Why Social Movements Now

7/29/2019 Why Social Movements Now

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Why Social Movements Now?1

- David Sogge

To begin answering the question, Why social movements now?, let's pose a counter-question

about social movements: Where would we now be without them?

Where would South Africa be today without the United Democratic Front or the Mass

Democratic Movement? Where would many societies be without the movement for women's

rights? Or, to go way back to the dawn of Western democratic systems, where would we be

without the movement for citizen's rights and equality during the English Revolution some 350

years ago? The point is inescapable. Without these and other emancipatory movements, many

lands would be a lot less free, less fair, less democratic.

But if social movements have been such positive movers and shakers for humanity, why aren't

they stronger and more numerous now? Some reasons are obvious. Apathy and the sheer

practical difficulties of stepping off the treadmill of daily life help explain the absence of

social movements. And backers of the status quo, often powerful people, oppose them.

1 Originally published in OD Debate (Durban) August 1997


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NGOs2. Examples in South Africa include networks of organisations concerned to fight child

labour, to combat violence against women, to promote stokvels and to press for

environmental sanity.

How do they come about and keep going?

Consider two among dozens of examples in modern African history.

>> The maji-maji (water-water) movement in colonial Tanganyika was a response by people

threatened by the colonial advance, made desperate by loss of assets and sovereignty. Many

perished in the belief that their magic - supposed to turn bullets into water -was stronger than

imperial ballistics. In short, a movement unable to fit the circumstances and gain leverage.

>> TheAfrican mineworkers movement in the 1940s and 1950s in the copperbelt of Northern

Rhodesia was broadly about basic rights and respect, and narrowly about better pay. Itchallenged the status quo but still played by certain rules (a parallel union, the strike Weapon

and industry-wide bargaining). It turned the tables on mine bosses and settler authorities by

appealing to their hallowed (if hollow) principles of fair play and Western precedents in

legitimizing the right of wage earners to organise. While not immediately successful, this

movement had, over ten years, paved the way for a nationalist political movement to assume

power in a new nation, Zambia.

Two stories, two outcomes. Both saw Africans challenging powerful outsiders who would denythem resources and respect. Yet there were great differences:

the historical moment (the beginning versus the end of the colonial epoch);

aims (total and uncompromising rejection versus a challenge to some ground rules);

choice of weapons (bullets versus non-violent pressure); and

2 NGOs may or may not be part of social movements. Increasingly leaders of member-based

organisations and social movements are asserting that many NGOs arenot. For example, Roberto

Campos, elected president of a broad association of peasant farmers in Central America, has stated,

We dont need all those NGOs." Elsewhere, activists have decried the exit of NGOs from socio-political

movements and their mutation into professional enterprises, as observed among Palestinian NGOs by

Hammami, 1995. For an important critique of the tendency to lump NGOs together with member-based

groups and movements, see Uphoff 1995.


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modes of livelihood as a basis of consciousness (semi- pastoralists versus wage

earners).

These social movements had few contemporary well-wishers or allies -- or rivals. They pursued

their struggles largely alone. Today the field is more crowded, competitive. and complex.However, some conceptual tools are on offer to help cut through the underbrush.

Theory

Students of social movements have long struggled over concepts to explain them. In re-

interpreting movements in the past, they have had to cast off or transform old received ideas.

With his now classic book, The Making of the English Working Class, the English historian E.P.

Thompson helped dethrone doctrinaire theories that only a factory-based proletariat can lead

a progressive social movement. He showed that the early working class movement had a broad

social base, embracing artisans and small traders as well as wage earners. AII faced severe

social stress. They sought dignity and respect for their rights. They drew up no strategic plans

and submitted no budgets to funders, but created their own means of mutual aid and their

own cultural vehicles, such as the many revival sects of early Methodism. The relevance of

such interpretations for the study of social movements in Africa has not gone unnoticed3.

Today, numbers and types of social movements have grown, and intellectual tastes are

diversifying. Thus academic kitchens have produced more elaborate menus of theories and

foci of fact-gathering.

In respect to what drives and keeps movements going, two approaches stand out.

One concentrates on the mobilisation and use of resources. It explains movement processes

through their (political) economy. Their direction and pace depends on recruitment of

movement foot soldiers, and on raising profile and funds. Ideology and social psychology don't

count that much, as what really set things in motion are imperatives from deep within social

structures -- poverty, denial of respect and rights -- or the opportunism of political Ieaders.For some critics, however, this approach offers little more than a firm grasp of the obvious:

all movements need money and members.

3See von Freyhold 1987.


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In the 1980s a new theoretical school eclipsed the resource mobilisation approach. It

embraced social psychology and the power of symbolic interaction. its perspectives emerged

as counter-cultural youth, environmental and disarmament movements demonstrated staying

power. This action mobilisation school puts human agency -- the participants and leaders --

at center stage. Ideology, values and a struggle to define cultural meanings and even

identities become central, even motive forces. Collective action makes its points through

symbols (unusual clothing, ritual, processions) and public gestures (entering a nuclear testing

zone, issuing a timely press release). It also builds a sense of autonomy, identity and

solidarity among participants.

In contrast to the 'resource mobilisation' perspective, by which movements are viewed as

socio-political phenomena, this approach portrays social movements as socio-cultural actors.

Sometimes borrowing from the arcane modern disciplines of sign- and discourse-analysis, this

way of looking at social movements sees them engaged not so much in the sweaty, deal-

making business of really existing political institutions, as in posing extended, radical

challenges to prevailing norms and institutions. Movements thus carry prophetic functions',

drawing the attention of media and politicians to the existence of social problems4.

Today there are calls for a synthesis of the two approaches5. Capturing and structuring

attention of publics and decision-makers through symbolic action is vital to movement

success. Nevertheless, money and material resources, and how they are steered and struggled

over, still explain a lot about movements' careers and effectiveness. Resources continue to

loom large in much empirical research, particularly into social movement organisations, the

formal vehicles of social movements. Research has focused on classic' movements for

economic and civil rights in industrialized countries.

One such study (Minkoff, 1994) uses US data from 1955 to 1985 on organisations in the

women's and black/Chicano voluntary and activist sector, and their funding and political

environments. At issue is the rise and fall of organisations according to their chosen strategies

or "repertoires of collective action". The three most common strategies are held to be:

service provision to a constituency, without pressing for change in policy;

4The writings of the sociologist A. Melucci exemplify this approach.

5 Canel, 1997, offers an excellent statement.


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protest -- challenging elites through non-routine means; and,

advocacy -- challenging elites through routine means.

Authorities, funders and members tend to prefer and thus legitimize certain strategies.

Enforcement of these preferences can sometimes benefit other organisations pursuing otheroptions, for example by legitimizing more vigorous action. But often they don't. For example,

new organisations pursuing the 'preferred' strategy will compete resources away from those

organisations committed to less-favoured strategies. Thus some organisations flourish while

others wither away.

Around 1970, following what were sometimes hard-edged public actions by (and often hard-

handed repression of) many protest groups, the voluntary/activist sector saw dramatic shifts

of actors and their strategies. Protest-centred groups got sidelined, and advocacyorganisations multiplied and came to the fore, where they remain today. Both the protest

and the advocacy organisations could build on the legitimacy of causes espoused by the

preceding generation of minority and women's rights movements, which had confined action

to service provision and had avoided confrontation. But given the preferences of funding and

other authorities, the advocacy organisations gained legitimacy through the presence of a

radical flank of protest groups, since elites needed alternatives to defuse challenges and re-

channel discontent.

Political space and opportunities created by new laws and welfare measures also influenced

cascading patterns of change in these social movements. But the flow of foundation grants

was even more decisive in steering things toward intermediate methods (advocacy) and

setting limits to confrontational ones (protest).

What might stop them?

Where social movements pressing for majorchanges in the rules of the game or seeking

wholesale displacement of ruling blocs, they can sometimes win only in times of acute social

crisis, and vulnerability or self-doubt among power-holders. Most of the time, however, such

movements get clobbered. In Latin America, southern Africa and places like Indonesia the

clobbering has been done by special police units, or, more commonly in today's privatized

world, by shadowy hit squads and rent-a-mobs.


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Today, emancipatory movements perish not only by direct repression. They also die by a

thousand cuts. They get demonized and belittled in the media, denied legitimacy through

phony elections, co-opted by politicians and, quite commonly, fatally injured through self-

inflicted wounds of factionalism and of compromised leaderships. Splits and schisms continue

to cripple or kill social movements. Factionalism within or between organisations often pivots

on who controls resources.

Here too the role of funding authorities can be significant. Beyond steering organisations

toward certain strategies, noted above, donors show preferences in organisationalforms.

Umbrella or apex bodies are a favorite, as monies can be granted an accounted for with

minimum fuss -- to the donor. But in the movements themselves, this can reinforce

unresponsive hierarchies and patron-client systems. If these remain unchecked by members,

tensions rise. The resulting schisms will, in the worst cases, shatter the very movement the

donors thought they were helping.

Social movements may also lose momentum and stop when victory seems to have been won.

Then leaders are recruited away to government or business -- or are consigned to oblivion.

Demobilisation and organisational decay sets in, both through natural release of tension, and

deliberate discouragement from on high. In its transition period, South Africa has heard words

of discouragement about social movements from both foreign and domestic oracles. They

warn against any revival of protest or of initiatives to make claims on profits or public

resources, as these only raise unrealistic' expectations. More dangerously, such movements

could lure decision-makers to pursue 'populist' economic measures. The prevailing wisdom

holds that a culture of entitlement must be smothered in its crib and that there is no

alternative to austerity measures for the poor.

Why social movements now?

Someone once said that the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power.

In southern Africa, and elsewhere in the world, a broad array of people and organisations is

challenging the claim to power represented by the There-Is-No-Alternative bloc comprising

Business South Africa, the IMF and key economic advisors to the government. The challengers,

comprising trade unions, some church bodies and environmental activists, are opposing

business-as-usual indifference to poverty and to gender equity and the denial of rights and


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self-esteem for young people and ethnic 'others'. Their message is both an alarm signal about

prevailing conditions, and an insistence that they be addressed through open processes. They

first wish to say, These are problems"; and second to say, "Don't remove them from the

public agenda by defining them as non-negotiable; there are alternatives."

Someone else once defined politics, cynically, as the art of preventing people from taking part

in affairs which properly concern them. If exclusion is the name of the game in today's politics

-- and, despite enormous democratic advances in places like South Africa and Mozambique,

there is much evidence to support the cynic's view -- then means are badly needed for citizens

to shape public agendas and to gain the space to participate on terms meaningful to them.

Down through the centuries, those insisting on taking part in affairs which properly concern

them have found those means, and created that space, through emancipatory social

movements.

Points for reflection

Given their importance, social movements merit more attention than they have received up to

now from non- profits, applied researchers, funders, and organisational development

specialists. (They also merit more nuanced treatment of their complexities and paradoxes

than can be given here.)

However, this may now be changing. In South Africa, prior neglect of member- andcommunity-based groups, the building blocks of social movements, is now held up for (self-)

criticism among some NGO leaders. A few northern private aid agencies, most of whom claim

wholehearted backing for civil society are inserting social movements into their policy

discourse, and sometimes even into their grant portfolios.

But those wishing to see emancipatory social movements gain more clout and staying-power,

still have a lot to reflect on. Among major points of learning, the following stand out:

Conflict. Non-violent, constructive pressure is what drives social movements forward, making

them effective. Obviously, there are risks to movement members, given the hair's breadth

often separating violent from non-violent public action, and the hair-trigger responses of he

officials tasked with maintaining public order. No wonder then that conflict avoidance, the

exit option, is a strategy of choice, especially for vulnerable people. yet it can a1so be a path

to irrelevance or even oblivion. There is a need to distinguish the destructive from the


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creative use of conflict. The art and science of conflict management is thus one key area for

learning.

Communication. If the vocation of social movements is to signal problems to the wider public

and to decision-makers, to act as prophetic presences, then, in a world where attention is

becoming the most sought after resource, learning how to attract and structure attention is an

imperative task.

Resources. Dealing openly and honestly about funds and other resources needs special

attention. This is especially so where there are risks -- often real risks, as underscored by the

research cited above -- that authorities will seek to steer movements away from being

.unreasonable', or, as a1so noted, where vibrant organisations risk being turned into

opportunistic enterprises or clubby patronage machines, or of being 'snuggled' or 'financed' to

death by over-enthusiastic (or manipulative) funders. These issues merit reelection, especially

among would-be supporters of social movements. Perhaps a first principle for donors should

be Do No Harm.

Ownership. NGOs are not the only ones to have neglected the grassroots. Even leaderships of

social movements have sometimes shown themselves unable to resist claims on their attention

by political and business elites. South Africa is not alone in having seen the harm done by

catapulting social movement leaders, however worthy and well-meaning, into roles where

they are expected to represent 'the grassroots'. In South Africa these command performances

take place in regional or national forums built along corporatist lines, that is, where deals are

routinely made among various social blocs with little public transparency. The lack of

anchoring and accountability can quickly turn solid, gutsy social movements into mere hollow

shells. Yet, is a return to the time-consuming, even paralyzing practice of mandating'

grassroots leaders the answer? Here too there is much to reflect on.

As non-profits and funders re-value social movements and therefore revisit these and other

issues, students and practitioners of organisational development will have to grapple with

them too.

Facing social movements from a distance, however, many of us know them only as outsiders

looking in. What if the distances were shorter, and the approach began from within? Where

can specialists in organisational development best position themselves, and give further

substance to the definition of their profession?


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References

Canel, Eduardo, 1997, New Social Movement Theory and Resource Mobilisation Theory: the

Need for Integration in M. Kaufman and H.D. Alfonso (eds.) Community, Power and

Grassroots Democracy, London: IDRC and Zed Books.

Hammami, Rema, 1995, NGOs: the professionalisation of politics Race & Class, Vol. 37. Nr.

2, pp 51-63.

Melucci, A., 1989, Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in

Contemporary Society, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Minkoff, Debra C., 1994, From Service Provision to Institutional Advocacy: The Shifting

Legitimacy of Organizational Forms' Social Forces 72(4) June. pp 943-969.

Thompson, E.P., 1963, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Vintage.

Uphoff, Norman, 1995, Why NGOs are not a Third sector: a sectoral Analysis with some

Thoughts on Accountability, Sustainability and Evaluation' in M. Edwards and D. Hulme (eds.)

Non-governmental Organisations. Performance and Accountability, London: Earthscan.

von Freyhold, Michaela, 1987, Labour Movements or Popular Struggles in Africa Review of

African Political EconomySeptember, pp 23-32.

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Why Social Movements Now