Paper short abstract:

Social activism has been traditionally studied either by scholars of civil society, concerned typically with NGOs and associations, or those focusing on protest movements. This paper looks at non-radical, everyday, activism performed by individuals, often outside any formal, or informal structures.

Paper long abstract:

The word 'activism' has been traditionally used, on the one hand, in studies concerned with social movements/popular protest, and on the other hand, in those focusing on 'civil society' understood in a myriad of ways. This paper aims to re-connect the two uses/understandings by following personal stories and choices of those engaged, those not-engaged and those 'engaged-differently'. In particular, it looks at forms of activism which are hard to notice because they seek neither financial support nor recognition, which aim at creating counter-spaces and counter-practices in discreet and often slow ways.

The paper scrutinises everyday, discreet, acts of citizenship (as defined by Isin, 2008), endeavours which could be considered infrapolitics (Scott, 1990) or micro-politics (Goldfarb, 2006): an alternative way in contexts in which other forms of activism appear impossible or ineffective and/or activists' choice for a less radical and more long-time approach. The interest lays in determining to what extend these acts form, for the engaged individuals, a stage between (or perhaps beyond) engagement in NGOs and social movements in 'genealogies of activism' (Stubbs, 2012); whether they are performed independently of such engagements, form a link between different activisms or catalyse them. The concept of 'subjective turn' used by Razsa (2015) in relation to individuals who 'yearn for radical change' is applied here to those who aim at offering a different future to themselves or, more often, to others, by engaging in everyday, non-radical, practices, within, outside or in-between NGOs, associations, movements and other forms of collective action.