Globalization and evolution of the nature of Western social movements

 
There is an intertwined relationship between evolution of social movements and evolution of capitalism in Western societies in recent decades. After World War II until 1970, the nature of these movements in the international political economy has often been identity- cultural and focused on the divine needs and demands. Environmental, student, and women’s rights movements are among those active social forces in the mentioned period. The structural crisis in capitalism in the 1970s and evolution of this system in the form of the division of labor and a new model of capital accumulation i.e. post- Fordism method of production and mobility of capital and technology against anti-system social forces, on the one hand paved the way for globalization of capital and a new structure of production and storage, and on the other hand, majority of the dissatisfied social forces have assumed a different character in response to the recent crises and in accordance with the logic of  capital performance. In this regard, the question that leads this paper is “ What impacts has globalization had on the nature of social movements in the advanced Western societies?”. The hypothesis is designed within the framework of Roland Inglehart’s theory of value change, and it states that globalization has paved the way for the identity- cultural evolution in the nature of social movements of Cold war era to economic-materialist movements of post Cold war era. This applied research has employed descriptive- analytical method and library instruments.