Trace the psychological and sociological roots of social movements in society today. Do social movements facilitate social change? (1990)
A social movement is sustained, organised and ideologically guided collective action for or against change (M. S. A. Rao). Explanations divide between those beginning inside the participant and those beginning in social structure: psychology explains why people are willing, sociology why they are able.
Psychological roots
- Crowd, contagion and frustration. Gustave Le Bon (The Crowd, 1895) saw the crowd dissolving judgement into suggestibility and Sigmund Freud (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 1921) traced group cohesion to identification with a leader; John Dollard and colleagues (Frustration and Aggression, 1939) linked blocked goals to aggression, and Eric Hoffer (The True Believer, 1951) held that mass movements attract the frustrated, for whom the cause is an escape from self. All pathologise protest, and none explains why grievance so rarely becomes action.
- Relative deprivation. Ted Robert Gurr (Why Men Rebel, 1970) locates rebellion in the gap between value expectations and capabilities, and James C. Davies‘s J-curve explains why revolt follows improvement rather than misery.
- Efficacy, identity and emotion. Bert Klandermans (The Social Psychology of Protest, 1997) makes participation turn on grievance plus efficacy, group identification and moral emotions; Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian‘s emergent norm theory restores the participant’s rationality.
Sociological roots
- Strain and contradiction. Émile Durkheim traced anomie to rapid change and Neil Smelser (Theory of Collective Behavior, 1962) makes strain the second of six determinants; for Karl Marx and A. R. Desai (Peasant Struggles in India, 1979), movements express class contradiction.
- Modernisation and democratisation. Urbanisation, education and media widen reference groups faster than opportunities expand, while T. H. Marshall‘s expanding citizenship and Charles Tilly‘s political opportunity make claim-making thinkable and safe.
- Identity and networks. Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci locate today’s movements in struggles over cultural codes and recognition; Manuel Castells shows digital networks cutting the cost of mobilisation, as Nepal’s uprising did in September 2025.
Do movements facilitate social change?
Yes:
- Law and policy. The anti-rape campaign after the Mathura case produced the 1983 criminal-law amendments; the right-to-information campaign the Right to Information Act, 2005; adivasi mobilisation the Forest Rights Act, 2006; and platform-worker unionism the Karnataka Platform Based Gig Workers Act, 2025.
- Culture. Anti-caste and women’s movements changed what counts as sayable, well beyond statute.
But the effect is bounded:
- Institutionalisation blunts. Robert Michels‘s oligarchic drift, and Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward (Poor People’s Movements, 1977), warn that organisation trades disruptive power for survival.
- Symbolic gains outrun structural ones. Ghanshyam Shah notes that Indian movements win recognition more readily than redistribution: the Samyukt Kisan Morcha obtained repeal of the farm laws in 2021, not the legal guarantee on support prices.
- Repression. Four protesters were killed in Leh in September 2025 and the movement’s best-known figure detained under the National Security Act; Ladakh’s statehood demand is still unconceded.
Conclusion
Movements are rooted in felt injustice and grow in structural openings; neither root alone produces them. In a democracy they are the chief engine of change between elections, but they redistribute recognition faster than resources — which is why the same grievances keep returning.