Becoming an Activist: Individualisation and a Democratic Contentious Ethos in ‘How to’ Books

Abstract

The article explores a new aspect of the interplay of individualisation and democracy. I ask how individualisation affects a contentious ethos, a set of ethical relations that contentious actors cultivate towards themselves and others in articulating their idea of the good. I analyse the ethea in the public through ‘how to become an activist’ books. The books instruct individuals in how they should turn inwards and work on themselves to become activists. I delineate three ethea: individuals can work on themselves to discover their passion, connect to an impersonal truth or situate themselves in a structural context. These may undermine collective political projects but can also facilitate deep democratic engagement.

Keywords

activism agonism contention democracy ethos individualisation

How does individualisation affect democratic engagement? The question has unnerved sociologists and philosophers from Tocqueville (2010), through Taylor (1991), to the canonical authors on late modernity (e.g. Bauman, 2001; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Giddens, 1991). In this article, I focus on the interplay of individualisation and contention. Contention is a central form of democratic engagement through extra-institutional collective and conflictual action such as conventional protests and direct action (McAdam et al., 2001). Previous sociological analyses have shown that individualisation may create new arenas, issues or forms of contention such as life politics (Giddens, 1991), lifestyle politics (Haenfler, 2019; Haenfler et al., 2012), subpolitics (Beck, 1992, 1997), networked forms of contention (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Castells, 2010) and new social movements (Melucci, 1995).

I tackle a different dimension of the question by asking how individualisation affects contentious ethea in the public culture. A contentious ethos is a set of ethical relations that contentious actors cultivate towards themselves and others in articulating their idea of the good. These ethical relations are integral to democratic flourishing because democracy is not only a set of formal institutions but also an ethical practice, a way of relating to and navigating differences and conflicts between ideas of the good (Connolly, 1995: xxv). Analysing the individualised contentious ethea in the public culture therefore helps us understand some of the tensions and possibilities of an individualised democracy. In doing so, I enter into a dialogue between the literature on individualisation (e.g. Dawson, 2012; Rasborg, 2017; Skinner et al., 2016), the resurgent sociology of morality (e.g. Bykov, 2019; Hitlin and Vaisey, 2013; Hookway, 2012; Sayer, 2011, 2020), the political theoretical literature on agonism (e.g. Connolly, 1995, 2002, 2005; Mouffe, 2005) and the literature on contention (e.g. Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; McAdam et al., 2001).

I get at these ethea through the ‘how to become an activist’ genre, which provides a novel and empirically grounded way of analysing the interplay of individualisation and contention. The general ‘how to’ genre is an exemplar of individualisation, turning the individual’s focus inward by asking how the individual may change themself (Bauman, 2000: 65; Hookway, 2018). The ‘how to become an activist’ genre applies this inward turn to contention. It constructs a series of contentious ethea in the register of individualisation. The value of the genre is that it helps us understand these ethea as they are diffused in the public culture. It shows how ethical relations in contention are constructed in the public and not just among a committed cadre of activists, thereby deepening our understanding of the interplay between individualisation and democracy.

I distinguish three individualised contentious ethea. In one ethos, individuals turn inwards to discover their passion, which will help them become activists. This may make it difficult to deal with differences and conflicts between ideas of the good. In a second ethos, this inward turn connects individuals to an impersonal and universal truth, which can orient their activism. Relations of solidarity may be constructed around this truth. At the same time, the ethos risks turning differences into antagonistic confrontations. In a final ethos, the inward turn should cultivate a productive self-doubt about ideas of the good. This may facilitate relations of agonistic respect in contention. In showing the complexity of these ethea, I suggest that we focus on the tensions and possibilities surrounding specific ethea and not whether individualisation as such is good or bad for democratic engagement.

The article is structured in four parts. First, I give a brief overview of the literature on individualisation and contention and introduce the concept of an individualised contentious ethos. Second, I outline my methods and the ‘how to become an activist’ genre. Third, I analyse the individualised contentious ethea in the books. Finally, I discuss the implications for sociological accounts of individualisation and democratic engagement.

Individualisation and Democratic Decline

The individualisation thesis has been at the core of sociological discussions of modernity for at least three decades (Dawson, 2012; Rasborg, 2017; Skinner et al., 2016). While there are differences in the classical formulations (Bauman, 2001; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Giddens, 1991), the thesis refers broadly to the ‘transforming of human “identity” from a “given” into a “task” and charging the actors with the responsibility for performing that task’ (Bauman, 2000: 31). In this way, it marks a ‘new mode of societalization’ (Beck, 1992: 127, emphasis in original) where the identity of the individual becomes a reflexive project (Dawson, 2012: 307).

Its classical formulations have rightly been criticised for their empirical wobbliness, obscuring the persistence of stratification (Atkinson, 2008; Rasborg, 2017; Skeggs, 2004) and exaggerating the novelty of late modernity (Gross, 2005; Lee, 2011). More measured approaches reposition individualisation as a partial and open-ended process (e.g. Dawson, 2012; Hookway, 2012; Rasborg 2017; Taylor, 1989; Trappmann et al., 2021). Individualisation describes one and not the mode of societalisation in late modernity, has deep historical roots and unfolds in many ways.

This warns us against adopting a narrative of decline when thinking about individualisation and contention (see Hookway, 2012). Such a narrative departs from Tocqueville’s (2010: 884) worry that democracy leads the individual ‘back toward himself and threatens finally to enclose him entirely within the solitude of his own heart’. In going inwards to discover our idea of the good, we are trapped in ourselves and cut off from others. As Hookway (2012, 2015) notes, the decline narrative is widespread (e.g. Bellah et al., 1996; Durkheim, 1997; Lasch, 1979). Bauman (1999, 2000, 2001) in his ‘liquid’ phase exemplifies it. To him, individualisation means that public space cannot translate private troubles into public issues (Bauman, 2000: 40). The pursuit of the good is a private concern that does not develop into a collective political struggle (Bauman, 2001: 125). The individual is the citizen’s worst enemy (Bauman, 2000: 36). Although Bauman is extreme, his worry is widely shared (Hookway, 2012). Beck’s (1992: 137) phrase about individuals seeking a ‘biographical solution to systemic contradictions’ contains a similar anxiety. In discussing the ideal of the authentic individual, Taylor (1991: 113) worries whether individuals adhering to this ideal can formulate a common democratic project. Bellah et al.’s (1996) seminal work on US individualism shares this concern. Dawson’s (2012) review of the individualisation thesis, which accepts much of the critique directed at the thesis, maintains that individualisation means the privatisation of political problems.

There are, however, other ways of seeing the interplay of individualisation and contention. Individualisation may stimulate contention in the form of life politics (Giddens, 1991), subpolitics (Beck, 1992, 1997), lifestyle movements (Haenfler et al., 2012), new political identities (Bang, 2005) or connective action that brings individuals together through personalised sharing (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Lichterman, 1995). I contribute to these studies by asking how individualisation affects ethical relations in contention. Hookway (2012, 2015, 2018) shows that individualisation may engender relations of care and kindness. Delehanty and Oyakawa (2017) suggest that individualisation can facilitate empathy in faith-based community groups. However, kind individuals are not necessarily contentious individuals who can navigate conflicts over ideas of the good. We therefore need to engage with the question of how individualisation is folded into a contentious ethos. This is what the ‘how to become an activist’ genre allows us to do.

A Contentious Ethos

Before turning to these books, I clarify the notion of a contentious ethos. I draw on agonistic political theory, especially the work of William Connolly, and relate it to recent developments in the sociology of morality.

We all orient ourselves to some version of the good, something that is incomparably higher (Taylor, 1989: 33). This is also the case in contention where people struggle over different ideas of the good. Connolly (1995, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011) distinguishes this substantial idea of the good from the ways we hold it. For example, do we think that our idea of the good is the only viable one or do we accept the contestability of all such ideas? These are different spiritualities that inform our relation to ourselves and others (Connolly 2005: 47, 2011: 90). When these spiritualities are embedded in general practices such as contention, they congeal into an ‘ethos’ (Connolly, 2008: 2). As I conceptualise it, a contentious ethos is part of a public culture that informs without determining individual spiritualities (Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2022; see also Lizardo, 2017).

This concept of a contentious ethos adds to the recent interest in character (Sayer, 2020; Shilling and Mellor, 2021) in the sociology of morality (Bykov, 2019; Hitlin and Vaisey, 2013; Sayer, 2011). Character is concerned with ‘what it is to be a good person’ (Sayer, 2020: 462). Like ethos, it acknowledges that ethical dispositions concern both emotion and reason (Connolly, 2005: 46; Sayer, 2020: 468). And like ethos, it cannot be extracted from the practices that shape it (Sayer, 2020: 474; Shilling and Mellor, 2021). On my reading, however, character does not distinguish between the substantive notion of the good and how this is held. The ethical dispositions making up character encompass both. I suggest that ethos is one dimension of character. For a democratic society that contains conflicting ideas of the good, the shapes of contentious ethea are a central ethico-political problem (Connolly, 1995: xxv).

An individualised contentious ethos is an ethos that compels the individual to go inwards, to work on themself and their own experience (see Taylor, 1989: 30), in formulating the idea of the good that motivates their struggle. It is what Taylor (1989: 130) calls radically reflexive. In the decline narrative, this inwardness makes it difficult to relate to others, undermining contention. However, this argument does not square with the increasing normalisation of contention in ‘social movement societies’ (Meyer and Tarrow, 1998). There is no a priori answer to how individualisation is folded into a contentious ethos. It is by taking this folding as an object of empirical analysis that we can make sense of it and enrich the discussion started by Tocqueville and renewed by the theorists of individualisation.

Methods

I do this through a novel data source: the ‘how to become an activist’ genre. I use ‘how to’ to denote self-help books and do-it-yourself guides. I first outline the genre before discussing my sampling and analytical strategies.

I approach the general ‘how to’ genre as an exemplar of individualisation (e.g. Bauman, 2000: 65; Hookway, 2018; Taylor, 1991), although it can also be situated within the neighbouring developments of therapeutic culture and neoliberal government (Nehring et al., 2016). It became a best-selling genre in the 20th century, spreading from an initial focus on business to other areas of social life such as the family (Nehring et al., 2016: 20–25). Across these areas, ‘how to’ books ask readers to turn inwards to work on themselves, instilling a radically reflexive orientation. Most analyses of ‘how to’ books have echoed the decline narrative, seeing them as a technique for producing individualised and depoliticised selves (Nehring et al., 2016: 27). However, as with individualisation in general, depoliticisation is not a necessary feature of the books’ inward turn.

Activist ‘how to’ books emerge from the genre’s spread throughout social life. While activist manuals and autobiographies have a deep history (e.g. Hardy, 1832), the ‘how to’ books analysed here are published in much greater volumes than previously and foreground the radically reflexive orientation of the reader. This reader is often seen as a depoliticised member of the public. Partly as a result of individualisation, they may doubt the efficacy of activism (Jordan and Maloney, 2006) or feel alienated from politics (Hensby, 2021; Marsh et al., 2007). In trying to mobilise this depoliticised reader, the books themselves wrestle with fears that individualisation brings about political decline. Crucially, their solution draws on the process of individualisation itself. Instead of relying on traditional authorities or mobilising networks, readers are instructed to work on their own experience to discover the good that will motivate their activism. In this way, the books express and constitute an individualised contentious ethos in the public culture. They help us understand the tensions and potentials of this ethos for democratic engagement among the public and not just committed activists.

I sampled as inclusively as possible, incorporating books that touched on the ‘how to’ question. The strategy was oriented by several considerations. First, I sampled books written in English by UK and US authors. As a lot of contention is cross-national, I did not restrict myself to one country. Second, I focused on books published after 2015 as I was interested in contemporary ethea. The years following 2015 saw a rise in the publication of these books, connected to the resurgence of contention following the Brexit referendum, the 2016 US presidential election and the consolidation of new economic, climate, anti-racist and feminist movements. This gave me a sample of 20 books, which I read through. The online appendix summarises the dominant ethos in each book.

I also conducted a focused discourse analysis by whittling the sample down through two further criteria. First, apart from books written by ‘general’ activists, I included at least one author from four major contemporary movements focused on economic justice, gender justice, racial justice and climate change. While the books addressed contention abstracted from any one movement, the contentious ethea in the books might be coloured by their origins. I did not find any clear pattern however. Second, I sought books with a wide readership. Here, I used the books’ ranking on Amazon UK and US best-seller lists to inform my selection. This cut my sample down to eight, above the one to five books usually analysed in the adjacent genre of autobiography (see Adamson and Johansson, 2021: 492). Although this final sample is not strictly representative, it provides an empirically grounded picture of the most prominent individualised contentious ethea. I checked my analytical conclusions from the discourse analysis against the 20 books, finding a strong resonance.

Table 1 presents the eight books and their authors. The authors are ideologically centrists or left of centre, except for Kate and Ella Robertson. While there are conservative books on contention, such as David Horowitz’s (2014) Take no Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left, they are primarily ideological manifestos. I therefore did not include these.

Table 1.

Final book sample and authors.

Book title	Author
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (2020)	Alicia Garza is an American civil rights activist and co-founder of Black Lives Matter
How to Change It: Make a Difference (2020)	Joshua Virasami is a British activist who has been involved with both Occupy London and Black Lives Matter
Make it Happen: How to Be an Activist (2021)	Amika George is a British feminist activist and founder of Free Periods, an organisation working to ensure equal access to education and to destigmatise menstruation
How to Resist: Turn Protest to Power (2017)	Matthew Bolton is a British living wage campaigner and Executive Director for Citizens UK, an organisation focused on community organising
Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It (2020)	Jamie Margolin is an American climate justice activist and co-founder of Zero Hour, a youth-led climate change organisation
How to Make a Difference: The Definitive Guide from the World’s Most Effective Activists (2019)	Kate Robertson is the co-founder and CEO of the UK-based charity One Young World, a forum for young leaders. Ella Robertson is its managing director
Do Something: Activism for Everyone (2019)	Kajal Odedra is a British activist and Executive Director for change.org UK, a petition platform
Five Rules for Rebellion: Let’s Change the World Ourselves (2020)	Sophie Walker is a British activist and co-founder and former leader of the Women’s Equality Party

My analytical strategy is informed by Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) discourse analysis. In this approach, discourse denotes written texts and spoken interactions (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 7). Discourse constitutes social reality and is action-oriented, fulfilling different social functions (Wetherell and Potter, 1988: 169). This strategy is appropriate because I am concerned with how the texts construct an individualised contentious ethos by attempting to turn individuals into activists. The approach identifies the interpretative repertoires that accomplish this. These are systems of tropes, metaphors and explanations that make sense of certain phenomena (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 149). Here, the repertoires constitute individualised ethea of contention.

Following Potter and Wetherell (1987: 167–172), I first read the texts, marking all material that touched on the ethos of contention. I then reread and coded the marked material to discern emerging patterns that would indicate distinct repertoires. I focused on how the turn inwards was configured in the texts and what this meant for the relations constructed to others. That is, I worked through two categories: the relation to self and the relation to others. In characterising a repertoire, I identified shared tropes and explanations across the material. I distinguished repertoires through textual distances and inconsistencies between tropes and explanations (Wetherell and Potter, 1988: 178). The identified repertoires are not the only ones in the texts, but they are prominent. Importantly, they facilitate an empirically informed way of understanding how individualisation is folded into an ethos of contention. The ethos may involve finding your passion, connecting to the truth or contextualising the self.

Finding Your Passion

The most prominent repertoire revolves around the task of finding your passion. It is something that everyone has deep inside but that they must work on and express. George sums this up by quoting a creator of a feminist podcast:

Firstly, start with your passion. What keeps you awake at night? What injustice drives you wild with fury? What do you believe should be done? Are you furious about the way refugees are treated? That women aren’t protected by legislation from upskirting? That tampons are a luxury item? Speak out on what you cannot stay silent about. (Frances-White cited in George, 2021: 31)

The books contain a series of tropes connected to this ethos of passion. It involves being ‘authentic’ (George, 2021: 78; Odedra, 2019: 16; Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 66) and finding your ‘inner voice’ (George, 2021: 17), ‘your truth’, (George, 2021: 120) and ‘your story’ (Bolton, 2017: 55; George, 2021: 47; Margolin, 2020: 48; Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 62; Walker, 2020: 114).

These tropes adhere to an ideal of expressive self-articulation that is deeply embedded in modern individuality, reaching back to the Romantic imagination (Taylor, 1989: 390, 1991: 25–26). It is by diving into our own depths that we discover our ideas of the good. In activist circles, this is connected to a self-telling associated with the consciousness raising popularised by US feminists in the 1960s (e.g. Sarachild, 1970; see also Brown, 1995: 41–42; Delehanty and Oyakawa, 2017). It can also be found in the broader public culture, such as in do-it-yourself morality blogs (Hookway, 2018), often with a classed nature (Skeggs, 2005). I take up the class dimension in my discussion. For now, I stress that becoming an activist means connecting to this passion ‘somewhere deep within’ (George, 2021: 159). It is this connection that defines an activist: ‘You care passionately about an issue and you’re going to do something about it – that makes you an activist’ (Odedra, 2019: 139).

The inward turn is challenging. In finding and trusting their passion, activists must overcome internalised doubts. George (2021: 128) notes that: ‘On the days when your confidence is rocky, and your head is full of self-doubt (who doesn’t feel like that some of the time?), remember that you are here because you deserve to be here.’ The books set up a struggle between discovering passion and the self-doubt that derails it. Robertson and Robertson (2019: 71) urge the reader to ‘Don’t ever be ashamed of your story.’

This way of turning inwards affects the relations activists cultivate to others. Activists exercise power through passion. This is usually done by speaking their truth in individual stories:

When you are being your authentic self you are more concerned with truth than other people’s opinions. Your testimony and ability to hold a mirror up to society is your most basic but powerful way to create change and make a difference. When you tell your story, your honesty can become your legacy. It’s not the words or the means that matter – it’s the story. (Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 84)

The inward turn is at the root of the activist’s power. This power seems to rest on the assumption that personal passions easily translate into public problems (see Bauman, 1999: 65). More specifically, the assumption shapes how activists mobilise others. We can follow the line connecting an inner passion with external support in the following:

Discover the enormous untapped power and impact of your voice and don’t listen when you are told that everything is fixed, unquestionable, and inevitable. Your actions will show them that they are wrong. And by being bold enough to get going, you’ll encourage others to stand up, too. A community of passionate changemakers will rise around you, inspired by your conviction, and will not back down when they are dismissed or demonised. All you need to do is choose to get started. (George, 2021: 17)

Passion inspires and mobilises others who are equally passionate. This sharing of passion defines the activist community (see Bennett and Segerberg, 2012): ‘Campaigning is often a deeply personal and emotional thing – we feel it to our core. To be alongside other people who feel that same issue to their core, is a bond like nothing else’ (Odedra, 2019: 87). The community is a harmonious one based on similarity and not difference (see Bauman, 2000: 172) because it is constructed through a shared passion. Finding a community ‘is like snuggling under a warm blanket, or being squished in the fold of a hug that tells you you’re not battling alone’ (George, 2021: 63).

The ethos does not completely disregard a reckoning with difference. Because everyone has an inner passion, activists must recognise that of others even when it differs. Activists should be ‘genuinely interested in other people, find out what drives them and how we can find common interests and common ground’ (Bolton, 2017: 50). This involves a respect for difference: ‘we need to carefully examine what right our voice has to tell someone else’s narrative’ (Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 68). It may also mean humanising those in power that activists oppose: ‘Relating to powerful people effectively means taking their interests seriously and respecting their values. Those who believe they have a monopoly on morality tend to sound shrill and are less able to move the majority of a powerful coalition’ (Bolton, 2017: 32).

The ethos does not trap the activists in the solitude of their own hearts. That being said, it is unclear how activists should engage with differences that challenge their ideas of the good. If activists relate to the good by discovering their passion and overcoming doubt, they cannot open up to these challenges (see Connolly, 2002: xxvii–xxviii). The challenges, instead, come from ‘haters’ whom they should ignore and focus on ‘positive comments’ (Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 111). The acknowledgement of difference and conflict remains superficial because it is denied access to the inner depths of passion.

Connecting to the Truth

Discovering your passion is about finding ‘your truth’, truth being particular to the individual. However, there is also a way of going inwards in which activists relate to the good by connecting to an impersonal truth. Here, activists use an internal drive to question the world around them. This ethos is most prominent in the books of climate activist Jamie Margolin and Black Lives Matter organiser Joshua Virasami, although it is not exclusive to them. Speaking of her fellow young activists, Margolin (2020: 11) argues that:

We are yet to be broken and burned out. We are still closer than adults to that part of ourselves that is full of questions, challenges, and a refusal to accept the state of the world around us. We have fresh energy, insight and a unique power to create change in our world. What we get in trouble most for at school is usually questioning the rules. But questioning the rules may actually be where our greatest power lies.

This questioning taps something deep inside the activist, an ‘internal resistance to injustice, which is born from the heart’ (Virasami, 2020: 14), and is directed towards the activist themself. It is an ‘active process that involves self-reflection and experimentation’ (Margolin, 2020: 19). If discovering your passion was an internal struggle against self-doubt, this inward turn is an epistemic struggle against ‘mass indoctrination’ (Virasami, 2020: 25): ‘Becoming revolutionary starts with the mind, with overcoming our miseducation. It’s a constant process, but we need to revolutionise our thinking by finding language and beginning to name our enemies, and bring them into the open’ (Virasami, 2020: 25). Its goal is not to find a personal passion but to ‘seek the truth’ (Virasami, 2020: 20). Truth, here, is ‘pure, undiluted’ (Margolin, 2020: 211).

Activists turn inwards but are not trapped there. The inward turn is made to get outside indoctrination, connect to the good and recognise the injustice of the world. This relation between inwardness and the discovery of an impersonal truth has deep historical roots. We can hear echoes of St Augustine, who went inwards to go upwards to God (Taylor, 1989: 134), and of certain Marxist notions of false consciousness where emancipation requires overcoming ideological distortion (e.g. Lukács, 1972).

It is through this impersonal truth that activists exercise power. Margolin (2020: 82) notes that: ‘Our power lies in our ability to call BS, speak truth to power, and expose the powerful for who they are.’ After connecting to the truth, activists speak it in public through practices such as protests (Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 119) or whistleblowing (Robertson and Robertson, 2019: 254). In this way, the ethos is connected to a series of democratic tropes surrounding political parrhesia, a risky and courageous truth-telling (Dyrberg, 2014; Foucault, 2010).

The inward turn has implications for how activists relate to others. Solidarity means connecting other people to the truth: ‘Bringing our wider communities into revolutionary thinking is an attitude of solidarity, it’s an invitation into a shared journey’ (Virasami, 2020: 146). The premise that makes solidarity possible is the shared urge to question and resist. Everyone has ‘this common internal resistance to injustice, which is born from the heart, and we therefore share a common struggle’ (Virasami, 2020: 14). As with the ethos of passion, the activist community is based on similarity. However, it is not a similarity of passions but a shared connection to an impersonal truth. This community is not the porous one feared by some late modern theorists, although it remains rooted in an individualised contentious ethos. The individual is not the enemy of the citizen (cf. Bauman, 2000: 36). Margolin (2020: 210) urges the reader to remember that: ‘You are a part of the global family of changemakers that has been slowly but surely bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice for centuries.’ The activists are united by the universality of their fight.

This raises the question of how activists make sense of difference. Difference is usually configured as a conflict. Going inwards to discover the truth involves ‘naming your enemies, sussing out their systems and using history as a weapon’ (Virasami, 2020: 58). This conflict has a right and wrong side: ‘History has proved that we are always on the right side of history over and over again’ (Margolin, 2020: 11). There is little room for a difference that is not a conflict to be won precisely because a universal truth exists that all may connect to. This also means that differences among activists are caused by something other than diverging ideas of the good: ‘We tend to let our egos cloud our judgement of what really matters and fill us with greed and envy of others who are on our same team, fighting for the same cause’ (Margolin, 2020: 186).

The turn inwards means connecting to an impersonal truth that all individuals may share. It is an ethos that can undergird collective political projects, assuaging the fears of some late modern theorists. However, it also makes possible a drive to antagonisation. In fighting for a universal truth, those who dissent risk becoming enemies who must be defeated and never listened to (Connolly, 2002, 2005; Mouffe, 2005).

Contextualising the Self

The ethea focused on passion and impersonal truth are characterised by a closure in relation to other ideas of the good. The final ethos opens this relation through a cultivation of agonistic respect (Connolly, 2002). It is scattered throughout the texts and consistently expressed by Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza and feminist activist Sophie Walker.

Becoming an activist means, again, beginning with the self. However, this is because activists should contextualise their experiences: ‘To understand where each of us fits in a movement and what our best role is and can be, we must first situate ourselves inside a context that makes it make sense’ (Garza, 2020: 12). They situate their own experiences, often of despair, in a broader structural context:

A first approach to activism and rebellion is to recognise the external factors that have led so many of us to feel so bad and so helpless about ourselves. Working on feeling better isn’t about mind over matter or accepting our complicity in our mental ill-health; it’s about deciding to behave as though something different is possible – or at least trying to. (Walker, 2020: 40)

This contextualisation can be uncomfortable because the structures are not only outside but inside activists: ‘We bring the things that shape us, consciously or unconsciously, everywhere we go. Unless we are intentional about interrupting what we’ve learned, we will perpetuate it, even as we are working hard for a better world’ (Garza, 2020: 178). In going inwards, activists do not find a unified passion or an impersonal truth but a fragmented complex of contradictions, fears and hopes springing from the contexts that have formed them: ‘your worldview is shaped by your experiences and history’ (Garza, 2020: 169), ‘we all also behave a certain way within those systems’ that we resist (Walker, 2020: 119).

Navigating this complex means accepting that the activist’s relation to the good cannot be free of tensions and self-doubt: ‘A person’s search for meaning is likely to create inner tension rather than equilibrium’ (Walker, 2020: 43). It is a process in which activists hope for something better without being able to pin this down. Activism is ‘prenatal care for that which is being born’ (Garza, 2020: 249). Beck (1997: 200), in fact, suggests something similar: individualisation can result in an art of doubt that ‘implies multiple voices, opposing voices on all sides and in each of us’.

Beck shows us how an acknowledgement of doubt may flow into relations to others. It belongs to an ethos of agonistic respect in which activists insert a ‘stutter’ into their relation to the good and accept, perhaps valorise, differing voices inside and outside themselves (Connolly, 2002: xxiii). In the books, these may challenge activists who ‘become open to new ways of seeing and interpreting our world’ (Garza, 2020: 210). Becoming an activist involves ‘being comfortable with feeling uncomfortable’ (Walker, 2020: 105). This is a deeper openness than the recognition of difference in the ethos of passion. Difference is allowed to disturb the activist’s relation to the good (see Connolly, 2005: 125). When meeting different and uncomfortable viewpoints, Walker (2020: 130) suggests activists:

Consider whether you need to sit a little longer with that discomfort before deciding you disagree. Make space for further conversation. And if you’re still really struggling, consider the option to agree to disagree, to let your thoughts continue to turn in your head.

Difference and discomfort are given space to exist, and the thoughts generated by them are allowed to continue inside the activist. This makes possible a responsiveness where new ideas of the good work on the activist, perhaps resonating with some of the contradictory strands in them (see Connolly, 1995: xv–xix). It is through this responsiveness that activists build power: ‘Movement building is not about finding your tribe – it’s about growing your tribe across difference to focus on a common set of goals’ (Garza, 2020: 126).

The openness to difference is coupled with a recognition of conflict. Solidarity for Garza (2020: 136) is ‘standing together in the muck of our differences and declaring that we refuse to be divided by the people who are responsible for our collective misery’. This conflict, however, is shot through with tension. Conflicting others are not just haters or enemies but formed by the same systems as the activists (Walker, 2020: 119). Consequently, they are also ‘inherently messy’ (Garza, 2020: 184). There is no neat boundary between those whom activists should oppose and be responsive to, between the demand to ‘conserve your energy for those who can be converted to your cause’ (Walker, 2020: 127) and learning to ‘listen more’ (Walker, 2020: 130). The tension cannot be resolved (Connolly, 1993: 383) but only managed.

Discussion

In delineating three ethea of contention in the public culture, the analysis provides an empirically grounded picture of how individualisation affects ethical relations in contention. It shows individualisation to be a complex process that is only very partially captured by a narrative of decline. I discuss the analysis’ implications for sociological accounts of individualisation and, more specifically, democratic engagement.

The complexity of individualisation is illustrated by the ethos of passion. In the ethos, individuals are not concerned exclusively with their private troubles (e.g. Dawson, 2012). Their passion may involve public problems such as social and economic equality. What is important is that it is their passion that should drive them in tackling these. The emphasis on passion provides a way for individuals who refuse a classical citizen identity to engage democratically by tapping their moral emotions (see Jasper, 1997). This may be particularly important for young people (Marsh et al., 2007). In this way, the ethos, and the ‘how to’ books expressing it, can be seen as a productive response to the feared erosion of traditional forms of mobilisation brought about by individualisation.

At the same time, the ethos is open to some of the classical critiques of individualisation. It is unclear how individual passions coalesce into collective political projects (Bauman, 1999: 54). It becomes difficult to construct a project that transcends the aggregation of passions because activists relate to the good by discovering an already-existing passion. Difference is not allowed to contaminate their own passionate relation to the good (cf. Connolly, 2002: xxvii–xxviii). This was a problem that Bellah et al. (1996: 191) already identified in the ‘professional activist’ who struggled to formulate a conception of the public good that could make sense of differences across society.

The ethos of passion is also problematic from a class perspective (Dawson, 2012; Hookway, 2018; Skeggs, 2005). It suggests that everyone can be an activist because everyone has a passion. However, this obscures that activists remain mostly middle class and college educated (Caren et al., 2011). Moreover, the ability to engage in the self-expression that the ethos requires is not evenly distributed (McNay, 2014: 200; Skeggs, 2005). There is a paradox here: the ethos of passion cautions against telling the stories of others, often the most marginalised, who should exercise political agency themselves. However, the imperative to discover and express passion may prevent these people from becoming proper activist subjects.

The ethos of passion comes close to classical accounts of how individualisation affects ethical relations in contention. The analysis nuances such accounts by stressing the tensions in this ethos. Furthermore, the analysis broadens our idea of how individualisation affects ethical relations in contention. Activists can also connect to truth or contextualise themselves. Although these ethea are open to the class-based critique (see McNay, 2014), they are characterised by different tensions and opportunities that we should be sensitive to.

Connecting to the truth does facilitate the relations often associated with a flourishing democracy. These strive towards universality and may underpin a collective political project (see Alexander, 2006: 58). However, the ethos may also result in a radicalisation of enmity, turning contention into a zero-sum struggle (Mouffe, 2005; Schmitt, 2005). At its worst, the emphasis on truth may deny the plurality of politics (Arendt, 1968: 284; Connolly, 2002: 92). In analysing this tension, we need to recognise that it is very different from that identified in the ethos of passion, although it is connected to the same process of individualisation.

The final ethos, focused on the contextualisation of the self, is perhaps the most interesting. It may fuel contention undergirded by agonistic respect where individuals recognise ‘a world in which the faith you embrace regularly brushes up against living alternatives that challenge, disturb, and disrupt its claims to universality’ (Connolly, 2011: 91). This is what some agonistic democrats might call a ‘noble’ ethos of engagement (Connolly, 2002; Nietzsche, 2000: 475; Owen, 2002). It is striking that this ethos is not only found in radical democratic experiments, such as square occupations (Karaliotas, 2017; Kioupkiolis, 2014), but in ‘how to’ books widely diffused in the public culture. It is found in a popular genre that is often seen to exemplify the decline of democratic engagement (Bauman, 2000: 67). Our discussions of individualisation need to take this ethos into account. Crucially, the ethos resonates with the democratic ideals of some canonical writers on individualisation. Beck (1997) puts forward the art of doubt as the political programme of radicalised modernity. Bauman (2001: 234) stresses that: ‘Democracy cannot, without betraying its nature, recognise any translation as final and no longer open to negotiation.’ My analysis suggests an optimistic perspective on individualisation whose tenor is more aligned with Bauman’s (1993) writings on postmodern ethics than his critiques of liquid modernity.

I disentangle how individualisation influences ethical relations in contention. In highlighting how individualised contentious ethea are constituted and expressed in the public culture, the article helps us think through the tensions and opportunities in these. Studying public culture in ‘how to’ books is only a first step. There are other important sites of public culture, such as activist fora, blogs and cinematic narratives. Furthermore, we should unpack the link between ethea in the public culture and the ethical orientations of individuals. This line of questioning nuances our understanding of the interplay of individualisation and democracy. It may also help amplify an individualised contentious ethos of deep democratic engagement.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-soc-10.1177_00380385221107495 – Supplemental material for Becoming an Activist: Individualisation and a Democratic Contentious Ethos in ‘How to’ Books

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-soc-10.1177_00380385221107495 for Becoming an Activist: Individualisation and a Democratic Contentious Ethos in ‘How to’ Books by Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup in Sociology

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup is a visiting research associate at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His research centres on the constitution of contention from both a historical and contemporary perspective. His current work focuses on public constructions of activists and protests.

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