A Productive Constraint: How Nonviolence Engenders Disobedients Careers in New York City

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6: How do Movements Change Individuals, Relationships, and Organizations?

Abstract

This paper examines the “disobedient careers” of New York City activists engaging in civil disobedience during the first Trump administration, exploring how nonviolent protest has become a normalized, even institutionalized, practice. In New York, some activists accumulate numerous arrests over decades, facing minimal personal consequences as long as they adhere to certain behavioral norms and remain “legible” (Scott 1998) - nonviolent and deemed “respectable” by authorities. This paper investigates this overlooked aspect of political sociology: nonviolence as a productive force. Through a case study of thirty New York activists with extensive arrest records, some dating back to the 1960s, and building on Fillieule (2020), it develops the concept of disobedient careers.

These disobedient careers reveal how nonviolence, beyond being a norm, acts as a productive constraint, shaping both individual and group identities and actions. The study suggests that factors such as citizenship, race, age, gender, sexuality, and social class play a significant role in shaping these careers. Findings indicate a demographic skew towards predominantly white, middle- and upper-class US citizens, often in their fifties and older, including cisgender women and individuals with minoritized sexual and gender identities. However, social properties and identities have little explanatory power on their own if they are not resituated within the configurations or arenas in which they unfold (Fillieule and Pudal 2010). In other words, disobedient careers reveal both who can repeatedly risk arrest and how that risk shapes them. Therefore, the paper also investigates these long-term biographical consequences and similarities with radicalization processes.

This paper draws on primary data from a doctoral research, including 24 months of ethnographic research in New York (October 2016-December 2019) within groups like ACT UP and Rise and Resist, alongside forty interviews with activists and National Lawyers Guild attorneys, as well as ACT UP New York's 187 oral histories conducted by Sarah Schulman.

Author

• Charlotte Thomas-Hébert, Aalborg University