Paper Summary:

This paper examines different social movements and the different factors that have enabled them to retain, and even add to, the ranks of their membership, over extended periods of time. The paper studies and compares radical economic movements, radical religious movements, and reformist movements in order to shed light on this topic.

From the Paper:

"Patterns of holding membership ranks at a stable level may vary as well for leaders of the groups and members of the rank and file membership. For animal rights activists, to take one example, there is often a quite flexible definition of what constitutes animal rights as ethical lifestyle, and the proper ways to go about pursuing the goals of the movement. However, at the higher levels of the movement, composed of activists whose entire lives revolve around animal rights, there is often a strong, core cause and code of behavior that unites them. This is because, almost like a religion, the movement is so totally consuming, requiring a certain way of eating, dressing, and often transgressing the laws of the land in terms of defacing fur and stealing animals from laboratories."

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