Palestinian Sumud: Toward a Southern Theory of Unsettled Times

Prominent sociological theories of action treat stability as the default and disruption as episodic. Yet for many marginalized communities, unsettledness is endemic. I intervene by “making strange,” a two-pronged strategy that shifts theory’s vantage point to destabilize what the center has naturalized. The first move examines the temporal occlusions that give extant theories of action their appearance of universality. The second centers Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) and Southern and postcolonial approaches to remake theories of action and time. Where extant accounts anticipate hysteresis, sumud reveals an ongoing effort to contest a temporal order designed to fragment and deplete. Because time is not a neutral medium for experience, habitus emerges as a vehicle for temporal intervention rather than merely a repository of accumulated dispositions. The result is a decolonial theory of action in which colonial power structures time without fully determining it.