Towards a Processual Social Movement Theory: Diachrony,Dialectics,and Danda

Abstract

Interest in temporality and the effects of social movements over periods of time has increased over the past few years. This has created the need for diachronic approaches to the study of movements and accounts for how movements create social change and have an impact on the course of history. There have been some struggles to account for history in existing approaches to social movements, with eventful or ruptural accounts of social change remaining prominent in some recent works. This article proposes a conversational philosophy between African philosophies such as ubuntu and ibuanyidanda and Marxist humanism as an approach that can allow us to explore dynamic ontologies. Marxist approaches to social movement studies have so far yielded the most dynamic approaches to social change. I contend that ubuntu and ibuanyidanda offer ontological perspectives that allow us to understand humans and the societies they create as dynamic, changing, and interrelated, in a way that can complement, and enhance, the historical materialist model of a society created by collective human agency, albeit not in circumstances that they choose.

Keywords

conversational philosophy ontology process social change social movements

The need for a processual social movement theory

In the 2020 special issue of Social Movement Studies focussed on time and temporality, editors Kevin Gillan and Gemma Edwards observe that ‘At the beginning of the century, McAdam and Sewell claimed ‘much, if not most, scholarship in the field . . . betrays no temporality whatsoever’ (McAdam and Sewell, 2001: 90). We believe that today this situation is (only just) beginning to change’ (Gillan and Edwards, 2020: 501).

This temporal turn is an exciting moment for the field and comes at a time when it seems vitally important to account for how social movements effect the course of social change. In a period of political instability, economic and ecological failure, and mass movements calling for radical change, social movement studies must be able to account for the reality of social change and popular campaigns’ role in shaping that development. If we are to observe the effects of movements on the process of social change, then these observations must occur over time (Jasper, 2004; Waters, 2008).

The discipline of social movement studies already has several temporal, or diachronic, approaches in its methodological repertoire. Existing biographical approaches are useful for understanding the processes that activists go through when taking part in social movements (Corrigall-Brown, 2012; McAdam, 1988; Neveu and Filleule, 2019; Pagis, 2018). Verta Taylor’s (1989) abeyance theory accounts for the survival of movements through periods of lower activity and the importance of experienced activists sharing their knowledge with new movement actors. Gary Fine (2020) has also highlighted the importance of elder activists in narrating a movement’s history and connecting campaigns to past struggles. The relationship contemporary movements have with the past is an important area of research that also represents part of this temporal turn (Dean, 2016; Thompson, 2020; Yazdiha, 2020), and the expansion of this literature is crucial to understanding the longer-term relationship between movements and social change. Therefore, the tools for diachronic, processual studies of social movements are emerging as part of the temporal turn, and there are already concepts and theories that can be utilised for a processual social movement theory.

However, these approaches are often rooted in a stubbornly static ontology. Eventful approaches, although they represent an advancement on purely functionalist perspectives, theorise a moment of crisis followed by a new stability (Bosi and Davis, 2017; Bourdieu, 1988; Della Porta, 2020; McAdam, 1988; Neveu and Filleule, 2019; Pagis, 2018). This comes across as an attempt to incorporate a diachronic analysis into a synchronic worldview. It is an acknowledgement that change happens over time but still rests on the idea that societies not in crisis are stable entities with complementary functions. That change requires a rupture in a social structure that normally reproduces itself. These ruptural approaches do not take a fully diachronic approach that recognises that society is constantly being created through a mixture of change and continuity. A fully diachronic approach would, by necessity, utilise a dynamic ontology.

This article argues that we can build on existing processual theory through a conversational philosophy between historical materialism and African philosophies such as ubuntu and ibuanyidanda. These philosophies share a dynamic ontology but display clear differences which can make a conversational philosophy (Chimakonam, 2019; Chimakonam et al., 2021) a productive exercise for social movement studies. The shared ontology displayed also implies ethics, based on solidarity, community, and collective action, which matches the normative commitments of many scholars in the field and the movements we study.

In the first section, conversational philosophy as a method for intercultural dialogue is explored, before the rest of the article goes on a journey through process sociology (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2006, 2013; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Elias et al., 1997; Latour, 1996; Nancy, 2000), historical materialism (Gould, 1978; Thompson, 2013 [1963], 1978), ibuanyidanda (Asouzu, 2011, 2014) and ubuntu (Ramose, 1999) to outline a social ontology for the study of social movements and social change.

Conversational philosophy

This article is intended to be just contribution to a growing diachronic turn in social movement studies, and here, it is suggested that historical materialism can be enhanced by embarking on a conversation with African philosophies that have a dynamic account of interdependence and collective action such as ubuntu and ibuanyidanda. The conversation here is not a casual one; it is a serious discussion of societal process and what it means to become human together, and therefore, it requires an appropriate method. Conversational philosophy would be a suitable approach for a number of reasons.

First, it is a decolonial method, intended as a method for the just conduct of intercultural philosophy that challenges Eurocentrism and the hegemony of Western thought. This, I believe, is a project that we must commit to, both for the reason that it is the right thing to do, in terms of recognising our shared humanity and forging humane relations with one another (Ramose, 1999), and that it is the best way for us to learn more about the social world we share. Nyansa nni onipa baako ti mu [‘wisdom is not in the head of one person’] (Akan proverb, Kwesi, 2021: 369) conveys that we learn by sharing our knowledge with each other and discussing it as equals.

Second, conversational philosophy, based on Ezumezu logic (Chimakonam, 2019; Chimakonam et al., 2021) and the idea of conversation, shares enough similarities (although it is very important to note the significant differences!) with dialogic and dialectical logics used in historical materialist thinking to create a comfortable intellectual space for those familiar with either procedure to share and talk through ideas. The procedure of conversational philosophy is defined by Jonathan Chimakonam (2017) as arumaristics, in which two positions go through a process of creative struggle to elaborate ideas. The two conversational positions are Nwa-nsa and Nwa-nju; Nwa-nsa holds a position, and Nwa-nju challenges this position to encourage Nwa-nsa to refine their approach. In this article, social movement studies’ position on social change is Nwa-nsa, and a set of complementary approaches have been put forward as Nwa-nju. The idea of this interaction is to refine the position and approach of social movement studies to social change. In the future, a more thorough and formal conversation between the two traditions could prove very fruitful for social movement researchers.

A third reason for turning to conversational philosophy is because of the ongoing relationship it entails and the mutual respect it is intended to foster. This methodology allows for horizontal intercultural philosophy and guards against the imposition of epistemic hierarchies, by allowing for a universal conversation between philosophies without them losing their individual identities.

It is beyond the scope of this article to begin that conversation in earnest, but the development of a body of social theory enriched by an arumaristic conversation as outlined here could provide a basis for a comprehensive study of social movements and social change.

In the next section, processual approaches to sociology will be introduced and assessed by way of introduction to diachronic approaches to social theory.

Processual sociology

Norbert Elias, when elucidating his processual approach to social theory, argues that many social theories:

present human societies symbolically as well-balanced, generally harmonious and thus normally unchanging human constructions. Social changes, often reified as ‘social change’, appear in this theoretical approach as something additional, as disturbances in a social structure that would not change without disturbance[. . .] the peculiarity of such an image of human society as a normally static object spreads to all the various concepts of the corresponding sociology, such as ‘function’ or ‘structure’ (Elias et al., 1997).

The ontological shift Elias proposes in response is a significant one, rather than seeing change as something that happens during ruptures of a system, which is normally in a steady state, Elias argues that we must see change as normal and stasis as an unusual occurrence. EH Carr (1961) observed the tendency of sociology to concentrate on synchronic accounts of society and urged for sociology to ‘become dynamic – a study not of society at rest (for no such society exists) but of social change and development’ (p. 66). In this statement, Carr is making the point that, from the perspective of history as a discipline, although synchronic empirical studies of society are valuable, no synchronic theory of society can be seen as valid. It is not just that societies are generally not static, the reality is that they never are. We must not make the mistake Sartre (1966) ascribed to Foucault in The Order of Things, in which he ‘replaces the cinema with the magic lantern, movement by a succession of immobilities’.

Crucially, Elias also makes the case that the processual nature of human society arises from the interdependence of human beings and their interdependence with the social world they inhabit (Elias et al., 1997; Van Krieken, 1998). This is pertinent for the study of social movements because of the relational turn in sociology and the interest in movement networks (Edwards and Crossley, 2009; Crossley and Krinsky, 2015).

However, in Elias’ account of the social, very little weight is given to human intention, with the emphasis placed on the unplanned nature of society (Elias et al., 1997; Van Krieken, 1998). In this understanding of figurations, Elias posits that, as any outcome is liable to stem from actions performed by multiple actors with multiple intentions, the outcome cannot be said to have been planned by any of these actors.

This is a troubling scenario for sociologists attempting to understand social movements, a field concerned with accounting for the agency of activists, their strategic actions, and the production of new ideas. Robert Van Krieken acknowledges that Elias does not sufficiently account for the contradictions and conflicts between organised groups in society and posits that a more dialectical understanding is necessary (Van Krieken, 2001).

Processual understandings of the social are also present in Rhizomatic, New Materialist, and Actor-Network theories. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) emphasise the dynamic, contingent nature of assemblages and their constant state of flux. New Materialist work inspired by feminist Science and Technology studies describes the vibrancy of a world created by matter in constant motion (Barad, 2007). Latour (1996) affirms the importance of interactions in a networked world, where change occurs through the combination, recombination, and dissolution of a multiplicity of networks.

These approaches are much more attendant to a world of flux and change that does not prioritise substance over accident. This comes from a critical analysis that deconstructs structures and decentres the subject to paint a holistic and complex explanation of causality. Networks, assemblages, and rhizomes criticise the dualism of human and nature, interiority and exteriority, and crucially, structure and agency. These approaches, however, run into similar problems to Elias when we think about applying these theories to social movement studies, as the status of human agency becomes ambiguous.

This issue stems from a problem highlighted by Jean-Luc Nancy (2000) in his critique of a tendency in Western thought to think of a free individual as either an agent or an agentic mass, without theorising a between stage. The posthumanist turn to agentic networks, agentic matter, rhizomes, and assemblages decentres the transcendental agentic individual but slips into the opposite pole of dispersing agency across a mass. The network, the assemblage, and the rhizome become a meta-subject, and the human or non-human actor is restricted to micropolitics. This issue of subjectivity is not ignored in the literature and has been notably addressed by Rosi Braidotti (2006, 2013) in her calls for a posthuman subjectivity as well as Donna Haraway (2016 [1985]) in her Cyborg Manifesto.

Nancy suggests that the problem is associated with the lack of theorisation of being-with. Agency is understood as a kind of sovereignty: of the self over the world, or the world over the self. Here, we can see outlined the two intertwined problems addressed in this article: how to account for a dynamic processual world without refuting the possibility of human agency. In the following section, I will outline the historical materialist way of approaching this problem as it is quite different to the approaches mentioned above, before exploring the illuminating ways in which Ubuntu and Ibuanyidanda have already addressed this issue.

Historical materialism: process and praxeology

In search of a processual social movement theory, we can turn to historical materialism, which, in its most fluid form, is well suited to the understanding of social movements. This suitability is due to its dialectical approach to the creation of political consciousness and its ability to account for how a conflict between social groups produces social outcomes. A reconstruction of Marx’s social ontology highlights the processual nature of his understanding of human beings and their societies (Gould, 1978). Following a more humanistic Marxism (Davis, 1971 [2000]; Fanon, 1961 [2017]; Freire, 2017 [1970]; James and Grimshaw, 1992; Thompson, 2013 [1963], 1978; Wood, 1995), we can explore the dynamic creation of groups of people intentionally struggling for social change.

This approach is made clear in an explicitly theoretical way by Thompson (1978) in The Poverty of Theory. In his withering critique of Althusser’s more structural understanding of class consciousness, Thompson states that we need ‘concepts appropriate to the investigation of process’ (Thompson, 1978: 45). Ellen Wood explains how this leads Thompson to an understanding of the development of class consciousness that is inherently processual and dialectical, ‘Class formations and the discovery of class consciousness grow out of the process of struggle, as people “experience” and “handle” their class situations’ (Wood, 1995: 80). Through their analysis of class formation, Thompson and Wood are explaining how groups of people understand the process of human history as they ‘experience’ it, to ‘handle’ that experience through conscious action, offering a model that describes people as in the process of understanding social processes and taking action on that understanding.

This model of social processes, guided by the dialectical motion of conscious actors interacting with a social world being constantly made and unmade around them through their actions and the actions of others, more accurately corresponds to the desire to overcome the dichotomy between the individual and society (Elias et al., 1997). Rather than a society of separate rational actors attempting to shape society based on their tastes, preferences, and desires, only to see all their best-laid plans come to naught, the historical materialism of Thompson and Wood is much more interactive, describing a relationality not just between individuals but also between groups and between the individual and the collective. It is also a materialism with the subject left in, which makes similar arguments about dynamism and process as the approaches discussed above, without their troubling implications for human agency (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2006, 2013; Deluzue and Guattari, 1987; Latour, 1996).

In The Making of the English Working Class, Thompson (2013 [1963]) describes how the emerging working class began to form collectives to resist capitalist exploitation, experimenting with different tactics, organisational forms, and ideas as they built social movements capable of affecting the social world as they experienced it. This is a historical process that emerges from a specific socio-cultural context and develops through decades of social interaction and interrelation. The tendency of histories of revolutionary organisations and movements to include an account of the years, or even decades, leading up to the ‘event’ of a revolution is a testament to the role this process plays in movement formation (Ackelsberg, 2005; Fitzpatrick, 2017; James, 2001 [1938]; Peirats, 1998; Waldron, 1997).

This interaction is best described by Paulo Freire (2017 [1970]) in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire describes this interaction as a pedagogical process that occurs through praxis. Freire (2017 [1970]) elaborates on the micro level what Thompson (2013 [1963]) explores on the macro level in The Making of the English Working Class. A group develops its practical consciousness through a dialectical relationship between experience and action (Freire, 2017 [1970]). Producing this praxis is the task of any attempt at critical pedagogy, but the dialectical process is related to the way that Freire understands how humans exist in relation to socio-historical processes. Freire (2017 [1970]) states that,

‘Humans [. . .] because they are aware of themselves and thus of the world – because they are conscious beings – exist in a dialectical relationship between the determination of limits and their own freedom’. (p. 72)

Contrary to Elias’ model of a processual world, in which all outcomes are unplanned because of the fundamentally interrelated and interacting nature of human action, the praxis model sees this field of interrelating and interacting action as the reason that human action can be planned. It is by interpreting the world, acting on it, reflecting on that action, re-interpreting, and acting again that humans realise themselves as historical beings capable of shaping the world around them. There is also a crucially collective element to this process, ‘which occurs only in and among people together seeking out reality. I cannot think for others or without others, nor can others think for me’ (Freire, 2017 [1970]: 81).

The necessity of this collective consideration for social movements is evident in the writing of Franz Fanon (1961 [2017]), who stated that, in a liberation struggle, the people must be taught that,

everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people. (p. 159)

This dialectical pedagogy of struggle is also affirmed by Angela Davis in relation to the feminist movement:

The personal relations which cluster around women contain in germ, albeit in a web of oppression and thus distortedly, the premise of the abolition of alienation, the dissolution of a compulsive performance principle, thus, ultimately, the destruction of the whole nexus of commodity exchange. But yet this utopian content is only a promise and nothing more. Its radical implications remain impotent unless they are integrated into a practical revolutionary process. (Davis, 1971: 168)

Fanon emphasises the need for a collective and popular development of revolutionary ideas and action while Davis concentrates on the realisation of revolutionary potentials through a process of political action. What they both emphasise is the necessarily collective nature of the process of enacting social change.

Therefore, as social movement scholars, we must understand social movements as collective actors attempting to intervene in historical processes to produce directed social change. The processual and collective nature of social movements is a fundamental element of what they are, and Marxist humanism is well placed to provide an account of how they work. The most significant theoretical contribution of Thompson’s (2013 [1963]) opus is the understanding of class consciousness as a process by which a group becomes a collective actor capable of political action. As Thompson (2013 [1963]) famously states in the preface, ‘The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making’ (p. 8). We can understand that making as praxis through Freire (2017 [1970]), and we can understand it as a more thoroughly thought-out explanation of Marx’s adage that people make history but not in circumstances of their choosing (Marx, 1996 [1852]).

However, there are issues with understanding collective actors in social movement studies reliant on the premises of Western philosophy. As Elias et al. (1997) and Nancy (2000) pointed out, we often fall into the trap of individualism vs holism and theorising on either side of this artificial bifurcation. In reality, both premises are true; we are fundamentally unique individuals, we are also shaped by the world around us, and there is no reason why both these observations cannot be true (Gould, 1978). Historical materialism allows for this dual truth due to its dialectical nature; humans are understood as existing in a dialectical relationship between their own self-directed activity and social limits. Yet, to formulate a richer account of the collective actor without negating the role of the individual, we can turn to African philosophies, which have a much fuller and more nuanced account of the relational and processual nature of human action and interaction.

Ibuanyidanda and the collective actor

Although there are many different African philosophies, a common thread across multiple African philosophical viewpoints is the understanding of human beings as fundamentally social in nature. Many African philosophies are described as Communalist, in that people are perceived as existing through community, rather than communities being a collection of individuals. This tendency is evident in famous statements of African personhood, such as John Mbiti’s (1970) ‘I am because we are’ (p. 106) and ‘umuntu ngumuntu nga bantu (motho ke motho ka batho) ‘[. . .] to be a human being is to affirm one’s humanity by recognising the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish humane relations with them’ (Ramose, 1999: 37).

As is evident in the Marxist humanist accounts explored in previous sections, this relational understanding of personhood allows for both the expression of individual agency and determination by external limits:

Subjectivity is thus always intersubjectivity. This means also that, unlike the Western Cartesian subject, the coherence and self-understanding of the African subject is not dependent on an overcoming of materiality, particularity, interdependence, and flux insofar as subjectivity is constituted precisely through these things: through the interaction of vulnerable bodies in an ever-changing community (du Toit and Coetzee, 2017).

It is also important to highlight that in these conceptions of personhood, because the person is created through relationships, it is also a processual concept. A person is not a static entity, personhood is achieved over time, and it is something you become (Gyekye, 1997; Menkiti, 2017; Molefe, 2017; Wiredu, 2008).

Communalism has been critiqued for failing to account for individuality and justifying conformity and authoritarianism (Táíwò, 2016). If, as in a communalist perspective, the community has ontological primacy over the individual, it is proposed that the individual is lost under the pressure to conform to social norms.

However, this perspective is arguably stuck in an individualistic understanding of humans and society. Individualist accounts tend to see a contradiction between self and society; freedom is freedom of the individual from society and freedom from interference with the individual’s designs. In contrast, Mogobe Ramose proposes that we must see that ‘Neither the individual nor the community can define and pursue their respective purposes without recognising their mutual foundedness; their complementarity’ (Ramose, 1999: 106). In this understanding, freedom is freedom with other people; as evinced by motho ke motho ke batho, it is through other people that we are becoming ourselves, and it is through this relational process that our agency manifests itself in community. It is not that we are not individuals or that we are subsumed in community, it is the bifurcation between the individual and the community that is being critiqued. The individual still exists as a unique entity, but it must be understood as being created through complementarity and not through a bifurcation of the individual and community (Asouzu, 2014; Ramose, 1999).

Complementarity is elucidated clearly by Innocent Asouzu in his ibuanyidanda philosophy. Asouzu derives the name of his philosophy from an Igbo aphorism, ibu anyi danda, which he translates into English as ‘no task is insurmountable for danda’ (Asouzu, 2011: 102). (Danda are a species of ant that, through cooperation, can carry extremely heavy loads that no single ant could carry.) Starting from this saying, Asouzu goes on to elaborate a philosophical schema he refers to as ibuanyidanda, which emphasises inter-relatedness, complementarity, and a dynamic ontology, which Asouzu (2011) counterposes to the western Aristotelian ontology which is individualistic, contradictory, and static (Chimakonam, 2016).

Ibuanyidanda provides a maxim that ‘anything that exists serves as a missing link in reality’ (Asouzu, 2011: 103). The concept of the missing link explains that all aspects of reality are in constant interaction and interrelation, so each aspect of reality forms a missing link between other aspects, and the interaction of these links forms the complex movement of reality as a whole. The fundamental nature of accident in this schema makes it a non-deterministic dynamic philosophy in which ‘being is dynamic in a complementary sense’ (Asouzu, 2011: 103–104) [emphasis added].

Jonathan Chimakonam explains how this dynamic philosophy also points towards diachronic understandings of human activity: ‘The ultimate structure of being is that of interconnectedness and inter-relatedness. This relationship is dialectical, and it is through the dialectical process that a being evolves from one stage to another’ (Chimakonam, 2019: 15). This dynamic and relational ontology plays out on the social level in ibuanyidanda through the realisation that we are fundamentally social beings existing in mutual inter-relationship and that the bifurcation of the self and other in Western philosophy is deeply flawed. In fact, the isolated Cartesian subject comes very close to not being a being at all within ibuanyidanda philosophy as the opposite of being is not nothingness but being alone (ka sọ mụ di) (Asouzu, 2013: 62).

Ibuanyidanda also provides a clear account of being-with, which is based on a dynamic togetherness rather than a shared distance or relationship to nothingness as seen in the study by Nancy (2000). Language is a missing link of reality, like everything else, and cannot create the nihilistic nothingness, empty space, or distance seen in poststructuralist theory.

Ibuanyidanda captures the essence of change as directed by a collective rather than individual actor; by combining our agencies, we are capable of mighty works, but we cannot do so alone. This is not a change as ‘unintentional’ like in the study by Elias et al. (1997), it is change that is enacted by a collective intent. Our freedom is not from one another but through one another. Our intent is mediated, not obscured, by our involvement in collective processes. Therefore, as social movement scholars, it is necessary for us to analyse movements as collective actors enacting a collective intent. By dismantling the bifurcation between the self and the other in Western philosophy, we can approach movement activists and their movements as dialectically interrelated and mutually empowering.

This understanding, in concert with historical materialism, leads us to the following definition of a social movement: a collective process aimed at shaping social processes in accordance with a collective intent. Having explained the nature of collective processes in this section, the following section will elaborate the necessity for thinking of social realities in an equally processual way.

Ubuntu, process and theories of becoming

Ibuanyidanda is counter to much of Western philosophy in its focus on process, which is common to many other African philosophies such as ubuntu (Ramose, 1999). Ubuntu was a key part of the movement for liberation from apartheid South Africa and plays an important, and contested, role in movements in Southern Africa to this day. Importantly, ubuntu and other African philosophies are ontologically processual. Motion is understood as central to existence. This allows us to move beyond static models of society and ruptural models of social change when we understand that process is fundamental to reality. Class conflict can enact radical change through a revolutionary rupture, but change happens all the time, and different forces can be in productive tension or even complementarity (Chimokonam, 2019), as well as contradiction.

Mogobe Ramose proposes, in a similar way to Asouzu, that ‘motion is the principle characteristic of being’ (Ramose, 1999: 107) and that ‘there is never a final immutable whole but only enduring and transient wholes always governed by the principle of motion responsible for change’ (p. 108). The constant interaction of various aspects of reality understood as wholeness but not a whole produces a necessarily processual ontology. There is no final whole, no static social state that is the end of all human activity, and no structure that is impossible to move beyond. The angel of history stands triumphant above all attempts to achieve the victory of substance over accident, proclaiming, this time with justification, ‘look on my works ye mighty and despair!’ (Shelley, 2000 [1817]).

This article proposes that this processual ontology, combined with Asouzu’s concept of complementarity and relationality, is an appropriate philosophical foundation for the study of social movements. Movements do not appear as supplicants in the court of the immovable structure of society; they are virtuoso performers on the stage of history, shaping a society in motion through their political praxis. Historical materialism as described by Marxist humanists such as Angela Davis (1971), EP Thompson (2013 [1963]), Ellen Wood (1995), and Paulo Freire (2017 [1970]) is an approach that is compatible with this ontology and can be enhanced through a conversational philosophy with ibuanyidanda and ubuntu (Asouzu, 2011, 2013, 2014; Ramose, 1999).

For example, Ramose, starting from his ontological position of humans as being-becoming and reality as ultimately processual, provides the following account of social change:

In this process the human being everywhere and at all times gains new insights into nature and also makes new discoveries. As a result, old forms of life-style might be totally abandoned or modified. The systematic–sometimes sudden–total abandonment or modification, refinement, purification of old forms of life-style on the basis of new insights and discoveries is the hallmark of the concepts of culture and civilization (Ramose, 1999: 108).

This understanding is extremely close to the historical materialist approach described above, in which people make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing, and ‘human beings exist in a dialectical relationship between the determination of limits and their own freedom’ (Freire, 2017 [1970]: 72). This is described clearly by Carol Gould:

In Marx’s view social reality itself is a process of dialectical change. The ontological character of this reality is that it is not fixed or static; rather its basic entities and relations are to be understood as changing. Thus, Marx’s theory of social reality is at the same time a theory of social change (Gould, 1978: 27).

It is my contention that historical materialism finds its ontological home with African philosophies such as ubuntu and ibuanyidanda, as the Western ontologies Marxism was born among are often inhospitable to processual, collective, agentic social theory. This can be seen in the failures of structural Marxisms to understand the base and the superstructure, economy and culture, or people and their environment in their proper dialectical inter-relationship (Gould, 1978; Thompson, 1978). An historical materialism that is restricted by the incorrect assumption that substance, conceptualised as social structure, is primary and accident, conceptualised as the activity of the working class, is secondary ends up rendering history as deterministic and robbing the theory of its processual character and emancipatory potential.

Ramose’s (1999) account of social change also avoids the issues that attempts at temporally sensitive theories of social change have with incorporating change into fundamentally static social theory. These theories can be characterised as eventful social movement theories as opposed to processual social movement theories.

Eventful theories argue that social change, inspired by social movements, is marked by a rupture in the nature of time, represented through concepts like crisis (Bourdieu, 1988) or messianic time (Benjamin, 1942). In these ruptures, the normal reproductive functions of society are suspended, and a period of transformation is experienced where all previous assumptions are up for grabs, before society settles back into its reproductive mode. These eventful theories are excellent attempts at theorising social change while restricted by a static ontology but end up contorting themselves into an awkward fudge because they are trying to account for diachrony with a synchronic theory. Ramose (1999) has no such issue because in ubuntu, change is normal; in fact, something that does not change does not even qualify as a being for Ramose (1999) as motion is so fundamental to being-becoming in ubuntu ontology. Therefore, revolutionary change presents itself as an acceleration of the normal process of societal evolution in an ubuntu-inspired ontology, and the normal rules do not need to be suspended to explain how a normally static or reproducing structure suddenly shifts fundamentally.

Ontology, ethics and inter-relationship

Complementary to this processual account of human beings as being-becoming is the relational understanding of humanity as posited in ibuanyidanda philosophy (Asouzu, 2011). Conceptualising being-becoming through inter-relationship allows us to move past the artificial boundary between society and the individual created by individualistic philosophy and on to a relational understanding of social movements as collective actors. Ibuanyidanda’s emphasis on the power of collectives is instructional for the social movement theorist, and the insistence that no task is insurmountable for danda posits a collective model of agency, as it is in combination that beings as being-becoming have efficacy in their interactions with the world. Rather than other people being an obstacle to our autonomy, they are the key to it, and we are free with them, not from them.

The fact that both ibuanyidanda and ubuntu are relational and processual philosophies is no coincidence, and the understanding of existence as a becoming requires the understanding of the way that becoming is enacted through interaction. It is my contention that this has been described well by certain Marxist thinkers such as EP Thompson (2013 [1963], 1978), Angela Davis (1971), Ellen Wood (1995), Carol Gould (1978), and Paulo Freire (2017 [1970]), but that historical materialism will be enhanced in conversation with processual philosophies originating in Africa, and that Western philosophy is not an adequate source of, to misquote EP Thompson (1978), philosophies appropriate to the investigation of process. Although many theorists of social movements make great contributions to the understanding of collective action in a relational sense, they fail to theorise social change because they are stuck with a static ontology, or an individualist account of agency.

The truth is we are subjects in a world of subjects, the recognition of the dynamic nature of reality does not rob humans of the capacity to act, it makes even more urgent the question of what is to be done.

Ubuntu and ibuanyidanda understand the subject in this way: a person is a person through other persons (Ramose, 1999), an understanding that is very close to Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s (2000) statement that ‘In Indigenous cultural domains relationality means that one experiences the self as part of others and that others are part of the self; this is learnt through reciprocity, obligation, shared experiences, coexistence, cooperation and social memory’ (p. 16, cited in Yazzie and Baldy, 2018: 2). We are all interrelated, human and non-human, interacting in a world where we create one another (Ramose, 1999: 105–110; TallBear, 2019). This does not mean we have no capacity to act, it is through this relationality that we have the ability to act. On my own, I have very limited agency. I can affect the world in a small sphere around my body. When I act in a complementary or solidaristic way with others, I have much greater agency; this is surely the power of a social movement – freedom to and with, not freedom from. In this model, agency is located on the meso level, not the micro level. It is not micropolitics that will emancipate us, but mesopolitics that affects the macro and micro levels through a collective negotiation of what is to be done.

What we must recognise is that ontology and ethics are not separate; our understanding of the nature of being instructs us on what is to be done. If we understand reality as a becoming, as defined by motion and flux, we must understand our actions as shaping, and shaped by, that becoming. If we understand ourselves as being-becoming, in relationship with others, both human and non-human, our actions must be oriented towards the care of these others, as they in turn care for us. This ontology does not necessitate a decentring of the subject, which can only lead to the reduction of the human to an object, a dehumanisation that would mean a betrayal of the cause of human emancipation; it necessitates an understanding of an ethical subject that acts with others because we are all missing links in the same reality. We are not separate from one another; I am because we are, and the opposite of being is not nothingness, it is being alone.

In this sense, the western Cartesian model of the subject is deeply flawed, and rather than being an exemplary model of being, the liberal subject of Western philosophy is fleeing from their own humanness. Rather than retreating from each other, our freedom relies on the recognition of the mutual humanity of all people and the imperative to act humanely towards one another. It is the Western model of humanity that we must transcend, not the category of human itself (King, 2017). This requires humility from Western social theory, acknowledging the limits, failures, and violences of our philosophies and listening attentively to the wisdom of the global majority (Todd, 2016). In many African philosophies, personhood is something acquired, rather than something given; a person is not something we are, it is something we become. The struggles of the 21st century are, in many ways, attempts at creating a new society in harmony with the world and our part in it; the creation of this society necessarily entails a collective becoming oriented towards this future. It is the contention of this article that understanding this process requires a decolonial philosophy to account for the diachronic and dialectical nature of society. Marxist approaches are the basis for the Western theory to embark on this decolonial praxis, due to its praxeological focus and role in decolonial struggles (Fadaee, 2023). Yet, a conversational philosophy is required between historical materialism and African and indigenous philosophies to enhance our understanding of a processual world and our role as processual beings acting together in that world.

Conclusion

While a Marxist approach to social movements and social change is best positioned within Western philosophy to begin approaching these topics in processual ways, ibuanyidanda and ubuntu ontologies help us realise where our agency and intent lies (collectively) and the fundamental nature of process in the study of society. Marxist humanism and African humanness such as ubuntu, can provide, through a conversational philosophy, a processual approach to political philosophy, which is missing in our current understanding and accounts for the relational and processual nature of social movements and the way they change the world around them.

In addition to providing a solution to a theoretical, intellectual problem, a conversational philosophy also reveals a shared ground for a discussion on a research ethic for an intercultural decolonial philosophy. Ubuntu ibuanyidanda and Marxist social ontology all imply an ethic defined by solidarity. If we recognise ourselves as becoming human through our relationship with others, and this process as fundamental to our humanness and the role in a moving reality, we necessarily need to understand ethical action as being defined by care and mutuality. This is appropriate for social movement studies because this is what a lot of the movements we study intend to do and because of our commitment as a field to co-productive and just research.

In summary, historical materialism offers us a thorough critique of the capitalist world, and the beginnings of a processual ontology, but we need African philosophy to learn how to create a new, more human, society. Therefore, it seems appropriate to end with the words of Steve Biko:

We believe that in the long run, the special contribution to the world by Africa will be in this field of human relationship. The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face’ (Biko and Stubbs, 1987: 47).

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Josie Bunting is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the development of political consciousness in social movements, the social history of activism, and processual approaches to social movement studies.

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