SOS 422 - Sociology of Social Movements

The aim of the course is to introoduce students to Social Movements that emerged as one of the principal social forms through which collectivities give voice to their grievances and concerns about the rights, welfare, and well‐being of themselves and others by engaging in various types of collective action, ranging from peaceful protest demonstrations to acts of political violence, from small or local uprising  to revolution, and from mass vigils memorializing deceased constituents to boisterous gatherings clamoring for retribution, all of which dramatize those grievances and concerns and demand that something be done about them. Beside that there are more institutionalized and publicly less conspicuous venues in which collectivities can express their grievances and concerns, particularly in democratic societies, social movements have long functioned as an important vehicle for articulating and pressing a collectivity’s interests and claims.