The Commercialization and Digitization of Social Movement Society

In Western democracies, popular political radicalism declined in the wake of the protest cycle of the 1960s and 1970s. What appeared instead is a ‘‘social movement society,’’ where protest becomes increasingly institutionalized and ‘‘civic’’ rather than disruptive. As the editors of the volume The Social Movement Society put it, ‘‘although disruption appears to be the most effective political tool of the disadvantaged, the majority of episodes of movement activity we see today disrupt few routines’’ (Meyer and Tarrow 1998:20). A study of over 4,000 events in the greater Chicago area from 1970 to 2000 finds that ‘‘sixties-style’’ protest decreased while hybrid events combining public claims-making with civic forms of behavior increased (Samson et al. 2005). Although researchers have since expanded on and revised the ‘‘social movement society’’ thesis, Ramos and Rodgers (2015) find it to be still applicable to contemporary society in a new edited volume that aims to reassess the thesis.