Social Movements as Agents of Change?

Abstract An increasing number of philosophers have argued that social movements as a form of contentious politics are apt agents of change. Given their contentious mode of communication, social movements are said to be more inclusive of the oppressed and effective in disrupting pernicious ideologies. This paper challenges the current overly optimistic and simplistic assessment of aptness. The core argument is that social movements are not just a form of practical contention but also a form of practical narration. As such, whether a movement fosters progress or regression depends crucially on the quality and content of the narration in which it is embedded. My argument proceeds in three steps. Firstly, I turn to the recent empirical scholarship on social movements to show the inadequacy of the contentious political model in explaining movement agency and the need for collective identity. Next, drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarship on narrative agency, I claim that narration is key to constructing collective identity, and that a specific genre of narratives, namely melodrama, is particularly effective in transforming the experience of oppression into motivationally powerful collective identities. Finally, I argue that the narrative conventions of melodramas that effectively galvanize agency are often the same ones that mischaracterize the causes of injustice, misplace blame, misinform goals, and reinforce ideologies. I illustrate this point with reference to the white supremacy movement in the United States. The upshot of my analysis is not to discredit social movements as “inapt” agents of change, but rather to show that there are dangers and complexities lurking within the hero narratives of recent philosophical work on social movements.