13 articles
Collective action
Collective action is group action toward a common goal, also called the collective action problem or free rider problem. Defined by Olson's 1965 Logic of Collective Action, studied via Ostrom's commons work, social movement theory, and psychology of protest participation.
Critical theory
Critical theory is a family of theories aiming to critique and transform society; capitalized, it names the Frankfurt School tradition begun at Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research in the 1930s.
Deviance (sociology)
Deviance in sociology is the violation of social norms, folkways, mores, or law (Sumner); unlike crime, it depends on social reaction. Main theories: Durkheim's functionalism, Merton's strain, conflict theory, and Becker's labeling theory.
Framing (social sciences)
Framing (social sciences): selection and salience in constructing meaning, from Goffman's Frame Analysis to social movement framing (diagnostic, prognostic, motivational tasks; Snow and Benford) and media framing effects research.
Opium of the people
Opium of the people: Karl Marx's phrase from his 1844 Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes), describing religion as both consolation for and protest against real suffering.
Political correctness
Political correctness (PC): avoiding language or behavior that may offend particular groups; term usually used disapprovingly. Traced to 1793 and Maoist China's 1930s party line, pejorative since the 1980s US campus culture wars.
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism: academic field studying the legacies of colonialism after the colonial era; founded around Said's Orientalism (1978), developed by Bhabha and Spivak, shaped by subaltern studies, and critiqued by Marxist and decolonial thinkers.
Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic, or Calvinist/Puritan work ethic, coined by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05): the thesis that Calvinist calling, predestination, and asceticism fostered diligence, frugality, and capitalism.
Resource mobilization
Resource mobilization theory, associated with McCarthy and Zald's 1977 paper, explains social movements through resources, organization, and political opportunity rather than grievances, displacing breakdown theories and later spawning political process and digital-era reformulations.
Respectability politics
Respectability politics: strategy in which members of marginalized groups conform to dominant social norms to seek advancement; coined by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham for Black Baptist women, later applied to LGBTQ and other groups.
Rules for Radicals
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Saul Alinsky's 1971 Random House book of thirteen rules for grassroots community organizing by the Have-Nots; his last book, influential on left organizers and Tea Party activists alike.
Subversion
Subversion is the covert, indirect effort to destroy or weaken an established system or government from within; from Latin subvertere, to overturn. Distinct from sabotage, espionage, and Apache Subversion, the version control software.
Zygmunt Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017), Polish-British sociologist at Leeds, theorist of liquid modernity and author of Modernity and the Holocaust; prolific, translated into 35 languages.