Social movements are purposeful and organized groups of people striving to work for common goal. These groups work to create change in the society, to resist change, or to provide political voice to those effected. Social movements and protest have significant impact on the people in society, on the social and political setup in the countries. In the functionalist perspective, there is big picture of all aspects of society in which people are living in groups and they have specific objective of their life. They are living under certain norms or life, having their religion, and social and moral values.
Functionalists may focus on way the social movements are developing and how a return of civil disobedience may occur. Functionalist think why social movements continue to exist and what the main purposes behind these movements. Social movements are often emerging in the situations when dysfunction in relationships or systems occur. In the 19th Century, the union movement was developed when there were issues of distribution of wealth in the economy. Resource were distributed inadequately and workers and their families faced serious financial issues.
In the history, there is a critical perspective about the creation of reproduction of inequality. Because of conflict perspective, and conflicts of interests, movements created. Many movements were against the economic inequality, war and social injustice. Conflict of social interested lead changes in the social relations. Functionalist observed that in the history, movements has changed their initial purposes or aims. For instance, different organizations linked with the anti-polio industry folded after invention of a more effective vaccine to virtually disappear the disease. Recalling the history with African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, unionized labor, immigrants, environmentalists, and people with disabilities, it is easy to find that there will be many other to come.
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In 2014, about 276 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped. Ramaa decided to call for help by activating the US social media. She stated a campaign to promote the message to gain help for the girls. She pushed by her message, Bring Back Our Girls. She became a vocal advocate for those girls and she worked for the women rights. In her campaign by the use of social media, she tells the story of kidnaped girls to recover them. He campaign was to save all those girls and to save many others from such situations. This is a modern way to engage people and societies for certain tasks that are related to social change and to make sense of social justice CITATION The16 \l 1033 (The Power of a Hashtag).
In the current social and political scenario on the United States, it can observe that there is a return of civil disobedience. Republican majority has mostly show compliance with Trump, despite his dislike for norms of democracy CITATION Jel17 \l 1033 (Cobb). Main issue is that Mr. Trump works to achieve what he wants. If he will successful in his aim, the politics and policy could be radically changed. This could be known as another phenomenon of the nineteen-sixties: the conviction that “democracy in the streets.” Congress is unlikely to find new President, but democracy could thrive in the states, the next elections, and the courts CITATION Jel17 \l 1033 (Cobb).
Works Cited
- Cobb, Jelani. “The Return of Civil Disobedience.” The New Yorker (2017): 5.
- The Power of a Hashtag. 2016.
