Back to Basics

Today I am going to try something a little different. Rather than talking about a current social movement, I thought I would start at the foundation and analyze what a social movement really is by discussing a TED talk I found called "Social Movements- a primer"  by Toby Chow.

This TED talk was very interesting, and it made me question a lot of what I have been writing about here on this blog. It was a little intimidating actually, because I began to doubt the content of which my blog is based off of. I felt as though for the past however many weeks, I hadn’t actually been writing about social movements, but rather things that resemble social movements.

The speaker starts out his talk by touching on this subject. He pulls up this poster

 

and states that the definition of movement needs some brushing up. Chow feels as though too many people are misusing movement and don’t actually know what it means. Often people use the word to describe things which resemble movements but can not actually be defined as one, such as the unity “movement”.  

Now, I’ll be honest. I watched this whole talk and was still a little bit confused about what it means to really be a movement, rather than just have the elements of one. To be fair though, I was watching the video while wearing an incredibly itchy wig and the sounds of someone singing about groundhogs blasting through the speakers under the stage. Nevertheless, I believe the speaker articulated that the most basic and necessary element of a social movement was the process of the oppressed turning around and banding together to face their aggressor. He used this image to demonstrate the type of relationship he referenced.

   

I think the hardest part of this talk for me to grasp was the so what. Why does it matter that some people are confusing the difference between movement and faux movement? Even after watching the video in its entirety I am still unclear on this question. I understand where the speaker is coming from in terms of the radio station ad, that is a very obvious butchering of the word. But it seems to me, that if someone is taking the time to start a “movement” in the first place then something must be wrong. Some injustice must have occurred. I believe this unrest should be honored and discussed rather than being shut down as not really a movement, just something that resembles one.