Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines

Researchers and students from divergent academic disciplines share an interest in the study of social movements and collective action. Through a variety of disciplinary approaches and techniques, researchers seek to understand the emergence and development of collective action. In the last few decades, the field of social-movements-studies has proliferated enormously, covering a wide array of movements, issues and places. With this growth, social movement scholars have criticized the traditional vision of collective mobilization as the results of irrational behavior and have instead developed a range of new approaches. The expansion of the field has also led to increased theoretical debates and attempts to synthesize the different perspectives. But these attempts have met with the obstacle of the field being multidisciplinary. Discussion a theory from many areas of research can lead to misunderstandings. TOC:Introduction: Richness of Perspectives.- Disciplinary Approaches to Collective Behavior.- Political Science: The Political Behavior of Social Movements: Movement Strategies.- How Political Structures Affect Mobilization Patterns.- Sociology: Structuralist chapter.- Culturalist chapter.- Social Psychology: Why and Whom: Motivation.- Collective Identity.- Interaction within Movements.- Anthropology: Culture and Movements: How Culture Affects Movements.- Social Movement (sub)cultures.