How do different theories explain social dimensions of social movements? Discuss. (2026)
No single theory explains a social movement whole. Each tradition isolates a different social dimension — strain, perception, organisation, polity, identity, meaning — and treats it as the variable deciding mobilisation.
Which dimension each theory foregrounds
| Theory | Social dimension explained |
|---|---|
| Collective behaviour | Strain, unrest and emergent norms |
| Relative deprivation | Perception and reference groups |
| Resource mobilisation | Organisation and resources |
| Political process | The polity and opportunity |
| New social movements | Identity and culture |
| Framing | Meaning and ideology |
The traditions
- Collective behaviour. Herbert Blumer saw movements as collective enterprises arising from unrest. Neil Smelser‘s value-added scheme (Theory of Collective Behavior, 1962) makes six determinants combine in sequence — conduciveness, strain, generalised belief, precipitating factor, mobilisation and social control, the counter-determinant that can arrest it at any stage. Critique: it reads protest as a species of panic rather than as politics — Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian reply that crowds are normatively governed.
- Relative deprivation. Ted Robert Gurr (Why Men Rebel, 1970) locates rebellion in the gap between value expectations and value capabilities, and James C. Davies‘s J-curve (1962) explains why revolt follows improvement rather than misery; Robert K. Merton‘s reference group supplies the mechanism. Critique: grievance is constant, mobilisation is the variable.
- Resource mobilisation. John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (1977) therefore shift to money, labour, legitimacy, media access and the organisations that aggregate them; Mancur Olson had shown why free-riding otherwise stalls action. Critique: it overstates rationality and writes out emotion.
- Political process. Charles Tilly and Doug McAdam add the polity — openness, elite divisions and allies, and the state’s propensity to repress — plus Tilly’s repertoires of contention. McAdam’s cognitive liberation restores consciousness.
- New social movements. Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci argue that post-1960s movements mobilise a new middle class around identity and recognition, work through networks and target cultural codes rather than the state; Ronald Inglehart‘s post-materialism supplies the cause.
- Framing. David Snow and Robert Benford show that movements do not find grievances but construct them, through diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing.
Limits, and the Indian corrective
Ghanshyam Shah finds Indian scholarship long on description and short on theory, and Gail Omvedt rejects the “post-material” label: the Narmada Bachao Andolan is displacement, livelihood, adivasi identity and a development model at once. Platform-worker unionism, which produced the Karnataka Platform Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025, is material yet network-organised.
Conclusion
The theories are cumulative rather than rival: strain supplies the motive, framing the meaning, resources the capacity, opportunity the moment and identity the durability. Any adequate explanation uses all six dimensions, weighted by context.