Refusal requires social and financial margin most people lack

Evidence

THE PROBLEM IS that many people have a lot to fear, and for good reason. The relationship between fear and the ability to refuse is clear when we consider that historically, some can more easily afford to refuse than others. Refusal requires a degree of latitude—a margin—enjoyed at the level of the individual (being able to personally afford the consequences) and at the level of society (whose legal attitude toward noncompliance may vary). For her part, Parks and her family were nearly ruined by her arrest. She was unable to find full employment for ten years after the boycott, lost weight and had to be hospitalized for ulcers, and experienced “acute financial hardships” that went unaddressed until the militant trade unionists of a small branch of the NAACP forced the national organization to help her out. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 299

Categorization

• XREF: The privilege critique the reader is testing: Odell herself names the marginality condition, which complicates (rather than dodges) the question of whether her prescriptions presuppose privilege. — connects to: Economic precarity shrinks people’s margin for refusal — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 37; Financial insecurity overrides principled refusals of corporate patronage. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 505
• SEED: Essay angle: the Rosa Parks case as counterexample to the myth of the ‘spontaneous’ individual hero — refusal as a collective, institutional precondition.