Question

• Briefly explain the history of the social movement.
• What social problem are activists hoping to solve?
• What is their ethical motivation for joining together to elicit social change?

Include the following moral concepts:

• Empathy
• Beneficence

Answer 1

Deprivation, discontent, and frustration are frequently assumed to be sufficient causes for initiating or joining a social movement. The relationship is not a simple one, however. There is little evidence that the most deprived segments of a population are the most likely to participate in social movements.Social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities.The four stages of social movement development are emergence, coalescence, bureaucra- tization, and decline. The Decline stage can result from several different causes, such as repression, co-optation, success, failure, and mainstream.One of the defining characteristics of a social movement is that it is relatively long lasting; the activity of the membership is sustained over a period of weeks, months, or even years rather than flaring up for a few hours or a few days and then disappearing.