Revision summary
A movement is sustained organised challenge, not a one-day crowd. Conditions: strain plus belief, resources, opportunity, and identity. Marx, Smelser, resource mobilisation, Weber’s charisma, and Durkheim’s community explain the passage. Indian Dalit, farmer, and women’s networks illustrate scale-up or stall. Without organisation, action remains an episode.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
- Collective action is joint behaviour in a situation: a crowd, a strike day, a riot. A social movement is a sustained, organised challenge with a programme, identity, and some continuity. Transformation needs conditions, not only anger.
Body
From episode to movement
- Neil Smelser’s value-added sequence: structural conduciveness, strain, generalised belief, precipitating event, mobilisation, and social control. Missing a step, the episode stays an episode.
- Resource mobilisation (McCarthy and Zald): money, leaders, networks, and media. Ideology without organisation dies.
- Political opportunity: splits in elites, elections, and courts, which Indian caste and farmer agitations have used.
Identity and framing
- Karl Marx: class-in-itself becomes class-for-itself when organisation and a theory of interest appear.
- New social movements add identity, as in gender and environment, after the limits of a pure class script.
- Emile Durkheim’s effervescence can found a crowd. Continuity needs a moral community, not only a night of assembly.
- Max Weber’s charisma can found a movement; routinisation into staff decides survival.
Indian illustrations
- From atrocity or price spike to a Dalit panther-type or farmer union form when associations, law cases, and symbols persist.
- SHG networks can scale women’s local action into a public, or remain micro-credit without a movement.
When it fails
- Repression, co-optation, or a belief that names no opponent keep action as a one-day crowd.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD CA[Collective action] --> FR[Framing identity] CA --> RES[Resources organisation] CA --> OPP[Political opportunity] FR --> SM[Social movement] RES[RES] --> SM[SM] OPP[OPP] --> SM[SM]
Conclusion
Collective action becomes a social movement when strain is framed, resources and opportunities are organised, and identity lasts beyond the event. Marx, Smelser, Weber, and Durkheim name pieces of that passage. Anger is a start, not the transformation.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Caste ideology appears to have strengthened democracy .Comment.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q7(c)). View answer →
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Is a riot a social movement?
It is collective action. It becomes a movement only if organisation and programme persist.
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Do social media crowds count?
They can frame and assemble. Without continuity and claim-making they remain episodes.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2026 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Explain in brief the relationship between social movement, collective action and revolution in bringing about social and political changes. -
2025 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How can you assess the significance of social movements in the digital era? Explain -
2024 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Underline the role of social media in contemporary social movements and describe its challenges -
2022 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Discuss how "environmentalism" can be explained with new social movements approach. -
2020 · Q8(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Examine how social movements come to an end. Illustrate with examples.
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