Write short note: Types of social movements. (1994, 1988)
There is no single classification of social movements, because every typology depends on the criterion of classification chosen. Movements have been sorted by the direction and depth of change sought, the locus of change, the social base, the ideology, the means employed and the territory involved. The most analytically useful criterion is the first: what a movement wants changed, and how much.
Classification by locus and amount of change
David F. Aberle (The Peyote Religion among the Navaho, 1966) crosses two criteria — is the target the individual or the social order, and is the change partial or total?
| Partial change | Total change | |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | Alterative — temperance, anti-liquor campaigns | Redemptive — religious sects; conversion movements |
| Social order | Reformative — Brahmo Samaj, the Right to Information campaign | Transformative — Naxalbari (1967) |
Classification by the direction of change
| Type | What it seeks | Indian illustration |
|---|---|---|
| Reformist | Partial change within an order accepted as legitimate | Satyashodhak Samaj (1873); anti-dowry campaigns |
| Revolutionary | Replacement of the entire order | Telangana armed struggle (1946–51) |
| Revivalist | Restoration of an idealised past | Arya Samaj’s shuddhi; assorted religious-nationalist mobilisations |
| Resistance / reactionary | Blocking or reversing change | Dharma Sabha against the abolition of sati; anti-reservation agitations |
| Millenarian | Divinely ordained deliverance | Birsa Munda’s Ulgulan (1899–1900); the Tana Bhagat movement |
M. S. A. Rao works with a simpler three-fold version — reformist, transformative and revolutionary — graded by how deeply the ideology cuts.
Other criteria in use
- Herbert Blumer separated general movements (the women’s movement as a whole) from specific ones, and active movements aimed outward at society from expressive ones aimed inward at the self.
- Social base: peasant, tribal, Dalit, women’s, students’, workers’ and middle-class movements — the standard Indian classification, used by Ghanshyam Shah.
- Territory: the Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Telangana statehood movements, whose names announce their goals.
- Old and new. Alberto Melucci and Alain Touraine mark off new social movements, which contest cultural codes and assert identity rather than pursue class demands — environmental, feminist and sexual-rights mobilisations. The last produced Navtej Singh Johar (2018), which read down Section 377.
- Networked movements are arguably a further type, organised online before they occupy any street. India’s 2026 youth agitation over examination paper leaks began as internet satire, gathered a mass following within weeks, held a seven-week sit-in at Jantar Mantar and forced the education minister’s resignation in July 2026 — leaderless in form, single-issue in content, and largely outside the older categories.
Limits of typologies
Types are ideal types, and real movements straddle them. B. R. Ambedkar’s movement was reformist in method, transformative in aim and redemptive in the 1956 conversion. Movements also change type across their life-cycle, radical at the stage of agitation and reformist once institutionalised. T. K. Oommen therefore urges that movements be studied as ongoing processes rather than fixed categories.
Conclusion
A typology is a tool, not a verdict. Its value lies in forcing the analyst to specify the criterion — change sought, base, ideology or means — and thereby to ask the properly sociological question: why a given structural strain produces a reformist movement in one setting and a revolutionary or revivalist one in another. The answer usually lies in the political opportunities available and in how open the order is to being reformed at all.