Social Activism Facilitating to Overcome Anthropocene

• In Event: Active Citizenship, Policy Making and Social Change

Abstract

Social activism facilitating to overcome Anthropocene
The civil society is domain and outcome of mass activism enabling continuously put in practice such fundamental principles as freedom, equality, fraternity (solidarity). The implementation of the “glorious triad” was historical precondition and enabler of intertwined emergence of both industrial societies - where rapid productivity increase enabled to fulfil broadening range of human needs - and civil society.
The activism of civil society players created, established, and institutionalized new legislative norms and social standards which shortened worktime, altered dominant patterns of (re-) distribution, and facilitated voluntary activities. The activism continuous to liberate more and more time from wage work and enables to spend (growing part) of it with voluntary activities carried out in self-organizing entities of emerging and self-empowering civil society. This constellation is interlinked with changing patterns and dialectics of enhanced cooperation facilitating the emergence of cooperative knowledge-driven society. It helps to overcome mass alienation and consciously re-establish enhanced harmony among human activities and (processes of) nature. These transformations are interlinked with association-prone patterns of mutual approximation among market and public sectors and self-empowering civil society. Cooperative patterns of macro-sectorial convergence are shaped by association-prone dynamism of emerging digitalization, interplay with shortening ‘standard work time’, altering patterns of (re-)distribution catalysing (mass)emancipation.
These trends require and presuppose enhanced mass activism of civil society players unfolding in frame of ongoing global participative revolution (Salamon et al., 2003), facilitating to bring cooperation into competitive environments. The spread of voluntary activities taking place in diverse forms - including self-organizing mass collaboration and peer production - (re-)enact creativity together with other non-depletable and non-rivalrous soft resources similar to information, knowledge, cognitive, relational, emotional, and psychological energies. The mobilization of soft resources facilitates to extend and upgrade the collective resource base and contributes to self-empowerment of the civil society capable and willing to operate as function system of society. Its role “...is the provision of stability for joint collective action for something greater than just individual benefits...for the common good and social coherence…[by enabling] to solve…[also wicked] problems that are not solved by any other part of society”(Reichel, 2012) .
The civil activism capitalizes on and contributes to self-empowerment of civil society and generates its capability to carry out social agency. It enables to prevent and recover social and environmental damages which ‘externalities’ of capital accumulation generate and that “fuel” accelerating emergence of the Anthropocene (Heikkurinen et al. 2017).

Author

• Jozsef Veress, Corvinus University Budapest