Social movements around the world have used a wide variety of protest tactics to bring about enormous social changes, influencing cultural arrangements, public opinion, and government policies in the process. This concise yet in-depth primer provides a broad overview of theoretical issues in the study of social movements, illustrating key concepts with a series of case studies. It offers engaging analyses of the protest cycle of the 1960s, the women's movement, the LGBT movement, the environmental movement, right-wing movements, and global social justice movements. Author Suzanne Staggenborg examines these social movements in terms of their strategies and tactics, the organizational challenges they faced, and the roles that the mass media and counter-movements played in determining their successes and failures.

Grassroots activism is essential to the success of the contemporary environmental movement, which depends on the organization of local activists as well as state, national, and international organizations. Yet grassroots activists confront numerous challenges as they attempt to organize diverse participants and devise fresh strategies and tactics. Drawing on more than seven years of fieldwork following diverse organizations in Pittsburgh over time, this book sheds light on the struggles that activists face and the factors that sustain movements. Suzanne Staggenborg examines individual motivations and participation, organizational structures and cultures, relationships in movement communities, and strategies and tactics, including issue framing. The book shows that collective action campaigns and tactics generate solidarity, maintain involvement, and bring in new participants even as organizers struggle to devise effective new types of actions.

Grassroots activism is essential to the success of the contemporary environmental movement, which depends on the organization of local activists as well as state, national, and international organizations. Yet grassroots activists confront numerous challenges as they attempt to organize diverse participants and devise fresh strategies and tactics. Drawing on more than seven years of fieldwork following diverse organizations in Pittsburgh over time, this book sheds light on the struggles that activists face and the factors that sustain movements. Suzanne Staggenborg examines individual motivations and participation, organizational structures and cultures, relationships in movement communities, and strategies and tactics, including issue framing. The book shows that collective action campaigns and tactics generate solidarity, maintain involvement, and bring in new participants even as organizers struggle to devise effective new types of actions.

In this highly-praised analysis of the controversial pro-choice movement, Suzanne Staggenborg traces the development of the movement from its origins through the 1980s. She shows how a small group of activists were able to build on the momentum created by other social movements of the 1960s to win their cause--the legalization of abortion in 1973--and argues that professional leadership and formal organizational structures, together with threats from the anti-abortion movement and grass-roots support, enabled the pro-choice movement to remain an active force even after their primary goal had been achieved.

Social movements around the world have used a wide variety of protest tactics to bring about enormous social changes, influencing cultural arrangements, public opinion, and government policies in the process. This concise yet in-depth primer provides a broad overview of theoretical issues in the study of social movements, illustrating key concepts with a series of case studies. It offers engaging analyses of the protest cycle of the 1960s, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian rights movement, the environmental movement, the new American right, and the global justice movement. Author Suzanne Staggenborg examines these social movements in terms of their strategies and tactics, the organizational challenges they faced, and the roles that the mass media and counter-movements played in determining their successes and failures. Ideal as a core text for courses in social movements/collective behavior and political sociology/social change, Social Movements is brief enough to be easily supplemented by a reader containing primary documents.