Publication Title
American Political Science Review
Document Type
Article
Department or Program
Politics
Publication Date
5-26-2023
Abstract
This essay makes a distinction between the roles that activists and social critics can play in democratic societies and defends the separate tasks of a non-activist social critic. Drawing on Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, I argue that non-activist social critics are better situated than activists to reach certain audiences, cultivate certain democratic capacities, and preserve their audience's agency while doing so. In Emerson's case, his concerns about his activist contemporaries led him to craft new ways of critically engaging his peers. At the same time, as Emerson's life also illustrates, non-activist critics are limited by their roles and must forgo some of their distinctive advantages in order to do activist work. Clarifying the scope of the social critic's role in this way helps critics to draw on the benefits of their position and avoid overstepping its constraints, thereby allowing them to more effectively promote political reform.
Recommended Citation
Gilson, L. (2024). Activism versus Criticism? The Case for a Distinctive Role for Social Critics. American Political Science Review, 118(2), 862–875.
Copyright Note
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association
Comments
Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542300045X