In this chapter, we will consider the challenges to conceptualizations of social movements and protest that come from three interlinked sources: globalization, the growing trend in ‘transnational activism’ (Tarrow, 2006), and the rise of ‘new media’ (by which I mean ICTs, including mobile communications and social media). Globalization has involved the spread of ‘people, capital, goods, and ideas’ (Adamson, 2005, 31) across national borders in ways that have provided social movements with a growing infrastructure to ‘go global’. This trend – like globalization itself – is not, historically speaking, ‘new’. Since 1989 (and the collapse of communism), however, globalization of a particular kind has stepped up its pace, extending a capitalist economic model and Western consumer culture across the globe, which is driven by multinational corporations and international political and economic institutions (Waters, 1995; Smith and Johnston, 2002; Cohen and Kennedy, 2013). This ‘dominant mode’ of globalization has been seen to provide a new issue environment for social movements, and new targets of activism (Sklair, 1998).

Assuming that it was produced at the Lenaea or City Dionysia, Samia will have been performed in the Theatre of Dionysus as reconstructed in stone during the administration of Lycurgus (c.336–324). The basic elements of the theatre environment – the ‘dancing-place’ (orchestra) in which the chorus performed, but which could also be used by the actors; side-passages (eisodoi, later parodoi) for entrances from, and exits towards, places at a distance; and a building at the back (still called ‘booth’, skene, despite being now a permanent and imposing edifice with a columniated front and projecting wings) representing up to three houses or other interior spaces that played a role in the action – were much the same as they had been for a century before him. In Samia, as in many other Menandrian comedies, only two of the three skene doors are in use – doubtless the two lateral doors, one representing the entrance to the house of Demeas, the other to that of Nikeratos.

All Menander's plays, so far as we know, can be performed, if necessary, by three actors, provided that it was considered acceptable for the same role to be played by different actors in different scenes – and we know that this sometimes was acceptable in the Athenian theatre, for it is necessary in at least one tragic drama – Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, produced posthumously in 401 bc. And there are passages which look as though they were written specifically to give time for an actor to change mask and costume before appearing in another role. Moschion's monologue before his final exit in Act I (only eight lines survive, 88–95, but it is likely to have been considerably longer) enables the actors who have exited (into the skene) as Chrysis and Parmenon to change and re-enter (via an eisodos) as Demeas and Nikeratos; and in Act V, Parmenon's not very well motivated departure at 694 will enable the actor to change and reappear as Nikeratos at 713.

The ‘unknowable’ path of history creates challenges for how we think about and understand social movements. Social movements are, by their very nature, ‘unpredictable’ phenomena. The essence of collective efforts orientated towards social change is, as Herbert Blumer pointed out, cultural innovation. Although we have seen that innovation in social movements should not be overstated (with lots of borrowing of tactics and ideas from other movements, such that recurring ‘repertoires of protest’ form), we have also seen that cases of social movements, and the contexts in which they operate, undergo substantial change and alter the very activity, organizational form, and protest tactics of movements themselves. Globalization and the rise of new technological contexts associated with new media, for example, have, for some, altered our very idea of ‘what social movements are’, the mobilization conditions on which they depend, and the potential that they have for social transformation (Chesters and Welsh, 2006).

In this chapter, we will consider variations of new social movement (NSM) theory, which developed through the work of three European thinkers from the 1970s onwards: Jürgen Habermas (German), Alain Touraine (French), and Alberto Melucci (Italian). Each of these thinkers is involved in challenging the conceptualization of social movements as manifestations of ‘class conflict’ offered by Karl Marx, which had been extremely influential in European thinking. Instead, they pointed to fundamental changes in industrial society from the 1960s that had caused a decline in class-based mobilizations and the emergence of NSMs concerning identity, cultural values, and ways of living. They suggest to us that the battleground of social movements has fundamentally shifted from the workplace to culture, and our understanding of ‘what social movements are’, has to shift along with it.

NSM theory is also interesting because it provides a challenge to the rationalist approaches of the last two chapters. In contrast to them, it suggests that contemporary social movements cannot be viewed empirically as the organized, rational pursuit of shared interests. Nor do they involve making claims on the state and political institutions. Instead, they suggest that we should view social movements analytically as the construction of collective identities that express society's key conflicts, which are cultural in nature. As a consequence, conceptualizations of social movements as ‘political struggle’, give way to conceptualizations of social movements as ‘cultural struggle’. This approach has several merits, not least the ability to refresh our very notion of what ‘political protest’ is, and looks like. Nevertheless, it generates its insights at a cost, leaving behind, for good, ideas on class struggle that, if contemporary Marxist scholars are anything to go by, can actually aid an understanding of the political significance of action taken to reinvent everyday life.

That Menander's drama, and New Comedy generally, owes much to fifth-century tragedy, especially Euripides, was already recognized in antiquity (cf. Satyrus POxy 1176 fr. 39 col. 7); indeed, according to Quintilian (10.1.69), it was recognized openly by Menander himself, who ‘both greatly admired [Euripides], as he often testifies, and followed his lead, though in a different genre’. In modern times it has often been observed that many of Menander's plays have strong intertextual links with particular tragedies, and in the case of Samia a close relationship has long been observed with Euripides’ Hippolytus, with Demeas, Moschion and Chrysis corresponding to Theseus, Hippolytus and Phaedra respectively. In both plays a quick-tempered father, returning from abroad, wrongly comes to believe that in his absence his son (a bastard son in one case, an adopted son in the other) has slept with his (the father's) wife or concubine. In both plays the son is proud of his virtuous character. In both, owing partly to deception, partly to the father's ‘over-confidence in his own reasoning’ (S. R. West 1991: 18), the situation develops in such a way that the son finds it impossible to convince his father that his suspicions are groundless. Many detailed parallels can also be perceived, most notably between the father-son confrontations in Samia 452–538 and Hippolytus 902–1101. Since Samia is a comedy, the truth naturally comes out in time to prevent any truly evil consequences, and several other features of the Euripidean play undergo inversion. The Hippolytus and Phaedra figures – Moschion and Chrysis – are at no time hostile to one another; in fact they are allies in a scheme to deceive Demeas, and Moschion intensifies Demeas’ suspicions of himself by speaking in defence of Chrysis (453–75). Hippolytus is falsely accused of rape; Moschion is really guilty of it, but is never suspected (in regard to Plangon, that is) until he confesses.