ANSO 300-01, Collective Action and Social Movements, Fall 2002

Abstract

This course is an introduction to the study of collective action and social movements in the modern world. In the first part of the course, we lay out some of the general questions about collective action and social movements – Why do they occur? Why do people join them? Why do they succeed or fail? – and explore the broad theoretical approaches to answering them. This first section is grounded in a close case study of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the second part, we examine varying forms of collective action, from riots to revolutions, and different types of social movements, including anti-imperial, right-wing, environmental, and Islamic movements. And finally, we touch on some of the new developments in the study of collective action and social movements.