The Emergence of a European Social Movement Research Field

Abstract

In this chapter we trace the emergence and consolidation of research on social movements and grassroots collective action as a distinctive field within European social science. We refer to 'social science' rather than 'sociology' because in this particular area of research it is virtually impossible, not to say misleading, to disentangle work conducted by sociologists from work conducted by other researchers, most notably, political scientists.

Keywords

• social movement research
• Europe
• social sciences
• sociology, political science