Engaging for Social Change

Abstract

The main productive heuristic tool we offer here for thinking, analysis and practice is the phenomena of engagement for social change. We see engagement as a spectrum of ways in which the citizens of a given society reflect on the norms and rules of social action (legally institutionalized, culturally dominant or specific to certain spheres of social action: professional, private or economic), which constitute the structure of their institutional reality, and ways in which they act, on the basis of this reflection, either in order to change parts of this institutional reality, or in order to reinforce them. Not all norms are “bad”. Therefore, engagement is any collective practice characterized by reflection on the existing social norms and rules, and consequently acting upon or against their change. Change and engagement become inseparable and irreducible and it is this relation we want to bring into light with this collection.