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Collective Behavior and Social Change: Exercise 2 - Social movements


Instructions: Read the passage and click on the correct answer. If wrong, try again. Scroll down if you do not see the Answer box.
Click here to review the key terms for this exercise.


Types of Social Movements (Part I)

     A social movement is a type of collective behavior (activities involving large numbers of people). Social movements require continued effort and organized activities, and their purpose is to cause or resist social change. Depending on whom the social movement aims to change and on how much it tries to change the society, a social movement can be alternative, redemptive, reformative, or revolutionary. In this passage, we will briefly explain alternative and redemptive social movements.

     Alternative social movements try to cause limited change in a specific group of society. Home schooling (parents educating their children at home instead of sending them to school) is an example of an alternative movement because it tries to change only a portion of the population – the children who are home-schooled – and only in a limited way – the education they receive.

     Redemptive social movements try to cause total change in specific individuals. They try to change the individual's whole way of life. Alcoholics Anonymous is an example of a redemptive social movement. It seeks to help an alcoholic to stop drinking, which changes his whole life.

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