In current and future situations of trans-global crises, social dissent and related practices of resistance cut across conventional country boundaries. Expressions of dissent and resistance pursue change through unconventional practices not only to challenge current governance, but to re-invent participation. They seek to impact society by transforming acquired values, subjectivities and knowledge. Despite these transformations of people’s subjectivities, majoritarian theories examining social movements still focus on finding rational patterns that can be instrumentalized in data sets and produce generalizable theoretical outcomes. This paper problematizes how social theory makes sense of collective action practices on the ground. Everyday non-discursive practices prove productivity-led theories' increasing disengagement with their object while challenging the excessive bureaucratization of scientific knowledge (Lyotard, 1997). That is, people experiment collectively with their capacities, and create their own initiatives and identities which do not follow determined patterns but do-while-thinking. The dichotomist approach of majoritarian debates in collective action theory is critically analysed by introducing the work of ‘minor authors’ and ‘radical theorists’. The fundamental purpose of this paper is to open a discussion space between the field of social action theories and activism knowledge, hence encouraging the creation of plateaus that blur academic boundaries and construct new subjectivities beyond “the indignity of speaking for others” (Deleuze in Foucault et al., 1977. p. 209). Drawing on the experience of the 15th of May 2011 in Spain, I analyse how radical theory reflects on current movements and collectives."
Search Results
Rethinking Social Theory in Contemporary Social Movements
Nadia Ferrer
Representations, History, and Wartime France
Brett Bowles
In a 1989 article published by Annales under the title “Le monde comme représentation,”1 Roger Chartier articulated a conceptual framework for bridging the gap that had traditionally separated the history of mentalities from social and political history. While the former field—pioneered by Georges Duby, Robert Mandrou, and Philippe Ariès in the 1960s—had legitimized the study of collective beliefs, anxieties, and desires as historical phenomena, the latter remained largely devoted to more concrete, easily quantifiable factors such as structures, institutions, and material culture. Drawing on the anthropological and psychoanalytical premises that had informed the work of Michel Foucault, Louis Marin, and Michel de Certeau, among others, Chartier emphasized the performative dimension of individual and collective representations in order to argue that they should be understood not only as evidence registering the exercise of social and political power, but as underlying catalysts of change in their own right. Like habitus, Pierre Bourdieu’s complex model of social causality and evolution, Chartier framed representation as a symbiotic “structuring structure” that deserved to sit at the heart of historical inquiry.
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2014
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–3 (3 total)
Editorial
meaning of the concepts of property, possession, and democracy in Pipes’s “epistemic world”—of latter of which’s subject is articulated in the philosophy of Michel Foucault (May 2006)—can be questioned: are they still appropriate in the applied epistemic
In The International Journal of Social Quality
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Editorial
- Pages:
- v–xiii
In Memoriam
W. S. F. Pickering
William Watts Miller
(1999) on Durkheim and Foucault on education and punishment, and by Sondra Hausner (2013) on The Elementary Forms , as well as three collections edited by Bill himself, one of which ( Pickering 2000a ) provided an invaluable analytical focus on the
Introduction to “Sex across the Ages: Restoring Intergenerational Dynamics to Queer History”
Nicholas L. Syrett
Halperin, who was building on the work of Michel Foucault, age (as well as class and status) asymmetry was key to how ancient Greeks structured sexual pairings between male citizens and the young men they mentored and penetrated. Some of the earliest
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2020
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–12 (12 total)
Introduction
Creative Practices/Resistant Acts
Nesreen Hussein and Iain MacKenzie
. Developing his earlier work on Michel Foucault, Rancière proffers what we call a “constitutive” model to account for this relationship. On this model, the everyday domain of politics is simply that which polices the senses, whereas the redistribution of this
Editorial: Actual politics and the need of conceptual clarity
Laurent J.G. van der Maesen
, with Michel Foucault, it is understood as intervention and change, that is, as social practice. Hepp chooses the case of precarization, which is becoming more and more important in contemporary times, also to explain the consequences for the use of
In The International Journal of Social Quality
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Editorial
- Pages:
- v–xx
Book Reviews
Alice L. Conklin Les Enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l’Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté by Emmanuelle Saada
Jason Earle Surrealism and the Art of Crime by Jonathan P. Eburne
Paul Jankowski Reconciling France against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français, 1927–1945 by Sean Kennedy
Jean-Philippe Mathy French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States by François Cusset
David Lepoutre La France a peur. Une histoire sociale de l'« insécurité » by Laurent Bonelli
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2010
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 134–150 (17 total)
Introduction
Jelena Tošić and Annika Lems
tendency—by policy makers, bureaucrats, but potentially also people on the move themselves—of understanding African-European im/mobilities as “not having a history” ( Foucault 1977: 139 ) and as appearing “out of the blue.” As we outlined earlier, when
In Migration and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2019
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–11 (11 total)
Education and Hospitality in Liminal Locations for Unaccompanied Refugee Youths in Lesvos
Ivi Daskalaki and Nadina Leivaditi
-like educational curricula invoked the production of docile bodies through disciplinary techniques and surveillance ( Foucault 1977 ). While most of the young guests felt the pressure of a tight schedule, they nevertheless carried on with their engagement in
In Migration and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 51–65 (15 total)