The Prefigurative Turn: The Time and Place of Social Movement Practice

Maeckelbergh, Marianne

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47776-3_9

Cited by 30 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Consequently, we argue that prefigurative partaking leads to incremental changes in the here and now (Maeckelbergh, 2016). Such an outlook of organizational politics is, we believe, what Cooper (1986) had in mind when he conceptualized organization as ‘disorganization’.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Prefigurative Partaking: Employees’ Environmental Activism in an Energy Utility

Skoglund

Böhm

2019

Organization Studies

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The separation between an ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of organizational politics has become untenable in a rapidly changing political landscape, where people engage in environmental activism in many different domains. To understand contemporary environmental activism, we situate ourselves empirically within an energy utility, Ordalia [pseudonym], a large corporation active across Europe and heavily criticized by external activists for its carbon emitting operations. By merging Rancière’s method of equality and notion of ‘partaking’ with literature on prefiguration in social movements, we analyse everyday green actions pursued by Ordalia’s employees, which we conceptualize as ‘prefigurative partaking’. By focusing on six characterizing themes of prefigurative partaking – aspirational, individual, professional, critical, loyal and communal – we have found that employee activism is incremental, horizontal and boundaryless. We discuss these findings in relation to recent calls for more fruitful exchanges between social movement theory and organization studies, arguing that Rancière’s conceptualization of politics can help us study actions that span civil society and business. This complements and expands our understanding of environmental activism as a dispersed set of actions that can take place anywhere, and hence also at work.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Prefigurative Partaking: Employees’ Environmental Activism in an Energy Utility

Skoglund

Böhm

2019

Organization Studies

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“… Regarding these two social change aims, rather than suggesting that they were or are the specific objectives of BLM, following existing research we suggest that they are important components of social change for any social movement (e.g., Droogendyk et al ., ; Leach, ; Maeckelbergh, ; Mizock & Page, ; Simon & Klandermans, ; Subašić et al ., ; Yates, ). Thus, we consider the ways in which Twitter is employed by users of #BlackLivesMatter to manage these components of social change. …”

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confidence: 99%

Whose tweets? The rhetorical functions of social media use in developing the Black Lives Matter movement

Wilkins

Livingstone

Levine

2019

British J Social Psychol

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Research on collective action frequently characterizes social media as a tool for mobilization. However, social media activity can fulfil a variety of different functions for social change. In particular, the rhetorical functions of social media use by social movements are not well understood. We address this shortfall by analysing the rhetorical functions of Twitter use during an early stage of the Black Lives Matter social movement. We examine how activists used Twitter to balance competing aims for social change, such as growing the movement beyond disadvantaged‐group members, while preventing appropriation or dilution of their message by advantaged‐group ‘allies’. We find that although Twitter users promote different, and often competing, definitions of the issues that the movement represents, rhetorical strategies are used to advance inclusive definitions that focus on racism. When activists address alternative definitions of movement actors and issues, representations of Otherness are used to characterize the proponents of these definitions as in opposition to the movement. Finally, we find that one way of resolving the tension between growing the movement and promoting disadvantaged‐group control is by using identity and technology resources to explicitly define (1) how different groups can be movement advocates, and (2) action strategies for social change.

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“…Mobility rights organizing can give rise to a diverse set of sustainable design practices, creating more inclusive spaces for discussion on issues of social and transportation justice. They reflect a type of prefigurative politics [94,95]-a process through which social movements express the political 'ends' of their actions through their 'means', or where they create alternative social arrangements. Such perspectives bring into view questions of social resistance to entrenched forms of political exclusion through a collective politics of outrage [96].…”

Section: Mobilizing Conflict Transformation and Safe Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Creating Sustainable Cities through Cycling Infrastructure? Learning from Insurgent Mobilities

Soliz

2021

Sustainability

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As policy makers grapple with rapid motorization processes, cycling facilities are gaining new urgency, offering non-polluting and affordable alternatives to automobility. At the same time, urban sustainability paradigms tend to focus on purely technical solutions to transportation challenges, leaving questions of history and social power aside. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in Aguascalientes Mexico, this article contributes to the transportation and mobility justice literature by focusing on the work of social movements in confronting a variety of challenges in the provision of active-transportation services. First, this research explores how social movements express and negotiate transportation-justice concerns to government and planning authorities. Next, I build on the concept of insurgent citizenship to highlight the processes through which residents contest ongoing injustices and formulate alternatives for building inclusive cities. From the creation of makeshift cycling lanes in underserved urban areas to the search for socially just alternative to policing, social movements are forging new pathways to re-envision sustainable transportation systems. These insurgent forms of citymaking—understood here as insurgent mobilities—underscore the creative role of citizens in producing the city as well as the enormous amount of care work involved in these processes.

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The Prefigurative Turn: The Time and Place of Social Movement Practice

Cited by 30 publications

References 17 publications

Prefigurative Partaking: Employees’ Environmental Activism in an Energy Utility

Prefigurative Partaking: Employees’ Environmental Activism in an Energy Utility

Whose tweets? The rhetorical functions of social media use in developing the Black Lives Matter movement

Creating Sustainable Cities through Cycling Infrastructure? Learning from Insurgent Mobilities

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