Social movements are organized groups striving to work toward a common goal. These groups might be attempting to create change, to resist change, or to provide a political voice to those deprived of their rights and freedoms. Social movements create social change. Functionalist focus on why social movements develop, why they continue to exist, and what social purposes they serve. Social movements rightfully arise when there is a dysfunction between systems.
However, when studying social movements in themselves, functionalists observe the movement’s change in their goals when the basic objectives are met or they risk termination. Symbolic interactionists study the everyday interaction of social movements, the meanings attached, and the individual experience of social change Movements themselves are flexible, diverse, and informal in participation and membership.
They often prefer to adopt nonhierarchical methods of organization and unconventional means of attention. The change in society created within social movements as well as externally, are the main driving forces for social change. Social movements are organized groups with the goal of either pushing toward change, providing a political voice, or gathering for any common purpose. Social movements intersect external factors in order to produce social change.
The reasons that people join social movements depend on that participate. Movement are basically political responses to inequality and oppression. It provides opportunities for the oppressed to fairly disperse the power. This is known as relative deprivation theory because it focuses on the actions of deprived and oppressed groups who want their rights. Collective behaviour, is voluntary non-institutionalized activity.
Norms are important in shaping crowd behaviour, especially those that change quickly in response to external factors. Emergent norm theory asserts that people perceive and respond to the crowd situation with their individual set of norms. There are four different forms of collective behaviour; crowd, mass, public, and social movement. Moreover, there are three main theories. The first, emergent-norm perspective, emphasizes the importance of social norms in crowd behaviour.
The value-added theory states that several preconditions must be in place for collective behaviour to occur. Lastly, the assembling perspective focuses on a collective goal rather than a collective behaviour. The idea that a country can overrule another with their culture and way of life. Imperialism carries the idea of spreading your power/influence.
Cultural imperialism would then be spreading the spreading the language, entertainment/arts, appearance preferences and most importantly values of a culture. When the British came to America, they began to control and overrule the Native Americans. The British imposed their culture onto the Native Americans, who were stripped of their culture and forced to blend into the British’s way of life. Their land was stolen, cultures erased, and now barely any memory of our first Ancestors.