ABSTRACT
The study of social movement organizations (SMOs) is a special case of the study of contention among deeply conflicting realities. This chapter reports on SMO study is sociological and scholarly neutral, the materials studied reverberate with philosophical, existential, and religious issues and implications. Deeply differing reality spurned by the mainstream is the core feature of the SMO, but that feature is not unique to the SMO and does not tell us enough to set the SMO off from other forms of deep reality-conflicts. SMOs and the broader category of citizen reality in conflict with the mainstream have meaning only in relation to the existence of a societalmainstream. The line between criminal groups and SMOs may reside as much in idealistic proclamations and aims as in sheer conduct. Elaborating the distinction between the SMO and the social movement, SMOs commonly but not always have an office, phone, publication, list of members, and other accoutrements of explicit association.
