Book Review: Direct Action by David Graeber (original) (raw)
Related papers
Direct Action: An Ethnography by David Graeber
American Ethnologist, 2012
Anthropologists and Christian missionaries have shared a long history. They travel to similar places and occupy overlapping stages of the colonial enterprise. They share hardy personalities, indefatigable spirits, and, at times, even lodging. Margaret Meade, like many anthropologists before and afterward, boarded with missionaries during her research in Samoa. In my own work in Botswana, I have often found myself within hearing
Direct Action, Individualism and Democracy
kevingillan.info
Direct action (DA) is often considered to be a tactical approach to protest, utilised in the service of a wide range of causes. More recently, the notion that DA forms the basis of a radical social movement of itself has gained some currency (e.g. Doherty, Plows and Wall 2003). This paper argues that we should rather understand DA as an orientational frame: a structure of normative beliefs that can form a guide to understanding and action in a variety of contexts (Gillan 2008). Examining documentary sources on the British DA tradition and ethnographic data from recent instances of DA protest against globalisation and war, I identify the core beliefs that hold the DA frame together. Three elements in particular are identified. First, DA is based on a fundamental belief in individual freedom that motivates an evaluation of the individual moral culpability of both protest participants and their opponents. Second, DA groups have an attitude to decentralised, non-representative decision making that offers a particular understanding of democracy. Third, DA involves the re-imagining of political space as grassroots collective constructs free from systems of domination, that are consciously sought or created by DA groups. Exploration of these key ideational elements will offer two benefits. First, we will see how the interaction and translation of ideas within particular contexts shapes the possibilities and constraints that movement participants encounter. Second, this analysis opens up possibilities for comparison with (and critique from) more obviously ideological structures of belief.
Direct Action: The Invention of a Transnational Concept
International Review of Social History
Direct action" emerged as a central concept in labour-movement politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article traces and explains that process of invention. In doing so, it seeks to settle three currently unresolved historical problems: the problem of the meaning of direct action; the problem of its relative novelty; and the problem of its relationship to nation. The article draws upon pamphlets and newspapers published on four continents in English, French, Spanish, and German. It argues that the concept of direct action was used in several analytically distinguishable ways: categorical; performative; and strategic. While aspects of direct action were evident in many nations over several decades, French activists played a decisive and catalytic role in the development of the concept. They welded the categorical, performative, and strategic together. They assembled key performances into an agreed repertoire. And they underlined the revolutionary significance of this combination. This new assemblage was then widely taken up across the global labour movement. *Many thanks to Marcel van der Linden, Peter Beilharz, Iain McIntyre, and Jackie Dickenson for advice on an earlier draft and for encouragement. Thanks also to the IRSH: its anonymous referees, Editorial Committee, Editor Aad Blok and Editorial Assistant Marie-José Spreeuwenberg. This research is supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
Direct social action (DSA) is a form of collective actions that is structurally part of the repertoire of contention. Along with DSAs the literature (Bosi and Zamponi 2015) refers to forms of collective actions that do not primarily focus upon claiming something from the state or other power holders, but that instead focus upon directly transforming some specific aspects of society by means of the very action itself as part of everyday politics. What distinguishes these forms of collective action from volunteering is their political potential: DSAs include the purpose of directly seeking to challenge a social problem perceived as unfair. The concept of DSA brings together practices that are different from one another, such as solidarity actions, mutual-aid initiatives, political consumerism, alternative finance, social clinics, food cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, housing occupations, self-management, social kitchens, free legal advice, and medical services, to mention just a few. Despite being different, these practices are used for some common purposes: they are direct as they aim to have a nonmediated impact on their object, and they are social as they address society, or at least some parts of it, rather than the state. Different fields have approached the issue of practice-based and society-oriented forms of action with different purposes and in the context of different debates, including third sector, solidarity economy, economic activism, political consumerism and sustainable community movements, alternative forms of resilience, prefigurative politics, specifically in the anarchist and post-autonomous tradition, environmentalism, basismo in Latin America, lifestyle politics, commons, feminism and movement abeyance, active citizenship and social innovation, and mutual aid. The concept of DSA stands out on this background because of two main elements: first, it refers to a wide set of forms of action, as different from each other as petitioning and striking are in the context of claim-based collective action, while the aforementioned strands of social research focus in most cases on subsets of the phenomena we consider as DSAs; second, its organizing principle is based on the form collective action takes on, rather than focusing on the ideological background of the actors that chose this form of action, or on the meanings that are attached to it, or on the context in which it develops. Within the repertoire of contention, but different Social movement scholars have studied DSA as an outcome of a cycle of contention, as a way of coping with a decline in mobilization, as forms of collective action capable to promote pre-political prerequisites to political participation or in interaction with other forms of actions, whether moderate or radical ones. The study of DSA, among social movement scholars, has been revitalized during recent critical events, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the long summer of migration, climate change, or the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, when these forms of collective action have proliferated.
Teaching Nonviolent Direct Action -- A Syllabus
Module Description This course will examine the range of conceptual, practical, political and ethical issues involved in the use of nonviolent direct action through the examination of cases drawn from the international and national arenas. Particular attention is paid to Nonviolent Direct Action (NVA) as a systematic, strategic and assertive set of tools that have been, and can be, employed to pursue political objectives, from changes in laws to the overthrow of tyrannical regimes. The course is structured to prepare the student for the final assignment: A critical examination of a case in which non-violent tactics were used in an effort to achieve political objectives. Some of the questions animating the module are: How and why have nonviolent approaches worked (or not) in addressing indignity, exploitation, political oppression, social injustice and violations of human rights? Who are the leaders of nonviolent movements around the world and what inspired them to develop unconventional approaches in dealing with violence and oppression? How has thinking about non-violence action evolved over time, for example, the development of ‘pragmatic NVDA’ from ‘principled NVDA’? What are the methods and strategies employed by these leaders, and how do they work? Did such methods and techniques lead to social, political and environmental change? (Did they work? What indicators would you use to measure their success?) By completing this module, the student will: • understand the theory and practice of Non-Violent Direct action • be able to develop and apply the analytical tools necessary to understand and assess the success or failure of cases of non-violent action
Introduction: Birthing the Book [Introduction to the book Mindful Activism]
Mindful Activism: Autoethnographies of Social Justice Communication for Campus and Community Transformation, 2022
Mindful Activism's Introduction overviews the purposes and social justice underpinnings of the book, its (auto)ethnographic methodology and mode of representation, and the dialogic application of a transformative learning model (adapted from one David Kolb devised in the 1980s). The authors contextualize the project in scholarship on experiential learning, social justice education, liberation frameworks, feminisms, participant action research (PAR), and nonviolent resistance.