Abstract
Introduction
We are excited to present our first book symposium in the journal. Organising for Change: Social Change Makers and Social Change Organisations by Silke Roth and Clare Saunders was published as part of Bristol University Press’s Organisations and Activism Series, in December 2023. It is a fitting title to feature as our first book symposium as it speaks powerfully to our manifesto at the journal, specifically our commitment to ‘offer an invitation to do sociology as part of a community, to work to envision radical alternatives, and to journey toward the future we wish to see’. As we face multiple crises, thinking about how we organise to build expansive, radical interventions and transformations is urgent. This timely book addresses these issues, exploring the different ways that ‘social change organisations’ and ‘social change makers’ can cultivate new forms of social relations. This book is both hopeful and practical, and documents the important everydayness of struggles, and the daily solidarity work that is essential to building for effective social change. It is a book that has great salience not only to academics in this field, but also as a rich teaching resource, and importantly a resource for the social change makers they speak about.
As part of the symposium, we invited three respondents to engage with the book from the perspective of their own research. Malin Arvidson, whose work includes explorations of civil society organisations, social welfare services, NGOs and poverty alleviation, probes where Roth and Saunders’ analytical framework takes us in terms of identifying patterns of change making. Arvidson also asks about the difficult issues around donor funding, power, accountability and the risk of co-option that those involved in social change making face. Lydia Ayame Hiraide works on Black feminism, political ecology, environmental politics and intersectionality. In her reflections she situates the book’s aims within the context of the race riots in Britain in the summer of 2024, and reflects upon reactionary social change as the antithesis to progressive social change. Hiraide picks up on how the book offers a more expansive notion of social change makers, going beyond the term activism and recognising more everyday practices, such as providing acts of service provision. She reflects upon the possibilities around this form of solidarity as well as its limitations as such services face being subsumed within systemic forms of neoliberal hegemony. elena pavan, whose research looks at the nexus between digital media and social movements, particularly in the field of feminist and LGBTQIA* mobilisations, reflects upon the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in collective organising for social change. While the role of ICT in helping drive social change has been recognised in Roth and Saunders’ account, it is done with some pessimism, whilst Pavan makes a case for the opportunities for activism and participation offered through the digital realm.
Roth and Saunders respond to these issues while contextualising and illustrating their responses with concrete examples from contemporary social movements and actions in the current conjuncture, from Palestine to the Musk–Trump alliance and the role of X. In doing so, Roth and Saunders emphasise the portability and applicability of their framework for social change offered in this book. ‘Organising is politics made durable’ is the opening line in the preface to the book by the series editors and this is a salient remark, raising questions about the role of sociology in helping to make politics durable. Sociology is very good at critiquing, less so at building change in practical ways. This book and the contributions from its discussants seek to challenge that and show the potential for sociologists to contribute and build a sociology oriented towards achieving social change. If there was ever a time for enacting what Wright (2006) called an emancipatory social science, it must surely be in these violent, unmooring and crisis ridden times. It is important to give attention to the everyday building for social change. The questions posed here are as important as giving answers, as there is no quick fix, only enduring work.