Question

Distinguish between collective behavior and social movements. Identify and discuss four types of social movements, giving an example of each.

Answer 1

Collective behavior refers to the group of people who spontaneously emerge for various reasons. They involve, crowd, mass, public and social movements. The primary difference between the first three collective behaviors and the last one social movements is that the former ones have no purpose but in the latter one, social movements, people gather with a purpose to change the existing movements. Social movements operate in four spheres in the society such as democratic movements which aligned to the political rights, labor movements that work for the betterment in the workplace, ecological movements that fight to save the environment and finally the peace movements that work towards promoting peace.