65 (Melucci 1989, 12)

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(Melucci 1989, 12)

This book argues that new conflicts develop in those areas of the system where both symbolic investments and pressures to conform are heaviest. These conflicts act increasingly at a distance from political organizations. They are interwoven with the fabric of everyday life and individual experience. The new conflicts are often temporary and they are not expressed through ‘instrumental’ action. Contemporary movements operate as signs, in the sense that they translate their actions into symbolic challenges to the dominant codes. This is understandable, since in complex societies signs become interchangeable: increasingly, power resides in the codes that order the circulation of information. In this respect, collective action is a form whose models of organization and solidarity deliver a message to the rest of society. Collective action affects the dominant institutions by modernizing their cultural outlook and procedures, as well as by selecting new elites; but it also raises questions that transcend the logic of instrumental effectiveness and decision-making by anonymous and impersonal organizations of power. Contemporary social movements stimulate radical questions about the ends of personal and social life and, in so doing, they warn of the crucial problems facing complex societies. [Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the Present. London: Hutchinson Radius.]