Robert F. Carley, an Associate Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University, dives into the intricate relationship between social movements and tactics. He argues that tactics are more than just means to an end; they're vital expressions of injustice and demands for justice. Carley connects Gramsci’s revolutionary theories with contemporary issues of race, highlighting how these tactics can reshape organizational dynamics and empower marginalized voices. His insights offer a fresh perspective on the mobilization of racialized subaltern groups in today's social struggles.
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insights INSIGHT
Tactics As Cultural Practice
Robert F. Carley reframes tactics as a cultural practice that movements perform, not merely means to an end.
He argues tactics produce public meanings and shape organizational forms and political communities.
insights INSIGHT
Make A Detour Through Stuart Hall
Carley urges scholars to detour through Stuart Hall to connect micro everyday experience to macro political moments.
He says Hall's approach creates a conversational sociological imagination grounded in political context.
insights INSIGHT
Ideological Contention Explains Internal Conflict
Ideological contention captures internal movement conflicts over meaning, strategy, and identity that framing approaches miss.
External conflict triggers internal debates which shape organization, membership, and outcomes.
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While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Carley argues by contrast that tactics are, above all, what social movements do. They are not mere means to an end so much as they are a public form of expression pointing out injustices and making just demands. Rooted in a highly original analysis of the tactically mediated relationship between race and mobilization in the work of Italian philosopher and revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice (SUNY Press, 2019) demonstrates how tactics impact the organizational structures of social movements and expand the affinities of political communities. Carley looks at how Gramsci used innovative tactics to bridge perceptions of racial differences between factory workers and subaltern groups, the latter having been denigrated to the point of subhumanity by a complex Italian national racial economy. Newly envisioning Gramsci as a theorist of race within a broader context of social struggle, Carley connects Gramsci's insights into the political mobilizations of racialized subaltern groups to contemporary critical race theory and cultural studies of racialization and racism. Speaking across disciplines and drawing on a number of empirical examples, Carley offers a battery of original concepts to assist scholars and activists in analyzing the tactical practices of protests in which race is a central factor.
Author info - Robert F. Carley is Associate Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University, College Station.
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