A New Approach to Social Movements, and Its Missed Opportunities

Abstract

Dieter Rucht sets out a theoretically oriented discussion of social movements. His intent is not to develop a full-blown theory of social movements but rather to establish the sociological theoretical groundwork that can shape a more fruitful approach to understanding social movements, what he terms an “interactionist, constructionist and process-oriented” approach. The result is a wide-ranging discussion through the lens of this approach of the concepts and arguments that have dominated the field of social movements, although with disappointingly little attention to the scholarship that has challenged and reshaped these dominant ideas.