In Cultural Politics and Social Movements (1995), social movements are defined as “collective efforts by socially and politically subordinated people to challenge the conditions and assumptions of their lives . . . collective action becomes a ‘movement’ when participants refuse to accept the boundaries of established institutional rules and routinized roles” (vii). Though I will typically ground my lecture in American social movements, we are not limited to the United States in our study. Each country/culture/context poses unique issues that need to be carefully considered. As we will see throughout our mini-course, social movements are very fluid phenomena. Before we meet, I’d like you to consider the following questions:
1) What would you identify as some of the difficulties in “starting a social movement” and how might individuals begin to organize a movement?
2) Beyond violence, how are social movements resisted by those in power?
3) What would you identify as the necessary ingredients in a successful social movement? (And, what does “success” mean?)
Speeches to Consider:
The Rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Rhetoric of Malcolm X
Oppositional Rhetoric
The Rhetoric of Black Power
(Youthful) Resistance Rhetoric
I’m looking forward to learning with you.
-Nate T. French, instructor & Director of the Magnolia Program, Wake Forest University
