Rethinking Collectivity

Abstract

The concept of collectivity is a cornerstone of much politically engaged social research. Yet, its political relevance is now virtually invisible to some, hence Jameson’s (2000) call for a new conceptualization of collectivity. Here, we consider the tension between critiques of collectivity as a politically potent tool for social research and emerging ways of understanding what collectivity and collaborative action are now becoming. Like that of other concepts, the value of the concept of collectivity hinges, not on the degree to which it reflects universal truths of existence, but on its capacity to make ‘the future different from the past by affording new forms of description, thought and action’ (Patton, 2000, p. 133).

[I]n a historical moment in which individual personal identity has been unmasked as a decentred locus of multiple subject positions, surely it is not too much to ask that something analogous be conceptualised on the collective level. (Jameson, 2000, p. 68)