An introduction to social movements as distinctive social spaces in which relatively powerless groups of people make collective efforts to affect history. Explores the major sociological approaches to studying these efforts, as well as the dynamics of social movement emergence, goals and messages, tactics and strategies, organization structures, internal conflicts, and activist identity formation.
While I never gave sociology much thought before this course, I really enjoyed learning the mechanics of social movements. I found sociology to be very interesting and it made a lot of sense to me, as if I was learning how to identify things that I always knew were there. This class taught me how to look critically at the workings of social movements, whether I agreed with them or not, and I learned how to identify what makes a social movement successful. I would definitely consider taking another sociology course in the future.
