activism

active involvement as a member of a POLITICAL PARTY, PRESSURE GROUP, or related political organization, e.g. a ‘trades union activist’. Theories and research concerned with political activism suggest that the tendency is for activists generally to be of higher social status, more socially confident and often better informed than most nonactivists. Levels of political activism also vary according to political circumstances. For example, in times of political crisis many people may be drawn into politics who would not normally be politically active. Some theorists, especially in POLITICAL SCIENCE (e.g. LIPSET, 1959), have suggested that in Western societies, in such circumstances, high levels of political activity and less informed participants may pose a threat to the 'S tability of democracy’. More generally, however, increased participation in politics by members of lower status minority groups (e.g. new URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS) is regarded as a favourable development. See also POLITICAL PARTICIPATION, OPINION LEADERS, TWOSTEP FLOW IN MASS COMMUNICATIONS, STABLE DEMOCRACY, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

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References in periodicals archive

In that performative space, they were contributing to cultural preservation and activistic mobility by remembering loss precisely by transcending it as incorporated into their relational sociality.

"Between death and life": mobility, war, and Marshallese women's songs of survival

Due to its preference for an activistic and aggressive transformation of environmental objects, it has become able to produce its basic elements itself.

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The version of the Great Commission recorded in Matthew 28:18-20 became the watchword of the Western missionary movement--perhaps emblematic of its activistic voluntarism, grand strategies, focus on evangelism, and emphasis on the use of means.

Migration and mission: some implications for the twenty-first-century church

There were also plenty of Reformed pietists who found--Kuyper's deep personal faith notwithstanding--his anti-revolutionary movement too "activistic," and hence, spiritually superficial.

The problem of Kuyper's legacy: the crisis of the anti-revolutionary party in post-war Holland

196) and "whether racism appears as a natural result of catastrophe or as the conscious instrument for bringing it about, it is always tied to contempt for labor, hatred of territorial limitation, general rootlessness, and an activistic faith in one's own divine chosenness" (p.

Uber Against Race

However, the Board has also adopted a more activistic posture in its relationship with the academic processes at the universities.

Course Ownership in a New Technological Context

"The FTC has demonstrated a dramatically more activistic antitrust enforcement lately," says Giblen.

Mergers and acquisitions: The good, the bad and the ugly

According to the rules of this broader cultural formation, for example, "hierarchy" is thought to be inimical to "critical" and "open," and also to "activistic" and "self-controlled."

Theorizing the good society: hermeneutic, normative and empirical discourses