3rd Annual Symposium Background and Problematics PDF Print E-mail

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.
 
< Prev
The SMWG is at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - UNC-CH
This website is hosted with supprt from ibiblio