New social and religious movements in the age of globalization: A critique

In the age of globalization, eroding boundaries, multi-level exchanges and rising modernities have given rise to newer hopes and anxieties. New Social Movements and New Religious Movements are seen as nothing but responses to such shifts. Ideally, New Social Movements are characterized as collective actions that rose in sharp contrast to the class based movements. Globalized world has witnessed vast proliferation of ‘new’ movements from environmental, gender, spiritual to ethnic ones all over the world. This paper broadly examines the multidimensional character of a ‘new’ league of alternative movements like New Religious Movements using the New Social Movement theory. Attempt is to locate critical points of convergence and divergence between the two ‘new’ paradigms in a globalized world. The idea is to explore the possibility of common historical, conceptual and practical grounds, if at all.