Abstract
Activists Forever? explores persistent activism through biographical methods. It builds on previous work on the outcomes of social movements and uses a symbolic interactionist approach to describe the lives of activists in detail. This approach yields a nuanced and complex picture of social movements and the impact involvement has on participants.
The first section of the collection deals with the long-term biographical impacts of political activism; Corrigall-Brown and Neveu show that commitment is maintained throughout the life of an activist. Corrigall-Brown describes this in terms of ideological commitment, and how this is the same of both left and right-wing activists, while Neveu investigates how the creation of an activist habitus in a movement produces a cohort of activists that enact this habitus in both movement fields and other areas. Oliver and Tamayo take a more relational approach, exploring the historical resonances of events through the lives of two women. Their article shows that events have an impact on individuals, but also individuals create events, revealing a compelling vision of a relational field of political action. Pagis’ article constitutes a fascinating combination of quantitative methods with a detailed biographical account. Pagis describes different activist trajectories and then illuminates these trajectories through the career of Peter, who displays the complexity of biography. Peter’s political outlook and commitments are significantly guided by romantic relationships, and this shows the importance of understanding the different influences on activist trajectories.
The second section focuses on high-risk activism and violence, both perpetrated and experienced by movement actors. This section explores some of the negative impacts of extreme activism, including experiencing stigma throughout the life-course due to involvement (Hivert and Vairel) and the difficulties women experienced in participating in violent action in the movement for Khalistan and the entanglement of their political and private lives (Gayers). However, there are also more positive outcomes, or at least outcomes that are useful to the movement. This includes the inability of the state to prevent activist culture being passed on to activists’ children (Hivert and Vairel), the empowerment of women (Tejel) and the fostering of strong commitment and life-long identification with the cause (Bosi; Gayers). Important theoretical interventions are also made in this section. Bosi, through his exploration of the interactions between former Provisional IRA members and the British state, argues convincingly that biographical approaches can produce illuminating accounts of the interaction between agents and structures. Tejel’s article explains how a rich biographical approach can explain complex processes, in this case disengagement of activists from radical Kurdish organisations in Turkey. This biographical approach shows that complex interactions between the micro, meso and macro levels influence activists’ trajectories and that repression does not necessarily lead to demobilisation.
The final section deals with the difficulties with converting social movement activism into action in institutional politics. Hadjiisky’s article argues that, after the fall of the USSR, Czech dissidents failed to move into party politics as their resistance was based on individual moral autonomy, which was incompatible with party discipline. Pellen explores the radical transformation of habitus that activist engagement can engender through a fascinating case study of the career of Andrzej Lepper, a Polish politician who rose from rural activism to government, before falling from power due to loss of support, financial difficulties and scandal. The final chapter outlines the fractures that occurred in the Workers’ Party in Recife, Brazil, once the party transitioned from being a social movement to a party of power. Goirand describes the feelings of betrayal from the grassroots, and the career successes of some activists who have moved into politics, creating a rich account of the process of movement transformation.
Activists Forever? represents an elegant approach to the agency/structure debate. By viewing the ways that individual biography interacts with different structures at the micro, meso and macro levels, the authors in this collection describe a social world in which agency and structure exist at the same time, in relation to one another.
The great strength of the book, its exploration of the nuances of activist biography, also produces some issues. In many of the chapters, there are allusions to other interviews that have not been included, and, at times, the voice of participants is lost as there is not space for lengthy quotes (Bosi’s article being a notable exception). Therefore, these kinds of studies perhaps require more space to be presented fully, perhaps in a monograph or longer-form article.
Overall, Activists Forever? makes a compelling argument for an interactionist approach to social movements, exploring the interactions between individuals, organisations and social structures across multiple shifting fields. The whole collection, tied together by Fillieule’s addendum, also outlines, and celebrates, a set of methodological principles for studying movements in this way. The richness and nuance elicited in the studies in this collection show the way forward in the field.
