Kâra vânner,
Hârmed skickar jag reflektioner fr. John Foran, sociolog och god vân.
Om ni vill, kan vi diskutera artikeln...
Vad hânder p/lôrdag?
Abnrazos
/Azril
____________

2016-03-14 17:40 GMT+01:00 John Foran <foran@...>:

> Attached and also viewable at:
>
> A Few Thoughts on Studying the Most Radical Social Movement of the
> Twenty-first Century
>
>
> Photo by John Foran, December 12, 2015, Paris
>
> A Few Thoughts on Studying the Most Radical Social Movement of the
> Twenty-first Century
>
> John Foran
>
>
> March 13, 2016
>
>
> http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-03-14/a-few-thoughts-on-studying-the-most-radical-social-movement-of-the-twenty-first-century
>
> Introduction
>
> We are living through an unprecedented crisis, in a world beset by massive
> social problems - the obscene poverty and inequality that neoliberal
> capitalist globalization has wreaked on at least two-thirds of humanity,
> the immobility of the political elite almost everywhere, and cultures of
> violence that poison our lives from the most intimate relations to the mass
> murder of the world's wars.
>
> These interconnected problems are rooted in long-standing processes of
> inequality - patriarchy, racism, colonialism, capitalism, and now
> corporate-controlled globalization - whose ongoing, overlapping legacies
> are making the early twenty-first century a crucial hinge of history.
>
> And now, with climate change, we are facing a perfect storm of suffering.
> In fact, given the timeline that climate science is screaming at us, we
> confront a crisis of humanity and of all species that must be resolved for
> better or worse by those living on this precarious planet today.  We are
> called by the urgency of the crisis to "change everything" as Naomi Klein
> puts it, and to do so in something like the next two decades.
>
> With other observers, activists, and scholars I believe that only the
> assembling of the broadest, most powerful social movement the world has
> ever seen has a chance of doing this in the narrow window the science
> imposes on us. The movements for environmental, climate, and social justice
> that I have spent my life studying and now participate in must become much
> stronger than at present.  But my reading of world history leads me to
> believe that they can succeed.  They must, if we are to safely navigate the
> present crisis and even come out of it living in ways that are far more
> egalitarian, deeply democratic, and fulfilling than the world we presently
> inhabit.
>
> Those of us who are academics (or journalists, or writers and creators of
> culture of every kind) need to focus our minds now, I think, on the
> "wicked" problem of climate change, to reinvigorate our own disciplines and
> work on our interdisciplinary skills (another way of saying learning how to
> connect the dots) and bring all this into a wide open dialogue, in ways
> that are consistent with the first principle of sociology, of ecology, of
> systems thinking, and, ironically enough, of Buddhism, as I understand it
> (and of Gaia theory, for that matter):  everything is connected.
>
> How Strong is the Climate Justice Movement?
>
> The movement I study and am part of is growing, getting bigger, stronger,
> smarter, more diverse, and more creative with every passing year - and
> that's important.
>
> But it's still not enough.
>
> The task - and the question on every scholar-activist's mind - is how do
> we get from where we are to where we need to be?  And how do we do that
> thoughtfully, quickly, and for the long haul?
> If I had to try to sum up the broad outlines of what the climate justice
> movement is planning going into 2016, it would be something like Resist,
> Rethink, Retool, Re-imagine?
>
> What Happened in Paris at the UN Climate Summit?
>
> Let's do a global stock take - as the UNFCCC [United Framework Convention
> on Climate Change, which oversees the annual climate summits] likes to call
> it - of the recent "Paris Agreement."  I've thought about this a fair
> amount, gathering into a bundle some of the fascinatingly divergent
> analyses, and as Paris recedes into the rear view mirror, more and more I'm
> coming to the view that that's where it belongs - behind us.  Paris comes
> down to a cynical joke played on the peoples of the world.
>
> The Paris Agreement calls on the world to keep global warming "well under
> 2 degrees, and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible." That is useful, but
> like the rest of the high-minded words in this non-binding agreement, it is
> merely "voluntary" and "aspirational," and at the rate these negotiations
> have been going for two decades, it will take at least the next ten COPs
> for them to get any traction (the COP refers to the Conferences of the
> Parties, as the climate negotiations are called, followed by the number of
> years since the first in 1995, making Paris COP 21).
>
> We can't let them delay that long, or the window for two degrees will
> close?
>
> I titled my blog post on the day of the treaty "Paper Heroes."  I think I
> may have stumbled onto one of the deep truths of what went down.  Paris was
> so triumphalist and so flimsy that it bears comparison to the shrillness of
> the know nothing/do nothing crowing of the Trump campaign.
>
> Will the movement use it against its architects (the well-meaning
> capitalist reformists of the UNFCCC and the enlightened wing of the one
> percent) and against our enemies - the fossil fuel industry, the political
> elites, the rich, the banks, and all the rest?  That's a certainty.
>
> Will we throw the cynical references to indigenous rights, a gender
> perspective, vulnerable nations, human rights, and intergenerational equity
> into their faces?  Yes, we will.
>
> Will we seize on the phrase "climate justice, as some call it" they so
> patronizingly let appear in the text - yes, we intend to make them come to
> rue the day they wrote them, and force them to understand these words, if
> we can.
>
> To hold the line on climate change to "dangerous" levels (that is the best
> we can do, and we are headed for "extremely dangerous" - in all probability
> catastrophic - at present), we would need something akin to a radical
> climate moonshot, an ecosocialist World War II-type war effort, a great
> transformation of everything that is so wrong about the world we live in.
> Everything.
>
>
> How do we do it? Or "What I've learned about how to change society
> radically (in a good sense, of course!) in the last thirty-six years?"
>
> Revolutions - and other movements for radical social change  - require
> broadly-based alliances of people from multiple classes, both (or more)
> genders, and cross-racial/ethnic alliances to succeed.
>
> People get involved in such movements when one or more political cultures
> of opposition and resistance gain adherents (Foran 2014).  The origins of
> such political cultures start with the experiences of people, in the
> grievances they endure and the emotional and political responses they
> fashion using every available cultural tool and historical memory they
> possess. For example, when collective discourses like environmentalism or
> feminism are available in the form of consciously articulated ideologies,
> would-be social actors take them up and put them to work locally, and in
> this way they tend to diffuse through activist groups into local settings
> and circulate among social movements. Perhaps more importantly, popular
> idioms or folk understandings - what student of revolutions Eric Selbin
> calls "rich stories," or cross-generational political imaginaries in the
> language of my research partner Richard Widick - are also available for
> use, providing new social actors as well as seasoned activists with locally
> understood, everyday terms such as fairness, justice, or democracy. In the
> case of climate activism, this might mean justice, buen vivir, historical
> responsibility, or intergenerational equity.
>
> When these take hold in a large enough social group or wider society,
> often through the work of some kind of radical/progressive organization or
> network, a social movement can gain enough committed followers to take
> decisive action. The forging of a strong and vibrant political culture of
> opposition is thus a collective accomplishment, carried through by the
> actions of many people.
>
> In any given society, there usually exist multiple political cultures of
> opposition, for people do not necessarily share the same experiences, speak
> similar idioms, or respond as one to the call of formal ideologies. The
> most effective social movements find ways of bridging the differences
> through the skillful creation of a common goal, such as the concise demand
> for "System change, not climate change!" raised at COP 15 in Copenhagen in
> 2009. When this happens, a movement's chances of growth and success are
> considerably increased.
> Such alliances, and the political cultures of opposition that motivate
> them, are an indispensable factor in the making and success of revolutions.
>
> There are, of course, also political and economic factors involved in a
> revolution's success.  I explored these in depth, and developed a model of
> the causes of revolutions in Taking Power:  On the Origins of Third World
> Revolutions.
>
> Unfortunately, all twentieth-century and anti-colonial social revolutions
> fell short of the achieving the dreams of those who made them.  The reasons
> for this include:
>
> ~ fragmentation of the broad revolutionary alliance after it came to power
>
> ~ intense outside pressures, usually from the First World, often from the
> U.S.
>
> ~ pre-existing inequalities, both within and between countries
>
> ~ lack of popular participation in governing (related to the first factor)
>
> But 21st-century movements for radical social change - recall that my
> definitions is not restricted to revolutions - look different from their
> 20th-century counterparts because:
>
> ~ they are mostly non-violent
>
> ~ they are more horizontally organized
>
> ~ they are even more diverse
>
> ~ they have dynamic new political cultures of opposition and resistance
> They also feature exciting political cultures of creation?
>
> Movements become even stronger when to a widely felt culture of opposition
> and resistance they add a positive vision of a better world, an alternative
> to strive for that might improve or replace what exists. As David Pellow
> has put it: "Many movements begin with a grievance or a critique, but what
> sustains them and pushes people out into the streets (or underground) is
> often a vision, a dream of something better."
>
> These movements are coming to power or attempting to do so, in some
> strikingly new ways: through elections, as in the case of the "Pink Tide"
> governments in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela (and now attempting this in
> Europe, or even with the Bernie Sanders campaign);  through occupations of
> public spaces, as in the wave of the Occupy movements of 2011 and others
> since;  through regional or local power-taking, or of re-making the nature
> of power altogether, as the Zapatistas have been doing in Chiapas since
> 1994; and through global networks such as the global justice movement of
> the 2000s, and now the global climate justice movement.
>
> All of these movements are increasingly intersectional in terms of both
> their social make-up (crossing race/ethnic, gender, and class lines) and
> the issues they are connecting the dots of.
>
> The movements that are most likely to succeed will feature some new
> combination of 1) stronger social movements and political cultures of
> opposition and creation, and 2) new kinds of parties, joined in 3) some new
> kind of networked structure, and 4) operating locally, nationally, and
> globally.
>
> In a nutshell, the sum of my study of revolutions and movements for
> radical social change in the 20th and 21st centuries so far is this:
> We may need a combination of both a dense network of movements and a
> totally new type of political party to achieve anything like deep radical
> social change.
>
> These movements will have to develop both powerful political cultures of
> opposition, and compelling political cultures of creation.
>
> At least these are hypotheses for scholar-activists to debate!
>
> Conclusion:  What is to be done?
>
> As for the global climate justice movement, might it prove to be the most
> radical social movement of the twenty-first century?
>
> It could if we make it so.  We need to operate on all levels:  local to
> global, and from short-range defensive action against every fossil fuel
> project and electoral ploy, to medium-range reforms (like the Bernie
> Sanders campaign perhaps?  Come to think of it, the Sanders campaign is
> pretty short range at the moment, isn't it?), to long-range radical (anti-
> or post- capitalist?) change.
>
> With the added challenge that definition of "medium-range" in our critical
> present moment has been shortened to something like "from now to the next
> four years" and "long-range" "from now to the next 10-15 years" because
> that's all we've got to bend the arc of climate justice.
> But it can be done.  We will not "save" the world.  My reading of climate
> science makes me agree with ecosocialist scholar-activist Brad Hornick on
> this point:
>
> "All thinking clearly about climate and political realities can do is
> change the nature of the struggle.
>
> It's not an easy prospect as it requires heart-wrenching personal and
> collective existential crisis (questioning meaning in all facets of life
> and work).
>
> I'll say it now: there is conclusive evidence-based scientific
> determination of irreversible physical changes that will by necessity cause
> catastrophic destruction to civilization in the coming decades.
>
> Full stop.
>
> We are at the point where we need to acknowledge these truths. It will
> come now or later - and if it comes later it will hit us much harder, and
> will mean deterioration in the relevance of certain life/work/political
> strategies."
>
>
> It's hard to say it better than that.  Consider this essay a wake-up call,
> colleagues.  A call to arms, comrades.  The time is now.  We are the
> available ones.  All of us.
>
>
>
>
>

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