Understanding contemporary social movements

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Until recently, theories in the social sciences have paid little attention to grass-roots movements, especially those of a transnational character. Whether it is the Durkheimian and Parsonian sociological theory of "the social system" or the Boasian concept of culture, theorists have tended to focus instead on the nation-state or its various microcosms: formal organizations, rational bureaucracies, political parties and cultural systems. Thus little attention has been given to the social movement as part of the Weltanschauung of the social scientists.1 Since the 1960s, however, following the postwar boom, there have been several crises in socialist and capitalists nation-states, as well as a "crisis of representation" in the social sciences.2 As a result of these changes, the last two decades witnessed the emergence of new movements in the realms of social organization, and in various domains of social scientific inquiry. The growth of grass-roots "critical social movements" in "world regional locales as diverse as North America, Japan, Europe, China & Mexico"3 have paralleled the growth of new frames of reference in the social sciences, including postmodernism, "practice," "body," "language game, fstructuration," and tne renewed significance of "everyday life."4 To make sense of the contemporary human condition, it is useful to note these parallel crises in the "nation state" and in social science "representation," and the critical responses of various emerging social and theoretical movements to these crises.