Engaging (for) Social Change: Towards New Forms of Collective Action
Author(s) Marjan Ivković , Srđan Prodanović Publisher Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade Published 2019 ISBN 978-86-80484-42-6 Pages 318 Edition Dispute
The volume brings together fourteen essays of varying scope, disciplinary backgrounds, and theoretical orientations, their unifying thread being a certain innovativeness in approach to the phenomenon of engagement for social change. Divided into four thematic blocs – “Engagement and Change: Pathways of Theorization,” “Overcoming Domination,” Engaging Images, Engaging Words” and “Engaged Researcher” – the texts question, each in its own way, the currently dominant paradigm of thinking about engagement and social change, which we could broadly speaking call “liberal,” and which revolves around terms such as “group interests,” “rational choice” and the dichotomy “state/civil society.” Instead of these, the authors offer new theoretical and methodological resources for understanding key aspects of collective engagement for change – sources of motivation for action, societal norms, mechanisms of political mobilization, different “vocabularies” of engagement such as visual art and literature, and ways in which the structure of a given political community shapes the capacities for individual and collective action.