ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses diverse aspects of, first, social protest and second, collective behavior and social movement phenomena variously related to protest. Protest is conceived as but one significant variation on the major elements making up the public arena of societies: human gatherings, citizen organizations, the macro-structure, central institutions, and mass opinion. The book provides a more specialized account of changes in an arena's macrostructure creating "ghettoization" as a generic circumstance productive of several forms of, especially, planned and unplanned celebrations and protests, as well as violence. It focuses on recruitment and commitment to a specialized form of citizen organization, the religious movement organization that demands intense commitment. The book also explains the efforts to break down barriers even within the category of the protest movement, striving to bring the religious, political, and ego forms under a single framework of analysis.