Protest Movements

Protest Movements

Protest movements have been of high interest to sociological research since the inception of the discipline in the mid-nineteenth century, during the periods of great industrial and urban development in Europe and North America. In the context of massive changes in the economic structure and mass rural-to-urban and cross-national migration, a variety of protest movements developed. They caught the attention of Comte, Le Bon, Weber, and other early sociological analysts. In the United States, the first widely used introductory sociology textbook, developed by Chicago School sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess in the 1920s, was organized around the concepts of collective behavior. Protest movements occupied a substantive part of the text.

Sociologists' interest in protest movements reflects the high interest of many who are not sociologists and are not research oriented. Such movements have the potential of affecting lives in substantial ways. This is particularly so when a protest touches on wide public concerns. In American society, the recognition of the potential impact of protest movements is encompassed within the framework of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

The language of the First Amendment, including the right to "peaceably" protest, is in recognition that protest movements can turn violent.