According to Doug McAdam and David Snow, a social movement is:

“a collectivity acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional channels for the purpose of promoting or resisting change in the group, society, or world order of which it is a part.”

Doug McAdam and David Snow, eds., Social Movements: Readings on Their Emergence, Mobilization, and Dynamics (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 1997), xviii.


Civil Liberties

Civil Liberties

Movements: Left-Wing

(Offsite & compiled by David Walls)

Movements: Right-Wing

Organized Labor and Organized Wealth

Think Tanks, Right-Wing Framing, & Social Control

Prejudice, Bigotry, & Discrimination

Religion

Social Movement Studies

Terrorism & Violence

  • Leaderless Resistance & Lone Wolves

Other

 

Welcome to Members of the
Section on Collective Behavior & Social Movements
of the American Sociological Association

Examples of Types of Resources:

Timelines

What Policymakers, Journalists, and All of Us
Need to Know about Social Movements

  • Most people who join social movements, political movements, or religious movements are not mentally ill or stupid. They have adopted an ideology and constructed an identity that in their view justifies their actions--whether these actions are deemed constructive or destructive by society.
  • The vast majority of movement activists never engage in violence.
  • There is no correlation linking religious piety with violence.
  • The radicalization process itself does not cause violence.
  • Dissent, movement activism, and non-violent civil disobedience are part of the democratic process in civil society.

 

Social Movement Theory for Activists

The Movement Action Plan (MAP)

The Practical Strategist

 

     

   
Featured Research Center
Berkeley Center for
Right-Wing Studies

Featured Social Movement Organization

Spirit House Project uses the arts, research, education, action, and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for racial, economic, and social justice, as well as for spiritual maturity.

Featured Physical Archives

Marquette University has acquired a large collection of FBI files on US right-wing organizations and individuals. The files were released under the federal Freedom of Information Act to researcher Ernie Lazar. The Lazar Collection is also ONLINE!

Emory University: Neighbor's Network (Atlanta, Ga.) 1987-1998)

Featured Multimedia

Anti-Nazi lithograph cartoons by a survivor of the the genocide.

Why this Webpage?

The goal of the website is to provide online linkages to a variety of existing and new transatlantic resources for the study of social movements that seek to expand or restrict access to full democratic human rights for all people. The mission is to illuminate the relationship of hierarchies of race, gender, and class to societal conflicts, especially those involving social movement organizations and their specific ideologies, frames, and narratives.

This website is a demonstration platform that is under development. The goal is to locate and provide links to exisitng resources on reliable websites; and develop new resources that can be adopted for free by others.



This website is sponsored by a group of scholars in the United States and Europe for the purpose of providing reliable resources for scholars, researchers, students, journalists, and organizers for human rights as defined by various international documents and United Nations declarations.

The Social Movement Study Website is an independent collaborative non-profit endeavor that receives no funding from governments or partisan political organizations.

Advisory Board
(in formation)

Cynthia Burack (US)
James Danky (US)
Alex DiBranco (US)
Martin Durham (UK)
Matthew Feldman (UK)
Paul Jackson (UK)
Angelia R. Wilson (UK)

The global human rights movement challenges the
systems, structures, and institutions that create, defend, and extend
oppression and repression in a society.

“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
                      --Frederick Douglass

“There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.”
                      --Audre Lorde

"The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion."
                       -- Molly Ivins

Democracy is not a specific set of institutions but a process that requires dissent.

Democracy is a process that assumes the majority of people,
over time, given enough accurate information, the ability to participate in a free and open public debate,
and can vote without intimidation, reach constructive decisions that benefit the whole of society, and
preserve liberty, protect our freedoms, extend equality, and defend democracy.

Without dissent there is no progress in a society: Dissent is Essential

Unless otherwise noted, all material on this website is copyright ©2022 by Research for Progress

Site curated by Chip Berlet