An emerging area of interest for me is the role that identity plays in the field of social change. This engaging article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker concludes that effective activism is a risky business, and for people to take such risks with their wellbeing, their livelihoods, even their lives, they need to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with close friends. “High risk activism… is a strong-tie phenomenon”.
So what is the role of this website, which, at best, will promote the development of weak-ties across diverse activist communities in Leeds? I think that this is a question that needs to be answered by everybody who engages with Leeds for Change, or any online portal for activism.
There is a real risk that in the fast pace of the modern world, the socially conscious amongst us could lose touch with what it is to really devote yourself to a cause. Internet-critic Evgeny Morozov from Stanford University claims that in our society, to profess “one’s commitment to social justice requires nothing more than penning a socially conscious Facebook status”. Indeed, Facebook in particular makes it so easy to get drawn into what he calls “civic promiscuity”, in which we feel compelled to engage at a shallow level with hundreds of causes instead of at a deep level with just one or two.
He goes on to argue that the same fears were raised around the time of the Industrial Revolution, in particular by philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Although many at the time claimed that the advent of newspapers, magazines, and coffee houses was a great move of democratic empowerment, Kierkegaard saw “a triumph of infinite but shallow intellectual curiosity that might prevent deep, meaningful, and spiritual engagement with a particular issue… He believed that only by making risky, deep, and authentic … commitments, by discriminating between different causes, by dealing with both triumphs and disappointments of such choices, and by learning from the resulting experiences, do people acquire wisdom and fill their lives with meaning.” (ref: Morozov, E (2011). The Net Delusion: How Not To Liberate The World. London: Penguin Books.)
Leeds for Change could play a crucial role in helping us all to make the connections we need to start building a more just and equal city and world. I genuinely believe that it could be a game-changer. However this will only be the case if it’s understood as an online representation of offline reality, rather than as another space for self-promotion or identity creation. So by all means let’s use the latest tools to share stories and make connections. However let’s also understand that the tools are nothing without a “risky, deep and authentic” reality behind them.