Reinforcing Criticisms of Civil Resistance: A Response to Onken, Shemia-Goeke, and Martin

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110282
Author(s):  
Alexei Anisin
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
Resistance Literature ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Resistance Strategies ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Policy Suggestions

This article reinforces the criticisms I cast on civil resistance literature in my study “Debunking the Myths Behind Nonviolent Civil Resistance” through addressing issues on how scholars code violence, unarmed violence, and nonviolence. It justifies studying unarmed violence as a sole category and explicates the pathways through which unarmed violence can lead oppositional campaigns toward success. In responding to Onken, Shemia-Goeke, and Martin, the article demonstrates that the dichotomization of nonviolence and violence is not premised on analytical equivalency and should be avoided if the study of resistance strategies is to progress onward and step away from the literature's intrinsic ideological bias. There is nothing idealistic about seeking to improve how we operationalize concepts to study resistance strategies, but if scholars in the civil resistance literature fail to move away from universalistic assumptions about nonviolence and social change, they will continue to misinterpret historical processes and produce policy suggestions that are neo-colonial in nature.

Ghost Marriage and the Cattle Trade among the Atuot of the Southern Sudan

Africa ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
Distinct Area ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Infinite Variety ◽  
Apparent Association

Opening ParagraphThis essay attempts to interpret the apparent association between participation in the cattle trade of the Southern Sudan and the decreasing frequency of ghost marriage among the Atuot. The commentary on social change is peripheral to the analysis since this phenomenon is a constant rather than extraordinary social process. Arens (1976: 2) has recently emphasized the same point, adding ‘social change by its nature is a broad and ill-defined concept that cannot claim a distinct area of enquiry but rather allows for the choice of an infinite variety of areas for discussion.’ Because societies and cultures are products of historical processes they are likewise open and subject to perpetual change.This study begins with a cursory discussion of recent Nilotic history followed by a summary description of the cattle trade. Certain forms of traditional Atuot marriage are then examined. In the conclusion, reference is drawn to data which support the assertion that involvement in this sector of the Sudanese economy directly influences the frequency of ghost marriage.

Problems, Crises, Events and Social Change: Theory and Illustrations

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Constance A. Nathanson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Change Theory ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
History Of Public Health ◽  
Charles Tilly ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Change Theory

This paper proposes a theory-based approach to the understanding of social change and illustrates that theory with examples from the history and politics of public health. Based in large part on the work of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (see in particular his Islands of History published in (1985) William Sewell Jr. has proposed an ‘eventful sociology.’ In this work ‘event’ is a term of art meaning occurrences in human affairs that result in social change. Sewell's approach and that of Charles Tilly are in many respects complementary, a major difference being Sewell's far greater emphasis on meaning and interpretation by engaged actors as essential to understanding of how historical processes unfold. In this paper I further elaborate Sahlins’ and Sewell's ideas, first by showing their connection with concepts that may be more familiar to sociologists and, second, by examining the contingent character of social change. Drawing on my own research on the history of public health, I argue that the transformation of ‘happenings’ into events and of events into meaningful social change are highly contingent on the social and political context within which these events occur. More generally, I hope to show that ‘eventful’ sociology is an exciting and productive approach to sociological analysis.

The Census, Political Power, and Social Change: The Significance of Population Growth in American History

1984 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margo Conk
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
American History ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Current Event ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Formed Part

The 1980 census was a recurring “current event,” the twentieth such census since the founding of the nation in 1789. As such, the census retained echoes of its distant past, and formed part of a tradition that provides many of the guideposts or bench marks of change. It is useful, therefore, to look at the census and census taking as historical processes that illustrate the issues that have concerned past generations of Americans as they watched the development of their population, culture, and society.

Teaching Collective Action: Strategies for Fostering Racial and Social Justice

2022 ◽  
pp. 65-96
Author(s):  
Aaron Schutz
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Civic Agency ◽  
Action Strategies ◽  
Do So

Universities teach students about social problems but provide few concrete tools for acting to promote social change. Teaching about challenges but not about possible solutions can be potentially disempowering and may reduce civic agency. This chapter discusses the development of a required class on community organizing and civil resistance that provides students with specific strategies for engaging in collective action. The author explores a range of tensions involved in teaching this class: making it experiential without forcing students to work on issues or take steps they might not agree with, providing multiple traditions of social action so they do not get the sense that there is one “right” way, working with students whose perspectives might differ from ones he sees as legitimate, and teaching a class that some outside the institution might see as beyond the purview of a university. Ultimately, he argues that it is incumbent upon universities to provide concrete skills for social action, because failing to do so restricts their capacity to become effective civic actors in our democracy.

Reverse, restore, repeat!

Focaal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 (72) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eeva Kesküla
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Term Analysis

In this article, I look at Russian-speaking miners' perception of their position in Estonian society, along with their moral economy. Former heroes, glorified for their class and ethnicity, they feel like a racialized underclass in neoliberal Estonia. Excluded from the nation on the basis of ethnicity, they try to maintain their dignity through the discourse of hard work as a basis for membership in society. Based on the longer-term analysis of Estonian history, I argue that the current outcome for the Russian-speaking working class is related to longer historical processes of class formation whereby each period in the Estonian history of the twentieth century seems to be the reversal of the previous one. I also argue for analysis of social change in Eastern Europe that does not focus solely on ethnicity but is linked to class formation processes.

Agency of ethnic minority employees: Struggles around identity, career and social change

Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Van Laer ◽  
Maddy Janssens
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Resistance Literature ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Power And Resistance ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Depth Interviews

Going beyond recent studies emphasizing the ‘successful’ nature of ethnic minorities’ agency, this qualitative study offers an in-depth analysis of the tensions and contradictions inherent to ethnic minority employees’ agency. To conceptualize agency, we draw on the resistance literature and adopt the notion of struggle, which stresses the dynamic and often contradictory interplay between power and resistance in everyday experiences and actions. Based on 26 in-depth interviews with ethnic minority professionals, our study highlights three main agentic strategies individuals use in relation to discourses of ethnicity: rejecting, redefining and adopting discursively available subject positions. Yet, these strategies are characterized by inherent tensions and contradictions, as all three involve both resistance and compliance, simultaneously challenging and reproducing discourses of ethnicity and relations of power. Our study further suggests that the tensions and contradictions inherent to ethnic minority employees’ agency can be linked to individuals’ involvement in struggles on three interconnected plateaux: the plateaux of identity, career and social change. Tensions arise as struggles on these plateaux come into conflict, forcing individuals to make important trade-offs. Finally, our study contributes to the resistance literature, reinterpreting the current debate on the prevalence of ‘banal’ forms of resistance as linked to its tendency to study (ethnic) majority individuals who have the privilege of focusing their agentic strategies on the plateau of identity.

scholarly journals Disciplinary Mosaic: The Case of Canadian Sociology

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 869-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Burawoy
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Political System ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
Dynamic Quality

The absence of any dynamic quality to the Canadian political system could probably in a large measure be attributed to its separation from the world of higher learning. The association of the intellectuals with the bureaucracy of government is clear enough. However expert they may be, or however many insights they may have into the historical processes, however well they might uncover the evolution of Canadian self-government, they remain aloof and objective. The dynamic dialogue so essential to social change and development can come only from scholarly intellectuals. The intellectuals of the mass media world have no disciplined training, and are unlikely to provide the dialogue. Far from contributing to the dialogue, intellectuals of the higher learning have done their best to mute it. John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic (1965)

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