As a social critic, I am ambivalent about the power of imaginative action in politics. On the one hand, I think that the power of the definition of the situation is a key resource of power for the powerless, the cultural grounding of “the politics of small things.” On the other hand, I worry about myth-making that is independent of factual truth.

On the positive side, there is the definition of the situation: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” This relatively simple assertion, the so called Thomas theorem, was first presented in a study of child psychology and behavioral problems by W.I. Thomas and his wife, Dorothy Swain Thomas. Yet, the theorem has very important political implications, going well beyond the area of the Thomases initial concern, moving in a very different direction than the one taken by the field of ethnomethodology, which can be understood as the systematic scholarly discipline of the definition of the situation.

While researching cultural and political alternatives in Poland and beyond in the 1980s and 90s I observed first hand how the theorem, in effect, became the foundational idea of the democratic opposition to the Communist system in Central Europe. The dissident activists acted as if they lived in a free society and created freedom as a result. A decision was made in Poland, in the 70s, by a group of independent intellectuals and activists to secede from the official order and create an alternative public life. People ignored the commands of the Communist Party and associated apart from Party State control, openly publicizing their association. They created alternative publications. They opened the underground by publicizing their names, addresses and phone numbers. They acted freely. They developed ties with workers and others beyond their immediate social circles. And when the regime for its own reasons didn’t arrest them, an alternative public life and an oppositional political force flourished, which ultimately prevailed over the regime.

The powerless can develop power that . . .

Read more: DC Week in Review: Political Imagination, the Definition of the Situation and Fictoids