Purusartha and Social Movements: With and Beyond Eurocentric Theorizing and the Calling of Trans-Civilizational Dialogues and Planetary Realizations

Purusartha is an important vision and pathway of life from India which talks about realization of meaning and excellence of human life in terms of four cardinal values and goals of life-- dharma (right conduct), artha (wealth), kama (desire) and moksha (salvation). Social movements are multi-dimensional initiatives in critique, creativity and transformation of self, society, culture, politics and the world. In our session, we explore dialogue between purusartha perspective and social movement studies. In social movement studies, two theories have been important—resource mobilization and identity formation. Resource mobilization focuses on the dimension of resources that social movements mobilize as well as which support the movements, identity formation theory focuses on how social movements challenge existing identities and create new identities. But while understanding social movements through resource mobilization perspectives, we link resources here to their interlinked broader existence and transformation, for example resource as wealth or artha related to artha as meaning. New social movements concern with creating movements and circles of new meaning and critique and transformation of the conventional, can be enriched by dialogue with purusartha meaning of life as consisting of dharma, artha, kama and moksha which can be linked to similar themes in other civilizations. In our session, we seek to go beyond Eurocentric theorization of social movements, self and society and engage with perspectives from Indic and other world civilizations and traditions. This way, we wish to cultivate planetary conversations and realizations beyond dominant Eurocentric perspectives on self, power, society, state and social movements.