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MARKING AND BINDING
Author(s) -
MacQueen Graeme
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/pech.1992.17.1.60
Subject(s) - social connectedness , communitas , set (abstract data type) , action (physics) , context (archaeology) , politics , sociology , epistemology , process (computing) , political action , social psychology , computer science , political science , psychology , history , law , liminality , anthropology , philosophy , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , programming language , operating system
Political bloodpouring, in the context of nonviolent direct action, can be interpreted as an act of redefinition of social reality . Participants, by a process of “marking,” set themselves against one set of things, and at the same time, by a process of “binding,” they identify themselves with a different set of things. Blood can serve these two different functions in one and the same political action. The set of things from which activists distinguish themselves is in this article called structure, and the set of things with which they identify is called antistructure (or communitas), these terms being taken from the work of the anthropologist, Victor Turner. The article stresses the importance of symbolic action and its connectedness with struggle for social change in concrete historical situations.