Exploring Social Movements: Theories, Experiences, and Trends

This book introduces the readers to the dynamics of various kinds of social movements. It examines how social movements have become an instrument of social change including assertion of identity and protest against marginalisation. This book describes three major domains – conceptual, experiential, and the impact of globalisation on social movements. The volume begins by locating social movements within broad and contemporary social processes and explores the intrinsic and complex patterns of dynamics among state, market, and social movements from a critical sociological perspective. It explains the meaning, basic features, origins and types, leadership and ideology, and perspectives of social movements and probes into major experiences of eight social movements in India, namely, peasant and farmers, tribal, Naxalite and Maoist, Dalit, working class, women, ethnic, and environmental movements. This book also analyses the role of information technology, media, and civil society in the spread and continuation of such movements. The experiences of queer, new religious, anti-systemic, and anti-displacement movements would also help readers understand how globalisation has offered new avenues of protest to diverse sections of the population. Lessons of anti-globalisation movements across the world provide a futuristic perspective in assessing the strength of social movements in a global society. This book will be useful to the students, researchers, and faculty working in the field of political science, sociology, gender studies, and post-colonial contemporary Indian politics in particular. It will also be an invaluable and interesting reading for those interested in South Asian studies.

Table of Contents:
List of Boxes vii List of Tables ix List of Figures x List of Contributors xi Preface and Acknowledgements xv PART I Social Movements: Conceptual Dimensions 1 1 Understanding Social Movements: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues 3 BISWAJIT GHOSH AND RABINDRA GARADA 2 Typology of Social Movements 31 JYOTIPRASAD CHATTERJEE 3 Intrinsic Dynamics of State, Market, and Social Movements 57 SUBHASIS BANDYOPADHYAY 4 Social Change through Social Movements: Role of Leadership and Ideology 75 SWATAHSIDDHA SARKAR 5 Kernel of Social and Protest Movements in Liberal Democracy 95 RABINDRA GARADA PART II Social Movements in India 119 6 From Peasant to Farmers’ Movement: The Changing Agrarian Dynamics in India 121 JYOTIPRASAD CHATTERJEE 7 Tribal Movements in Colonial and Post-Colonial India 148 CHANDAN KUMAR SHARMA AND BHASWATI BORGOHAIN 8 Movements of Radical Marxists: From Naxalism to Maoism 173 BISWAJIT GHOSH 9 Dalit Movements: Typologies and Trajectories 194 VIVEK KUMAR 10 Movements of Organised and Unorganised Labour 215 BISWAJIT GHOSH AND TANIMA CHOUDHURI 11 A Trajectory of Women’s Movement in India 238 RITU SEN CHAUDHURI 12 Ethnic Movements 261 BISWAJIT GHOSH 13 Intractable Conflicts: Environmental Struggles in Neoliberal India 285 SHOMA CHOUDHURY LAHIRI PART III Globalisation and Social Movements 305 14 Globalisation, Technology, Media, and Social Movements 307 STHITAPRAGYAN RAY AND NEHA OJHA 15 Genealogies of Queer Activism Around the Globe 326 BANHISHIKHA GHOSH 16 Rise of New Religious Movements in the Global Scenario 349 RAJEEV DUBEY 17 Anti-systemic Movements from Global to Local: Concepts, Frameworks, and Practice 367 SUMIT SAURABH SRIVASTAVA 18 Displacement, Development, and Movements: Contemporary Concerns 386 PANKAJ KUMAR 19 Anti-globalisation Movements 407 SHWETA SHUKLA Index 431

About the Author :
Biswajit Ghosh has recently retired as the Vice Chancellor of The University of Burdwan, West Bengal. Being a Professor of Sociology, he taught, supervised, and conducted research on certain emergent issues of the discipline of Sociology for 37 years. He studied in The University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He also served as a Visiting Faculty in many universities. He has authored 107 articles, including reviews, e-contents, and study modules, and written three major policy documents of UNICEF, Govt. of West Bengal, and Save the Children. He has edited/written the following five books: Social Movement: Concepts, Issues and Experiences from India (2020), Methodology of Research in Sociology (2018, Inflibnet e-book), Social Movements (2018, Inflibnet e-book), Interrogating Development: Discourses on Development in India Today (2012), and Pariveshvidya (2012, The University of Burdwan). He was a Module Coordinator of UGC E-Pathshala e-content on Research Methodology and Social Movement Courses in Sociology. He is in the editorial board of many reputed journals.