Years after the movement to obtain civil rights for black people in the United States made its most important gains, scholars are reaching for a theoretical perspective capable of clarifying its momentous developments. New theories of social movements are being discussed, not just among social psychologists, but also among political theorists.
Of the many competing formulations of the “classical” social psychological theory of social movement, three are prominent in the literature on the civil rights movement: “rising expectations,” “relative deprivation,” and “J-curve.” Each conforms to a causal sequence characteristic of classical social movement theory, linking some unusual condition, or “system strain,” to the generation of unrest. When these versions of the classical theory are applied to the civil rights movement, the source of strain is identified as a change in black socioeconomic status that occurred shortly before the widespread protest activity of the movement.
For example, the theory of rising expectations asserts that protest activity was a response to psychological tensions generated by gains experienced immediately prior to the civil rights movement. Advancement did not satisfy ambition, but created the desire for further advancement. Only slightly different is the theory of relative deprivation. Here the impetus to protest is identified as gains achieved during the premovement period, coupled with (coupled with: 加上， 外加) simultaneous failure to make any appreciable headway relative to the dominant group. The J-curve theory argues that the movement occurred because a prolonged period of rising expectations and gratification was followed by a sharp reversal.
Political theorists have been dismissive of these applications of classical theory to the civil rights movement. Their arguments rest on (rest on: v.被搁在, 停留在, 信赖) the conviction that, implicitly, the classical theory trivializes the political ends of movement participants, focusing rather on presumed psychological dysfunctions: reduction of complex social situations to simple paradigms of stimulus and response obviates the relevance of all but the shortest-term analysis. Furthermore, the theories lack predictive value: “strain” is always present to some de美国GREe, but social movement is not. How can we know which strain will provoke upheaval?
These very legitimate complaints having frequently been made, it remains to find a means of testing the strength of the theories. Problematically, while proponents of the various theories have contradictory interpretations of socioeconomic conditions leading to the civil rights movement, examination of various statistical records regarding the material status of black Americans yields ample evidence to support any of the three theories. The steady rise in median black family income supports the rising expectations hypothesis; the stability of the economic position of black vis-à-vis (prep.和...面对面, 同...相比, 关于) white Americans lends credence to the relative deprivation interpretation; unemployment data are consistent with the J-curve theory. A better test is the comparison of each of these economic indicators with the frequency of movement-initiated events reported in the press; unsurprisingly, none correlates significantly with the pace of reports about movement activity.英语作文
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