Prefiguring Succes – Meaningfully conceptualizing success for social movements
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2025-07-03
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en
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Success in social movements has never been extensively addressed in the literature of prefigurative theory. In prefigurative politics the means are just as important as the ends. Therefore the prefigurative idea of success, the alignment of means, can be a great addition to the conceptualization of success. Together with successful consequences like discourse change or cultural impact. This thesis weighs the successes against negative consequences of a protest movement like imprisonment, trauma or even death. I will conceptualize success in a meaningful way and create a framework to analyze if a social movement is successful or not. I conclude that the alignment of means is a compelling way of speaking about success but when this goes along with negative consequences for activists, then the protest is not always a success. When the stakes are high some form of positive consequences (ends) need to be a part of the movement to call it successful. The case of the Lebanese uprising in 2019 will be used as a constant example to concretely show what it means to think about success in social movements, it will create clarity in a sometimes dense theoretical work.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen