protest, reevaluating the importance of conflict, at a time when non‐class conflicts were often ignored. Compared with the then‐dominant Marxist interpretations, the theoreticians of new social movements had two specific advantages: they placed once again collective actors at the center of the stage; and they had the ability to capture the innovative characteristics of movements that no longer defined themselves principally in relation to the system of production. Despite the influence of the new social movements perspective, attention to the relationship between social structure and collective action is by no means restricted to it. A Marxian approach has continued to inspire numerous analysts of collective action who have maintained the concept of social class a central role in their analyses. In many senses, structural approaches strongly influenced by Marxism can be regarded as the predecessors of the thriving research on global justice and anti‐austerity movements (Barker et al. 2014; Barker and Lavalette 2015). Some scholars have attempted to locate the new wave of popular mobilization in the global South as well as within the Western world in the context of much larger processes of economic restructuring on a global scale, and from a long term historical perspective, broadly inspired by Wallerstein’s theory of the world system (Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein 1989; Reifer 2004; Silver 2003).
In explicit critique of analyses suggesting the demise of social conflict and its individualization, and most explicitly the end of conflict about distributive stakes, many scholars regard the crisis of the workers’ movement in the 1980s and 1990s, following financial restructuring at the global level, as a largely conjunctural phenomenon. Systemic failure to meet the expectations of the working class from developing countries will fuel a new wave of sustained class conflicts, that will also reflect the growing feminization of the labor force and its stronger ethnic dimension, following mass migration dynamics (Arrighi and Silver 1999). The increasing relevance of “global justice” as a central concern (della Porta 2006) seems to support these arguments. Moreover, and rather unexpectedly, social movements have developed in the South, bridging frames and organizational structures with their northern counterparts. Especially in some geographical areas (such as Latin America and the Far East) social movement research developed, often within a Gramscian approach, stressing the role of cultural hegemony. Not only research indicated that the class conflicts was well alive in many parts of the world, with a bias view of its decline deriving from a culturally bias focus on the North–West, but what is more Marxism was revisited as a potentially useful approach also to understand the growing focus on social inequality even at the core of the capitalist system (Silver and Karatasly 2014; della Porta 2015a; della Porta 2017b; Cini, Chironi, Dropalova and Tomasello 2018).
Another important attempt to relate social structural change to mass collective action has come from Manuel Castells (Castells 1983, 1997). In an earlier phase of his work, Castell has contributed to our understanding of the emergence of urban social movements by stressing the importance of consumption processes (in particular of collective consumption of public services and public goods) for class relations, by moving the focus of class analysis from capitalist relations within the workplace to social relations in the urban community (Castells, 1983). Later, Castells has linked the growing relevance of conflicts on identity both in the West (e.g. the women’s movement) and in the South (e.g. Zapatistas, religious fundamentalisms, etc.) to the emergence of a “network society,” where new information technologies play a central role.
Yet another original effort to link structural analysis and social movement analysis has been inspired by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Researchers engaged in the analysis of cultural habits (or the cultural predispositions produced by processes of socialization) as well as their structural determinants have used Bourdieu’s insights to explore specific instances of political conflicts, stressing their cultural meanings within the specific fields to which individuals belong. Going beyond economic interests, some scholars explained indeed social movement activism as following needs and desires that derive from values and norms that are typical of specific cultures (or fields). In this sense, action is not rational, but reasonable (Bourdieu 1992). In the Bourdesian perspective, pragmatic sociology has looked at social movements as carriers of broad cultural justifications and shifting capitalist conceptions (Boltanski and Chiappello 2005; Boltanski and Thevenot 1999). From a different angle, and with explicit reference to general theory à la Smelser, Crossley (2002) has used Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, structure, and agency to propose a new theoretical model, able to integrate the insights from European and American approaches over the years. In doing so, he has proceeded in parallel with other theoretical work in the broader framework of structuration theory (Livesay 2002; Sewell 1992).
A major criticism of new social movements theory has been that it took as foundational characteristics of new social movements certain traits that were not necessarily new and far from generalizable – such as activists’ middle class origins, or loose organizational forms (see e.g. Calhoun 1993; Kriesi et al. 1995; Rudig 1990). Structural approaches in general have also been faulted for failing to specify the mechanisms leading from structural tensions to action. In fairness, this criticism does not apply to Melucci’s work, and only partially to Touraine’s and Bourdieu’s (in any case, the latter’s overall influence over social movement studies has been quite limited); while it is surely appropriate for scholars like Offe or Castells, or world system theorists, whose focus is clearly not on micro or meso processes. Certainly, it developed general theorization upon a specific historical context, considering as broad historical trends also some contingent transformations that affected especially some specific geopolitical areas (della Porta 2015a). Whatever the case, the approaches presented here must be regarded first of all as theories of social conflict, more specifically, of the impact of structural transformations over stakes and forms of conflict. And it is fair to say that the questions more directly related to the development of collective action have been more cogently addressed by other intellectual traditions.
1.1.2 How Do We Define Issues as Worthy Objects, and Actors as Worthy Subjects, of Collective Action?
In the 1950s and 1960s, students of collective behavior tended to classify under the same heading phenomena as diverse as crowds, movements, panic, manias, fashions, and so on. Two problems arose from this. On the one hand, although many of them defined movements as purposeful phenomena, students of collective behavior placed more attention on unexpected dynamics – such as circular reactions – rather than on deliberate organizational strategies or, more generally, on strategies devised by actors. As James Coleman recalled (1990, p. 479), the hypothesis that situations of frustration, rootlessness, deprivation and social crisis automatically produce revolts reduces collective action to an agglomeration of individual behaviors. Functionalism so ignores the dynamics by which feelings experienced at the (micro) level of the individual give rise to (macro) phenomena such as social movements or revolutions.
One response to these theoretical gaps has come from symbolic interactionists close to the so‐called Chicago School, credited with having developed the analysis of collective behavior as a specialist field within sociology. The concept of collective behavior – contrasted with that of collective psychology – indicated the shift of attention from the motivation of individuals to their observable actions. Already in the 1920s, the founders of this approach – among them, Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess – had stressed that collective phenomena do not simply reflect social crisis but rather produce new norms and new solidarities, and viewed social movements as engines of change, primarily in relation to values systems. Subsequently, other students of collective behavior were to make reference to the tenets of the Chicago School, focusing their attention on situations of rapid change in social structures and prescriptions (Blumer 1951; Gusfield 1963; Turner and Killian 1987 [1957]). Tendencies toward large‐scale organizations, population mobility, technological innovation, mass communications, and the decline of traditional cultural forms were all considered to be emerging conditions pushing individuals to search for new patterns of social organization. Collective behavior was in fact defined as behavior concerned with change (for example, Blumer 1951, p. 199), and social movements as both an integral part of the normal functioning of society and the expression of a wider process of transformation.
