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The emergence of new civic groups from the 1970s onward is discussed in this chapter. The new civic movements which begun in the 1970s can be understood as a Japanese form of the new social movements so prevalent in industrialized nations since the 1960s. The focus of movement intellectuals on issues of daily life, their attention to non-class identities, and their preference for practical initiatives are all quintessential elements of the NSMs (New Social Movements). Leading activists' emphasis on self reflexivity also lends credence to an NSM reading of these movements. Nevertheless, the chapter set aside the NSM paradigm for two reasons: firstly, much of what the intellectuals of the movement claimed to be new about their movements actually drew liberally on elements of earlier shimin thought and activism, especially notions of self-help, participation, nation, and community; and, secondly, the new civic movements and their leaders effected changes that NSM theory simply could not explain.

The early nineteenth century saw the rise of “new social movements” such as feminism, the ecology movement or “greens,” the youth movement, the peace movement, and other initiatives aimed at legitimating personal identity or lifestyle. These movements worked outside formal institutional channels and deemphasized economic goals, instead focusing on the politicization of everyday life. This chapter looks at the “new social movements” and argues that they were not really novel because their major characteristics were also present in social movements in America during the early nineteenth century, particularly the labor movement. It thus refutes both notions of American exceptionalism and the historical claim that late twentieth-century social movements were of a fundamentally new kind. The chapter also explores identity politics and other features common to movements throughout the modern period, considering broad historical patterns in the activity, diversity, and integration of social movement fields.

The differentiation of the state, market, and private spheres in Western societies has given rise to social movements as a legitimate form of political action. In the United States, grassroots social movements, especially the so-called “new” social movements, have been seen as an alternative to the conventional means of reforming the political economy. However, this chapter argues that social movements tend to be as reactionary as they are progressive, are readily coopted by the corporate state, and exhibit a radical subjectivism or emotivism characteristic of the established order that they purportedly try to change. It suggests that renewed social movements have a propensity to focus on a “return to the self” and on issues of feelings and community, and also looks at the social activism of conservative Protestants, along with religion and politics in social movements.

Anarchism is a commonly misunderstood social and political ideology, yet it has remarkable affinities and commonalities with many contemporary global social movements. While most current social movement theories either poorly or inadequately explain the anarchist movement, the new social movement (NSM) theories describe many characteristics closely synonymous with anarchism. Due to the historically confused and contradictory discourse around NSMs and NSM theories, I adopt two distinct approaches here, by (1) considering what conditions or factors lead to the current movement moment and (2) evaluating the “objective” analysis of certain movement qualities. This chapter analyzes anarchism and anarchist movements via six primary characteristics of NSM theories, and finds a great deal of compatibility. Specifically, anarchism has grown beyond—but not completely—industrial conflict and politics, broadened to include new social constituencies such as middle class participants, used anti-hierarchical organizations and networks, engaged in symbolic direct actions, used a strategic and self-limiting radicalism, and has created new anarchist identities. However, modern anarchism may be differentiated from other NSMs (like ecological and LGBT-rights movements) by certain unique characteristics, including revolutionary anti-statism, radical practicality, anti-capitalism, and a degree of core compatibility with classical anarchism. The strategic and tactical benefits of these characteristics are discussed.

Chapter 6 moves beyond liberal notions of human rights based upon the protection of the individual. The UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was a landmark in protecting citizens from tyranny whose importance cannot be overstated. But there is another tradition of human rights, dating back to Tom Paine’s Rights of Man (1791 - 1792) that links human rights to moral protest and democratic struggle to create a ‘civilised society’. In this chapter is argued that dissident struggles and social movements have become the collective expressions of ‘rights talk’, in which citizens have created (1) an alternative democratic space to Parliament as a top-down model of democracy; (2) a bottom-up forum, based upon multiple counter-publics, continuously seeking to renegotiate power relations and; (3) through the influence of civic insurrections in 1989 and 2011, changed the democratic narrative. This is a vital manifestation of civil society in terms of the collective expression of human rights in the tradition of radical humanism.

This chapter turns towards the political concerns of Lignes during its first series, largely focusing on changing immigration policies and the adoption of economic liberalism as the pensée unique of both the right and the left. It situates the early years of Lignes as dominated by the legacy of World War Two, as a rise in holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and racism is accompanied by a resurgence of the far-right and the Front National. Pierre-André Taguieff provided a useful analysis of heterophilic neo-racism early on, but, as Taguieff drifted towards the New Right and showed sympathy to Alain de Benoist, Étienne Balibar’s class based analysis of structural nationalism becomes favoured by the review instead. Turning its attention to the French left, Lignes is frustrated by the tightening of immigration policy suggested by changes to the nationality code, and also by the government’s support for the Gulf War. As the new social movements erupt in 1995, the review takes a firmer position on the side of the radical left, keen to foment social solidarities between the sans papiers and the unemployed, and to forge a more consistent critique of the economic liberalism now adopted by both the Parti Socialiste and the Rassemblement pour la République.

This book studies third sectors in different parts of the world. The third sector refers to various types of relief and welfare organizations, innovation organizations, public service organizations, economic development organizations, grassroots mobilization groups, advocacy groups, and social networks. These include civil society organizations, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and formal and informal associations. Building on recent work on the origins, dynamics, and effects of civil society across the globe, this book compares the functions, impacts, and composition of the nonprofit sector for six countries: United States, France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. This introduction explains the book's approach of using institutional logics to study the third sector, offers new theoretical perspectives on how different types of participation can increase generalized trust and state legitimacy, and considers the impact of neoliberalism and the so-called “New Political Culture” on nonprofits. It also discusses the emergence of New Social Movements and how associational politics might fit into the large picture of political life.

The third chapter reflects on new youth activism within the wider context of what has been termed ‘the new social movements’. It addresses the broader transnational influence of movements abroad, and shows how new areas for political expression opened up around peace, anti-militarism, environmentalism/nuclear disarmament and sexuality. Late socialist Yugoslav society witnessed the proliferation of a youth arena of civil initiatives and activist citizenship, albeit fragmented and often discordant, which found shelter and support within parts of the existing youth institutional framework. Although the federal Youth League did not explicitly endorse all of the initiatives stemming from the new social movements, it did provide spaces for some of them and increased the visibility of their demands in the public space.

The available literature on the Telangana movement offers historical, political, and economic perspectives that define Telangana as a ‘backward’ region and the movement as an offshoot to this backwardness. The backwardness generally discussed pertains to the economic standing of the people of Telangana. From the vantage point of a fresh perspective, this chapter uses regional culture as a vantage point to understand the emergence of the mass movement. It explores the context in which the idea of separate statehood for Telangana took shape and discusses how the movement can be understood as a new social movement. The chapter also attempts to understand the contours of the movement’s history in terms of how the culture of Telangana was marginalized and how Telangana activists, especially employees and students, mobilized against the dominant Andhra culture, leading ultimately to widespread, robust cultural assertion.

After exploring the impact of NGOs on the post-Second World War peace settlement, including in the establishment of the United Nations and in the promotion of human rights standards, this chapter outlines the divisions in transnational civil society that developed in response to the onset of the Cold War and decolonization. The chapter proceeds to discuss the emergence from the 1960s onwards of a new generation of international NGOs that aimed to transcend the East-West and North-South divides by promoting causes including international development and nuclear disarmament. The emergence of “new social movements” and new transnational networks is evaluated, culminating in the transnational movement to bring the Cold War to an end. The chapter concludes by exploring the impact of post-Cold War developments including economic globalization and the internet on transnational civil society, and reveals how, despite the emergence of ambitious transnational coalitions by the turn of the millennium, transnational civil society became confronted by new challenges including religious fundamentalism and the global financial crisis.

When individuals tell awakening stories, they weigh in on cultural disputes over truth and meaning that emerged during various historical eras and evolved through time. This chapter sketches a cultural history of the awakening narrative formula, showing how awakening narratives proliferated over time with the rise of various discursive communities. It discusses several cases that span different contexts, belief systems, and historical periods -- from the Axial Age to the late modern era -- in order to show how awakening stories emerged in various historical eras to mark the prominent cultural and moral tensions of those eras. These cases variously express philosophical, religious, political, scientific, psychological, and sexual worldviews and span different levels of analysis. These include the story of Zarathustra, Plato’s allegory of the cave, the Buddhist story of Siddh?rtha Gautama, the Christian story of Paul the Apostle, the Western Enlightenment narrative, the Marxist account of false and class consciousness, and Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. Finally, this chapter discusses the proliferation of awakening stories that accompanied the rise of identity politics and new social movements, including New Age movements, in the 1970’s and 80’s.

For much of the twentieth century, social democracy was associated with a strong and centralised state, able to wield the levers of power for progressive aims. Yet earlier traditions were often local and regional. State transformation and rescaling have removed from the nation-state many of the instruments for social and economic management, while decentralisation has vested significant powers at local and regional levels. Social and economic struggles take place at a variety of spatial scales. The author looks at how social democracy and social democratic compromises can develop at the sub-state level.

This chapter describes how societal changes over the past several decades have reshaped the social and political interests of democratic citizens. Publics and parties have traditionally focused on the economic cleavage as a basis of electoral politics. The processes of social modernization have produced a second cultural cleavage based on environmentalism, gender equality, immigration, and identity politics. New social movements advocating these issues have stimulated a conservative backlash. This cultural cleavage now exerts influence equal to economics in shaping citizens’ policy demands. A two-dimensional space for political competition has gradually evolved to represent these new political interests, producing new parties on the far left and far right. Longitudinal data from the European Election Studies allow us to track these changes in both citizen and elite opinions from the 1970s to 2014.

Chapter 6 provides a detailed examination of the impact of identity politics. It begins with a critical look at the development of black radical ideas, their dismissal of the ‘white working class’, and their failure to set out how sectorial struggle could lead to working-class unity. It concentrates on the experience of the Bengali Housing Action Group, a squatters’ organisation coordinated by black radical activists from Race Today, and on anti-racist resistance spearheaded by second generation Asian Youth Movements. These campaigns succeeded in securing homes for many families and in generating a sea-change in community consciousness and confidence as Bengalis asserted their right to stay in Britain and be treated decently. However they left a legacy of geographical clustering and of separate community-based organisation that failed to address wider socio-economic inequalities. The chapter compares this identity politics with the 1930s, when the Communist Party used campaigns against racism and for better housing to unite the working class across the racial divide, to undercut support for fascism, and to build support for left ideas. It concludes by looking at how public money has been used to incorporate once-radical organisation into the establishment and institutionalise competition between different community groups.

This afterword reflects on the afterlife of neo-idealism and clarifies the author's stance on questions of social justice, utilitarian ethics, and the nearly universal repudiation of statism. The author's argument has been focused on the degree to which the collective consciousness that formed a staple of the New Social Movements — perhaps its key catalyst — gives way in seventies culture to a profound displacement onto subjectivity. But it would be a mistake to see this as a perversion of sixties thinking. The appeal to subjectivity was always the latent grounding of social change among important movements of that earlier decade; hence the coming to dominance of identity politics in the generation after the sixties. It is no surprise that the effort to reclaim consciousness's underappreciated power in sixties discourses should give rise to celebrations of unfettered power in seventies thinking. The afterword examines how the market became the megastructure for a wide array of antistatist impulses.