be, or have been used. Confucius regarded the
'rectification of names' as the first task of government. 'If names are not correct,
language will not be in accordance with the truth of things', and this in time would
lead to the end of justice, to anarchy and to war. One could point out that the
attempts by governments to enforce their own quaint meanings on words have not
been conspicuous for their success in justice.

There are many today who would disagree with Bismarck's view that politics
can never be an exact science. But all of us who are students of politics-and our
numbers both inside and outside the universities continue to grow-will be the better
for knowing what precisely we mean when we use a common political term.
 Concepts

It is possible to analyse the difficulties of the refinement of the social

movement concept under five main headings: the problem of generality, dangers of
ambiguity, problems of reification, problems of the type concept and problems of
comparison.

The things that are logically connected with the problems of reification are the
pitfalls of type-concepts. Social movement is itself a ꞌtypeꞌ concept, in that is must
necessarily be related to a wider typology of social institutions, collectivities and
phenomena, and it rises simultaneous problems of defining social movement
types and subtypes.

However, social movements are rarely one-dimensional; they tend to be

multidimensional.

A working concept?

It is proposed that our working concept should attempt to identify and

generally define the quintessential characteristics may thus be defined as a
precondition of social movement.

 A social movement is a deliberate collective endeavour to promote change

in any direction and by any means, not excluding violence ,illegality,
revolution or withdrawal into a ꞌutopianꞌ community.
 A social movement must evince a minimal degree of organization, though
this may range from a loose, informal or partial level of organization to the
highly institutionalized and bureaucratized movement and the corporate
group.
 A social movementꞌs commitment to change is founded to the movementꞌs
aims or beliefs and active participation on the part of the followers or
members.

Historically, social movements are multi-dimensional and kaleidoscopic.

British socialism, for example, has from time to time, contained the
characteristics of a class movement, a quasireligious labour secretarianism, a
moral and intellectual crusade, populism, and even imperialism and
nationalism.

Rural and urban movements

ꞌPopular movementꞌ, however, is too broad a term to constitute a type of

social movement in any meaningful sense.

ꞌThe peopleꞌ, surely, are the vital element of all the social movements.

National movements

There is no justification for restarting the history of nationalist concepts

and doctrines, as this has been outlined in several able accounts to which the
reader is reffered. Nevertheless, students of social movement will note a lack of
analytical and comparative studies of national movement.

Race movement

Races can be loosely defined as human groups sharing certain easily

identificable somatic characteristics, the most important of this being skin
pigmentation.

The wide occurrence of colour prejudice, however, is generally

exacerbated by the dissemination of various racial myths which have been used
to justify a particular pattern of dominance to provide quasi-ideological
rationalization for the cruelest forms of racial persecution or the stirring up of
race hatred.

Moral crusade

Modern moral crusade and moral protest movements are confronted with
extremely testing problems of political strategy. To add to their traditional
repertoire of public meetings, processions, marches, demonstrations, the
presentation of petitions, mass lobbying of legislators and pamphleteering,
moral crusades have developed new means for exerting moral and
psychological pressure-planned mass civil disobedience, ꞌsit-insꞌ and ꞌfreedom-
ridesꞌ.

Revolutionar and totalitarian movements

Revolutionary movements are aimed at sweeping away existing political,

economic or social structures.

Guerilla-based revolution

One of the great, possibly decesive strengths of modern revolutionary

movements in the Third World Countries has been their ability (as for example,
in China, Algeria and Cuba) to establish a firm foundation of popular support
among the rural poor.