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3rd Annual Symposium Background and Problematics |
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For two years, our symposiums, “Critical Issues in Social movement
Research: knowledge, autonomy and alternatives” (2006) and “Alternative
Cartographies of Social Movements” (2007), organized by graduate
students and faculty from the Departments of Anthropology, Geography,
Sociology, and Communications, focused on trying to come to terms with
the parameters and scope of what research on social movements could be.
So, while during the first year we worked to bring issues, themes and
epistemologies typically obscured in mainstream social movement studies
to light, critiquing the blindspots of a sub-field that has become
rather influential within academia; during the second, we tried to map
out alternative genealogies and trajectories for relevant research and
knowledge with/for/on these movements—specifically those taking place
outside the dominant field as it is typically delineated. Both years
there was a recurrent emphasis on movements as knowledge producers and
meaning-makers in their own rights. And, both years, a series of
challenges emerged around our relationship to and positionality vis a
vis such movements, on the one hand, and social change and activism
more broadly, on the other. In other words, we struggled to come to
terms with what our critical approach to social movements—one that
places social movements’ knowledge and meaning-making practices at the
center of our attention—meant for our own efforts to produce, or
participate in politically relevant research (and action).
We were faced with a number of questions that were in turn underpinned
by presumptions about what constituted “activism” or movements on the
one hand, and “knowledge” on the other. For example: What does
recognizing that movements prolifically produce knowledge, participate
in and utilize research, (including sophisticated social-theory) and
continuously create narratives and meanings that help shape social
reality, do to the role of the social scientist? Does it make “us”
moot? Do we as researchers become “part of,” identical to and fully
horizontal with the movements we study, or is there still a valid and
specific position for the researcher? Is it the role of an academic or
researcher to “serve” movements? What happens when our own political
commitments/judgments conflict with or contradict those of movements or
activists? Conversely: Is it true that our intellectual work is
necessarily different from, or additional to activism, and that “true”
activism must have an explicitly “action” component? Are there ways of
imagining interventions within academia—our writing, teaching,
theoretical challenges—that can be considered to be political
engagement, like activism, in and of themselves—or is this simply an
argument we claim to make ourselves feel better?
Based on select readings, and presentations on the spectrum of diverse
forms of engaged-research and intellectual practice with/on/for and by
movements, the two days of discussion will seek to address these
questions (and more below) head on.
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