Social Movements through Music and Culture. An Overview

The author seeks out to offer an overview of the main theories of social movements in the last decade, emphasizing the importance of culture in producing collective action. In the past, Old Social Movements (OSM) theory defined movements through the lenses of political process, rational actor or resource mobilization theories. This paper centers more on New Social Movements (NSM) theories which focus rather on a cultural approach to social movements and stress the importance of collective identity, framing and networks in understanding the mobilization and participation of movements. The author shows that all these interrelated processes discussed by NSM theories are important for the achievement of collective action.