Blackwell Reference Online

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Culture is the symbolic and expressive dimensions of social life. This includes sets of symbols such as language, intangible, abstract “mental products” such as ideas, beliefs, values, and identity, and the meanings given to material objects such as clothing, decorations, art objects, buildings, and the like. Social movements are sustained, more or less organized attempts at change. They may try to change individuals, group behaviors, government policies, or society's cultural understandings. Social movements are generally thought to last longer and be more organized than a mob or a crowd, but are not as established or institutionalized as a political party or lobbying group. Sociologists have studied culture and social movements with three basic sets of questions. First, many accounts of social movement emergence posit their basic causes as cultural. Second, when studying the processes and dynamics that allow social movements to function and maintain themselves, analysts have focused on cultural factors such as collective identity, ideological claims, emotions, and internal group norms, rituals, and practices. Third, scholars who study the impact that movements have on society have often focused on the cultural changes that are their goals for action (cf. Johnston & Klandermans 1995). Most of the sociological study of social movements since the end of World War II has sought ... log in or subscribe to read full text