The Whole and Its Parts: Dieter Rucht’s Theoretical Approach to Social Movements

In his new book, Dieter Rucht argues for a more sustained conversation between general social theories and research on social movements. He proposes an approach based on three foci: interaction, social construction, and process orientation. The book provides a number of important insights into the potential contribution of general social theories to our understanding of social movements. However, its limited engagement with an analytic definition of social movements results in a conflation of social movements and other forms of collective action. Moreover, its interactionist perspective fails to recognize the breadth of relational approaches to collective action. These limitations reduce the innovative potential of what is nonetheless a useful contribution to the field of social movement studies by one of the most productive and influential researchers of the last decades.