Introduction

Abstract

A central aim of Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case-Studies is to bring together classical, recent and contempo-rary analyses of the social-movement phenomenon. In this volume analysis is represented in several variants of its dis-cursive form: the expository essay, the critique, the general theory, the specific case study, the futuristic meditation. The book is divided into six parts — entitled, respectively, Classi-cal Perspectives; Disciplinary Approaches; Conceptual Issues: Debates and Critiques; Contemporary Studies; The Future of Social Movements; and a coda: So-cial Movements in Sociological Thought — each containing one to four essays. Although each essay was written independently and to serve its author’s particular purpose, its presentation in this volume permits each to contribute to a comprehensive and thematic formulation of the subject. The editor’s concluding essay provides an original and critical summation of the place of social movements in past and present sociological thought.

Social Movements can be viewed as collective enterprises to establish a new order of life.

Herbert Blumer¹