[Linganth] Summary of responses: 'we' among activists

[Gregory Morton]

Dear list readers,



           Good afternoon—thank you *very much* for your generous responses
to my request for readings about the use of “we” among activists. (This
request is specifically for a project about the successful campaign for
drivers’ licenses for undocumented migrants in New York State.)

          So many thoughtful suggestions arrived that it seemed like a good
idea for me to compile the ideas and return them to the listserv. Although
I’ve removed the names of the suggesters – since they didn’t necessarily
give me permission – please know that I am very grateful. The collective
wisdom is shining!



                       Sending good wishes,

                                                        -Duff





READING SUGGESTIONS ON “WE” AMONG ACTIVISTS (and related topics)





*A beloved and maybe obscure classic:*

Seidel, Gill

1975 Ambiguity in Political Discourse. *In *Political Language and

Oratory in Traditional Society.Maurice Bloch, ed. Pp. 205–226.

London: Academic Press.

(This chapter considers the rhetoric of the May 1968 uprising in Paris, and
it contrasts the “we” used by left-wing student activists with the
collective “you” employed by the conservative de Gaulle.)



*A much-recommended idea:*

Ben Lee, particularly the last chapter of TALKING HEADS and also the
following:

Lee, Ben
2001 Circulating the People. In Languages and Publics. Susan Gal
and Kathryn Woolard, eds. Pp. 164–181. Manchester, UK: St.
Jerome



*In non-Euro-American societies:*

“Greg Urban's discussion of "we" in *Metaphysical Community *is
analytically very much to the point (as it is about alliance politics in a
small-scale society).”



“The book Ku Waru by Francesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey is about a set of
dispute resolution negotiations among related kin networks in Western
Highlands, Papua New Guinea in the 1980s. The whole analysis runs on the
use of pronouns. The issue is that “clans” are relatively instable, often
coalescing around particular disputes and then falling apart again. So
dispute resolution has to do a lot of work to try to frame who exactly was
involved and on which side, telling conflicting histories that often hinge
on who gets identified as part of the ‘we’ at stake.”





**Amazingly enough,* readings by anthropologists who have studied the same
movement for drivers’ licenses in New York State:*



2020 Medeiros MA and JR Guzmán. Im/migrant Farmworker Deportability Fears
and Mental Health in the Trump Era: A Study of Polimigra and Contramigra in
New York State. Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 42(2):103-113.
https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12254

2020 Guzmán, JR and MA Medeiros. Damned If You Drive, Damned If You Don’t:
Meso-level Policy and Im/migrant Farmworker Tactics under a Regime of
Immobility. Human Organization 79(2):130-139.
https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525.79.2.130



2019 Guzmán, JR and MA Medeiros. An Unlikely Cause: The Struggle for
Driver’s Licenses to Prevent Family Separation. Practicing Anthropology
41(1):3-6.





* “We” among activists and professionals*

Nguyen, Naomee-Minh. 2021. "This is similar to Vincent Chin":
Intertextuality, referring expressions, and the discursive construction of
Asian American activist identities in an online messaging community. *Discourse
& Society* 31(1): 98-118.



Gordon, Cynthia and Melissa Luke. 2016.* We* and professional identity
socialization in email supervision of counselors-in-training. *Journal of
Language and Social Psychology* 35(1): 56-76.



 Pages 734-736 in

Morton, Gregory Duff. “Modern meetings: Participation, democracy, and
language ideology in Brazil’s MST landless movement.” American Ethnologist
41(4): 728-742. (This one is by me.)





*“We” and the creations of group identities*



Billig, Michael. 1995. *Banal Nationalism*. London: Sage.



Dori-Hacohen, Gonen. 2014. “Establishing Social Groups in Hebrew: ‘We’ in
Political Radio Phone-In Programs.” In *Constructing Collectivity: ‘We’
across Languages and Contexts, *edited by S. Pavlidou, 187–206. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.



Marques, Isabelle Simões and Michele Koven. 2018. “‘We are Going to Our
Portuguese Homeland!’ French Luso-descendants’ Diasporic Facebook
Conarrations of Vacation Return Trips to Portugal.” *Narrative Inquiry* 27
(2): 286-310.



Urban, Greg. 2001. *Metaculture: How Culture Moves through the World*.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.



Yeh, Rihan. (2018) *Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City*.
University of Chicago Press.
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