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Volume :44 Issue : 4 2016
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New Social Movements and Collective Identity The April 6th Youth Movement
Auther : Sayed M. Fares
Since the January 25 Revolution, Egyptian society experiences a period of increased protest activity involving one or more issues and many protesting groups and movements. And since then, protest cycles develop a sharp peak and then decline. New social movements played a pivotal role in instigating protest activity before and after the revolution, and became a principal source of political and cultural change. These movements mold a collective identity sustains the development of the movement, processes of recruitment and mobilization, belonging, and commitment to movement'sgoals. Therefore the present qualitative study focuses on investigating:(1) The role of movement's internal culture in molding and reproducing collective identity. (2) The impact of collective identity upon the development of the social movement, processes of recruitment and mobilization, and strategies. (3) Exploring the mechanisms and processes of collective identity formation. The present study used an anthropological qualitative methodology relied upon participant observation and Semistructured interviews for data collection. And it was moreover oriented by new social movement theory as a theoretical framework. The findings revealed that:(1) the social movement molds a collective identity regarded as one of the cultural outcomes of the movement, and contributes to mobilization; sustains belonging or affiliation and commitment to movement's goals and ends; and strengthens collective solidarity. (2) collective identity is a cultural representation, a set of shared cultural meanings, produced and reproduced, negotiated and renegotiated in the interactions of individuals embedded in specific sociocultural contexts.
Keywords: New social movements, Collective identity, Mechanisms and processes of identity formation.