A Typology of Activism
Keck, Margaret E.
Solidarity has been a core value for religious, leftist and labor groups, signifying support for the struggles of people who, one way or another, are oppressed. After World War II, but...
...On the other hand, like rights activists, they are much more likely to focus their strategies on procedural or institutional facets of issues...
...After World War II, but especially since the 1960s, solidarity organizations have been joined by human rights organizations, which take a very different approach to the problem of saving lives...
...The solidarity and rights frameworks have been two of the main patterns on which international advocacy has taken place among non-governmental organizations...
...Human rights appeals, on the other hand, raise procedural claims: that violations of personhood or of accepted civil or legal norms and procedures are unacceptable regardless of the victim's beliefs...
...On the one hand, the "new" environmentists share with solidarity activists a strong belief that the cause on behalf of which they are fighting is just, and that the legitimacy of the struggle derives from the substantive justice of the cause...
...Solidarity also involves a notion of risk-sharing...
...Solidarity involves a substantive dimension that rights-based activism does not: support based on a conviction that those supported are right...
...Yet a third pattern of international advocacy, represented by traditional environmentalism as well as the activities of many UN agencies and mainstream NGOs, ignores the political conflicts inherent in the idea of sustainable development...
...Individuals are endowed with rights...
...Even when they recognize the social aspects of environmental problems, they approach them with technical, not political proposals...
...Activists make themselves vulnerable in some way as testimony to their belief in a sense of community with the victims of injustice...
...Although both involve relationships between oppressed peoples and those in a position to support them, there are important conceptual differences...
...The turn towards poor peoples' movements in North-South environmental networking and advocacy represents an interesting hybrid of solidarity and rights traditions, and marks a clear break with the apolitical approach of traditional environmentalism...
...In this current of activism, like-minded scientists or technocrats come together around a set of seemingly technical goals...
...communities are the repositories of solidarity...
...Although clearly many human rights activists pursue information at great personal risk, the human rights methodology has not included expressions of shared vulnerability...
Vol. 28 • March 1995 • No. 5
