Understanding the Four Types of Social Movements

📚 American anthropologist David Aberle provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing social movements in his book.

💡 Aberle identifies four types of social movements: alterative, redemptive, reformative, and transformative.

🔑 There are four types of social movements categorized based on the level and type of change they seek.

✨ An alterative movement aims for partial individual change, like efforts to stop drunk driving or promote recycling.

🌟 Redemptive movements aim for total individual change, often associated with religious movements and the search for a new inner-state.

🔑 There are four types of social movements: religious, reformative, transformative, and revolutionary.

🔑 Religious movements aim for complete personal transformation.

🔑 Reformative movements seek partial social change, such as the Women's Suffrage Movement.

🔑 Transformative movements strive for total social change, like revolutions.

🔀 Transformative movements seek to change or destroy the current system.

🔄 Social movements can be a combination of different types and can change over time.

🔄 Movements can have multiple goals and target both the social system and individual level.

💡 Analyzing the ideology and behaviors of both the movement as a whole and the individuals involved is crucial in understanding social movements.

🔍 Examining the day-to-day lives of the people in the movement, along with their formal messaging, helps determine the nature of the movement, whether it's alterative or transformative.

🌍 Contextualizing social movements by considering historical periods or the modern society they exist in is necessary for classification and analysis.

🔑 Key factors to consider when analyzing social movements: power dynamics, groups in power, groups seeking power, repression, and societal norms.

⏳ Historical context is important when analyzing social movements and their means, as norms and acceptability change over time.

📚 David Aberle's framework from 1966 provides a useful classification system for analyzing social movements.