Ideology and Social Movements: The Contributions of Habermas*

Theorists of social movements have not developed a sufficiently complex perspective of the role that ideology has in the dynamics of social movements. This essay demonstrates that Habermas’theory of the autonomy of normative structures is useful to explain the independent role of ideology in determining the direction taken by social movements. Habermas’emphasis on the interrelationship between cultural traditions, consensus formation, epistemologies, and differentiated rationalization processes furnishes an alternative to the instrumentalist and ahistorical assumptions that often characterize theorists’treatment of ideology in social movements. Empirical examples from studies of social movements are utilized to demonstrate the usefulness of Habermas’approach.