Social Disobedience
Summary
Social disobedience is the deliberate withdrawal of cooperation from the social events, customs, and institutions of a community as a form of nonviolent protest. In Sharp’s 198 Methods taxonomy it is method 63, listed under Methods of Social Noncooperation — Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions [source: commons-198-methods].
Body
Social disobedience works by withdrawing the everyday cooperation that holds a community’s social life together: refusing to attend civic events, declining social invitations, leaving associations, refusing to participate in customary rituals [source: commons-198-methods]. The method’s force is in its visibility to peers — every empty chair at the parish festival, every silent household on the national holiday, signals the campaign’s grievance to the same audience that the regime also addresses through these same events. Operationally, social disobedience requires a sufficient density of participants that the absence is felt (a single empty seat is private refusal; a hundred empty seats is a public protest), and a clear link between the refused custom and the campaign’s demand.
The method’s edge case is its dual character: refusing to attend a state event is also a form of consumer/economic noncooperation when the event’s organisers depend on attendance for revenue. Sharp’s taxonomy separates social noncooperation (this method) from economic and political noncooperation on the basis of whose event is being refused.
Worked examples
- iranian-activists-one-million-signatures-campaign-for-gender-justice — the One Million Signatures campaign (Iran, 2006–2011) for gender-justice legal reform, a sustained campaign that combined public-nonparticipation tactics with signature-gathering.
- dutch-citizens-resist-nazi-occupation-1940-1945 — Dutch citizens’ resistance to the Nazi occupation included mass non-attendance at occupation-organised civic events, a worked example of social disobedience under occupation.
See methods-of-nonviolent-action for the broader method library.
FAQ
What is social disobedience?
Social disobedience is the deliberate withdrawal of cooperation from the social events, customs, and institutions of a community as a form of nonviolent protest. In Sharp’s 198 Methods taxonomy it is method 63, listed under Methods of Social Noncooperation — Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions [source: commons-198-methods]. The method works by withdrawing the everyday cooperation that holds a community’s social life together: refusing to attend civic events, declining social invitations, leaving associations, refusing to participate in customary rituals.
What is the force of the method?
The method’s force is in its visibility to peers — every empty chair at the parish festival, every silent household on the national holiday signals the campaign’s grievance to the same audience that the regime also addresses through these events [source: commons-198-methods]. Operationally, social disobedience requires a sufficient density of participants that the absence is felt, and a clear link between the refused custom and the campaign’s demand.
How does the method relate to other noncooperation forms?
The method’s edge case is its dual character: refusing to attend a state event is also a form of consumer/economic noncooperation when the event’s organisers depend on attendance for revenue. Sharp’s taxonomy separates social noncooperation (this method) from economic and political noncooperation on the basis of whose event is being refused. The choice is the campaign’s: a refused civic festival is social disobedience; a refused consumer brand is a boycott.
What are the historical examples?
Two worked examples anchor the method. The 2006–2011 One Million Signatures campaign in Iran is a sustained campaign that combined public-nonparticipation tactics with signature-gathering for gender-justice legal reform. The Dutch citizens’ resistance to the Nazi occupation (1940–1945) included mass non-attendance at occupation-organised civic events — a worked example of social disobedience under occupation.
Related
- methods-of-nonviolent-action
- noncooperation
- boycotts-and-strikes
- student-strike
- withdrawal-from-social-institutions
Learn more
- On Wikipedia: Civil disobedience — CC BY-SA 4.0