Democratizing civil disobedience

Philosophy and Social Criticism 42 (10):982-994 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The goal of this article is to show that mainstream liberal accounts of civil disobedience fail to fully capture the latter’s specific characteristics as a genuinely political and democratic practice of contestation that is not reducible to an ethical or legal understanding either in terms of individual conscience or of fidelity to the rule of law. In developing this account in more detail, I first define civil disobedience with an aim of spelling out why the standard liberal model, while providing a useful starting point, ultimately leads to an overly constrained, domesticated and sanitized understanding of this complex political practice. Second, I place the political practice of civil disobedience between two opposing poles: symbolic politics and real confrontation. I argue that the irreducible tension between these poles precisely accounts for its politicizing and democratizing potential. Finally, I briefly examine the role of civil disobedience in representative democracies, addressing a series of recent challenges made in response to this radically democratic understanding of disobedience.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,386

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Interpretation of Political Action: The Case of Civil Disobedience.A. Lawton - 1988 - Dissertation, University of Leicester (United Kingdom)
Ecosabotage and civil disobedience.Michael Martin - 1990 - Environmental Ethics 12 (4):291-310.
Rawls and Gandhi on civil disobedience.Vinit Haksar - 1976 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 19 (1-4):151 – 192.
Reply to Critics.Kimberley Brownlee - 2016 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 10 (4):721-739.
How Democratic is Civil Disobedience?Daniel Weinstock - 2016 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 10 (4):707-720.
‘Law and order’ and civil disobedience.Fred R. Berger - 1970 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 13 (1-4):254 – 273.
Is ecosabotage civil disobedience?Jennifer Welchman - 2001 - Philosophy and Geography 4 (1):97 – 107.
The Burdens of Conviction: Brownlee on Civil Disobedience.William Smith - 2016 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 10 (4):693-706.
Justifying Non-Violent Civil Disobedience within the Kenyan Context: A Moral Perspective.Rmj Oduor - 2011 - Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya 3 (1):21-59.
Disobedience, Civil and Otherwise.Candice Delmas - 2017 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 11 (1):195-211.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-03-22

Downloads
243 (#80,195)

6 months
36 (#97,055)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Robin Celikates
Freie Universität Berlin

Citations of this work

Environmental Activism and the Fairness of Costs Argument for Uncivil Disobedience.Ten-Herng Lai & Chong-Ming Lim - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3):490-509.
Civil disobedience.Kimberley Brownlee & Candice Delmas - 2021 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Theorizing social change.Robin Zheng - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (4):e12815.

View all 45 citations / Add more citations