Our actions define who we are: pragmatic praxis and tactical tastes

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we highlight the utility and implications of the sociological pragmatic theory of action, in particular for the study of social movements. Drawing on the classical theories of George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, we illustrate that there are moments in social life where we cannot strictly ascribe rational/strategic or identity/cultural logics to actors’ actions. During socially indeterminate periods, people are able to reflect upon how they want to see themselves, and act to help crystallize and reconstruct their identities to fit this image; at these moments, the means/end distinction dissolves. We utilize a comparative study of two cases to illustrate this point. Both the 1930s Farmers’ Holiday Association from the Midwestern US and contemporary DREAMers in the broader US illustrate that people can utilize action to help them re-create their self-understandings to fit with how they want to see themselves. This has implications not only for the study of social movements, but also in the study of social action in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Tactics
• strategy
• identity
• pragmatism
• theory of action

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A similar observation can be made regarding how movement entrepreneurs use frames to recruit or dissuade potential allies (Benford & Snow, 2000). Steinberg’s (1998) discursive interpretation helps alleviate frame theory’s instrumental tendencies. While he highlights how action can impress understandings upon activists, akin to our argument here, he seems to treat discourse as action, much like Thévenot’s regimes or Boltanski’s (2011 [2009]) tests of critique (p. 103–110). However, we argue that there is a fundamental phenomenological difference between corporeal action and speech, a distinction that is further highlighted later in the paper.

2. Our interviews with DREAMers took place over six years starting in 2012. We began with interviewing activists from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 2010, DREAMer organizations at these two Texas schools split over strategy with the San Antonio group advocating more radical actions and the Austin group advocating moderation. In these initial interviews of Texas DREAMers, we asked activists to identify national leaders who led the radical camp and the moderate camp. We continued this snowball sampling until we were confident that we had interviewed multiple perspectives in the two camps. Interviews ranged from one hour to three hours in length. The average interview time was just under two hours. Interviewees also shared correspondences from 2008 through 2010 providing historical context for their accounts of the DREAMer split.

3. Schwiertz’s (2016) paper on the emergence of a radical frame within in DREAMer activism highlights the work of IYJL, a core member of the radical network in 2010, and the March 2010 coming out actions. He is right about the pivotal role of this Chicago action, and in a longer piece, we would discuss the connections between this action and the Arizona action. For example, Tania Unzueta and Rigo Padilla were instrumental in the organization of the Arizona action.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Jaster

Daniel Jaster is a Lecturer at the University of South Dakota. His research focuses on the motivations and morphology of protest movements as well as pragmatic and utopian theory. His work has appeared in journals such as Mobilization and Journal of Classical Sociology.

Michael P. Young

Michael P. Young is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently working on a book about how DREAMers radicalized the U.S. immigrant rights movement.