Response 2.

Emily Beanblossom
Jules Unsel
Digitizing Movements
Spring 2008


Response 2


I was unaware that the term “Social Movement” has only been coined since the later half of the eighteenth century, and it’s interesting to note that the organized political risings originated out of North American and Western Europe. As the book Social Movements 1768-2004 mentions that forms of political uprisings have been happening over thousands of years, I am curious as to why those happenings are not considered “social movements’. Most likely, it is because the term describes a specific idea - social movements entail organized rallies, street marching, and picketing. Uprisings that occurred in history were most likely forceful rebuttals and plotted overthrowings of the state head or leader(s).
It seems the concept of the social movement is an evolved thing. As time progresses and civilizations become more intricate and complex, new forms of social practices and applications are necessary. Because of events that took place before them, as well as previous writers and thinkers, people like Marx and Lorenze von Stein could use past events and ideas to formulate great social analysis documentation, such as The Communist Manifesto.
It’s no surprise the extent to which technology has altered the course of social movement evolution. Technology, in the purely definitive sense, has obviously allowed for the spread of social movements - the applied science of knowing how to document any sort of information gave information a vehicle to spread at a rapid pace and reach more people. In a similar way, modern day technology, such as the internet, is the new form of the printing press, quill pens, and papyrus. As information spreads at a more rapid rate, social movements are becoming much more globalized.
In response to Tilly’s section on globalization in conjunction with the rapid expansion of communication technologies, I question whether or not this new globalizing technology acting as a social movement catalyst just expands to rich, western countries. If this is the case, is globalization just granting more power to richer countries, leaving less developed countries in the dark? The term Political Circuits, mentioned on page 103 describes the combination of technology and information as a force behind the births of social movements - as communication costs are reduced, the occurrence of social movements doesn’t necessarily increase, but does definitely cover more ground for communication.