Social Movements and “Ally-Ship”

The question of what it means to be an ally in a social justice movement arises both from allies and from the members of marginalized social groups with whom they wish to join forces in collective social justice efforts. Allies work together with members of marginalized social groups to achieve social justice, but because of their privileged social position, allies do not directly experience the systemic and structural disadvantages that the movement or movements they support aim to address. Because different social positions yield different experiences, insights, and knowledge, it is not always clear to the people involved—either those aiming to be allies or those with whom they seek to ally themselves—how best to work together for change. The goal of this chapter is to examine a number of the analytic complexities that result when we recognize that successful social movements must involve the collective action of people who are differently placed, both epistemically and with respect to power and agency, within structures of privilege and oppression. The chapter will at once seek to explain why ally-ship can seem fraught while also using the idea of ally-ship to advance the understanding of the ontology of social groups, the ontology of collective action and collective agency, and the way that differential knowledge and power both within and among social groups complicates the idea of what it means to act together in the context of collective responsibility and collective obligation.