The Basic Differences between Old and New Social Movements

• Old social movements were an initiative within the framework of a political party, it did not involve the question of power distribution in society or concerns about the quality of life offered to citizens by its government
• New social movements are central to cultural anxieties, aspirations related to quality of life issues, etc. These new social movements struggle to include beliefs that are in contradiction with a dominant cultural orientation
• The old and new social movements differ in directing their energies. While the old movements advocated the interests of the working-class, new social movements are interested in the provision of intangible goods

India has long witnessed many instances of social movements throughout history. Some of the famous social movements are proposals for reservation in education and employment, the peasants’ movement, Dalit and other lower-caste struggles, etc. Social movements can also be classified as redemptive, revolutionary, and reformist. Both redemptive and reformist social movements involve incremental steps towards change in personal and political arrangements respectively. It is important to note that new social movements are not structured on class lines or inequalities. On the contrary, it unifies people from different class boundaries. For instance, feminist movements include women from different backgrounds – rural and urban areas.

Social movements refer to group actions taken with an objective to challenge and change specific political or social situations. It requires continuous collective action by people demanding a similar change. Such movements are mostly a consequence of distrust or dissatisfaction between the political institutions running the government and the society. Some social movements are driven to reform current systems and set up, that is, they are motivated by the forces of revolutionary and radical ideas. All in all, social movements break out when people feel deprived of their relative living standard or when people become knowledgeable which convinces them that their way of living is unacceptable. These movements of sustained collective action take place through the organization, that is, it justifies the role of its leadership and members and the ways to make decisions.

Many political scientists have divided social movements into two broad categories – old and new social movements.

• Old Social Movements:  Social movements of this type revolve around traditional issues of economic equality, material resources, and the struggle for political power. Old social movements are concerned with the question of the arrangement and organization of society and state.
• New Social Movements: New social movements are a result of cultural and modernistic ambitions which aim to bring a change in the mindset of societal and cultural norms. An appropriate example for a new social movement would be the human rights movement, feminism, LGBTQ, environmental concerns, etc.