Monica Brasted

Students for a Democratic Society: a Movement Study Monica Brasted

During the nineteen sixties the organization, Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, represented the New Left in the United States. SDS led a political movement whose major goal was to bring about social change. In this book, SDS is examined using Burke's dramatistic perspective as it moves from order, guilt and the negative through victimage and mortification to catharsis and redemption. The phases of development of a movement as described by Leland Griffin (1969) are also used as a framework for this study to determine if the development of SDS as a movement corresponds with the phases of inception, crisis and consummation. The analysis examines SDS as it developed in the nineteen sixties, and should be of interest to anyone who is interested in learning more about a turbulent historical time in the United States.