Challenging power and creating alternatives: Integrationist, anti-systemic and non-hegemonic approaches in Australian social movements

Abstract

Social movements are often discussed as either reformist or revolutionary, or, more often, as containing aspects of each of these approaches. However, whether a movement seeks integration into the existing system or seeks to overthrow that system and replace it, both approaches are hegemonic in nature. That is, they focus on totalising power structures. In this article, we explore another aspect of social movements: non-hegemonic approaches are those which prefigure alternatives at the local level. Non-hegemonic approaches are not oriented to power structures like states. Instead of actively resisting power, they bypass it or in some ways ignore it, as they create new ways of being. This approach may be limited in scope, and is unlikely to challenge the existence of inequalities at broad scales, but they can point to real examples of alternatives to existing power structures.