Introduction
A social movement is a group of individuals who acts cooperatively with some degree of organization and continuance process, and to some extent outside the normal political processes and institutions, to bring about societal change. Mass protest has been a vibrant part of American political history (Dreiling & Wolf, 2001, p. 38). The movement has drawn in a wide variety of social, economic and political bodies in American society, yet it has also maintained its function as a significant challenge to central patterns of development and vested benefits embodied in the status quo.
Social movement groups has attracted more and more intellectual attention in recent decades as ordinary citizens have “taken to the streets” to protest about rights which they feel passionately. In the sphere of civil rights, women’s rights, environmental protection, abortion, levy, homosexual rights, religion and peace, social movements (activists) have played a vital role in reshaping our society, culture and politics.
Main body
In the past, studies on social movements specified that activism could be explained by investigating the psychological motivations of persons (Westbay, 2002, p. 287). An accepted theory was that activism came from an apparent gap linking what a person felt he or she was entitled to and what he or she actually got. Research studies have shown that individual predispositions are inadequate to account for involvement in collective action.
A social movement requires first and foremost to be organized for it to run efficiently. For its prosperity resources are needed for social movements. In respect with this, a social movement can obtain and then organize resources to achieve their outlined goals. Scholars have recommended a typology of various types of resources for a social movement. Money and physical capital makes a difference to limited, temporary initiatives (Westbay, 2002, p. 287).
For example, rich neighborhoods are much better than poor neighborhoods at getting concessions and services from local administration. In addition, the Physical concentration such as cities, industries and universities increases the potential for social movement activity. With respect to this, the civil rights lobby group followed the energized blacks to move from dispersed rural areas to concentrated urban areas in America (Dreiling & Wolf, 2001, p. 38). The welfare of the social movements is fully supported by church groups, special interest organizations, and recreational groups, community groups, political veterans and educational organizations.
The early stages of mobilization are hard if the majorities are leading private lives and grassroots groups have a small number of members. Earlier studies have shown how extensive public contribution and a healthy anthology of grassroots groups could accelerate district government initiatives. Consequently dramatic and unexpected measures can lead to public anger and major shifts in civic attitudes. For example, rise in oil prices, revelations of grave government delinquency and official violence against citizens may serve to aggravate social movement. For people advocating a motion of sustainable financial development, one of the most important political advancement of the past three decades has been the surfacing of widespread environmental concern and related environmental movements all over the developing world.
Environmentalism is a type of social movement which seeks to affect the political process by lobbying, a policy of vigorous action in politics and learning in order to safeguard naturally occurring resources and ecosystems. In acknowledgment of humankind as a contributor in ecosystems, the environmental movement seeks on address the ecosystem, wellbeing and constitutional rights. An environmentalist campaigns for sustainable running of resources and management of the natural environment through changes in open policy or individual activities. In different ways, environmentalists and ecological organizations seek to offer the ordinary world a stronger vote in human affairs.
The origin of modern environmental laws in Europe was passed in 1863 after the emergence of great Industrial Revolution that resulted to modern environmental pollution as it is commonly known today (Barbara, 1987, p.25). This law was passed to regulate the toxic air pollution emitted by the Leblanc method, which is used to manufacture soda ash. As a result the social movement was formed, which was a response to industrialization, the development of cities, and deterioration in air and water pollution.
In America, the first phase of an environmental movement can be drawn as far back as 1740, at what time when Benjamin Franklin and other Philadelphia people, appealed to Pennsylvania Assembly to end waste discarding and get rid of tanneries from Philadelphia’s commercial region. The America movement expanded their voices in the 1800s, fighting to protect the natural resources of the West. This was lead by John Muir and Henry David Thoreau who made key theoretical contributions. Thoreau carried out a study on how people relate with nature. He concluded that people should become intimately close with environment. The environmentalist principles as well as the certainty in an intrinsic right of environment were to develop into the foundation of modern environmentalism (Barbara, 1987, p.25).
The Environmental movement is a diverse systematic, collective, and opinionated movement. Moreover, throughout the past decades, the movement has been integrated into religion. The lobby group is represented by a variety of organizations, from the huge to grassroots. Owing to its outsized membership, with varying beliefs, the movement is not fully united. On the contrary, disunity can be a limiting factor in the face of powerful opposition from heartless political and developed forces. The intellectual approaches to environmentalism in developing countries are progressively adopting two assumptions that play down the role of social divisions. Foremost, many writers have argued that environmentalism is a progressive and include political force that assists the development of civil society.
On the other hand, other writers have argued that environmental problems are increasingly universal in nature, and equally disguised that they pose an equivalent threat to all sectors of civilization. Traditionally, academic approaches to social movements are generally divided into four major theoretical groupings. These include collective behavior theory; resource mobilization theory, new social movements and action-identity approaches (Dreiling & Wolf, 2001, p. 38). Collective behavior theories refer to structural explanations of societal change, in which social movements occur as responses to large-scale malfunctioning or misbalance of society.
That is it occurs as a weak structure of revolutionary outbreak, which is as the result of social changes such as industrialization or urbanization. Secondly resource mobilization theories are more recent and still widely adopted as an intrinsic and positive aspect of the political process, in which relevant success of different movements is a result of diverse innovatory strategies and mobilization of support achieved. Political alliances between various political organizations may for that reason increase the likelihood of successful social movements. Environmental organizations can be international or local, and they can be managed by the government or private sector.
Moreover, a group of individual devoted to society development and community justice may also attend to environmental problems. During environmentalism’s initial wave in the 19th and near the beginning 20th centuries, environmentalists, administrators and philosophers reacted to industrialization and modern-state authority with three different principles about the suitable relations among humankind and nature. According to Guha (2000) the first waves are referred to as “back to the land,” “scientific conservation,” and the “wilderness idea” and he investigated their different vision and new policies. In the second wave, environmentalism is developed from an academic response into a sequence of group movements in US, Europe, and the rest of the world (Barbara, 1987, p.25).
Environmental campaigners in the America, Europe and elsewhere carried the environmentalism group petition and divergent objectives in the structure of deep conservationism and environmental movements. Environmental movements from the worldwide challenged the morals and guiding principles of wealthy, post-industrialized conservationists. Marxism and socialism tackled the environment in exceptional ways too. Finally, in past decades environmentalists from the whole world have met in Kyoto and discussed how to develop an increasingly united global environmental movement (Barbara, 1987, p.25).
Varied environmental movements and differences from around the world draw difficult relations back to these conflicting and challenging ideals (Ramachandra, 2000). Colonial and nationwide forestry divisions strove to guard and control use of national resources reliable with scientific management, but they barred the long-established rights of local forest communities. The advantage of nature preservation is to protect rhinos, lions and zebras which in addition, serve as national heritage of some Asian and African countries (Ramachandra, 2000). These bring global tourist cash but they also strictly control the access of farmers and villagers to their local resources.
National government build gigantic barrier and power schemes for the sake of their rising municipal economies and in response to rural. Most often ancestral forest minorities rally to save and guard their lands and resource liberties. Ecology movements advocate the equality of all environmental biota, disagree for more fundamental limits on individual economies, and pay attention to the natural resources. In contrast, both societal and environmental movements are directly focused on human societies.
Ramachandra (2000) divides these challenging principles and their challenging constituencies. Ramachandra attempt to explain and examine social ecology and he is a symbol of a brave and practical effort to find way between these differing and competing environmental ethics (Ramachandra, (2000). Further he explains how to achieve goals for preserving relationship between humanity and our nature. This paper will address resource mobilization theories and critical understanding of the challenged faced by environmentalist. Majority of analysts have focused more on how social movements groups are financially supported.
Companies offer funds for such movements. For a movement to be successful they mostly search for help from local business-men as part of raising funds and other support which include food for volunteers, promotion through advertisement and magazine and newspaper advertisement. When individual provide resources to social movements they turn over their control by this means making the resources communal. Mostly this kind of resources is provided in terms of small donation (money) and time. In most organization, the members are required to pay regular contribution and to respond to movements for additional support.
The main research question about social movements is why some succeed and others fail. To address this question, we will base our argument using Edwards & McCarthy (2004) paper on “typology of social movement resources”. For a social movement to be successful there must be support provided in terms of resources. The concept of resources is crucial and is one of the challenges faced by the groups. In the year 1980, resources was “one of the most and unspecified terms in the theoretical vocabulary” of social movements groups (Edwards, & McCarthy, 2004). Social movements are supported through moral resources which include legality, sympathetic support and fame support.
Moral support happens to instigate outside the collective movements and are usually bestowed by an outer source known to posses them. This type of moral resources is faced with some challenges. This was however seen in US during the civil rights activism in 1960 (Edwards, & McCarthy, 2004). The moral resources can decide to retract through withdrawal of the support and also spreading informal propaganda about the social movements to the interested parties and individuals. Such withdrawals can affect the success of the social movements because the members may disintegrate leading to a fall of the group.
A cultural resource is another type of resources which are object of knowledge and help the movement with technical advice and information. This support is on how to run a meeting or movement, how to mobilize people, how to address their grievances among others (Edwards, & McCarthy, 2004). It should be noted that, not all cultural resources posses an invaluable ideas and knowledge that are of value and important in an organization.
The social-organizational resources include both the intentional and appropriable social organization. The two are created for different purposes. Intentional deals with social movements goals whereas appropriate is for non movement purposes. The main contribution for the social organizational is to train volunteers, spread information through neighborhood association, talking to workers and educating them. The access to intentional social organization will depend to a varying degree with the goodness between specific legality and goals of the groups involved (Edwards, & McCarthy, p. 126, 2004). The social-organizational resource is divided to three categories.
The infrastructure includes the roads, pavements, traffic lights among many. This type of the social-organizational resources is non proprietary such that the access can be denied to a varying degree. Consequently, this has lead to uneven distribution of social-organizational resources that result to further constituencies’ inequality. Further we discuss the Human contribution to social movements. This involves direct contribution of human than the three types discussed earlier.
The resources are offered in terms of labor, expertise skills and leadership. The advantage of this type of resources is that individuals are their own bosses and thus can control over the use of their own labor. In addition, different individuals with varying expertise are required by a social movement group. Such individuals are famous, have good connection with company executives, church leaders, lawyers, computer expertise and dynamic speakers. A vital issue to whether a certain skilled individual expertise will improve the social movement to run effectively hangs on how well he fits with the movement (Ramachandra, 2000).
For example, an undergraduate may be in a good position in evaluating the methodology of an environmental impact assessment than a popular church leader. This address a further research question on how each member of a social movement can contribute. The material resource is indispensable and is a collective term for money and capital net of the social-organization. This also includes other tangible properties like organizational furniture, vehicles, office equipment and many more. Money is the key necessity for any movements to run its daily duties (Edwards, & McCarthy, p. 125, 2004).
During meeting, conferences and recruiting new members’ bills are incurred and money is used to pay for them. However money has by far received much investigative consideration because they are generally more touchable, proprietary, and even more fungible. How money is handled can disintegrate a movement in case of mistrust. On the other hand, if a movement has no capital it will be ineffective and members will retract. Material mobilization is often through fundraising, donations from individuals and non-governmental organization (Edwards, & McCarthy, 2004).
Conclusion
And, although limited to the last century, the first global studies of environmentalism as a social and political movement were investigated. How can nations besieged with poverty be influenced to embrace environmental concerns? In other words why have civic activists in developing countries not improved environmental results? The problem is one of collective act, not collective lack of concern (Ramachandra, 2000).
The solution, in turn, requires institutional novelty that can help link the gap between public preferences and public outcomes. There is no successful resource mobilization without enhanced management capacities to administer resource mobilization activities and project design and delivery. Much of this topic is analogous with sound organization performance, but we need to be aware of what to center on and this requires preparation for all of us at one point or another.
It makes sense to organize such training at the local level because some of these facilities maintained locally at lower price for the benefit of all constituencies of the region. For a social-movement organization to be effective, it is prudent to focus on constant development in key areas such as research and economic and environmental analysis. Others to be focused include policy design and analysis, strategic planning, outreach management, proposal preparation and financial management. Each of these departments constitutes a guidance module in the route offered to assist organizations to advance their resource mobilization and program and project management at regional both and national levels.
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