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- Convenors:
-
Ehler Voss
(University of Bremen)
Ulrike Flader (University of Bremen)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
Confronted with capitalist authoritarian co-optation, transformative social practices face contradictions in articulating and conceiving alternatives. This workshop examines the ways in which social movements resist the co-optations, negotiate these contradictions, and envision radical futures.
Long Abstract:
For classical anti-capitalist theory, social struggles arise from social contradictions. Analyzing these contradictions and articulating ways to overcome them is central even for social movements that are not explicitly anti-capitalist. Hence, the question of overcoming is entangled with the question of the possibility of imagining a radical outside. However, we can observe how practices and discourses of radical social change are contained and dismantled by capitalist appropriation. This becomes evident e.g. in an overlap of ideas, concepts, demands and practices; notions like self-determination, democracy, solidarity, care, freedom and responsibility are (re)formulated in ways that often take a (soft) authoritarian twist.
This workshop asks how current and historical social movements in different regions of the world negotiate transformative ideas and practices against the background of these global capitalist logics. What contradictions and ambivalences do social movements articulate and what do they understand to be radical? Do they analyze attempts to co-opt and contain them, and to what extent do they resist them? How can possibilities of breaking away from hegemonic thought and conceiving alternatives under given conditions be grasped in terms of practices of (un)commoning?
Based on empirical studies, this workshop aims at critically examining social struggles from two complementary perspectives: We want to understand whether and how they identify and perceive contradictions, as well as how and with which theoretical and practical references these contradictions are negotiated. This way, we wish to address the possibilities and limits of ‘radical futures’ in the light of capitalist authoritarian co-optation.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
This presentation focuses on the future of citizens' assemblies. I argue that their "top-down" design prioritizes efficiency and functionality over bottom-up empowerment. Consensus is mostly shaped by process design, raising concerns about technocratic management over deliberative democracy ideals.
Contribution long abstract:
In recent years, citizens’ assemblies (mini-publics) have emerged and become established as new formats for public participation worldwide. This presentation approaches this phenomenon from a practice-theoretical and ethnographic perspective, examining the translocal network of experts who design and promote these formats, as well as the temporal and socio-material structures of the procedural format themselves. Two key questions guide this analysis: What type of citizen participation is being promoted here, and how is consensus achieved within these processes?
In addressing these questions, the argument is made that citizens’ assemblies are increasingly being designed and implemented in a top-down manner to guarantee outcome generation within temporal and material constraints. Through this focus on effectivity and functionality, top-down governability is enhanced rather than empowering marginalized groups from the bottom-up. Consensus generation, rather than arising from the “unforced force of the better argument” as the ideal of deliberative democracy would have it (Habermas, 1981), is instead shaped through the procedural design and the use of specific facilitation and voting techniques. As a result, the citizens’ assembly, as a governance technology, is evolving into a form of technocratic and neoliberal population management rather than a means of grassroots empowerment and democratization.
Overall, the presentation calls for a more nuanced consideration of trade-offs, particularly between the ideals of deliberative democracy on one hand and the effectiveness and functionality of these “democratic innovations” on the other.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper will argue that an empirically driven account of the formation of political subjectivity is important for us to better understand the sociality of radical transformation, especially in the age of Hindutva and other authoritarianisms on the rise globally.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper will sketch the 'contradictory' dimensions of the Malayali communist subjectivity, accrued over decades-long engagement with parliamentary democracy in the south Indian state of Kerala. Often perceived as an alternative model to neo-liberal governance (the 'Kerala model of development' favoured by economists like Amartya Sen), Kerala also remains one of the few states within the Indian federal system where the Hindu Right has failed to make substantial inroads in electoral politics.
The paper begins with the early participation of Communist activists and Congress- Socialists in religious reformist movements, and how it shaped the beginnings of their radicalism and political orientations. Here, the reformist, anti-caste, and anti-landlord dimensions in the early days of Kerala’s communist movement are sketched in detail. It then shows the introduction and familiarization of Marxist writings in the vernacular Malayalam, as well as the life histories and autobiographical narrations of communists themselves.
This paper will argue that an empirically driven account of the formation of political subjectivity - in this case, the Malayali communist subjectivity - is important for us to better understand the sociality of radical transformation, especially in the age of Hindutva and other authoritarianisms on the rise globally.
Contribution short abstract:
Brazil's largest housing movement merges urban occupations with state program collaboration, empowering precarious communities. Using patriotic and religious rhetoric, it balances transformative aims with strategies akin to right-wing populism, mobilizing members to advocate for housing justice.
Contribution long abstract:
The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST), Brazil’s largest housing movement, is often described as transformative. Based on nine months ethnographic fieldwork in São Paulo between 2022 and 2024, this paper explores the dynamics of the MTST amid the criminalization of social movements and the rise of moral-religious discourses under President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). Rooted in the traditions of the labor movement, the MTST adapts radical theories to urban struggles by occupying unused spaces and advocating for the “social function” of property. This resistance counters São Paulo’s extreme social inequality and real estate speculation. To this end, the MTST also collaborates with the government program Minha Casa Minha Vida, which empowers people living in precarious housing to organize and politicize. Within urban squats, the movement experiments with communal living and shared reproductive labor. However, its internal dynamics also include bureaucratized practices where activism becomes a prerequisite for accessing hard-won housing resources. To recruit new members, the MTST employs religious rhetoric and patriotic symbols, including the Brazilian flag—strategies echoed from right-wing populist movements. The paper shows how the MTST engages in these strategies to navigate a complex landscape of resistance and adaptation in its pursuit of housing justice. It argues that these appropriations enhance the movement's credibility among recruits while also creating tensions.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper discusses the key role of hope for radical social change in light of current authoritarian developments. Drawing on research on Turkey, it illustrates how envisaging radical transformation is impeded through a paradoxical production and deferral of hope by contradictory state practices.
Contribution long abstract:
The starting point of my paper is the notion of “hope”. Hope for change is intrinsically connected to with the ability to envisage the possibility of change. While liberal democracy has institutionalized this possibility within its provisions for alternating power, radical change is tied to the ability to think a future beyond the given and hence entails an affective dimension.
Drawing on research on current state government in Turkey, this paper illustrates how hope is dismantled not through its absolute foreclosure, but rather through its deferral. This ‘soft’ authoritarian government distinguishes itself from full dictatorship or fascism through its specific use of contradictions. It fundamentally undermines basic democratic principles, while upholding formally democratic structures. It does this not only by legal means, but with an array of administrative, discursive, social and affective practices whose key characteristic is to “sustain and contain contradictions” (Martin & Krause-Jensen) that make it impossible to critique the contradictions they entail. The result is what my interlocuters call a state of total ‘absurdity’ or: madness. As part of this, hope is repeatedly produced in different constellations generating a limbo which traps those who envisage change into its logics.
This paper takes the opportunity to revisit the key role of contradictions and hope for radical social change expressed in the works of e.g. Holloway, Eagleton, and Bloch, and discusses how the ability to frame, think and organise radical transformation is impeded through the cunning soft authoritarian production and deferral of hope.
Contribution short abstract:
Employing the concept of schismogenesis, the following article analyzes the time-related contradictions between tourists and locals at the tourist site known as Ballermann and the transformative and heritage practices that natives use to imagine a future horizon without tourists.
Contribution long abstract:
Batesonian concepts like double bind and schismogenesis reveal the mutually-reinforcing link between internal contradictions on the individual level and the monstruous social bonds that stem from cumulative interaction of such contradictions. Whenever involved in schismogenetically-driven communicative processes, individuals, or entire communities, are not only overwhelmed by contradictory messages, but also, in trying unsuccessfully to “solve” these contradictions, fail to imagine new future horizons.
Based on 15 months of Fieldwork in s´Arenal, Majorca, better known in Germany as “Ballermann”, this paper argues that “party tourism” is the form of a schismogenetic relationship between partygoers and Majorcan population, and aims at understanding the time-related contradictions that this implies for the local population and the transformative practices they put into play to overcome them.
Trapped for decades in the authoritarian capitalist fallacy that the more they invest in the so-called “quality tourism”, the more they will get rid of “party tourism”, Majorcan population became more dependent and sunk nearly into despair, making the idea of a non-touristic future almost unimaginable. This is because, to borrow a Luhmannian idiom, schismogenesis entails “defuturization”, the reduction of future horizon.
Yet, partially aware of it, some social groups in s´Arenal, in commoning heritage knowledge related with the old mining trade (Trencadors) and the landscape of quarries (Pedreres) of the site, have precisely reinvented their celebratory practices not to oppose to, but to symbolically incorporate the foreign celebration. With new celebrations, they reconsidered the long-time perspective, thus relativising the harshness of the present in-view of articulating new futures.
Contribution short abstract:
The contribution connects knowledge production with shared future visions and highlights the transformative potential of queer practices of solidarity. It reimagines engaged anthropology by illustrating how queer activist research can reshape research relationships and promote democratic futures.
Contribution long abstract:
This contribution analyses the epistemological boundaries and responsibilities within solidarity-driven ethnography in queer activism research. Drawing from my dissertation, which investigates how queer communities envision caring and solidaristic coexistence (Hark 2021), it explores the potentials and limitations of these elements to challenge societal norms and power structures through ethnographic research. It argues for an engaged approach (Zenker & Vonderau 2023) that leverages the situatedness of knowledge production following a "shared problematisation", which is in turn linked to shared ideas of future and amounts to a "similar process of worlding" (Niewöhner 2019: 32).
Building on an activist framework, it examines how queer practices of solidarity appear in settings like Prides and other movements, queer collectives, and relationships, highlighting their transformative potential of queer utopias as counter-worlds (Muñoz 2009). In such sensitive contexts trust is fundamental, necessitating engaged participation and vulnerability. This paper demonstrates how queer activist research can reshape research relationships (cf. Seeck 2021; Tillmann-Healy 2003) and promote responsible, democratic futures (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). It argues that queering normativity through care and solidarity in the research process allows ethnography to engage with transformative societal and epistemological paradigms.
The contribution urges a reevaluation of participation and power asymmetries in ethnography, aiming to align anthropological knowledge with the priorities of the researched, fostering equitable dialogue between science and society. This approach seeks to contribute to forming a "different political body" and envisioning a future that supports a good life for all (Sutter et al. 2021: 17f.).
Contribution short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the protest movement against the Corona measures and their further developments in Germany, this presentation focuses on the internal and external discourse on the question of co-optation of the movement and the related question of an alternative future.
Contribution long abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the protest movement against the Corona measures and their further developments in Germany, this presentation focuses on the internal and external discourse on the question of co-optation of the movement and the related question of an alternative future. The ubiquitous self-description of those who locate themselves in the protest movement as “ awakened” is linked to a feeling of being able to recognize what is really going on behind the surface and to expose deceptions, manipulations and propaganda. This is accompanied by a widespread mistrust and omnipresent suspicion of co-optation, which leads to mutual suspicions and accusations even within the movement. The way in which an alternative future is imagined depends very much on the diagnosis of the problems. This presentation will explore the oscillation between personalizing conspiracy theories and structural analyses of power and the ironic tipping points within the protest movement that reveal the limits of a search for a radical future