Research Paper on:
Past and Present Social Movements

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
questions crop up in its regard. For example, to what extent are social movements and theories new and to what extent could similar analyses apply to previous movements? Some theorists  suggest that the movements appear to be brand new while others refer to past movements and suggest that they are not all that new but rather repeats of the past.  One theorist points out that some have mistaken the uniqueness of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s as these movements are indicative of a cyclical phenomenon (Buechler &  Cylke, 1996). This theorist does seem to have a point. In delving through history one can see that there were movements and certain decades have been more active than others  in terms of social discontent. Prohibition for example came with its own movements but things were rather calm in respect to political protest for example in the 1940s and 1950s.  When the 1960s prompted movements in part due to civil rights and in part due to the Vietnam War many onlookers probably thought that these were new types of movements,  but they really may have been not unlike previous ones. Other critics say that the movements are unique because they are not attached to other movements of the past (Buechler  & Cylke, 1996). They are not the same but rather responses to the current situation. Both views are well taken. On one hand there is a similarity between the movements  of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the latter movements; at the same time, each one is unique. Perhaps the movements are to a greater extent a repeat of  the past and are essentially like the old movements. In terms of social theory, one can see history repeat itself over and over again. While the agendas are different, the