ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the theoretical and conceptual interest in the activity of social movements. The idea and sentiment of change has been formulated in theory and practice at the level of the national state or society. Protests continue to lobby the national government and the idea of 'national elections' is standard and accepted in liberally democratic states. The societal dislocation generated by industrialization, as men and women were pushed from their feudal relations into the large factories of industrial towns such as London and Manchester generated social friction. Industrial capitalism turned humans into wage labour to be bought and sold on the labour market. New social movements focused on the restrictive organizational aspect of the older struggles, the focus on the state as a strategical enabler and the spatial site of resistance. New social movements became concerned with the bureaucratic nature of the revolutionary movement and the older movements had become insurmountedly dislocated from their radical grassroots.
