“Communities Change When Individuals Change”: The sustainability of system‐challenging collective action

Abstract

People who challenge the status quo through collective action face tremendous obstacles-not just practically, but in their ways of thinking, existing, and relating to others. This article addresses how collective actors sustain their engagement in the face of such high costs. System-challenging collective actors must reimagine and enact new, non-normative ways of thinking, existing, and relating that transform the status quo. This article explores the social psychological processes underlying sustained system-challenging collective action through activists' narratives of politicization, experiences of identity change, and reimagination of social structures. We draw on contributions from social psychological theories of system justification and social identity to examine how system-challenging collective action is motivated and sustained. Through interviews with Chicago-based activists and organizers engaged in system-challenging collective action, we implement a qualitative thematic analysis to propose that sustainability arises from three integrated factors: shared identity, system-challenging ideology, and intentional community.

Sociopolitical ideologies as predictors of collective action across liberal and conservative domains: Injustice‐based anger, efficacy, and empathy as mediators

“…SIMCA positions social identity as facilitating group-based anger, group efficacy, and ultimately collective action. The present findings contribute to a budding literature indicating that ideology can also motivate collective action (Becker, 2020;Choma et al, 2020Choma et al, , 2021González et al, 2022;Ho & Kteily, 2020;Jost et al, 2017;Liekefett & Becker, 2022;Osborne et al, 2019;Rao & Power, 2021;Saeri et al, 2015;Solak et al, 2021). The idea that ideology, as well as identity, predicts collective action echoes the recently proposed Dual Chamber model (Agostini & van Zomeren, 2021) where morality, which can include ideology, is conceptualized as a predictor alongside social identity.…”

“…First, compared to social identity, there is little inquiry on ideology and its role in collective action (Becker, 2020;Ho & Kteily, 2020). Yet, a qualitative study interviewing 21 activists in the United States revealed ideology as one of the primary factors supporting continued participation (Rao & Power, 2021). Despite this potential, ideology has only very recently received attention as a motivator of collective action (Becker, 2020;Choma et al, 2020Choma et al, , 2021Ho & Kteily, 2020;Jost et al, 2017;Osborne et al, 2019).…”

“Fuck Capitalism”: Mutual Aid Participants’ Experiences of Burnout During the Early Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Notably, all three causes of burnout are amplified for activists with marginalized or politicized identities, such as women of color and Indigenous peoples, especially external factors with higher rates of violence and targeting by those in power and in-movement causes, experiencing racism, sexism, homophobia, and harassment within their own organizations (Chapman, 2013;Danquah et al, 2021;Gorski, 2018). However, sharing identities with other activists-especially marginalized or politicized identities-has been found to be a protective factor from burnout (Rao & Power, 2021), suggesting that shared identities and lived experiences among activists may buffer against the oppression faced in activism work.…”

Stories of self, us, and now: narrative and power for health equity in grassroots community organizing

“…This worldview is another form of narrative that can override the perspective and historical evidence that organizers may provide (e.g., the civil rights movement) about how community change happens. Finally, the adherence to a worldview that favors cooperation over conflict exemplified in these quotes may reflect an impact of COVID in that in times of great uncertainty, people tend to cling to the status quo (41,42).…”