Final Social Movement Analysis:

For the final, you will be required to analyze and deconstruct a social movement as described below. Your answers to the questions should be typed, and no longer than 12 pages total. Your answers should reflect both thoughtful organization and argument, as well as scholarly use of the required readings in support of your arguments. Provide appropriate references (e.g. Blah & Blah, 1978), whenever you cite a work. No reference list is necessary, as long as you are able to produce the citation.

Final Social Movement Analysis Guidelines

Choose a social movement or effort aimed at social change and deconstruct it utilizing the themes and theories discussed in class. In other words, apply the concepts, themes, and theories discussed in class to make sense of the social movement. In other words, analyze the movement using the theoretical perspectives discussed in class. How does each explain why the movement emerged and the trajectory it took?

Develop an argument in which you describe the theoretical perspectives that best explain the formation and development of your movement - or alternatively, why one theory cannot provide a complete explanation on its own. Your essay should be 10-12 pages in length and should reference at least 8 readings from our course reader. As a general rule, you should have 2 references per written page. This should insure that your analysis is sufficiently theoretically framed.

Questions you should consider when examining the social movement or efforts aimed at social change include:

1. Why do individuals participate in movements? What are their motivations or interests? What are the structural conditions that shape these interests or motivations?

2. How does mobilization occur? What is the process?

3. How do people come to identify with and be committed to a movement (or not)?

4. How do people understand grievances and persuade others to agree with them?

5. How are movements organized? What networks do they draw on, what is their organizational structure?

6. How do movements draw on external resources or allies or take advantage of political opportunities (or not)? How are they constrained by social structure?

7. What tactics or strategies do movements employ? How are they constrained? What role does creativity or leadership play?

8. How do regimes, opponents, or other outsiders (including media) respond to movements?

9. What are the temporal dynamics of movements? What affects their trajectory over time?