This article offers an overview and assessment of the utility of new social movement theories for analyzing contemporary forms of collective action. The article begins with a brief overview of the origins of new social movement theory and a description of some of the general tenets of this approach. Next, I consider the contributions of four major theorists (Castells, Touraine, Habermas, and Melucci) to this paradigm. The heart of the article provides a critical discussion of the central debates that have emerged within this paradigm. I then propose a typological distinction between "political" and "cultural" versions of new social movement theory. In the conclusion, I assess new social movement theory as a whole and situate the paradigm with reference to other paradigms for the study of social movements.

Resource mobilization theory became the dominant paradigm for studying social movements in the 1970s because it was better able to account for the 1960s cycle of protest than previous theories of collective behavior. After almost two decades of theoretical development, the resource mobilization framework is now under increasing challenge. Drawing on research on women's movements in the United States, this article identifies ten issues which collectively pose a major theoretical challenge to the dominance of resource mobilization theory and which may initiate a paradigm shift to a new framework for the study of social movements.

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Critical thinking is often presented as a generic technique. This article develops an alternative that links critique more closely to the sociological perspective. I suggest three answers to the above question: that the sociological perspective is critical for comprehending complex issues, that all sociology is implicitly critical by virtue of its debunking tendency, and that some sociology is explicitly critical by virtue of value commitments that lead to a critique of domination. The article identifies some basic themes of what it means to think sociologically, discusses sociology's “double critique” in more detail, illustrates the critical potential of scientific, humanistic and critical approaches to sociology, and explores some implications of this approach for how we teach sociology. It concludes by suggesting that the goal of fostering critical thinking in our students might better be met by returning to the critical roots of our own discipline.