Category: Uncategorized
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Your relentless political Facebook posts…
Haha. For more on this topic, read: Activists Caught in the Filter Bubble.
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more geeking out about floating signifiers
I’m reading Dynamics of Contention by Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. I’ll be posting some notes as I digest it over the next few days. It’s been interesting to see different language for some of the same concepts—or at least overlapping concepts—that I’ve been working on, influenced by many others of course. I…
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A theory of political behavior (pt.4: imagined communities & populist alignment)
Modern society significantly complicates the group-oriented identity framework I’ve been discussing (in parts one, two, and three). Most of us juggle multiple roles in multiple spheres, each of which holds a degree of our individual identity. The temptation is to then look at identity as a predominantly individual matter. But each sphere of an individual’s…
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A theory of political behavior (pt.3: political dimension of group identity)
Continuing from part 2… Values Where do values fit into this picture? Do I not construct my identity according to the values that I hold? This can certainly be the case, but those values are constructed by my identification and experiences with some group in the first place. As with identity, we may benefit by…
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A theory of political behavior (pt.2: evolutionary logic of identity)
Picking up where I left off in part 1, the next axiom: identity serves an evolved, group-benefiting function. I am well aware that examining an evolutionary framework to explain behavior is something that not everyone is comfortable with. Indeed, it has provoked pushback from some of my cultural studies friends and advisors (but encouragement from…
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A theory of political behavior (pt.1)
Why explore political behavior? To inform my own organizing practice, I have been working toward a more explicit theory of political behavior, which this post will begin to lay out. Leading up to this exploration, last week I discussed some of my philosophy of social science, mostly asserting my embrace of a multiply-determined reality with…
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What’s wrong with activism?
Originally published at BeyondtheChoir.org. Over the years I have often been asked how I became an activist. The question of how individuals as individuals become involved in social change movements, fascinating as it may seem, can carry equally fascinating assumptions about activism itself. It may imply a voluntary and self-selecting enterprise, an extracurricular activity, a…
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How do we mobilize society to stop global warming?
I just read Bill McKibben’s terrifying new article in Rolling Stone. I won’t recount the math here, but it’s enough to get anyone working on social issues (as I do) to question their priorities. Clearly, we need a massive social effort to confront the power of the fossil fuel industry — and we need it…
Jonathan Matthew Smucker 