Prefiguration and Group Style: Ideology and Strategy in Consensus-oriented Decision Making

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 22. Prefigurative Politics

Abstract

With increasing prevalence, leftist social movement organizations are adopting consensus-oriented decision making, which aims to achieve the agreement of all participants. Scholars and organizers have criticized consensus-oriented decision making (CODM) for reproducing inequalities, excluding and alienating people, and interfering with political opportunities. Why then do organizers continue to practice CODM? Typically, strategic and ideological motivations have been juxtaposed in the literature on CODM and prefiguration. I move beyond this polarization with Eliasoph and Lichterman’s (2003) cultural concept, group style, which refers to the culture of interaction that is observable in how groups speak, relate to one another, and relate to the outside world. Style consistencies can be found across many groups, movements, and regions. Based on semi-structured interviews with 30 social movement organizers with experience in more than 15 leftist social movements, I found that organizers’ commitment to CODM is fundamentally ideological. With their distinctive group style they express their ideological commitment in strategic terms by emphasizing the practical benefits of CODM. Their group style, pragmatic prefiguration, enables them to maintain their ideological commitments while adapting CODM to their strategic interests within limits.

Author

• Kathryn Rachel Hoban, UC Irvine