New social and health movements: Issues of representation and change

Abstract

The potential of social movements to accomplish change relevant to people's health, longevity and empowerment has received little sustained attention in medical sociology outside the USA. In the current era of global or disorganized capitalism the most discussed movements in Europe have been the new social movements (NSMs). In this paper the NSMs are defined and discussed in terms of their actual and potential impact in the health domain. Within a broadly Habermasian framework, a series of rhetorics associated with, and intermittently enacted through, NSMs are identified. This leads to a provisional typology of ‘mobilizing potentials’ characteristic of NSMs. It is suggested that it is the organic bases and flexibility of health-related NSMs, together with their potential to comprise a ‘culture of challenge’ in the public sphere of the lifeworld, which makes them serious political agents for lifeworld de-colonization.