Introduction

If you're like most Americans, the term social movement is inextricably linked in your mind to thoughts of long-haired hippies, VW vans, and the antiwar protests of the 1960s. You may not think of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, birth control, the AFL-CIO, Protestantism, the Revolutionary War, or Nazism, and yet all of those were, at the time of their inceptions, rightly termed social movements.

So what precisely is a social movement? How do they arise? Why do people join them? And how do the radicals of today become establishments of tomorrow?

 

Following successful completion of this lesson, students will be able to:

  • Define social movement and social change.
  • Explain the impact of the modern Civil Rights Movement, the women's movement, the gun rights movement, the green movement, and other minority movements in the United States.
  • Identify characteristics of sociology, including social action.

The above objectives correspond with the Alabama Course of Study: Sociology Objectives: 1.2, 10, & 10.3.

 

 

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