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.