Social movements and the synecdoche problem

Abstract

Social movements are central to our contemporary understanding of social change. Accordingly, we should want to be able to say what it is that makes social movements special; that is, to say what it is that movements in their entirety have that random samples of people and organizations within the movement do not have. But I will argue that the prevailing analysis of social movements does not do this. The features enumerated by the social science literature on movementhood are at best necessary conditions, but they do not offer a jointly sufficient analysis because they allow that arbitrary proper constituents of movements will count as further movements. This particular challenge to sufficiency is what I call the Synecdoche Problem. I argue that an attractive, if also provocative, solution to the Synecdoche Problem is to posit that social movements are, as a matter of definitional necessity rather than mere contingent fact, part of an explanation of social change, where holist accounts of explanation will vindicate this as a property that a movement as a whole might have but not its proper constituents. This view has interesting implications for common movement‐related disputes.