In observing what’s happening all over the US, I find myself thinking about the historical dynamics of social change. About how to pragmatically DO social change. I can’t help but think of James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak, on peasant rebellions.
Let me begin by expressing full, unqualified, unequivocated support for the protests against the pandemic of police violence inflicted on Black people and communities, both recently in response to the George Floyd situation and also spanning back centuries. There is an unfortunate institutional amnesia about even the very recent instantiations of this lineage of resistance. For more on this, see A Timeline of Events That Led to the 2020 ‘Fed-Uprising.’
It’s not my place to comment on being Black in America. I have no frame of reference, and I would never presume to know even a fraction of this very heterogeneous community’s experience, much less patronizingly explain this experience to them or to anyone else—no matter how much reading I’ve done on the topic of race in America, “listening” I’ve done to my Black acquaintances, or my own experiences of prejudice as an Asian-identified woman.
I do think I am qualified, however, to reflect on the current moment in historical and cross-cultural perspective.
As Scott observed of the subdiscipline of peasant studies, we have a tendency to focus on flashy moments of revolt when looking for transformational politics and in seeking to explain or enact social change. We love a good “revolution” or “rebellion” when trying to identify historical tipping-points, when in reality such moments do little in terms of durable change, and in fact are often counterproductive.
(Scott 1985, 29)
I think he overstates the case in the book, but I do think the reason why social change is so difficult to manifest is because action needs to occur on a spectrum, while the human psyche disposes us to want simpler, binary narratives. Vesting all hope in violent resistance is basically dooming oneself to disappointment, and cynicism, which in the long run is corrosive to durable change. But vesting hope in the structure to correct itself is likewise dooming oneself at best to the status quo, and more likely to continual erosion.
I think it's about reframing things at a more macro-historical level. Violent uprising are necessary to open up spaces for dialogue. To enlighten people to the realities of rampant injustice, and to hopefully imbue a larger mass of people with a greater critical consciousness after the violence has ended, to do the little things that in aggregate create durable change over time. One of those things is voting, but it's way more than that—it's sustained organizing, it's having perspective on your own comfort and privilege and enacting minor everyday forms of resistance (see Facebook employees pushing back against Zuckerburg's recent decisions), it's recognizing internalized racism and patriarchy and maybe making a minor choice to cite fewer “Big Men” (Sahlins 1963) and more women and folks of color, stuff like that (she says as she cites a Big Man).
I’m only beginning to do the work of taking stock of my own position, and beginning to make certain commitments to myself about how I might contribute to change in the long-run. So far, I’ve made one commitment in particular, in relation to constructing syllabi going forward:
Syllabus must be 60%+ Women
Syllabus must be 50%+ BIPOC[1]
No known assholes
[1] Updated to reflect more recent statistics.
Sahlins, Marshall D. 1963. “Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5(3): 285–303.
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.