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Content: Converting a disorganized cabal of individuals into a collectivity capable of joint action
and coordinated response undermines the institution's strategy of opposition. But more
importantly, it takes the combined energy of movement members and transforms it into
energy available for the purposes of the movement. They provide an ongoing rhetoric of affirmation. Social movements are confronted
daily with their failures. An effective movement rhetoric must provide strategies to
affirm allegiance to the movement in the face of such failure. The rhetoric may
celebrate successes, rededicate to the ideal, use the resistance of the institutions, or find
nobility in loss, but somehow the energy devoted to the movement must be affirmed. Return to the Contents of this Page
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Tensionswhich shape American social movements
American social movements must handle a fairly standard set of tensions that threaten to divide
the movement and destroy its concentration of energy. Political and Cultural Objectives. In the nineteenth century, some women believed that the
energies of their movement should focus on achieving the vote and changing women's legal
status -- political objectives. Others believed that the energies should focus toward changing
the cultural possibilities for women including relationships in marriage, responsibilities in child-rearing, access to education, building their connections beyond the home -- cultural objectives.