ABSTRACT
A norm-oriented movement is an attempt to restore, protect, modify, or create norms in the name of a generalized belief. 1 Participants may be trying either to affect norms directly (e.g., efforts of a feminist group to establish a private educational system for women) or induce some constituted authority to do so (e.g., pressures from the same group on a governmental agency to support or create a public co-educational system). 2 Any kind of norm—economic, educational, political, religious—may become the subject of such movements. 3 Furthermore, norm-oriented movements may occur on any scale—for instance, agitation by a group of nations to establish an international police force; agitation by groups of businessmen for tax legislation on the federal, state, or local level; agitation by the members of a local union to federate with other unions; agitation by a minority of members of a local chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to amend the by-laws of the chapter. Finally, the definition includes movements of all political flavors—reactionary, conservative, progressive, and radical. 4
