IB Global Politics Social Movements Key Definitions

Civil disobedience is the deliberate, public, and usually non-violent breaking of a law to protest an injustice. Participants typically accept the legal consequences in order to draw attention to the cause and pressure authorities to change.

A socially constructed sense of self and group belonging, shaped by shared history, culture, language, religion, ethnicity, or ideology, that informs how individuals and collectives act in political life.

Intersectionality is a framework, developed by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989, that analyses how overlapping social identities such as race, gender, and class interact to produce distinct and compounded forms of discrimination or disadvantage.

Social movements are organized, collective efforts aimed at promoting or resisting change in society. They often emerge in response to perceived injustices or unmet needs and can operate at local, national, or global levels.