The Concept of Prefigurative Politics in Studies of Social Movements: Progress and Caveats

In this chapter, we review the term’s trajectory: fi rst, its origins in
discussions of Left political strategy, in which the social movement is
understood more expansively to include political parties and projects
(1968– 89); second, its increasing use in labelling new social movements
(1990– 2004); and third, its increasingly diff use attribution as an orientation
to a variety of diff erent political activities in predominantly Left- wing social
movements (2005– 20). Across these periods, the concept has been used to
qualify or distinguish activities, actors and spaces in diff use ways, which have
shifted considerably. The aim of the fi rst part of this chapter is therefore to
provide clarity about the explicit use of the concept across these periods. In
the second part of the paper, we shift our focus to the implicit use of the term.
Specifi cally, we observe that prefi guration is at risk of being overused to
describe non- hierarchical Left- wing movements and underused to describe
Right- wing movements, suggesting an implicit association with particular
political positions that the concept’s defi nition does not warrant. Hence, it
remains to be seen whether prefi gurative politics are actually much rarer, or
simply overlooked, in Right- wing movements. We conclude the chapter
by discussing implications for future research.