Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement

As it is popularly understood, civil disobedience is a form of constitutional patriotism: protestors have to accept legal punishment and appeal to society's core principles in order to demonstrate that they are sincere reformers, not revolutionaries. Although this template for action is based on the example of the Civil Rights Movement, Seeing Like an Activist demonstrates that it profoundly misunderstands civil rights activism. Based on historical andarchival evidence, it argues that civil rights activists turned to civil disobedience as a practice of decolonization: to emancipate themselves and others, and in the process transform the racial order.