Outside the whale:
(re)thinking social movements and
the voluntary sector

Overheads

The full text of this paper is available here.

The context of this paper, or,
theorising theorising

activist theorising:

• embedded in specific structural relationships
• activism attempts to change these relationships through agency (which has an implicit or explicit theorising element)
• theorising attempts to explain (a) how this structure works, and (b) how "best practice" activism can change it
• therefore, produces certain types of theorising:

main strengths:

1. primacy of "self-understanding"
2. movements seen in their own terms
3. stresses fluidity and process

main weaknesses:

1. tendency to reproduce "accepted wisdom"
2. embedded in unreflected cultural constructs
3. limited conceptual armoury
4. tendency to be isolated from history

academic theorising:

• embedded in specific institutional relationships
• theorising attempts to explain (a) facets of movement activity and (b) create, or add to, a "field of knowledge"
• therefore, produces certain types of theorising:

main strengths:

1. broad conceptual armoury
2. potentially historical

main weaknesses:

1. tendency towards field stasis
2. embedded in unreflected institutional constructs
3. marginalisation of the actor's perspective

Inside the whale, or the view from academia

"Social movements" and "voluntary sector" subdisciplines:

• started from individualist economic rationalism
• proceeded to "syntheses" of incompatible theories
• insulated from wider theoretical debates
• have not felt need to engage with each other
• undergoing extensive processes of institutionalisation

This institutional process has intellectual results:

• definition of subject in terms of relationship to state
• construction of ahistorical fields
• taking for granted of overall social order as given
• exclusion of possibility for movements to change this
• lack of awareness of own presuppositions (examples)

Where does this process come from?

• state-centric point of view reproduces that of writers
• narrowing of "fields" follows academic fragmentation
• lack of theory minimises critical self-awareness
• literature is "opaque" to many activists
• hence academia comes to hold "expert" knowledge

Case study:
Irish working-class community politics

current available perspectives:

• historical: posits changes in state activity as defining
• typological: positions working class community activism on a state-oriented consensus/conflict spectrum
• empowerment: success analysed in terms of ability to influence the state
• sectoral: positions activism within "voluntary sector"; with an explicit orientation to (welfare) state needs

consequences:

• no account or theorisation of the "movement" itself
• unaware of the "hidden transcripts" of actors
• therefore, of no help to activists

indigenous theorising:

• stresses the sociality of movements i.e. as conflict between opposed social actors
• problematises concepts e.g. sees theory - and, by extension, the movement itself - as being in a state of constant flux
• needs are discovered through interaction, i.e. not as the property of individual actors, but as the product of social beings

What kind of theory might help activists?

Problematise the definition of the movement:

• ask how we define what we're trying to organise
• see movement boundaries as created in struggles
• identify potentials for development of movement

See "fields" as objects and products of struggle:

• movements try to reach beyond their current state
• fetishising current situation excludes transformation
• combine theories of structural power & social change

Offer principles to guide choices actors face:

• identify actors capable of making choices
• offer reasons likely to appeal to them

See actors as self-transforming in struggle:

• help actors understand own processes of development
• bridge organising and self-transformation

Be open to movement organisers:

• appropriate contexts, forms, distribution etc.
• abandonment of "expert" role in favour of dialogue
• provide open language for movement deliberations

A "political economy of labour"?

• movement participants, not state, as starting point
• political in terms of the development of a class
• human beings as social beings reaching beyond current situation

The full text of this paper is available here.