Occupy Wall Street

Can Prefigurative Politics Replace Political Strategy?

"Peoples Library Occupy Wall Street 2011 Shankbone" by David Shankbone - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Jonathan M. Smucker October 7, 2014, Berkeley Journal of Sociology Occupy Wall Street participant Jonathan Smucker takes a critical look at the movement’s “prefigurative politics” through the theoretical lenses of Gramsci and Habermas. What is politics? In this essay, I examine so-called “prefigurative politics” as it played out in Occupy Wall Street (OWS)—through Gramscian and Habermasian theoretical lenses.

Imagine you are a Palestinian academic or a student

The Islamic University of Gaza bombed by Israeli F16 warplanes, August 02, 2014. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Nazmi Al-Masri on August 12, 2014 Over the one-year period from July 2013 to July 2014, I was supposed to participate in six international academic conferences and meetings as a partner in four international projects: three EU-funded projects (two from Erasmus-Mundus, one Tempus) and one BritishArts and Humanities Research Council-funded project. Because of the siege and the current war, I could not participate in any of these academic gatherings, which were held in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Jordan, and Cyprus....