That book is the “assume a spherical cow” of social movement sociology! Aka debunked by decades of actual empirical sociology research. It makes for a fun reading, I guess, as long as you don’t actually take it seriously. 
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Replying to @zeynep
What are some examples of points that were debunked?
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Replying to @Noahpinion
The whole who joins movements part. Not at all found in actual research. None of the typologies hold. Practically the whole book. It’s just a eloquent guy ranting. Maybe you could say there are some insights of sorts into perhaps cults, kind of? Not movements.
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Replying to @zeynep
I'd love to check out some of the debunking papers! Can you link me to a paper or two on the topic of who joins movements?
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Replying to @Noahpinion @zeynep
seconded! i love this topic. i would guess that "who joins movements" changes as the movement evolves. early social movements might attract radicals when the cause itself is radical, but for any movement to succeed it eventually has to win over the less radical majority
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Also, he was thinking about militant mass movements of the early 20th century, which might look very different from a modern protest movement like the Hong Kong protests or BLM...maybe the Nazis or Bolsheviks were a lot more cult-like than protest movements.
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Replying to @Noahpinion @DKThomp
Okay calm now. I’m sure he got them wrong too. In their own time, those were also mass movements. He’s someone who’d look at women’s march today and say look at all these hysterical women. If you’re a recent serf or bedraggled sailor in Czar’s military? Perfectly rational choice.
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"He’s someone who’d look at women’s march today and say look at all these hysterical women." <-- Really? He didn't seem to ascribe "hysteria" to anyone in his book.
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Replying to @Noahpinion @DKThomp
Of course not. Projecting his thinking forward as example. Large movements aren’t what he describes them to be. We have less empirical grounding for past but studies back to 1871 (Paris commune) show social networks mobilizing etc. Just like today. See: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2096251
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"Projecting his thinking forward as example." <-- It doesn't seem very fair to "project" sexist attitudes onto the man long after his death! Thanks for the link, will read!
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Well pick your insult. I just picked a movement and matched insult. That book is from the movements as “madness of crowds” school which was pretty completely overturned after the 60s.
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Hmm. I don't think attributing imaginary insults to real people is good practice! As for the "madness of crowds", I've certainly seen tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of Twitter people believe in absolute madness in real time, so I'd like to explain that... ;-)
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