ABSTRACT
Much of the most productive theorizing of social movements originates from the US and has been utilized in Europe (and elsewhere). The theoretical paradigms developed, while instructive in many ways, tend to share a view of social movements as strategic actors, and their action as being guided first and foremost by instrumental rationality. As Alexander has put it in a critique, such perspectives make social movements “resemble complex maximizing machines” (Alexander, 1996a: 208). This holds true for the highly influential resource mobilization theory and the political process models. Even the culture and sociology of emotion approaches that have more recently been developed often share this assumption. In this book, in contrast, we are positioned in a European tradition, stemming back to Durkheim, and which sees morality as a reality sui generis and as fundamental to social life. Without due recognition of the role that morality plays in activism, much of the movements’ behavior may seem irrational or ineffective.
