This chapter provides the theoretical context of the research. It begins by establishing the key relevant debates in SMT, including new versus old social movements, the influence of new media technologies on social movements and the role of emotions within social movement studies. This chapter identifies the theoretical perspective for studying activist cultures, drawing on Bourdieu's (1992) theory of practice. This serves as the basis for developing an analysis of the affective and cultural dimensions of social movements. This approach enables the development of in-depth ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973) and an understanding of the interactions between activists as well as between the activist field and the wider social and political context, which is a theme that is threaded throughout. Critically, this chapter highlights feminist critiques of mainstream (or ‘malestream’) SMT's failure to recognise the importance of gender to theorising social movements. This is contextualised by a wider discussion about the gendered exclusions that exist within the public sphere.

Social movement theory: old versus new movements

Broadly speaking, mainstream SMT can be categorised in terms of three distinct waves. The first considered social movements as abnormal and irrational, and studied their emergence in order to prevent future movements occurring. This viewpoint has long been abandoned in favour of viewing social movements as ‘politics by other means’ (Goodwin et al, 2000: 69). However, the earlier positioning of social movements as ‘irrational’ resulted in a desire to distance SMT from emotions (which are traditionally conceived of in opposition to reason). The second wave was concerned instead with depicting social movements as collectives of rational actors engaged in instrumental action. One of the dominant theories here is resource mobilisation theory (RMT) (McCarthy and Zald, 1977), which focuses on how rational actors make calculated decisions to secure the resources required for mobilisation. Further, second wave theories of collective action were largely grounded in a Marxist tradition, which viewed movements in economic terms as the struggle between the working class (or the proletariat) and the ruling class within an industrial society defined by production. In response to both this Marxist tradition and RMT, the third wave of SMT sought to develop an understanding of the symbolic and cultural features of newly emerging social movements post-1960s, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s. The dominant theory that characterises this third wave is new social movement theory (NSMT).