SOC101Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Social Movement, Collective Behavior, Extreme Measures
Document Summary
One of the earliest social movements was the workers rights movement in the 19th workers demanding better working conditions: safety, child labour, shift length, minimum wage. Women won the right to vote in 1919 which was the first real fight in this movement. All of these are examples of collective behaviour. Collective behaviour: voluntary, often spontaenous activity that is engaged in by a large number of people and typically violates dominant group norms and values. Some collective actions are routine and others are non-routine . Routine collective actions tend to be nonviolent and follow established patterns of behaviour in bureaucratic social structures. Non-routine collective action tends to be short-lived and sometimes violent (mob, riot, panic) Fundamentally, social movements are about change, which is how they violate a dominant group norm and eventually may become a dominant group norm like womens" rights. Three centuries ago, social movements were typically small, localized, and violent.