Radical Shifts: Prefiguring Activist Politicization through Legitimate Peripheral Participation

ABSTRACT In this paper, I unpack how youth organizers became politicized activists through their engagement in the prefigurative practices of the fair trade movement. Prefiguration refers to the practices of a movement that are embedded in and reproduce their shared political visions; prefigurative politics allows social movement groups to embody their politics through their interactional practices, their tactical repertoires, and their outwardly oriented campaigns. As novices within United Students for Fair Trade (USFT), through their immersion in the organization’s community of practice and their increasing participation in the prefigurative practices of the community, participants came to identify as and be identified as activists, shift their worldviews, and adopt new political philosophies. This paper examines the activist practices that supported legitimate peripheral participation, including group agreements, keeping stack, and antioppression interventions. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways that prefigurative politics enabled particular activist identities and philosophies and encourages further investigation into political identity development as a learning phenomenon.