After New Social Movements

This article combines an historical and a sociological approach. Historically, it distinguishes three main moments in the history of social movements since the 1960s. After working-class movements, which corresponded to industrial societies, came the so-called new social movements, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and these were followed by a third generation of actors deserving a new denomination as alter-globalization activists. Sociologically, this articles analyses the differences between these three figures from the point of view of the identity of the actors, of their relationship to culture, to their adversary, to their subjectivity, or to their framework for action (national or otherwise). The article introduces the concept of anti-movement, which is illustrated with the contemporary cases of ‘global’ anti-movements such as global terrorism or global anti-Semitism.