This post is part of a series of posts I am working on to propose a sociological model of Effective Altruism that could help understand and address coordination challenges.

Summary

Effective altruism is a social movement, defined as "a group of agents trying to achieve a set of shared goals through collective action". Further:

Effective altruism is not a purely intellectual movement. (More)
Mass movements are part of the social movement reference class. (More)

Introduction

I have noticed sometimes a lack of clarity in movement building strategy discussions. These discussions can span a variety of topics such as coordination, personal experiences with EA, EA as a philosophy and the different "domains" of EA. There is often a lack of clarity around what the correct reference class of EA should be used, which can lead to miscommunication.

The purpose of this post is to clarify the reference class I use to think about the EA movement when developing models of movement building, in particular when considering constraints within the EA movement such as coordination. I hope this clarification helps create a common language for future work in this space and can be used as a reference document.

Definition of social movements

I define a social movement as:

A group of actors trying to achieve a set of shared goals through collective action.^[1]

where

An actor may be an individual or an organization associated with the movement in some capacity. Actors can take on many different roles within a movement, depending on the function they serve. Common roles in a social movement are leaders, who typically coordinate the movement, and members, who typically act on the leaders’ actions.
Shared goals are the common outcomes all actors within the movement wish for the movement to achieve. These are very broad, overarching, goals, which are then broken down into more specific actions. Most actions can be justified by demonstrating how they achieve the broader shared goals (even if some actors may not pursue those actions themselves).
Collective action is defined as an act that can only be accomplished by two or more actors coordinating with each other. This could include tasks that require several actors performing the same task, like voting, protesting, or lobbying. It could also include actions that require multiple actors performing differentiated tasks based on their skills,

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Towards A Sociological Model of EA Movement Building