scholarly journals Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 164 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-757
Author(s):  
Sheena J. Vachhani
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Ethics And Politics

AbstractUsing two contemporary cases of the global #MeToo movement and UK-based collective Sisters Uncut, this paper argues that a more in-depth and critical concern with gendered difference is necessary for understanding radical democratic ethics, one that advances and develops current understandings of business ethics. It draws on practices of social activism and dissent through the context of Irigaray’s later writing on democratic politics and Ziarek’s analysis of dissensus and democracy that proceeds from an emphasis on alterity as the capacity to transform nonappropriative self-other relations. Therefore, the aims of the paper are: (i) to develop a deeper understanding of a culture of difference and to consider sexual difference as central to the development of a practical democratic ethics and politics of organizations; (ii) to explore two key cases of contemporary feminist social movements that demonstrate connected yet contrasting examples of how feminist politics develops through an appreciation of embodied, intercorporeal differences; and (iii) to extend insights from Irigaray and Ziarek to examine ways in which a practical democratic politics proceeding from an embodied ethics of difference forms an important advancement to theorising the connection between ethics, dissent and democracy.

Religion and Progressive Activism—Introducing and Mapping the Field

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Nicholas Fuist ◽  
Ruth Braunstein ◽  
Rhys H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Religious Activism ◽  
Progressive Religion

This chapter introduces readers to the often-overlooked field of progressive religious activism in the United States, and maps its contours. First, it traces the history and continued relevance of progressive religious activism in American political life. Second, it argues that progressive religion should not be conceptualized as a category of social actors, but rather as a field of action defined by participants’ commitment to progressive action, progressive values, progressive identities, and/or progressive theology, as well as through participants’ efforts to distinguish themselves from the activities of religious conservatives and/or secular progressives. Finally, it assesses the varied ways that attention to progressive religion challenges common political binaries (like Right/Left and progress/tradition), and prompts a reconsideration of long accepted theories of religion and social movements as well as the role of faith in democratic politics and civic life.

Rape Consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-68
Author(s):  
Robin E. Field
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
First Person ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Maya Angelou ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts

The new understanding of the victim’s psyche in rape fiction is derived from the literature of the anti-rape movement and autobiographical accounts of sexual assault. The rhetoric of this 1970s social movement, particularly the persuasive language of polemical nonfiction and the first-person narration in testimonies and autobiographies, inspired rape fiction. The use of sociopolitical theories and newly discovered facts about sexual assault informed the themes and plots of the first rape novels, and autobiographies and testimonies provided a bridge between the galvanizing rhetoric of social activism and subsequent fiction. The diverse texts that contributed to the emergence of the rape novel—from the transcripts of the consciousness-raising sessions of radical feminists to the memoirs of Maya Angelou and Billie Holiday—highlight the primacy of social movements to this new genre.

Meaning by Doing: The Making of Endurance Activism on the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Dain TePoel
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Nuclear Disarmament ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Physical Challenges

This article offers a consideration of physical activity within the contexts of social movement philosophies, decision making, strategies, and tactics through an examination of the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. Drawing from interviews with twenty activists on the Great Peace March, the author argues that physicality and endurance actions—literally, but also symbolically—signify particular meanings of movement for social movements, such as persistence, focus, and determination, to stretch sociopolitical limits and boundaries. Participants endeavor to accomplish difficult physical challenges and maintain the solidarity of their communities to analogize the coming into existence of equally extraordinary visions of social or political transformation. Physical and symbolic expressions of what the author terms “endurance activism” sustained the marchers’ vision of community and the survival of their organization. The article encourages sport historians to use a wider framework to interpret the links between physical activity, social activism, and oppositional movements.

scholarly journals A Feminist Politics of Ambivalence: Reading with Emma Goldman

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Hemmings
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
Emma Goldman

Abstract: Feminist theory worldwide is confronting - perhaps as it always has done - a series of deep challenges. On the one hand, awareness of gender and sexual inequalities seems high; on the other, co-optation of feminism for nationalist or other right-wing agendas is rife. On the one hand, feminist social movements are in ascendancy, on the other there is a continued dominance of single issue feminism and a resistance to intersectional, non-binary interventions. If we add in the collapse of the Left in the face of radical movements such as those underpinning Brexit and Trump (and the frequent blaming of feminism for fragmentation of that Left) then it is hard to know what to argue, to whom, and for what ends. In the face of such claims it is tempting to respond with a dogmatic or singular feminism, or to insist that what we need is a shared, clear, certain platform. I want to argue instead - with Emma Goldman (anarchist activist who died in 1940) as my guide - that it can be politically productive to embrace and theorise uncertainty, or even ambivalence, about gender equality and feminism.

scholarly journals RAYMOND WILLIAMS'S “STRUCTURE OF FEELING” AND THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRATIC VALUES IN BRITAIN, 1938–1961

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1133-1161
Author(s):  
STUART MIDDLETON
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

This article traces a history of the literary critic and theorist Raymond Williams’s idea of the “structure of feeling”, the formation of which is situated within debates about the place of artistic and moral values in democratic politics during the 1940s and 1950s. It demonstrates that the “structure of feeling” was intended to circumvent an equation of collective normative legislation with totalitarianism in the early cultural Cold War, by conceiving the definition of values as a process upon which all individuals in a society were always, necessarily, engaged. In articulating this quasi-democratic account of the production of artistic and moral standards, Williams also sought to escape the various theories of “minority culture” that dominated literary and cultural criticism in mid-century Britain. However, his concept of the “structure of feeling” required him to maintain a privileged role for artistic and intellectual arbiters, which constrained his vision of a properly democratic culture. In conclusion, the article argues that the problem of “democratic values” that Williams addressed in his work of the 1950s was a major factor in the marginalization or exclusion of moral criticism from political argument in Britain after 1945, and suggests that this passage of intellectual history may therefore be of considerable importance to contemporary debates about the lineages and reform of, in a broad sense, neoliberal political economy.

Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. By S. Sara Monoson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 252p. $39.50.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 466-467
Author(s):  
Larry Arnhart
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Athenian Democracy ◽  
Common View ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The Common

Sara Monoson challenges the common view of Plato as a strong opponent of democracy. Although she acknowledges his severe criticisms of democracy, she argues that his re- sponse to Athenian democracy shows ambivalence rather than complete hostility. Not only does Plato offer some qualified endorsements of democratic politics, she contends, but also he presents the practice of the philosophic life as rooted in Athenian democratic culture. Karl Popper's cri- tique of Plato as a proto-totalitarian enemy of the "open society" is not as influential as it once was, but the assump- tion that Plato and Platonic philosophy are incompatible with democracy persists. Monoson wants to overturn that view and thus convince modern democratic readers that they may have something to learn from Plato.

‘Making space public’ through occupation: The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Iveson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Single Site ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Spatial Strategy ◽  
Australian Capital ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Arab Spring

Through the actions of activists involved in the Arab Spring uprisings, European anti-austerity movements and the Occupy and Umbrella movements among others, long-term occupations of public space have re-entered the repertoire of insurgent social movements to spectacular effect. These events have dramatised the challenges and limits of occupation as a spatial strategy for ‘making space public’. This paper seeks to make a contribution to the critical geographical literatures on occupation and public space, through analysis of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – a politically motivated occupation of a patch of land in the Australian capital that is now entering its 45th year. The Embassy activists mobillised occupation in the process of making and sustaining a counterpublic. Counterpublic participants face a distinct set of geographical challenges in making space for both withdrawal and representation in the face of spatial subordination. Occupations like the Embassy seek to resolve these challenges by combining both of these activities in a single site. The Embassy draws our attention to two important sets of issues in relation to the counterpublic geography of occupations. First, it has much to teach about how space is made public through occupation, including dynamics related to the location, duration, reproduction and relations of occupation. Second, the Embassy issues a challenge about whose space is made public through occupation – as an embodied enactment of indigenous sovereignty, the Embassy reminds us that democratic politics in settler colonial nations like Australia is premised on a violent dispossession that has yet to be fully acknowledged or addressed.

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