In this guide, you will learn what a movement of movements is. We explain how to strengthen connections between movements. We discuss how to bring together activists across countries, causes and strategies.

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Also make sure to read our guides on coalition-building and partnerships (guide not yet created). If you are interested in the practicalities of starting collaborations with other movements, we recommend you to check out those guides.

This guide on movement of movements will allow you to take a more birds-eye view and understand how various movements relate to each other.

Summary #

A movement of movements is a dynamic network of solidarity and collaboration among different social movements that challenge the same dominant systems of oppression and exploitation.

• ❤️‍🔥 What is a movement of movements?

• 🌏 Examples

• 🗺️ Movement mapping

• 💪 Strengthening relations

• 😅 Commons challenges

Analysing a movement of movements #

Strengthing a movement of movements #

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Common challenges #

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Discussions #

• How do you balance seeing the value of all tactics and strategies as complementary, versus giving founded critiques as to why certain tactics/strategies should be abandoned in favour of others?

  • How do you avoid defending tactics that are actually harmful or not as effective as others? (Which may cause you to lose campaigns in the context of limited resources or time)

• How to deal with the following paradox: Organisations, especially innovative ones, must defend their controversial strategies at the cost of other strategies to convince people to participate. For example, this may be the case for organisations that are trying to get people involved in civil disobedience by pointing out that other, easier (!), strategies have not worked. At the same time, such the people within such organisations may realise that actually, these other 'easier' strategies and civil disobedience go hand in hand. However, they can never say that out loud, because if they would, nobody or not enough people would participate in the difficult strategies. After all: Why would anyone participate in doing something you could get arrested for, when you can also sign a petition and achieve the same effect? Advocating the value of an ecology of social movements, paradoxically, results in an ecology of social movements becoming impossible.

  • Does this paradox actually exist, or are there ways around this? More nuanced narratives perhaps? Is there a way to make these nuanced narratives easy to understand?

  • What are the implications for collaborations, for example in the form of coalitions? Some actors within the ecology of social movements may benefit from frustrating a narrative of "everything is complementary", which is useful to bring people together.

External resources #

Movement of movements #

• PDF: Movement of movements primer by Saïd Business School (2020)

• Book: The movements of movements. Part 1, What makes us move? edited by Jai Sen

• Book: A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? edited by Tom Mertes

• Book: The Movement of Movements: A Last Chance to Save the Planet? by Christian Sarkar, Karthiga Ratnam and Philip Kotler

• Chapter: This Movement of Movements in 'Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger' by Julie Sze (2020)

• Academic: Appreciating the Movement of the Movements by Helen Hintjens (2006)

• Chapter: Movement of Movements, Resilient Strategies in the ‘Global South’ in 'Art and Activism in the Age of Systemic Crisis' by Kitty Zijlmans

• Roadmap: A Movement of Movements by Michael Nagler (2014)

• Academic: Movement of movements, toward a more democratic globalization (2007)

Social movement ecology #

• Social Movement Ecology and Its Implications: Unpacking the Natural Metaphor by Benjamin Case (2018)

• What is social movement ecology?

• Social movement ecology and its implications: unpacking the natural metaphor by Benjamin S. Case (2017)