The Four Stages Of A Social Movement

“The one thing that doesn 't abide by majority rule is a person 's conscience.” (Lee, 1960), Social movements are a large part of how our society shifts to new norms. Social movements are causing a cultural change in our society based on a social ill that has been deemed necessary to be fixed. The types of social movements can go from one end of the spectrum to another, One could have riots and violence, and the other could have speeches and a passive nature. They are all capable of being able to go through the four stages of a social movement, emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization, and decline. One of the main four types of the social movements is alternative social movements. Alternative social movements are looking at a selective part …show more content…
They fight for their rights almost like a new religion would. They are also seeking members who feel the same beliefs that they do, whether they simply be allies to the LGBT community or they are directly related to the cause. Almost all religions do this as well, they raise awareness about their higher being/s and they try to convert others to share in their beliefs. This type of social movement, just like any other goes through the four stages. They realize that there is a problem that multiple people are facing and want to change something, which is the first stage, then they start to organize and send out awareness to everyone, that is the second stage. This category can be accepted by the government, thus going into the third stage. Finally, they usually go into the mainstream of society and continue preaching their gospel to their …show more content…
The Communist party is a socialist group that wants to change all of America to their ideals. Their ideal, Socialism, is an belief that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. They are very clear with what their intentions are, and how they are going to do it. They have already reached the third stage and they don’t seem to be going into the fourth stage anytime soon. Unless these types of movements ends during the second stage it will always end up in a revolution of sorts, Revolutions do not need to be as devastating as the American Civil War, it could be revolting against using a certain brand and putting them out of our country. It could even be repressed, but the revolution will still have happened. There is however the discussion that revolutionary social movements are not usually necessary, since they usually end in violence. This is usually looked down upon and is not suggested to be used very often. Only when necessary should people choose this type of social movement to cause a change in the social world that we live