Activism, Social Movements, and Social Change: An Incessant Societal Process

Rather than understanding social movements and social change in terms of a cause-effect relationship, this chapter contends that social movements shall be recognized as sociopolitical processes themselves, produced in society under specific social and political condition(s). It is discussed here that a social movement’s relationship with social institutions and social change processes needs to be understood along with its temporal and scale dynamics. This includes to contemplate the interacting impacts (amplifying/reducing) of various co-existing social movements in society. For this, this chapter examined three currents of social movements, today, across the South Asian region. Although having a century-long background of various social movements, South Asia is undergoing a burgeoning phase of social movements’ transformation, which is the outcome of the various factors including reluctantly changing state structure vis-à-vis social development, rights regime, marginalization, and conflict resolutions. Throughout, this chapter outlined that the heterogeneity and complexities within the society, social movements, and social movement driven changes in society.