People may damage a bus and attack its driver when the bus has run over a child. This is an isolated incident of protest. Since it flares up and dies down it is not a social movement. A social movement requires sustained collective action over time. Such action is often directed against the state and takes the form of demanding changes in state policy or practice. Spontaneous, disorganised protest cannot be called a social movement either. Collective action must be marked by some degree of organisation. This organisation may include a leadership and a structure that defines how members relate to each other, make decisions and carry them out. Those participating in a social movement also have shared objectives and ideologies. A social movement has a general orientation or way of approaching to bring about (or to prevent) change. These defining features are not constant. They may change over the course of a social movement's life. Social movements often arise with the aim of bringing about changes on a public issue, such as ensuring the right of the tribal population to use the forests or the right of displaced people to settlement and compensation. Think of other issues that social movements have taken up in the past and present. While social movements seek to bring in social change, counter movements sometimes arise in defence of status quo.
Read the passage above and answer the following questions.
Social movements are directed towards some ________.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Specific goals
Option (1) Continuous and ongoing processes — Incorrect. This describes social change in general. Social change is continuous and ongoing; it is the sum total of countless individual and collective actions gathered across time and space, and is not directed by anyone towards a goal.
Option (2) Ambiguous Goals — Incorrect. Goals that are unclear cannot hold people together in long and continuous social effort and action. Social movements are, on the contrary, directed towards some specific goals, and that is what sets them apart from social change in general.
Option (3) Common Goals — Incorrect. The members of a movement do share their objectives, so in that sense the goals are common to them. But the point that sets a movement apart from general social change is that it is directed towards some specific goals, a particular issue it takes up; ‘common’ only says that many people hold the goal.
Option (4) Specific goals — Correct. Unlike social change in general, social movements are directed towards some specific goals, and this involves long and continuous social effort and action by people. The nineteenth-century social reformers’ efforts to change society are an example.
NCERT (2025-26): “Distinguishing Social Change and Social Movements … It is important to distinguish between social change in general and social movements. Social change is continuous and ongoing. The broad historical processes of social change are the sum total of countless individual and collective actions gathered across time and space. Social movements are directed towards some specific goals. It involves long and continuous social effort and action by people. To draw from our discussion in Chapter 2, we can view sanskritisation and westernisation as social changes and see the 19th century social reformers’ efforts to change the society as social movements.” |