140217 SE VM1 / VM8 - Radical Approaches and the Politics of Co-optation (2015W)

This course address the question of co-optation of radical concepts, practices and institutions by discussing literature on appropriation, dilution, and reinterpretation of key concepts, discourses and practices by mainstream actors for different political purposes. Stratigaki has defined co-optation as follows: 'In the cooptation process, the concept itself is not rejected, but its initial meaning is transformed and used in the policy discourse for a different purpose than the original one' (Stratigaki 2004: 36). Ferree and Hess (2000: 141) understand co-optation as 'being absorbed into the policy structures that one has been fighting against'. Over the last decades, activists, scholars and policy makers have witnessed the way radical concepts and programmes have made inroads into state policies, international projects, and political rhetoric. As a result of this 'success', mainstream actors increasingly felt required to adopt rhetoric borrowed from radical approaches albeit without changing their ideologies. As Nancy Fraser suggests, this 'selective enlistment' deserves critical scrutiny. This exploration can be guided by asking the following questions:
- What exactly is being co-opted? What is not or cannot? Which parts are left out?
- For which purpose?
- By whom? Which actors are involved? What is the role of radical actors themselves in the process of co-optation?
- What are similarities and differences in the mechanisms of appropriation as well as possible shared strategies to resist co-optation?
- What are the links between discursive and material practices of co-optation?

In this course we will seek to answer those questions by looking at different co-opted elements: programmes, movements, frames, actors and institutions. We engage for instance with co-optation of the fair trade movement, the squatting movement as well as LGBTQ activism by the state, the UN as well as transnational companies. Finally, we discuss related concepts, such as appropriation, instrumentalisation, and 'strange bedfellows', in order to come to a better understanding, and more precise conceptualisation of co-optation, as well as, perhaps, a critique of (charges of) co-optation.