Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production

The dynamics, politics, and richness of knowledge production in social movements and social activist contexts are often overlooked. This book contends that some of the most radical critiques and understandings about dominant ideologies and power structures, and visions of social change, have emerged from those spaces. Written by authors working closely with diverse social movements, NGOs, and popular mobilizations in the Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, it articulates and documents knowledge production, informal learning, and education work that takes place in everyday worlds of social activism. It highlights linkages between such knowledge(s) and praxis/action, and illustrates tensions over whose knowledge and voice(s) are heard.

Table of Contents:
Learning From the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production - Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor * PART I: MAKING KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING FROM THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND REPRESENTATION: "CIVIL SOCIETY," ACADEME, AND SOCIAL ACTIVISM - TENSIONS, CHALLENGES, AND DILEMMAS * Global Justice? Contesting NGOization: Knowledge Politics and Containment in Anti-Globalization Networks-Aziz Choudry * Knowledge and Power in South Africa: Xenophobia and Survival in the post-Apartheid State - Ashwin Desai and Shannon Walsh * On the Question of Expertise: A Critical Reflection on "Civil Society" Processes - Robyn Rodriguez * Whatever Happened to the Counter-globalization Movement? Some Reflections on Antagonism, Vanguardism and Professionalization - Kees Hudig and Emma Dowling * Collective Approaches to Activist Knowledge: Experiences of the New Anti-Apartheid Movement in Toronto - Rafeef Ziadah and Adam Hanieh * The Subjectivation of Marriage Migrants in Taiwan: the Insider's Perspectives - Hsiao-Chuan Hsia * PART II: MAKING KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING FROM UNION, WORKER ALLIANCES, AND LEFT PARTY-POLITICAL ACTIVISMS * Learning to Win: Exploring Knowledge and Strategy Development in Anti-privatization Struggles in Colombia - Mario Novelli * Worker Education and Social Movement Knowledge Production: Practical Tensions and Lessons - David Bleakney and Michael Morrill * Conversations on the M60: Knowledge Production through Collective Ethnographies - Biju Mathew * Vanguards and Masses: Global Lessons from the Grenada Revolution - David Austin * PART III: MAKING KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING FROM PEASANT AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' STRUGGLES * Learning and Knowledge Production in Dalit Social Movements in Rural India - Kumar Prasant and Dip Kapoor * Anjuman-e-Mazareen Punjab: Ownership or Death - the Struggle Continues - Azra Sayeed and Wali Haider * How do you say Netuklimk in English? Using Documentary Video to capture Bear River First Nation's Learning through Action: Sherry Pictou and Martha Stiegman

About the Author :
AZIZ CHOUDRY is Assistant Professor at the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, Canada. DIP KAPOOR is Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Review :
"This volume makes an invaluable contribution toward connecting scholarly production with social movement activism. Going beyond simplistic calls to engage in 'scholar-activism,' which often positions academics lower in relationship to social justice activists, this book re-centers intellectual production within social movements themselves. Rather than simply theorize social movements, it positions social justice organizers as producers of the theory. It does not presume a romanticized notion of social movement organizing, rather, it brings a critical lens to the forces of co-optation and normalization within both the academy and activist arenas. A must-read for all those wishing to advance intellectually rigorous social movements." - Andrea Smith, Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of California, Riverside "An extremely important book. Neo-liberalism always had a dual nature: market fundamentalism and (far more insidious) institutionalism. Campaigning groups - siphoned into a game of negotiations with transnational corporations, international institutions, and states - are either neutralized or become agents in capitalism's structural manoeuvrings. Choudry and Kapoor's have sounded the battle-cry for a counter-attack against this manipulative agenda, and to re-affirm the role of agency. They have brought together some very interesting cases of precisely this kind of knowledge production by the movements themselves. They point the way forward to a new form of scholarship where scholars who are themselves committed activists engage critically with the mass movements, enabling the latter to understand better the historical trends which their agency is creating, and thus to gain confidence and sense of direction in the experimentation process from which major societal restructuring will emerge." - Robert Biel is Senior Lecturer of Political Ecology and Director of the Research Degree Program at University College London and author of The New Imperialism and The Entropy of Capitalism "This is an exciting international contribution to developing knowledge production and learning from within - and for - social movement organizing. It demonstrates that our social movements are actively producing knowledge and providing crucial resources in our struggles for social justice and liberation." - Gary Kinsman, Professor of Sociology, Laurentian University; long-time queer liberation and anti-capitalist activist