Revision summary
NSM theory: movements struggle over identity and the quality of life, not only wages. Touraine, Melucci, and Habermas named historic actors, networks, and the lifeworld. Environmentalism fits as defence of nature and livelihood against system projects. Chipko and Narmada illustrate Indian forms. Guha and world-system critique stop a purely post-material reading.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Environmentalism is a politics of nature, risk, and livelihood that often sits outside the old union-and-party map of class. The new social movements approach, after Alain Touraine, Alberto Melucci, and Jurgen Habermas, explains it as identity, culture, and civil-society action in post-industrial or post-colonial public spheres.
Body
What the NSM approach claims
- Touraine treated movements as struggles over the historic quality of social life, not only over wages. The actor names a self against a dominating apparatus.
- Melucci stressed submerged networks, identity, and information as resources. The movement is a message about how we shall live.
- Habermas placed new movements as defences of the lifeworld against system steering by money and administrative power.
- Offe and others contrasted them with old labour movements: cross-class membership, non-party forms, post-material or risk issues.
How this explains environmentalism
- Chipko in the Himalaya combined livelihood, gender, and forest as a moral community, not a classic strike for pay.
- The Narmada Bachao Andolan named displacement, river, and alternative development against a large-dam state-and-capital project.
- Silent Valley and later climate marches mix science, identity of “the affected”, and media spectacle.
- Membership is often students, peasants, women, and professionals in shifting coalitions, which Melucci’s networks fit.
Indian and Southern twist
- Ramachandra Guha distinguished environmentalism of the poor from Northern post-material ecology. NSM tools still work if livelihood is kept inside identity, not treated as a luxury value.
- Andre Gunder Frank and Wallerstein remind us that forests and dams sit in a world-system of extraction. NSM culture talk must not erase that.
- SHG and local resource groups can be quiet environmental actors without a national banner.
Limits of the approach
- Old organisations, unions, and parties still carry green demands. The “new” is not a clean replacement.
- State repression and caste in movement leadership need conflict theory beside identity theory.
- Global climate NGOs can professionalise and lose the NSM grassroots that Melucci prized.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD NSM[New social movements] --> ID[Identity networks] NSM --> LW[Lifeworld versus system] ID --> ENV[Environmentalism] LW[LW] --> ENV[ENV] ENV --> CH[Chipko Narmada]
Conclusion
New social movements theory explains environmentalism as identity, networks, and defence of the lifeworld against system projects. Chipko and Narmada are the teaching cases. Keep Guha’s environmentalism of the poor and world-system extraction in the same frame, or the approach becomes a Northern lifestyle story.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Illustrate with examples the role of pressure groups in the formulation of social policies.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2022 · Q7(c)). View answer →
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Is environmentalism only a middle-class post-material cause?
Not in India. Guha’s environmentalism of the poor is livelihood first, identity second, still readable with NSM tools.
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Do NSMs replace class?
They add culture and identity. Dams and mines still distribute class costs.
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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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 -
2020 · Q8(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Examine how social movements come to an end. Illustrate with examples. -
2018 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Are social movements primordial in means and progressive in agenda? Explain -
2026 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How do different theories explain social dimensions of social movements? Discuss.
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