Review Symposium on Dieter Rucht, Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach

2023, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780198877400

For decades, Dieter Rucht, a long-time member of the Social Science Center in Berlin, and former professor of sociology at Berlin's Free University, has been a leading scholar of social movements.

In his new book, Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach, he presents an historically informed conceptual approach. Rucht analyzes social movements within the framework of general theories of society, with an emphasis on social change processes, and by combining three basic perspectives: interactionist, constructivist, and process-oriented. In doing so, he is guided by the ideas of fellow sociologists Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens, and arrives at the important role of the public sphere and its structure for the emergence of social movements and their potential impact on society.

We have invited other leading social movement researchers from the United States and Europe to review and comment on the book, and will offer Dieter Rucht the opportunity to respond.