In a word: Versatile.

In a sentence: Civil Disobedience is a tool of social movements used by an individual or group to protest a law or common practice, and can change over the course of the movement from a spark of ignition to a unifying action.  

In a picture:

Types of Civil Disobedience:

Individualistic-Often dramatic, and in accordance with an individual’s own ‘higher law,’ individualistic Civil Disobedience is an action of one or a few who find a present practice or law against their beliefs—religious, secular, or otherwise—and take action. Meyer’s example is of a woman who bars all other women entrance to an abortion clinic.

Collective-In acting not against a law or for a ‘higher law,’ collective Civil Disobedience relies on disagreement with a common practice that goes against the ‘collective value’ of a large group. Meyer’s example is of a fictional play in which women withhold sex and chores until war ends. Though not breaking laws, they are breaking customs. See ‘Famous Users’ for more.

Primary uses of Civil Disobedience:

Bring attention and inspire action-At the beginning of a movement, Civil Disobedience can bring media attention to an issue and inspire involvement by previously dormant citizens. Case in point: Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. (spark)

Unify a campaign- In the course of a movement, Civil Disobedience can serve as a common thread linking protestors, leaders, and events. Case in point: MLK and Ghandi used non-violent civil disobedience to gain the moral high ground and control the direction and methodology of protests.

Famous users/uses of Civil Disobedience:

Women and Prohibition-Though Meyer’s does not mention this in his fictional account of women withholding sex, many women in America actually did withhold sex, cease household labor, and acted generally against the grain in a response to the obscene drinking of the early twentieth century. The result: prohibition. This illustrates perfectly collective Civil Disobedience.

MLK and the Civil Rights Movement-Referred to constantly my Meyer’s and used by analysts around the world, the Civil Rights Movement illustrates both individualistic Civil Disobedience and Collective Civil Disobedience in the ways written about through the piece.

The Take-away

The key to understanding the different uses of Civil Disobedience lies not in the result or the people involved, but the origin of the action. In assessing whether or not a movement is effectively using Civil Disobedience at the right moment in the course of a movement, one must look at why it occurred. Did a single person or small group act in favor of a ‘higher law’ or a ‘collective value’?

With that in mind, how is Civil Disobedience used by the Occupy movement? Which kind? At what time? How about the Tea Party?

There are several important takeaways that the author wishes us to absorb from chapter 6 on civil disobedience. The first is that the term “civil disobedience” is described and defined very broadly by its famous users to incorporate many behaviors. These more famous users include the likes of Henry Thoreau, Ghandi, and MLK. Their definitions range from “to wash one’s hands of [an enormous wrong]… and not give it practically his support,” to disobeying an “unjust” law because it violates a “higher law,” such as moral conscience, the constitution, or the bible.

The next point of absorption is that due to this vagueness of terms, civil disobedience can be can be overused, both as a term and a practice, and be employed by both sides of the same argument. This becomes problematic because anything can be rationally justified as civil disobedience and Americans tend to view it as the trademark of a justified cause, which can lead to misconceptions. For example, the author uses the example of pro and anti-abortion demonstrators and how they both use acts of “civil disobedience.” If I were an American with a positive stigma towards “civil disobedience” due to our countries history of it, I would not be able to rationally choose, with those definitions, which side of the abortion argument was truly civil disobedience and which one was a protest of a justified practice or non-practice. Also because users of civil disobedience appeal to “higher laws” the users believe, sometimes falsely, that no secular authority can ever disagree with them. In other words, labeling something civil disobedience is highly subjective.

Next, the author wishes for us to recognize the many instances of successful use of civil disobedience. MLK’s tactics, the story of Lysistrata, and Ghandi’s practices are the most famous. The author also wants to point out several characteristics of these usages. The first is people who did not otherwise have voice in society carried them all out. This shows that civil disobedience is often a last resort and a way for an outsider or marginalized person to affect the status quo. After all, “Dissidents are unlikely to march outside the White House if the can have a meaningful audience inside.” (114) The second is that civil disobedience was not the cause of the positive results of each movement; civil disobedience was used to generate publicity that eventually got the people who could change the status quos to change them. This is significant because it reveals that even though civil disobedience itself goes outside of a system to affect it, the real actual act of changing the system still comes from within. Thirdly, Civil disobedience is the most effective when the participants have strong emotional or personal connections to each other. I found this interesting because OWS does not have this characteristic.  Finally, civil disobedience can be adapted and employed in any number of social movements with good affects, however, they tend to be more successful when they share the above characteristics.

So, keeping in mind the main ideas of this chapter, I was wondering what the forum has to say about civil disobedience and anything else the chapter discussed. Is “civil disobedience” overused? Do you think Americans have been overexposed to those types of actions and don’t take them as seriously as they once did? Does anyone have good answers for the questions that the book poses on the bottom of page 111? “Do the politics and government of the United States encourage the development of certain kinds of strategies for social movements? Do the dominant strategies change over time? Are there certain kinds of constituencies who will choose to use civil disobedience, or are there certain issue areas for which the tactic is most relevant?” (111)

-JP Shannon