admin November 15th, 2009
So so busy and sad I have not had time to share here. Below you will find a recent reworking of the ‘radical perspective’ framework I have been working on, here adding in Mead and Berger and Luckmann. Pending comments from some colleagues, and here, it will likely be cleaned up and sent for publication consideration. I will also likely use some form of it for some course work as it is built from things I am learning and picking up here and there. I find that keeping a project like this under constant revision and refinement using things I come across ultimatley leads to a clearer conveyance of ideas.
Thoughts are, of course, much appreciated. (There are likely to be some formatting issues, bear with me)
Introduction
The argument presented here is aimed at addressing the growing call for a reinvigoration and reassessment of social movement literature, particularly in regards to its relationship with contemporary forms of Western radical activism and radical communities (Bevington and Dixon 2005; Cox and Nilsen 2007). The canonical theoretical approaches of social movement theory are largely ‘top-down’ views of the field of social action, including institution-political reductionism that sidelines the bulk of radical behavior, vague cultural approaches that reframe radicalism in terms of style or rigidly “objective” overviews of the movements themselves which prevent any understanding of activists own perceptions and worldview and, in some cases, risks replacing it with the perceptions of the observer.
The theoretical framework presented here is an attempt at a ‘bottom-up’ approach, one that takes the activist perspective as its foundation and can contextualize movement thought and action in terms of this worldview. It is important to state at the outset that there is not room here to fully develop a picture of this ‘radical perspective.’ However, in addition to personal familiarity with the field, there is a growing body of literature that is documenting the evolution of contemporary radical politics, past an early focus style and direct confrontation with political institutions, blossoming into a body of communities, organizations and institutions that appear deeply focused on developing lasting cultural, intellectual and social resources (cf. Jordan 2002; Halfacree 2004; Klein 2004; Augman 2005; Gordon 2007; Carlsson 2008; Spencer 2008; Spannos 2008; Ruggero 2009).
As I will show below, the work of Antonio Gramsci is a particularly useful starting point for engaging with this radical project of social change. However, in an effort to pull away from a ’simplistic’ relation of Gramsci’s ideas and a history of academic infighting, his work is situated alongside that of Max Weber. Taken together, Weber and Gramsci provide a broader picture of the encounter of socialism and modern sociology, yielding a particularly useful framework given our radical subject. Additionally, this framework is substantially bolstered with the incorporation of elements of George Herbert Mead’s and, subsequently, Herbert Blumer’s development of symbolic interactionism as well as facets of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman’s analysis of the sociology of knowledge found in The Social Construction of Reality.
A central goal here is to show that scholars need not recklessly abandon their rich intellectual resources; instead, it is more helpful to draw on them in a flexible way that incorporates the observed reality of radical communities within its wider social and cultural narrative, as told by the actors themselves. In short, the analytical framework used to study these movements and communities should seek to integrate these actors’ worldview in order to better understand their form, actions and goals.
Failure of Social Movement Theory
There should be little doubt that contemporary social movement theory and contemporary Western radical social movements suffer a dysfunctional relationship. However, given that this relationship was initially forged in the tumultuous post-Soviet era, it is not surprising there is chaos and disconnect. On one hand, political and social theorists, largely caught off-guard by the events of 1989, suddenly had half a continent’s worth of social systems to observe and they were keen to develop frameworks for understanding what was happening in the East. Meanwhile, radical communities throughout the West were making their first appearances in the form now generally subsumed under the antiglobalization label.
The fact that this movement of movements (MM) spent a great deal of energy in its early career distancing itself from the 1960s and 70s is a telling example of this emerging dysfunctionality. McAdam, Sampson, Weffer, and MacIndoe (2005) write, “The movements of the 1960s and 1970s greatly increased interest in the [social movement] field but their own particular forms and processes have tended to dominate contemporary social movement scholarship and theory,” noting a “close association in the minds of most researchers between movements and extreme forms of protest” (McAdam et al., 2005: 2;9). Consequently, though the movements evolved, megaprotests became a central empirical focus in the study of new transnational activism, ignoring the changing reality of actor/activist experience, handling them with the theoretical and methodological practices of the past.
Mainstream approaches generally only tweaked old models or forced a ‘fit’ with established theories. Early literature frequently homogenized the MM, sidelining its constituent submovements and communities; they were seen as peripheral, tangential to a more formal ‘movement’ that made headlines in Seattle; of course, there is no such static movement form.
Instead of listening to activists, the literature has approached the subject of movement formation and behavior not from the perspective of the movements themselves, but from canonical perspectives, deaf to what the movements are actually saying and doing. These failing perspectives can be loosely divided into two forms, based on the foundational perspectives that inform the work: 1) statist approaches and 2) cultural approaches. The internal problems with each of these will be briefly discussed, followed by an attempt to reconcile the issues found within them and, additionally, incorporating other theoretical tools with the goal of developing a truly adequate and engaged framework for approaching the study of the movement of movements.
Forms of Failure: Culturalist
The ‘cultural’ approach to the MM has emerged as a curious milieu of British cultural studies, ‘movement as performace’ perspectives, soft network analysis, lifestyle and identity politics, and, most problematically, somewhat thin overviews of particular portions of the movements landscape, which are linked to traditional theory at the last moment (cf. Day 2005; Goodwin and Jasper 2004; Jasper 1997; Johnston and Klandermans 1995; McKay 1996 and more). As Cox and Nilsen note in their excellent critique of the discipline as a whole, approaches in this vein have all too often treated these movements and communities as simply “one lifestyle among many in postmodern capitalism” or, more frequently, drowned the movements in so much relativism so as to produce “an unsatisfyingly vague theory of everything” (Cox and Nilsen 2007, 430).
The problem is that these approaches spend too much time looking in, rather than attempting to stand in the movements’ shoes, looking out. Despite efforts to speak to the movement perspective, such work frequently constructs this perspective from the outside, using tools and words alien to activist and community experience. It remains external, a top-down analysis that attempts to categorize according to academic directives as opposed to those dictated by reality.
Forms of Failure: Statist
On the other hand, the institutional-political reductionism of statist approaches tend to view movements as occupants of a particular level of the political system. This top-down approach frequently makes a priori assumptions about the irrelevance of movements’ creation of and participation in long-lasting social institutions.
For example, consider the massive body of ‘civil society’ literature produced during its ‘revival’ over the last decade or so. Those theories that purport to engage with contemporary radical activism generally either use MM examples to justify old models or use the concept to ‘dress up’ what are little more than overviews of the most easily observable movement behavior (see especially Kaldor et al. 2007; 2005; Kaldor 2003). Thus, despite populist undertones, the familiar call for a theory of global civil society that envisions a system of governance based on consent, one that is ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top-down,’ composed of “transnational autonomous association and institutions,” maintains a tradition of focus on statist, that is government, institutions:
…civil society thus consists of those groups and organizations through which individuals can influence and put pressure on the centers of political and economic authority, in particular through which they negotiate new social contracts or bargains at a global level.
(Kaldor, 2003: 143;146)
Again, the term’s statist bias remains because it is inherently a top-down theoretical perspective. There is an implicit assumption that citizens and movements can or wish to address ‘centers of political and economic authority.’ Further, any activity that does not engage with those ‘centers of political and economic authority’ falls through the cracks and remains, in a way, invisible. It is only one example, but the Civil Society case is illustrative of the discipline’s problems because of the sweeping nature of the concept itself.
Both the culturalist and statist approaches fail to engage with the MM, and Western radicalism more generally, because they remain tied to the directives of the discipline. It has been unable to understand or accept what Cox and Nilsen call “the most basic point of activist theorising” (Cox and Nilsen 2007, 430). Namely, that our social, political and economic reality is a social choice, not a fact; it is not immutable and is subject to challenge. In other words, the literature is unable to theorize the MM’s contention that ‘another world is possible.’
This is an admittedly shallow overview of the literature-activism disconnect; however, there is no room here to fully detail the problem and, more importantly, to do justice to the growing body of scholarship that is transforming what was once a somewhat polemic critique into a workable methodological agenda (cf. Bevington and Dixon 2005; Cox and Nilsen 2007; Flacks 2004; McAdam et al., 2005; Halfacree 2004; Gordon 2007). That said, one important point should be drawn from the criticism above: the need to develop theory that is truly ‘bottom-up,’ taking as its foundation the radical/activist perspective, as opposed to relying on the ‘top-down’ traditions. In order to understand the most basic point of activist theorizing, that another world is possible, it is necessary to attempt to see the world through activists’ eyes.
Synthesis
Though the above suggests social movement literature needs to take activist and community perspectives as a foundation and guide for study, this is not to imply letting go of the discipline entirely. Indeed, there is a disturbing thematic trend of endless renouncement in the literature surrounding the MM, both academic and non; however, these calls for something new and forward looking are frequently constructed only of critiques of the past, deepening divisiveness and encouraging partisan debates largely irrelevant to the goal of engaged social movement scholarship.
An important and instructive example is found in Richard Day’s Gramsci is Dead (2005), in which he asserts the source of the problems discussed above lies with the dominance of the concept of hegemony within contemporary marxist and liberal discourses. This ‘hegemony of hegemony,’ as he puts it, “deeply conditions our present understandings and possibilities” (Day, 2005: 13). The newest activist practices are not aimed at taking state or corporate power and, Day argues, cannot be understood within the hegemony paradigm.
Day is not wrong in this statement. Unfortunately, Day’s use of Gramsci to represent hegemony discourse on the whole obscures the history of scholars’ misreading of Gramsci and, consequently, the actual nature of his core ideas. An issue common with renouncement literature, it is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Indeed, Day’s argument is, essentially, a Gramscian one. In the first paragraph of a chapter titled “Doing it Yourself”, Day posits that contemporary radical activism employs an “array of non-hegemonic tactics” including:
…dropping out of existing institutions, subversion of existing institutions…impeding existing institutions…prefiguring alternatives to existing institutions…and construction of alternatives to existing forms
(Day, 2005:19; emphasis in original)
As I will show below, this approach to radical social change is, in fact, modeled in Gramsci’s work. Like so much social movement literature, Day has perpetuated a top-down approach to analysis, whereby outside-in observation of movement behavior is used to evaluate established theory. To claim that ‘Gramsci is dead’ because these movements do not wish to influence or take state power ignores the other half of the equation: the collective behavior of elites. If we instead take a bottom-up analysis, guided by activists’ perceptions, we find that Gramsci provides a fruitful starting point for the (re)construction of a theoretical framework that analyzes these movements and communities in terms of the targets of their ire, the logic of their action and, most importantly, their understanding of how social change happens.
To get at those elements of Gramsci’s work that best reflect radical practice and perspective, we must slice through the maze of Gramscian discourse. The application of loaded phrases brings a history of academic arguments and risks a loss of focus. “Rather than simplistically believing Gramsci has the answers or holds the key to different historical and contemporary problems,” Adam David Morton argues, stress should be placed on “the importance of thinking in a Gramscian way” (Morton, 2007:35). The aim here is to internalize his method, adding to and modifying it as necessary, so as to approach the issue of contemporary radical communities in an engaged way. This means shaking off compromised terms, rebuilding and reclaiming them with the radical subject in mind. In short, we must start over. We do not have to reinvent the wheel, but we cannot begin with the car.
Appropriating Tools for Theory (Re)development
I introduce Gramsci’s writing with the understanding that his work should be reexamined in order to develop “a point of departure to deal with similar problematics in our own time” (Morton, 2007:36). The focus here will be on those portions of Gramsci’s thought most relevant to contemporary radical communities and those most commonly rendered in radical-produced theory: Hegemony, Domination, Civil Society and the State.
Further, in an effort to pull away from a ’simplistic’ relation of Gramsci’s ideas, his work is situated alongside that of Max Weber. Taken together, Weber and Gramsci provide a broader picture of the encounter of socialism and modern sociology, yielding a particularly useful framework given our radical subject. Additionally, this framework is substantially bolstered with the incorporation of elements of George Herbert Mead’s and, subsequently, Herbert Blumer’s development of symbolic interactionism as well as facets of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman’s analysis of the sociology of knowledge found in The Social Construction of Reality.
As noted above, one goal here is to show that scholars need not recklessly abandon their rich intellectual resources; instead, it is more helpful to draw on them in a flexible way that incorporates the observed reality of radical communities within its wider social and cultural narrative, as told by the actors themselves. In short, the analytical framework used to study these movements and communities should seek to integrate these actors’ world-view in order to better understand their form, actions and goals.
Gramsci and Weber: Isolated Contemporaries
The connections between Gramsci’s words and the writings of Max Weber has interested a number of scholars, most notably Carl Levy. He notes that while there is room for comparison of the main themes found in Gramsci’s and Weber’s political and scientific writings, the assertion that “a good deal of the political reflections found in the Prison Notebooks were characterized by explicit or implicit, specific or generic references to Max Weber…is greatly exaggerated” (Levy, 1987:382).
Of course, there remains the question of the extent of Gramsci’s knowledge of Weber’s work before and during his imprisonment. Gramsci was fully aquatinted with Weber’s Parliament and Government before prison; in work completed in 1922, Gramsci had “translated Weber’s example of Junker domination and distortion of the prewar German state into its Italian equivalent” (Levy, 1987:388). In the Notebooks, Gramsci uses three Weberian texts:
Parliament and Government (1919), not available in prison but quoted from memory on several occasions; passages from Economy and Society, transmitted via an article by Robert Michels…and The Protestant Ethic, available via an Italian serialization in 1931-32
(Levy, 1987: 389)
Levy also notes that Gramsci had access to a number of Robert Michels’ works while in prison. Michels had been a student of Weber and taught at the University of Turin while Gramsci attended.
Though Weber is only referenced directly in five passages of the Notebooks, Weberian concepts appear throughout the texts without direct reference. Consequently, I will draw on a number of Weber’s texts to produce a sort of distilled Weberian viewpoint to mesh with Gramsci. Of interest here are: 1) the similarities of Weber and Gramsci’s discussions of the state and domination and 2) the intersections of Weber’s analysis of the Protestant sects in America and Gramsci’s view of culture in the development of hegemony and counter-hegemony.
State, Domination, Hegemony
Weber’s definition of the state is presented quite clearly in Politics as a Vocation. He views the state as a type of political association. It is the modern form in a historical progression and “[l]ike the political institutions historically preceding it, the state is a relation of men dominating men…” (Weber, 1946: 78). Thus, individual forms of political association are defined less by their ‘ends’ – commonly, domination – than by the ‘means’ they employ.
The ‘means’ to domination are the forms of power exercised in order to overcome the resistance of another. Appealing to the self-interest of resisters, getting the resistance to willingly submit (legitimation) and the use of sheer physical force (i.e violence) are all examples. Domination, though, is never a settled position. In Weber’s view, political associations must continually interface with the dominated through these power relations to maintain the authority they claim. Further, legitimation is the key prop for a system of domination; when subordinates believe in the legitimacy of their own subordination, the need to resort to violence, threat, or bribe is significantly reduced.
But why, Weber asks, does domination persist? “When and why do men obey? Upon what inner justifications and upon what external means does this domination rest” (Weber, 1946:78). He describes three basic ‘inner justifications’ or ways of legitimizing domination: Charismatic, Traditional and Legal.
Charismatic legitimation rests on the personal charisma of a leader. “Men do not obey him by virture of tradition or statute, but because they believe in him” (Weber, 1946:79; Weber, 1946:295). Legitimacy built on tradition appeals to the notion of the ‘eternal yesterday,’ as Weber puts it. The accumulated precedent of a particular form of political association lends credence to its legitimacy simply by virtue of its age and routine. This form of domination appeals to the “belief in the everyday routine as an inviolable norm of conduct” (Weber, 1946:296).
Legal legitimacy rests on the accepted validity of a particular set of rules. The modern state relies primarily on legal rationality for its legitimacy (though it can and has mixed other forms). In this sense, for example, the state develops a set of rules for the appropriate and accepted use of violence, as in the social contract surrounding the conduct of the police. Thus, the state becomes the “sole source of the right to use violence” (Weber, 1946:78).
It is possible to find similar themes in Gramsci’s work. In his sixth notebook, Gramsci makes clear his theory of the state:
For it should be noted that certain elements that fall under the general notion of the state must be restored to the notion of civil society (in the sense, one might say, that state = political society + civil society, that is, hegemony protected by the armor of coercion)
(Gramsci, 2007:75)
Immediately we can see that Gramsci, like Weber, understands the state as more than the common (and more narrow) definition of the state as government. From a Weberian and Gramscian perspective, the state is a complex of social relations, a particular social order that represents the domination of a particular social group over others. Here we might draw on Mead’s argument that the social institutions of a society do not represent immutable facts, but “common response[s] on the part of all member of the community to a particular situation” (Blumer, 1966: 535; Mead, 1934: 249). Indeed, the organization of society depends on the development of these common responses, it is what makes the community possible. It is also possible to think of the Weber-Gramsci state concept as analogous to Berger and Luckmann’s notion of an ‘institution.’ They describe an institution as the product of “reciprocal typification of habitualized actions” by actors (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 54). Here, the particular social order represented in ’state’ can be described as the shared typification of the “normal” functioning of modern societies by the members of that society.
Of course, this is a very broad conceptualization; however, it is purposively so. Not only does it enable us to remain theoretically flexible at this pre-empirical stage, but it also reflects the perceptions of radicals. The notion that ‘another world is possible’ is similarly broad because it is attempting to incorporate the many smaller institutions and mechanisms through which power operates. Indeed, if we understand the state as an institution, we must also accept that, as radicals and activists claim, the state-institution controls behavior “by setting up predefined pattern of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would theoretically be possible” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 55).
But again, ‘why do men obey?’ Berger and Luckmann note that the controlling aspect of an institution exists on two levels. First, and most importantly, it is inherent to the process of institutionalization; here, we might interpret this to mean actors’ perceptions of the array and order of social relations in the term ’state’ as ‘normal.’ Secondly, institutions may also develop ‘additional control mechanisms’ that are specifically designed to support or protect the institution (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 55).
If we turn back to Gramsci, his discussions of the means by which dominance is maintained echoes both Weber’s three-fold power array (appealing to self interest, violence and willing submission or legitimation) and the two-fold mechanisms of institutional control seen in Berger and Luckmann.
Gramsci theorized that dominant groups maintain their position through a mix of sheer force (coercion through political society) and, more importantly, with the active participation of the subordinate groups (consent through hegemony in civil society).
The use of coercion in the process of domination is the domain of what he calls ‘political society,’ meaning “the armed forces, police, law courts and prisons, together with all the administrative departments concerning taxation finance, trade, industry, social security, etc.” (Simon, 1990:71). In Gramsci’s view, however, these are only a portion of the state’s domination framework. Indeed, the role of political society, the “apparatus of state coercive power,” is to enforce “discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’” (Gramsci, 2003:12). The state, or dominant group, only turns to coercive tactics if efforts to manufacture consent fail. Similarly, Berger and Luckmann note that “outright coercive measures can be applied economically and selectively” when “socialization into the institutions has been effective” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 62).
Consent to domination, the second portion of Gramsci’s formula of power and similar to Weber’s notion of legitimacy, is developed within civil society. Gramsci refers to the realization of consent to domination through civil society as hegemony, a social order where “a common social-moral language is spoken, in which one concept of reality is dominant, informing with its spirit all modes of thought and behaviour” (Femia, 1981:24). Hegemony, however, is not simply achieved through the alignment of the free choices of subordinate groups. Consent is actively manufactured within civil society; hegemony is pursued through “extremely complex mediums, diverse institutions, and constantly changing processes” (Buttigieg, 1995:7). “Through their presence and participation in various institutions, cultural activities, and many other forms of social interaction, the dominant classes ‘lead’ the society in certain directions” (Buttigieg, 2005:44). Hegemony operates through the social institutions of civil society: the church, the educational system, the press, all the bodies which help create in people certain modes of behaviour and expectations consistent with the hegemonic social order.
Additionally, the power and influence of hegemony (as opposed to more coercive forms of control) strengthens exponentially over time. Through the continued control of social institutions between successive generations, consent to domination benefits from the inherited perceptions of ‘normalcy.’ In Berger and Luckmann’s terms, as the social order developed and maintained by dominant groups persists, it gains strength as it’s relative objectivity ‘hardens.’ The social order of the state-institution comes to be experienced by individuals as an objective reality:
The institutions are there, external to him, persistent in their reality, whether he likes it or not. He cannot wish them away. They resist his attempts to change or evade them. They have coercive power over him…He may experience large sectors of the social world as incomprehensible, perhaps oppressive in their opaqueness, but real nonetheless.
(Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 60) The ultimate goal of hegemonic power is the attainment of such perceived objectivity. Consequently, we must recognize the collective actions of elites as part of a process of reflexive action aimed at developing this ‘hardened’ position in the minds of the subordinate. This implies a process of ongoing modification and evolution of the mechanisms of domination; it requires dominant groups to remain responsive to the actions of the subordinate in order to consistently expand and universalize its control. Similarly, Mead argued that the successful organization of a community is directly linked to the degree to which that organizational force “is universal and makes possible a bigger community” (Mead, 1934: 255). Mead offers, for example, that Jesus’ gospel of neighborliness was an attitude which could appeal to anyone, giving it an element of universality that provided a foundation for its development as a universal religion.
Thus, we can say that dominant groups interpret the actions of the subordinate and respond accordingly, engaging in a process of ‘give and take,’ necessarily ceding to demands or accepting behavior that does not directly threaten their dominance. It is this element of the symbolic interaction of dominant and subordinate that helps to maintain a certain ‘base level’ of universality. By picking their battles, dominant groups effectively mask the sources of their power, further aligning the subordinate’s perception of themselves with the dominant group’s hegemonic characterization of what is ‘normal.’
Consequently, empirically speaking, the social institutions through which domination is secured can and will vary between different societies and different times, as will the delineation between mechanisms of consent and coercion. For example, recalling Weber’s notion of the ‘right to violence,’ the police and courts – organs of coercion – operate with a high level of consent in many societies today. Indeed, in modern democracies, the overt use of force by the government has given way to more subtle forms of coercion. Buttigieg alludes to this in his discussion on the US-led War on Terror:
In the United States, both in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the buildup to the Iraq War, the Bush administration did not arrest anyone who opposed its interpretation of events, nor did it shut down any newspaper, television network, or radio station that questioned its views and policies. Instead, it invoked patriotism, national security, and the obligation to support ‘‘our troops,’’ and, then, left it to the most influential institutions of civil society to bring the overwhelming majority of the citizenry into line and to marginalize the dissenters through a campaign of vilification.
(Buttigieg, 2005:46)
In sum, the ‘consent-coercion’ process of creating ‘inner justifications’ for domination described above is primarily one of articulation, whereby dominant groups articulate their particular form of desired social order through an ongoing process of symbolic interaction. Dominant groups use a combination of consent and coercion to signal and induce the desired behavior. Dominant groups ‘lead’ a society by way of the educative mechanisms of consent, signaling appropriate behavior, organizing individual expectations and defining the parameters of ‘normal’ society. Coercion, similarly, signals deviation from a dominant group’s desired ‘norm,’ not only impacting the behavior of the coerced, but the rest of society as well.
The framework of domination presented thus far speaks to activists’ perceptions of the collective actions of elites, a a seriously under-theorized perspective. Of course, this is only one side of the equation; the framework must build on these observations in order to theorize the ‘hidden’ forms of and rationale for the collective action of radicals and activists, essentially, alternative articulations of social order. Continuing with the Weber-Gramsci foundation, this next step draws on Weber’s discussions of religion in The Protestant Sects and Gramsci’s development of the practice of counter-hegemony, again using Mead, Blumer, and Berger and Luckmann to strengthen the framework’s correspondence with and relevance for the radical-activist perspective.
Common Sense, Culture, and Counter-Hegemony
In Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber discusses how religious affiliations and organizations in early America formed an integral social function within society and “the question of religious affiliation was almost always posed in social life and in business life” (Weber, 1946:303). Indeed, sect membership carried with it access to a host of social, business and, by extension, political opportunities. Once recognized by others as an upstanding and reputable individual (confirmed by membership), new avenues for credit, business opportunities and support in times of trouble are opened. Conversely, Weber notes, “expulsion from one’s sect for moral offenses has meant, economically, loss of credit and, socially, being declassed” (Weber, 1946:306).
Consequently, sect memberships served as “vehicles of social ascent into the circle of the entrepreneurial middle class. They served to diffuse and to maintain the bourgeois capitalist ethos among the broad strata of the middle class” (Weber 1946:308). Here we see the Protestant sects as conduits for instilling capitalist values amongst a wide base of American society. Sect member’s interactions with non-members and a secular institutions managed to spread these values far beyond religious communities. Over time, they became established as tenets of ‘good business’ or even ‘good Americanism,’ shaping the practices of the religious and non-religious alike, infusing themselves into the institutions of political and civil society. Indeed, Weber notes that without diffusion and maintenance of these principles through religious communities, “…capitalism today, even in America, would not be what it is” (Weber, 1946:309).
If we now approach Weber’s examination of religious communities through Berger and Luckmann’s ‘institution’ lens, we can understand the ‘goodness’ principles of the religious communities as a particular form of ‘knowledge’ about social order. This knowledge is what motivates institutional conduct, defines the boundaries of its action, and controls conduct both within its own domain and at the borders. Importantly, Berger and Luckmann note, such knowledge exists at the ‘pretheoretical’ level: “It is the sum total of ‘what everybody knows’ about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so forth…” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 65).
This analysis of collective institutional knowledge about social order is very similar to Gramsci’s notion of the ‘common sense’ of a particular social grouping, or culture. This use of term ‘culture’ can be understood as analogous to the use of ’social group,’ ‘communities,’ or ‘a society’ above. Here, ‘culture’ allows us more flexibility to capture the subtle variations among the individuals and sub-groups within these higher-level terms. Thus, a culture is defined largely by the nature of it’s shared institutional knowledge, which it imparts to it’s members; in Gramsci’s words, “In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social elements which share the same mode of thinking and acting” (Gramsci, 2003:324). This shared mode of thinking is the culture’s ‘common sense,’ not in the familiar English sense of the term but, instead, as shared conception of the social order; in Gramsci’s words:
Every philosophical current leaves behind a sedimentation of ‘common sense’…[it is] the folklore of philosophy, and is always half-way between folklore properly speaking and the philosophy, science and economics of the specialists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, that is as a relatively rigid phase of popular knowledge at a given place and time.
(Gramsci, 1949: 144)
The shared knowledge within a culture is the wellspring from which the rationale and validation for innumerable institutions and practices flows. Like ripples in water, the existence, structure and behavior of the myriad facets of political and civil society can be traced back to this cultural knowledge.
Again, ‘culture’ does not indicate any particular group of values and norms. While it is possible to speak of a dominant culture, it is by no means the only culture within a society or even the only culture to which an individual belongs. Though the dominant culture seeks universality, it is only with regards to those elements of the social order seen as important for maintaining dominance. In most modern cases, this revolves around the social relations of production and consumption and political power. However, for example, in a primitive theocratic society, these elements would revolve around issues of the divine. So, in modern liberal democracies, dominant groups do not (generally) concern themselves with the collective institutional knowledge (‘common sense’) of various subordinate religious cultures. That is, unless, this subordinate common sense is perceived as a direct challenge to the dominant common sense, for example, in the case of anti-Catholicism in early America.
Further, internally, cultures themselves are fluid, arenas where “dominant, subordinate and oppositional cultural values meet and intermingle…vying with one another to secure the spaces within which they can [frame and organize] popular experience and consciousness” (Bennett, 1986:xix). It is important to understand this view of culture and knowledge as we begin to discuss Gramsci’s ideas about social change.
Gramsci conceived of two methods for challenging domination: a ‘war of maneuver’ and a ‘war of position,’ best understood as points on a continuum rather than mutually exclusive options. A ‘war of maneuver’ involves physically overwhelming the coercive apparatus of the state. However, the success of this strategy depends on the nature of the state’s hegemony, that is, its position within civil society. In a comparison of the state in Czarist Russia with that in liberal democracies (referred to as the East and the West respectively), Gramsci notes that the strength of the latter lies in a sturdy civil society [here Gramsci uses the term State to mean government, or political society, as opposed to his more broad definition used elsewhere and throughout this text (i.e. State= political society + civil society)]:
In the East the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the state tottered, a sturdy structure of civil society was immediately revealed. The State was just a forward trench; behind it stood a succession of sturdy fortresses and emplacements.
(Gramsci, 2007:169)
In modern liberal democracies, direct confrontation (armed uprising, general strike, etc.) will not threaten the dominant groups so long as their credibility and authority is firmly rooted in civil society. Buttigieg notes, “civil society, in other words, far from being a threat to political society in a liberal democracy, reinforces it—this is the fundamental meaning of hegemony” (Buttigieg, 2005:41).
However, Gramsci does not give up on the notion of radical change in liberal democracies; he was a writer principally focused on a radical transformation of capitalist society. Described by Gramsci as “the only viable possibility in the West,” a ‘war of position’ is resistance to domination with culture, rather than physical might, as its foundation (Gramsci, 2007:168). Cox succinctly describes a ‘war of position’ as process which “slowly builds up the strength of the social foundations of a new state” by “creating alternative institutions and alternative intellectual resources within existing society” (Cox, 1983:165). For Gramsci, the common sense of a culture is what lies at the heart of any revolutionary project, it is “how class is lived,” it shapes how people see their world and how they maneuver within in it and, more importantly, “it shapes their ability to imagine how it might be changed, and wether they see such changes as feasible or desirable” (Crehan, 2002:71).
Thus, the complex program of radical social change in a modern liberal democracy, as suggested by Gramsci, involves more than anything, developing a strong and dynamic culture capable of establishing the necessary institutions for a subversion of hegemony. Gramsci notes that it must be born of a popular, mass culture in order to create the shared vision necessary for challenging hegemony:
An historical act can only be performed by ‘collective man’, and this presupposes the attainment of a ‘cultural-social’ unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills, with heterogeneous aims, are welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception of the world, both general and particular, operating in transitory bursts (in emotional ways) or permanently (where the intellectual base is so well rooted, assimilated and experienced that it becomes passion).
(Gramsci, 2003:349)
Internalizing the Framework, Incorporating Radical Perspectives
Weber’s theories of power and their appearance in his analysis of the Protestant sects in America support and, perhaps, influenced Gramsci’s thinking. Gramsci appears to accept the Weberian view of the role of violence in domination, incorporating it into one side of his ’state = political society + civil society’ formula while recognizing that violence is not the most important source of power in domination. Gramsci also appears to adopt a Weberian view of culture as a means of social consolidation, encouraging a sense of solidarity, through a shared institutional knowledge, among “all those who think of themselves as being the specific ‘partners’ of a specific ‘culture’ diffused among the members of the polity” (Weber, 1946: 172).
However, Gramsci improves upon Weber in many ways. While Weber clearly understood the central importance of domination’s perceived legitimacy, Gramsci’s exploration of the role of culture in creating hegemony is in many ways a more nuanced examination of the sources of legitimacy. Gramsci’s hegemony speaks to the way in which domination is continually legitimized and reproduced through myriad individual acts.
That said, the Gramsci-Weber framework calls out for better elaboration of the specific mechanics of domination (and resistance), particularly at the level of the individual. Mead and Blumer help to step ‘behind the eyes’ of both the dominators and the dominated, understanding their respective collective actions in terms of their perceptions of the field of action, that is, in terms of their worldview. This is important not only because it moves away from the top-down theoretical approaches that have proved unhelpful, but it also forces us to recognize the dynamic and reflexive nature of dominator-dominated relationships.
Berger and Luckmann help explain how these relationships become cemented over time, taking on a perceived objective reality in the minds of those involved. A key part of the cementing process is the development of a common stock of knowledge regarding the prevailing social order; this knowledge is passed between generations, ensuring future stability of the ‘hegemonic social order’ institution as the knowledge itself becomes an objective reality. It is this objectified institutional knowledge that Gramsci described as the ’sturdy fortresses and emplacements’ of civil society, buttressing the more vulnerable institutions of political society.
Indeed, this framework argues that, in modern liberal democracies, power is maintained primarily through hegemony. While coercive tactics can be useful, domination is insured by hegemony within civil society.
This leads one to question how domination built on hegemony can be resisted and countered. The foundations for a radical project of social change informed by the Gramscian perspective are: 1) identifying relationships between particular social problems and the hegemonic value system and 2) identifying the mechanisms by which the hegemonic value system masks its relation to those problems, insinuates itself into the minds of the subordinate, and creates behavior that reenforces its primacy. This careful analysis is vital in order to accurately design an appropriate cultural response, that is, a deliberate and shrewd articulation of an alternative institutional knowledge based upon an alternative system of values and norms, subsequently expressed through alternative social institutions and intellectual resources, aimed at dismantling hegemony by subverting it. This is counter-hegemony.
Directions for Future Work
I have argued here that the theoretical framework presented above provides a more powerful starting point for the study of contemporary radical activists and communities. By taking a bottom-up approach that aims to conceptualize radicals’ worldview and perceptions of the mechanics of power, this theoretical stance may offer a more engaged tool to explore their actions, forms and goals.
Of course, this must be tested. Further work with this framework should compare it with the words and practices of activists, ideally, as described by the activists themselves. Notable points for comparison will be: perceptions of power structures on a grand scale, subtle mechanisms of social control, power and control across cultures, appropriate responses and the concept of counter-hegemony.
Based on previous and ongoing research, this framework seems to provide an accurate theoretical conception of radicals’ worldview, as indicated by their analyses of reigning power structures and the stated rationale for myriad forms of daily activism. Further, the framework’s ‘common sense’ aspects appear useful for historicizing the movements as part of a larger progression of radical politics and culture, revealing the connection between in 19th century anarchism and 21st century Punk, for example.
In sum, the theory and practice of contemporary radical communities reflects a Gramscian approach to understanding and subverting power. Further, the movements’ manifest behavior appears deeply focused on developing lasting cultural resources. The articulation of contemporary radical politics has evolved its early focus on style, moved past a primary focus on direct confrontation with political society, and has blossomed into a body of communities, organizations and institutions that closely mirror Gramsci’s culturally thick, passion-infused, counter-hegemonic base. An internalized radical culture – a ‘common sense’ – has served as a foundation for these alternative social and intellectual resources that, in many cases, explicitly aim to replace their hegemonic counterparts in the lives of community members. Further, this process has seen the refinement of intellectual resources as well; the culture is getting better at expressing its ‘common sense’ not only to ‘outsiders’ but back on itself as well (Jordan 2002; Halfacree 2004; Klein 2004; Augman 2005; Gordon 2007; Spencer 2008; Ruggero 2009).
In closing, it seems important to ask, if the theoretical perspective presented here seems consistent with both the theory produced by radical communities and the actualization of those ideas, how does this impact analysis? What sort of tools does this perspective suggest may be appropriate for analyzing contemporary radical communities? In the most basic sense, we can say that scholars should reconsider their approach to the actions, goals and form of contemporary radical movements and communities as follows:
1) Actions: Given that movements may not see spectacular protest or other easily quantified activities as important tools for change, researchers cannot only rely on counting events and numbers of participants. Instead, they must look for those mechanisms and institutions that articulate and reenforce the culture’s ‘common sense,’ and those that serve as counter-hegemonic alternatives to institutions radicals wish to emancipate themselves from.
2) Goals: While few scholars have suggested legislative victories, closed conferences, or police mobilizations as useful measurements, there also have been few discussions of how these movements gauge ‘victory.’ This framework suggests looking at lifestyle changes and altered normative assumptions as examples of the influence of an internalized counter-hegemonic ‘common sense.’
3) Form: Just as quantified protest events tell us little about the movements’ internal characteristics, the dissection of protest events is similarly confusing. All that can be confidently stated about those present in Seattle or Genoa is that they showed up; this is a complex body of communities and movements and aggregating labels have only made it harder for scholars to see that. The importance of ‘cultural-social unity’ suggested by the Gramscian framework points to networks and relational ties as more useful tools in exploring form.
Hopefully, these new perspectives and directions for research can bring social movement scholarship closer to understanding the activist assertion that ‘another world is possible’ and, more importantly, shed light on the vastly understudied realm of everyday activism.
