Sean Chabot - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Sean Chabot
Passages, 2001
As a recent graduate from Howard University, James Farmer moved to Chicago in August 1941, where ... more As a recent graduate from Howard University, James Farmer moved to Chicago in August 1941, where he found a job as race relations secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). The one thing these two institutions had in common was their close aYnity with the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence. On the one hand, Farmer's mentor at Howard University, Howard Thurman, had personally met and spoken with Gandhi at his ashram, while Mordecai Johnson, the university president, was famous for his eloquent speeches on India's nonviolent struggle for independence. On the other hand, as an interracial and Christian paci st organization, the FOR had long been interested in the Gandhian approach to activism. This social environment, as well as his childhood confrontations with racial bigotry in the Deep South, inspired the young Farmer to formulate a plan for adapting the Gandhian repertoire of contention to the situation faced by African-Americans. After discussing his ideas with friends and fellow activists, he wrote a memo to FOR president A.J. Muste entitled "Provisional Plans for Brotherhood Mobilization." In it, Farmer proposed a Gandhian framework for ghting racial injustice in the United States:
The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
Societies Without Borders, 2013
Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the unde... more Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the underlying hegemonic story of neoliberalism. It is hard to dispute that the most popular brand of nonviolence, articulated by Gene Sharp and his followers, has helped people overthrow authoritarian regimes across the globe. Yet Sharp’s nonviolence also promotes the spread of neoliberal freedom and democracy, which cause multiple forms of visible and invisible violence. This article’s first section examines significant details in Sharp’s hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance and problematizes its limited understanding of violence. The following section relates Sharp’s approach to Iran’s Green Movement and Egypt’s Revolution. It shows how strategic nonviolence enabled these social movements, but also pushed them toward neoliberalism. The final section returns to the ideas and practices of Gandhi for a counter-hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance as well as freedom and democracy. We conc...
Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory, 2019
The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frant... more The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frantz Fanon as an apostle of violence. In the process, they deny his deep commitment to revolutionary humanism and mutual recognition among colonizer and colonized. This chapter argues that Fanon is highly relevant for understanding and confronting colonial violence in the contemporary world-system. It starts by discussing Fanon's analysis of total violence in colonial contexts, before considering his original approach to decolonizing counter-violence. Then it examines Fanon's concept of new humanism and illustrates the latter's significance. We propose that "stretching Fanon" allows us to make sense of how today's wretched of the earth struggle against and beyond conditions of colonial annihilation.
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2000
Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before th... more Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956? How did transnational diffusion of the Gandhian repertoire proceed over time? Classical diffusion theory provides a useful starting point for answering these questions, but it does not fully capture the twists and turns occurring in the transnational diffusion of a collective action repertoire. To account for the non-linear and contingent aspects of transnational diffusion between social movements, this article proposes an alternative theoretical framework and applies it to the case of diffusion between the independence movement in India and the civil rights movement in the United States. The historical case study emphasizes collective reinvention of the Gandhian repertoire by American civil rights networks, instead of critical mass or individual thresholds; and the intergenerational transfer of relevant knowledge and experience from these imple...
Relaciones Internacionales, 2018
Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action... more Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action against oppressive forces. They pay much less attention to positive dimensions of resistance that allow practitioners to create alternative social relationships and ways of life. As a result, studies on nonviolent resistance tend to take “the colonizer’s model of the world” for granted. This article contest the prevailing approach by drawing on Gandhi, on the one hand, and autonomist Marxist and anarchist literature, on the other, to explore decolonizing forms of nonviolent resistance. It argues that Gandhi’s “constructive program” and autonomist Marxist thought on “reclaiming the commons” offer tools that are relevant for innovative research on decolonizing nonviolent resistance. And it shows that the Zapatista movement and revolutionary Zapatista women are on the frontlines of experiments with constructive work and autonomous commons in the world today. They demonstrate to scholars as...
International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2014
How do people who want to fight oppression decide which protest methods to use? How do they know ... more How do people who want to fight oppression decide which protest methods to use? How do they know which strategies for interacting with authorities and wider publics will work? How do they know which organizational styles will allow for strong coalitions and mass mobilization? How do they know which forms of communication will resonate among fellow activists, bystanders, and rulers? Social movement scholars commonly employ the concept of "contentious repertoire" to respond to these questions. They suggest that people within specific contexts have access to a limited set of protest methods that they have learned from past struggles. This repertoire emerges from activities in everyday life and includes familiar ways of challenging powerful institutions, constraining what activists are capable of doing within particular circumstances. Although participants constantly improvise in the heat of contentious events, they follow shared scripts that prescribe their choices, expectations, and performances. Most social movement scholars agree that major shifts in contentious repertoire are very rare. Charles Tilly, who introduced the concept, argues that the main transformation took place in Europe, especially in Great Britain and France, between the 1750s and 1830s. While the "old" repertoire generally produced sporadic localized actions like food seizures and attacks on property, the "new" repertoire enabled large-scale direct actions like national strikes and mass marches. According to Tilly, the latter set of protest methods continues to shape contemporary social movements
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2015
Western scholars dominating the field generally suggest that civil resistance struggles involve p... more Western scholars dominating the field generally suggest that civil resistance struggles involve public contention with unjust states to expand political rights and civil liberties. We argue that this perspective is an example of Eurocentric universalism, which has three blind spots: it tends to ignore struggles seeking to subvert rather than join the liberal world system, as well as coloniality's effects on nonviolent action, and emerging subjugated knowledges. We propose going beyond these limitations by learning from social movements focusing on human dignity, material self-sufficiency, and local autonomy, especially in the Global South. Our essay examines two classic decolonizing thinkers (Gandhi and Fanon) and two contemporary decolonizing struggles (the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Abahlali in South Africa). Each emphasizes coloniality, constructive over contentious resistance, transformations in political subjectivity, and emancipatory visions that go beyond Western ideals...
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
ABSTRACT
... conditions grew more volatile and Indian politi-cal leaders increasingly lost faith in nonvio... more ... conditions grew more volatile and Indian politi-cal leaders increasingly lost faith in nonviolence. ... repertoire's practical signi¢cance and traveled to India to question Gandhi himself on ... the March on Washington Move-ment (MOWM) introduced the idea of ''nonviolent good-will ...
The Diffusion of Social Movements
How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights ... more How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights movement? Responses generally focus on Martin Luther King's pilgrimage to nonviolence or favorable social contexts and processes. This book, in contrast, highlights ...
Amsterdams sociologisch tijdschrift, 2002
Résumé/Abstract How did the Gandhian repertoire of collective action travel from the Indian indep... more Résumé/Abstract How did the Gandhian repertoire of collective action travel from the Indian independence movement to the American civil rights movement? Why did it take more than three decades before African-American activists adopted and implemented Gandhi's style ...
International Review of Social History, 2004
Most of the contentious-politics scholars who pioneered the study of framing in social movements ... more Most of the contentious-politics scholars who pioneered the study of framing in social movements now also recognize the importance of transnational diffusion between protest groups. Interestingly, though, they have not yet specified how these two processes intersect. This article, in contrast, explores the framingtransnational diffusion nexus by highlighting three historical moments of interaction between African-American intellectuals and Gandhian activists before Martin Luther King, Jr traveled to India in 1959. After briefly reviewing the relevant literature, it illustrates how three different types of ''itinerant'' African-American intellectualsmentors like Howard Thurman, advisors like Bayard Rustin, and peers like James Lawson-framed the Gandhian repertoire of nonviolent direct action in ways that made it applicable during the American civil rights movement. The final section considers possible implications for social movement theory and fertile areas for further research. In February 1959, a few years after the Montgomery bus boycott had anointed him as a prophet of nonviolence, Martin Luther King, Jr arrived in India to talk with fellow disciples of Gandhi and witness the effects of the Indian independence movement. He and his wife, Coretta, toured the country, had dinner with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, visited Gandhi's ashrama (self-sufficient communes), participated in conferences, and attended numerous receptions in their honor. During their four-week stay in India, the Kings discussed Gandhian nonviolent action with native experts like Dr Radhakrishnan, India's Vice-President; Jayaprakash Narain, a contemporary protest leader; and G. Ramachandran and R.R. Diwakar of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (Gandhi Memorial Trust). 1 Upon return to the United States, Martin Luther King, Jr wrote an article for Ebony, the popular African-American magazine, describing the journey's personal impact: It was wonderful to be in Gandhi's land, to talk with his son, his grandsons, his
Paper presented at the International Peace …, 2004
Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vin... more Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vinthagen, Stellan, 1964-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för freds-och utvecklingsforskning Chabot, Sean (author) University of Gothenburg Faculty of Social Sciences. Department ...
Critical Sociology, 2008
Critical sociologists have long recognized the intersections between love and revolution. For the... more Critical sociologists have long recognized the intersections between love and revolution. For the most part, however, our understanding of love and its relevance for revolution remains vague. My article seeks to remedy this limitation. It starts by sketching the social and personal contexts of alienation, indicating that in today's capitalist world genuine love is revolutionary in itself. It then specifies what love means, what types of love exist, and what revolutionary love implies in theory and practice. The next section introduces the political cultures of loving revolution concept and applies it to the Indian independence movement led by Gandhi. The conclusion discusses how potential revolutionaries might benefit from my interpretation of love and revolution.
Passages, 2001
As a recent graduate from Howard University, James Farmer moved to Chicago in August 1941, where ... more As a recent graduate from Howard University, James Farmer moved to Chicago in August 1941, where he found a job as race relations secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). The one thing these two institutions had in common was their close aYnity with the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence. On the one hand, Farmer's mentor at Howard University, Howard Thurman, had personally met and spoken with Gandhi at his ashram, while Mordecai Johnson, the university president, was famous for his eloquent speeches on India's nonviolent struggle for independence. On the other hand, as an interracial and Christian paci st organization, the FOR had long been interested in the Gandhian approach to activism. This social environment, as well as his childhood confrontations with racial bigotry in the Deep South, inspired the young Farmer to formulate a plan for adapting the Gandhian repertoire of contention to the situation faced by African-Americans. After discussing his ideas with friends and fellow activists, he wrote a memo to FOR president A.J. Muste entitled "Provisional Plans for Brotherhood Mobilization." In it, Farmer proposed a Gandhian framework for ghting racial injustice in the United States:
The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements
Societies Without Borders, 2013
Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the unde... more Our central argument is that the hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance is reinforcing the underlying hegemonic story of neoliberalism. It is hard to dispute that the most popular brand of nonviolence, articulated by Gene Sharp and his followers, has helped people overthrow authoritarian regimes across the globe. Yet Sharp’s nonviolence also promotes the spread of neoliberal freedom and democracy, which cause multiple forms of visible and invisible violence. This article’s first section examines significant details in Sharp’s hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance and problematizes its limited understanding of violence. The following section relates Sharp’s approach to Iran’s Green Movement and Egypt’s Revolution. It shows how strategic nonviolence enabled these social movements, but also pushed them toward neoliberalism. The final section returns to the ideas and practices of Gandhi for a counter-hegemonic story of nonviolent resistance as well as freedom and democracy. We conc...
Frantz Fanon and Emancipatory Social Theory, 2019
The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frant... more The vast majority of political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers continue to label Frantz Fanon as an apostle of violence. In the process, they deny his deep commitment to revolutionary humanism and mutual recognition among colonizer and colonized. This chapter argues that Fanon is highly relevant for understanding and confronting colonial violence in the contemporary world-system. It starts by discussing Fanon's analysis of total violence in colonial contexts, before considering his original approach to decolonizing counter-violence. Then it examines Fanon's concept of new humanism and illustrates the latter's significance. We propose that "stretching Fanon" allows us to make sense of how today's wretched of the earth struggle against and beyond conditions of colonial annihilation.
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2000
Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before th... more Why did American civil rights activists fail to fully implement the Gandhian repertoire before the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956? How did transnational diffusion of the Gandhian repertoire proceed over time? Classical diffusion theory provides a useful starting point for answering these questions, but it does not fully capture the twists and turns occurring in the transnational diffusion of a collective action repertoire. To account for the non-linear and contingent aspects of transnational diffusion between social movements, this article proposes an alternative theoretical framework and applies it to the case of diffusion between the independence movement in India and the civil rights movement in the United States. The historical case study emphasizes collective reinvention of the Gandhian repertoire by American civil rights networks, instead of critical mass or individual thresholds; and the intergenerational transfer of relevant knowledge and experience from these imple...
Relaciones Internacionales, 2018
Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action... more Scholars of nonviolent resistance, in particular, almost exclusively focus on oppositional action against oppressive forces. They pay much less attention to positive dimensions of resistance that allow practitioners to create alternative social relationships and ways of life. As a result, studies on nonviolent resistance tend to take “the colonizer’s model of the world” for granted. This article contest the prevailing approach by drawing on Gandhi, on the one hand, and autonomist Marxist and anarchist literature, on the other, to explore decolonizing forms of nonviolent resistance. It argues that Gandhi’s “constructive program” and autonomist Marxist thought on “reclaiming the commons” offer tools that are relevant for innovative research on decolonizing nonviolent resistance. And it shows that the Zapatista movement and revolutionary Zapatista women are on the frontlines of experiments with constructive work and autonomous commons in the world today. They demonstrate to scholars as...
International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2014
How do people who want to fight oppression decide which protest methods to use? How do they know ... more How do people who want to fight oppression decide which protest methods to use? How do they know which strategies for interacting with authorities and wider publics will work? How do they know which organizational styles will allow for strong coalitions and mass mobilization? How do they know which forms of communication will resonate among fellow activists, bystanders, and rulers? Social movement scholars commonly employ the concept of "contentious repertoire" to respond to these questions. They suggest that people within specific contexts have access to a limited set of protest methods that they have learned from past struggles. This repertoire emerges from activities in everyday life and includes familiar ways of challenging powerful institutions, constraining what activists are capable of doing within particular circumstances. Although participants constantly improvise in the heat of contentious events, they follow shared scripts that prescribe their choices, expectations, and performances. Most social movement scholars agree that major shifts in contentious repertoire are very rare. Charles Tilly, who introduced the concept, argues that the main transformation took place in Europe, especially in Great Britain and France, between the 1750s and 1830s. While the "old" repertoire generally produced sporadic localized actions like food seizures and attacks on property, the "new" repertoire enabled large-scale direct actions like national strikes and mass marches. According to Tilly, the latter set of protest methods continues to shape contemporary social movements
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2015
Western scholars dominating the field generally suggest that civil resistance struggles involve p... more Western scholars dominating the field generally suggest that civil resistance struggles involve public contention with unjust states to expand political rights and civil liberties. We argue that this perspective is an example of Eurocentric universalism, which has three blind spots: it tends to ignore struggles seeking to subvert rather than join the liberal world system, as well as coloniality's effects on nonviolent action, and emerging subjugated knowledges. We propose going beyond these limitations by learning from social movements focusing on human dignity, material self-sufficiency, and local autonomy, especially in the Global South. Our essay examines two classic decolonizing thinkers (Gandhi and Fanon) and two contemporary decolonizing struggles (the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Abahlali in South Africa). Each emphasizes coloniality, constructive over contentious resistance, transformations in political subjectivity, and emancipatory visions that go beyond Western ideals...
Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
ABSTRACT
... conditions grew more volatile and Indian politi-cal leaders increasingly lost faith in nonvio... more ... conditions grew more volatile and Indian politi-cal leaders increasingly lost faith in nonviolence. ... repertoire's practical signi¢cance and traveled to India to question Gandhi himself on ... the March on Washington Move-ment (MOWM) introduced the idea of ''nonviolent good-will ...
The Diffusion of Social Movements
How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights ... more How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights movement? Responses generally focus on Martin Luther King's pilgrimage to nonviolence or favorable social contexts and processes. This book, in contrast, highlights ...
Amsterdams sociologisch tijdschrift, 2002
Résumé/Abstract How did the Gandhian repertoire of collective action travel from the Indian indep... more Résumé/Abstract How did the Gandhian repertoire of collective action travel from the Indian independence movement to the American civil rights movement? Why did it take more than three decades before African-American activists adopted and implemented Gandhi's style ...
International Review of Social History, 2004
Most of the contentious-politics scholars who pioneered the study of framing in social movements ... more Most of the contentious-politics scholars who pioneered the study of framing in social movements now also recognize the importance of transnational diffusion between protest groups. Interestingly, though, they have not yet specified how these two processes intersect. This article, in contrast, explores the framingtransnational diffusion nexus by highlighting three historical moments of interaction between African-American intellectuals and Gandhian activists before Martin Luther King, Jr traveled to India in 1959. After briefly reviewing the relevant literature, it illustrates how three different types of ''itinerant'' African-American intellectualsmentors like Howard Thurman, advisors like Bayard Rustin, and peers like James Lawson-framed the Gandhian repertoire of nonviolent direct action in ways that made it applicable during the American civil rights movement. The final section considers possible implications for social movement theory and fertile areas for further research. In February 1959, a few years after the Montgomery bus boycott had anointed him as a prophet of nonviolence, Martin Luther King, Jr arrived in India to talk with fellow disciples of Gandhi and witness the effects of the Indian independence movement. He and his wife, Coretta, toured the country, had dinner with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, visited Gandhi's ashrama (self-sufficient communes), participated in conferences, and attended numerous receptions in their honor. During their four-week stay in India, the Kings discussed Gandhian nonviolent action with native experts like Dr Radhakrishnan, India's Vice-President; Jayaprakash Narain, a contemporary protest leader; and G. Ramachandran and R.R. Diwakar of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (Gandhi Memorial Trust). 1 Upon return to the United States, Martin Luther King, Jr wrote an article for Ebony, the popular African-American magazine, describing the journey's personal impact: It was wonderful to be in Gandhi's land, to talk with his son, his grandsons, his
Paper presented at the International Peace …, 2004
Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vin... more Search: onr:"swepub:oai:services.scigloo.org:67447" > From techniques to ... ... Vinthagen, Stellan, 1964-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Institutionen för freds-och utvecklingsforskning Chabot, Sean (author) University of Gothenburg Faculty of Social Sciences. Department ...
Critical Sociology, 2008
Critical sociologists have long recognized the intersections between love and revolution. For the... more Critical sociologists have long recognized the intersections between love and revolution. For the most part, however, our understanding of love and its relevance for revolution remains vague. My article seeks to remedy this limitation. It starts by sketching the social and personal contexts of alienation, indicating that in today's capitalist world genuine love is revolutionary in itself. It then specifies what love means, what types of love exist, and what revolutionary love implies in theory and practice. The next section introduces the political cultures of loving revolution concept and applies it to the Indian independence movement led by Gandhi. The conclusion discusses how potential revolutionaries might benefit from my interpretation of love and revolution.