Justice in New Social Movements

During the struggle against the Qajar tyranny, struggling leaders went to the Shah Abdul Azim Shrine to hold a sit-in against the Shah Mosque Case and foot whipping of Tehran sugar merchants. The demonstrators in Paragraph 4 of their demands, as mentioned by Nazem al-Islam Kermani, the initial demands of refugees, called for the establishment of a justice system. According to this report, and many other evidences, justice, always has been a lasting and permanent matter for the Iranian society. Recent surveys show that justice should still be considered as one of the main demands of the Iranian society. The debate about justice and social movements is constantly changing, and thinkers in this area are constantly revising their ideas. The aim of this study is to elaborate these changes and to discuss the place of justice in new social movements that refers to a range of collective actions with purpose of changing in one or all of the institutions. The emergence of new social movements brought about new ways of expressing demands and protests, and a wide range of collective behavior forms, which, in terms of goals, nature and method of struggle, had a fundamental difference with earlier movements. In fact, with the advent of modernity, the calculations of traditional society were collapsed and, with the advent of postmodernity, new demands were created largely due to development of higher education and autonomy of individuals. Accordingly, new social movements emerged in a broader context of discourses, subcultures, ideological straggle, and identity diversity, and were spread in the form of new discourses.