Understanding Individual Commitment to Collective Action

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

Carlos Ramírez, Carlos Ramírez, Carlos Andrés Ramírez, Carlos Andrés Ramírez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032458250
• eBook ISBN: 9781000956047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

When speaking colloquially of political participation or civic action, one thinks, in the first instance, of groups and organizations such as political parties, social movements or various types of voluntary associations. The perspective of individuals is not the first thing that comes to mind when seeking to understand their functioning. In contrast to this vision, understanding the dynamics of participation requires taking a closer look at the individual, that is, at his or her moral dispositions and projects, his or her multiple and simultaneous identities, the breaking points in his or her biographical trajectory, the roles he or she adopts in an organization or the styles of communication which he or she uses. The book comprises a variety of case studies and theoretical and methodological contributions that, independent of rational choice theories, seek to understand collective action at the level of the individual and, in doing so, to articulate the various fields of study in this regard with the singularity of biographies and the reflective personal identities that characterize contemporary individualism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Individual engagement in social activism: An interactionist account
• 2 The ogre and the activist. The sociology of activist careers in a structural interactionist perspective
• 3 Thinking the engagement: Dispositionalism, contextualism and scales of observation
• 4 The commanders-educators of the FARC–EP and the links between their biographical trajectories and the guerrillas’ organizational plans
• 5 Individual activism in collective dynamics: Some methodological approaches to the practices of—political—resistance
• 6 The (ambivalent) lives of others. Reconstructing the trajectories of Egyptian revolutionaries through social media traces and biographical interviews
• 7 Individual and collective dimensions of the Parisian revolution of 1789. Historiographic reflections and research strategies
• 8 QCA and radicalisation
• Conclusion: Building bridges
• Index