Examine how social movements come to an end. Illustrate with examples. (UPSC CSE Mains 2020 - Sociology, Paper 1)
Social movements are collective attempts to further common interests or to secure common goals through action outside the established patterns of institutions. Social movements are considered most powerful collective action, aim to bring changes/resist changes in the society. Structural elements of social movements are-
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- Ideology
- Common goal
- Collective action
- Leadership
Social movements eventually decline for one or more of many reasons. Sometimes they achieve their goals and naturally cease because there is no more reason to continue. More often, however, they decline because they fail. Both the lack of money and loss of enthusiasm among a movement’s members may lead to a movement’s decline, and so might factionalism, or strong divisions of opinion within a movement.
Government responses to a social movement may also cause the movement to decline. The government may “co-opt” a movement by granting it small, mostly symbolic concessions that reduce people’s discontent but leave largely intact the conditions that originally motivated their activism. If their discontent declines, the movement will decline even though these conditions have not changed. Movements also may decline because of government repression. Authoritarian governments may effectively repress movements by arbitrarily arresting activists, beating them up, or even shooting them when they protest.
Democratic governments are less violent in their response to protest, but their arrest and prosecution of activists may still serve a repressive function by imposing huge legal expenses on a social movement and frightening activists and sympathizers who may not wish to risk arrest and imprisonment.
Any movement can''t be sustained for longer time. Once its goal is achieved it may disappear. For instance, Anti Sati movement in India.
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