Research starters academic topic overviews

Extra-institutional:   The area outside of formal political and 

social institutions in which social movements operate.

Factionalism:  One of the ways in which social movements 

fail.  It is marked by increasing internal strife within social move-

ments between groups who have differing ideas about how the 

movement should function or what it goals should have.  

Mass Society Theory:  In early social movement theory it is 

a theory which argues that rapidly industrializing society led to 

alienation and the breakdown of tradition social constraints.

Repression:  One of the five ways in which social movements 

decline  in  which  authorities  use  violent  or  coercive  tactics  to 

destroy a social movement.