If I can't dance: Play, creativity, and social movements.
Item
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Title
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If I can't dance: Play, creativity, and social movements.
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Identifier
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AAI3213270
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identifier
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3213270
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Creator
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Shepard, Benjamin.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Irwin Epstein
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Date
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2006
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social Work | Sociology, Public and Social Welfare
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Abstract
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In recent years, a new breed of organizing has ignited campaigns for peace and justice. Many of these campaigns utilize innovative approaches to organizing diverse communities against a broad range of targets. This new organizing emphasizes elements of play, creativity, a healthy dose of experimentation, and cultural activism. Themes of community building run throughout. A lively element of openness, learning from past mistakes and empirically testing new approaches propels this new organizing. A spirit of trial and error keeps it fresh. Weissman (1990) describes such work as 'serious play.' Here, innovation finds its inspiration in a spirit of fun, pleasure, and joy.;Play is a term for drag, ACT UP zaps, the use of food and mariachi bands in the Latino community, dance dramaturgy, culture jamming, the carnival, and other forms of creative community-building activities. It is the exhilarating feeling of pleasure, the joy of building a more emancipatory, caring world.;While some movements are concerned with specific ends, such as policy making, other projects are concerned with the day-to-day activities of clients and participants. In the former, the ends are the emphasis. In the latter, some means and ends overlap, such that engagement with other people in creative and joyful ways is a desired end and it is also a means for drawing attention to a problem. This study emphasizes the latter in case studies of direct action groups including: the Yippies, Young Lords, ACT UP, SexPanic!, Housing Works, Reclaim the Streets, the More Gardens Coalition, the Absurd Response to An Absurd War, the Clandestine Rebel Clown Army, and Times Up!. The study locates itself in the history of social movements, including a close study of the work of the Dadaists, the Situationsts, and decidedly unplayful formations, including the Weather Underground. There is a long history of community-organizing which makes use of prefigurative organizing approaches that seek to create an image of the world in which activists hope to live. This study builds on the use of play in these cases to make the case that different kinds of social knowledge are necessary to sustain movements for social cultural change.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
