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

The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change

Abstract

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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany

    Hosna J. Shewly & Eva Gerharz

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  1. Hosna J. Shewly
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  2. Eva Gerharz
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Correspondence to Hosna J. Shewly .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Rajendra Baikady

  2. Department of Social Work, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

    S.M. Sajid

  3. Department of Social Work, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, South Africa

    Varoshini Nadesan

  4. Centre for Family Research, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland

    Jaroslaw Przeperski

  5. Inst of Social Welfare & Res, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    M. Rezaul Islam

  6. Department of Social Work, Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Jianguo Gao

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Shewly, H.J., Gerharz, E. (2022). Activism, Social Movements, and Social Change: An Incessant Societal Process. In: Baikady, R., Sajid, S., Nadesan, V., Przeperski, J., Islam, M.R., Gao, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_261-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_261-1

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  1. Latest

    Activism, Social Movements, and Social Change: An Incessant Societal Process
    Published:
    08 December 2022

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_261-2

  2. Original

    Activism, Social Movements, and Social Change: An Incessant Societal Process
    Published:
    15 June 2022

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_261-1

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