SMT Responses (1/25/16)

What is the point of Social Movement Theory (SMT)?

As a subfield of social science, the point of Social Movement Theory is to provide a framework in which we can attempt to analyze the effectiveness of social movements. SMT provides us with the tools needed to understand how social movements come about and why they take the forms that they eventually do. Through SMT, we can better understand social movements, and we can make predictions about the future as well.

Is there any reason we couldn't use the same analytical frameworks to study, say the American Civil Rights Movement and movements for political change in the MENA region?

First, looking at the American Civil Rights Movement, I believe that SMT can easily be applied in this case. As we saw in the documentary A Force More Powerful, the main objective of the American Civil Rights Movement was to eliminate segregation through a collective nonviolent movement. We can use SMT to explain when, how, and why this movement occurred and also to understand the effect that it had on the rest of the country. Because the American Civil Rights Movement had a clear objective, distinguished leaders, and the resources needed to carry out the nonviolent movement, it is possible to analyze its success through SMT.

As for the MENA region, I think that using the same analytical frameworks used to analyze the American Civil Rights Movement (ACRM) becomes a bit tricky. While with the ACRM, there was one clear objective, the political and social conflicts in the MENA region today cannot as easily be simplified enough to produce one clear objective, because there are many different actors in the region with different objectives, so the ideas of how to deal with the movements in the MENA regions may differ depending the actor you talk to and his/her groups' objective. In Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East, authors Joel Beinin and Frederic Vairel point out that it is much more difficult to analyze movements in the MENA region because they do not resemble the more paradigmatic movements like the American Civil Rights Movement.  Taking that into account, I think that the same analytical frameworks used to analyze the ACRM can only be applied to the MENA region if there is a way to isolate and identify a group with stable leaders and a concrete agenda. In A Force More Powerful, activist James Lawson states that nonviolent movements are not spontaneous, but they require discipline, strategy, planning, organizing, and recruiting, so using theories like the SMT to analyze the MENA region can only be done once a clear movement is identified.

What use can SMT be in understanding the success of Islamist movements?

The success of the Islamist movement, while unlike most other large social movements, can be analyzed using Social Movement Theory (SMT). When we view those involved in the Islamist movement as rational actors and we take into account the organization and resources behind the movement, we can use SMT to understand and analyze the effectiveness of the Islamist movement.