./english/62.txt:39:Social movement scholarship constitutes a specific area of academic study of social movements usually undertaken in the disciplines of sociology and political science. In American sociology, the early movement theorists tended to view social movements as an irrational form of collective behavior, which could be explained by reference to the mobilizers’ ‘social strains’ or ‘grievances’ (LeBon, Kornhauser etc.). Much of the work after the 1970s sought to challenge this kind of thinking, in which social movements were seen in terms of ‘mob psychology’ or as an expression of social breakdown and anomie. Thus, the new dominant paradigm in the study of social movements was focusing on such concepts as ‘resource mobilization,’ ‘political opportunities,’ ‘networks of mobilization,’ ‘framing’ and ‘political contention’ (Jenkins, Zald, McAdam, Tilly, Tarrow, Snow, Benford etc.). As a critical reaction to this structuralistic way of theorizing social movements, some analysts turned to the study of ‘emotions,’ ‘biographies’ and ‘culture’ (Goodwin, Jasper etc.) with the mainstream approach of Tilly, Tarrow, McAdam and their collaborators eventually accepting to incorporate culture as one of the determinants of their structural effects. However, even from the 1960s, European scholars (Habermas, Touraine, Melucci etc.) were elaborating an alternative paradigm, that of the ‘new social movements,’ critically reflecting on the legacy of Marxism and motivated directly from the social struggles of that period (feminism, environmentalism, May 1968 etc.).
./english/62.txt:43:However, the differences between movement scholarship and activism are not exhausted along the lines of different forms of knowledge produced by them. There are also significant differences in terms of who are the actors that compose the constituencies of each one of them and of how – through which processes – such a social aggregation and representation is enacted. From this point of view, in principle, it is academia or the scientific community (Kuhn) the social subject, which validates the work of science, in general, and social movement studies, in particular. But it is known that science as social institution operates according to a set of pertinent norms, criteria of validity, ways to measure academic productivity and systems of reward, accreditation, promotion and success (Merton). As for the question of whether science is social accountable, this is indeed tantamount to posing the claim of the democratization of scientific expertise. Furthermore, up to the degree that the very bulk of scientific community is integrated into the system of higher education – through research conducted in universities – modern science tends not only to serve big business and the market but in many cases it becomes big business and it is marketized and privatized – for instance, in the lucrative areas of technological and medical research but not only. Consequently, the study of social movements appears to by drastically underfunded and, therefore, rather marginalized, when compared to many other social science topics. Thus, given the dominant trend of corporatization in higher education and politicized government funding, social movement scholars in academia would face many difficulties if they wanted to direct their research on studying social change and conflict for the empowerment of the powerless and the exposition of inequities in the status quo and inequalities in the distribution of resources (Croteau, Cancian). Hence, the very majority of social scientists tend to be restricted in analyses of a smoothly functioning society, mild policy reforms and studies of how to achieve an efficient social control and to manage social problems.
./english/62.txt:45:For this purpose, social movement scholars need to publish in the field’s ‘best’ journals, if they want to survive professionally in the academia. At the same time, their research has to stick to theory development and they should analyze large survey data sets and use sophisticated quantitative methodologies from statistics, network theory etc. To master the field’s jargon, they should develop a language of a detached scholarly stance by making plentiful reference to the work of other academics. The result is that in many cases academic language becomes impenetrable to non-specialists and devolves into a ‘secret language of social movements’ (as Charlotte Ryan has noted in a discussion about the future of social science in the journal Social Problems).
./english/62.txt:66:All the actors of social forums' memory have a profile that is in itself significant : they are both in and out, at a distance of social forums/social movements; whether they are researchers (academical ones or not) ; artists ; documentalists/librarists ; actors of the freesoftware community.
./english/62.txt:89:1. Academic research is a power driven, hierarchical, formalized place within capitalist structures. Most of us are white-middle-class- city-slickers. Knowing this, the idea sounds odd to me that we can have any kind of privileged voice to tell others (activists, activists researchers) what to think. Not without reason one of the first questions activists ask me is who actually finances my work.
./english/62.txt:90:2. In fact, researchers are employees, employers and/or something in between. Most of those researchers dealing with social movements also are activists and/or activist researchers. Therefore the boundaries make no sense if to construct some kind of teacher-pupil relationship regarding research and social movements. Social movements, protest and other kinds of demanding a better world from below are crossing the academic/public education sector since ever. This means that we all must remind that the political struggle also takes place in the academic area. Researchers can not exclude themselfes from their "objects" social movements believing that they are not part of the problem. Spoken for the german case this means too, that doing social movement research in times of privatization and neoliberal restructuring of the academic sector somehow should mean too that we must struggle that social movements and their causes remain on the academic agenda. I think young researchers should be aware about their own precarity, we should be more critical towards our place. Universities and the academic institutions get more and more places for the production of elites, they get more and more a mixture of bureaucratic nightmares, neoliberal thinking and precarious working conditions.
./english/62.txt:91:3. This results in my position for an anarchical relation between researchers, activist researchers, activist and all the overlapping situations and perspectives. Our communication should be horizontal, open to conflict and not bound to any kind of naïve tutelage. What is missing in this session so far is that people not working in the academic area tell us what they await from research. Which questions should we research? I am very interested in suggestions, criticism or any other kind of input.
./english/162.txt:50:Today, with the popular explosion of Gnutella and other peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, these notions of the high-tech gift economy have begun to form part of common sense. It seems to admit at least a few new things: that the coded creations circulating on the Internet are never "consumed" like a cigarette would be; that use by some people in no way limits their availability for others; and that certain kinds of exchanges therefore have nothing to do with rarity and are quite possible without money. What is less often remarked, because of a denial which is characteristic of free-market rhetoric, is the fact that non-monetary models of exchange have been operating on a very large scale for as long as one can remember, for instance in the realm of academic publishing, where the primary motive for sharing information is not its monetary value but the recognition it brings – a recognition which itself is at least partially dependent on the idea of contributing something to humanity or truth. In fact there exists quite a large movement in the domain of scientific publishing aiming for online release of all the articles carried by specialized journals, in order to make the results universally accessible despite the increasing cost of many essential print publications. (15) Recently, an author by the name of Yochai Benkler has taken the twin examples of free software and academic publishing as a foundation on which to build a general theory of what he calls "commons-based peer production," by which he means non-proprietary informational or cultural production, based on materials which are extremely low cost or inherently free. This voluntary form of self-organized production depends, in his words, "on very large aggregations of individuals independently scouring their information environment in search of opportunities to be creative in small or large increments. These individuals then self-identify for tasks and perform them for complex motivational reasons." (16) Benkler's first aim, however, is not to explain peoples' motivation, but simply to describe the organizational and technological conditions that make this cooperative production possible.
./english/176.txt:41: The advent of the internet brought this lack of research and theorizing more urgently to our attention. But even though the role of the internet in mainstream and institutional politics has been widely researched, the academic community seems to have ‘neglected the role of ICTs in the extra-institutional sphere of ‘politics’ in which loosely structured groups and social movements play a prominent role’ (van de Donk et al. 2004, 2). This omission is quite remarkable considering that the Internet has been hailed as a medium favouring subversive, extra-institutional and loosely formed groups (Ibid).
./english/176.txt:54:overwhelming percent of the sample (45.7%) were students, a figure which is again partly explained by the young age of the respondents. Professional workers (doctors, lawyers, academics) came second accounting for 17.3% of the sample.
./english/236.txt:19:• The educational project “Other Worlds”, an initiative inspired by the seminar series in New Delhi that involved educators, activists and academics in Brazil, India and the UK in the development of a set of introductory learning materials as an entry point to the Forum and to the issues discussed within it in order to prompt and support the creation of pedagogical “open spaces” in educational and community settings. In the second phase of this project, an international comparative research exercise has started, in which groups are going to pilot the materials in different contexts in five countries.
./english/237.txt:41:The AS meeting points were occupied social centres, away from the closeted safety provided by the metal detectors and body searches at City Hall, which was the meeting place imposed on the ESF process to suit the busy agendas of GLA officials. While the social centre environments were vibrant and rooted in local actions and participation, they were also subject to state scrutiny by police photographers and intelligence teams. Our meetings of mothers, academics, media workers, participatory economists and pranksters were described to curious by-passers by the police standing in front of the doors as full of ‘radical political extremists’. Of course, this encouraged quite a few adventurous people to drop in who, upon seeing the criminalisation of ‘normal people’, offered their support!
./english/241.txt:9:As an example of the emergence of this question, we can note that the first International meeting on activist research and social movements was held in Barcelona this year. It brought together “academic-investigators” coming from different experiences of social movement studies: from those where social movements are the subjects of the research, like the work emerging from community researchers or autonomous centres, to experiences where the social movements are the object of the research, such as the production of academic theses on social movements.
./english/241.txt:36:The research springs from the relation between the subject-investigator (the investigator as a subject) and the subject-investigated, both of whom are involved in the composition process. Rather than treating the social movements as objects of investigation, this non-instrumentalist research is an investigation without an ‘object’. Instead, the movements, as well as the investigator, are subjects in a process in which everybody is left reconstituted. It is not a research ‘about’ Social Movements; rather it is “from” and “for” Social Movements in the immanence of the process. Rather than locating itself at an already codified position already codified, it produces the terms of the situation. The subject-investigator participates in the situations investigated, is open about his or her motives and opinions, and is not necessarily a person with a specialized university education. On the contrary, the traditional role of the academic-investigator, as an individual specialist operating at a supposedly objective prudent distance, is questioned by this approach.
./english/241.txt:38:The Guide is based on a non-disciplinary methodology. It looks for the overcoming of the fictitious academic compartmentalization of reality. On the contrary, reality is understood as a totality that combines manifold interconnected aspects.
./english/241.txt:40:It is a piece of research explicitly tailored to action for the critical transformation of the current reality. The research pursues the creation of a knowledge that is valued for its practical effectiveness in generating changes, as opposed to an objective and contemplative theoretical knowledge, as in the traditional academic manner; knowledge that generates and maximizes action and whose fruits serve the process of constituting new antagonistic subjectivities through social movement convergence processes. In the sense of practical effectiveness the core of the Guide is to build useful “networking tools” such as a Directory and contact details of the collectives and organisations which have participated to the ESFs of Florence, Paris, London, organized thematically and by region; and a Map of the European networks developed within and around the ESF process. The level of utility is defined by the capacity of the use-builders of the Guide itself to make it grow through the identification of actors with the networking process, of resources for the action, of reflection for social transformation.
./english/241.txt:57:In a process of collective creation, it is nurtured by a spirit of experimentation and cooperation through an open and pluralistic network structure. The Guide is developed from a network of very diverse nodes, politically and organizationally, such as research groups internal to the social movements (Transform! Italia, Transnational Institute, Glocal a-research centre) or social movement organizations (ARCI, EYFA, UNITED for Intercultural Action), in collaboration with academic departments/centres (The University of Florence or The Centre for the Study of Global Governance- LSE), Trade Union Foundations (like the CGIL’s Fondazione Di Vittorio), hackers support teams (Pangea), International archive institutions (IISH - International Institute of Social History) and a cluster of 40 advisers. It is also being developed with the collaborative interaction and recognition by the working groups internal to the social forum process which were mentioned above.
./english/241.txt:94:Cox, Laurence and Colin Baker, 2001 “What have the Romans ever done for us? Activist and academic theorising.
./english/243.txt:7:This workshop on Neo-Marxisms was just one in a long day at the Radical Theory Forum , organised as an autonomous space during the European Social Forum in London . It was originated by young, politically active academics, who wanted to create a space where education and activism could be interlinked. The well-kept social centre 491 gallery , which served as the venue, helped this to be not only a successful but also an enjoyable event. The workshops covered ‘Anti-Consumerism', ‘Feminist Theory' and ‘Practice at the ESF/WSF', as well as the philosophical and explosive question who the ‘we' in the Social Movements is. The discussions were at the highest level, but not exclusionary.
./english/243.txt:13:Systematic political education is clearly underdeveloped among emancipatory movements struggling for another globalization . Although there are a significant number of critical analyses written for an academic audience, materials and methods of knowledge transfer for people's education are rare. Additionally, at the Social Forums the seminars often remind you very much of university lectures – and they are about as inspiring as them. Yet, even if you are the type of person that is into the academic style, have you ever wondered why you did not read an essay by this person instead of listening to him or her for hours, whilst sitting on an uncomfortable chair?
./english/259.txt:17:2. that the institutional academic environment is a space where the power relations contested in global radical politics are reproduced; and
./english/259.txt:30:For myself as an anthropologist (+ecologist/dancer/woman/activist), this emphasis was particularly relevant. Perhaps because social and cultural anthropologists have tended to work in cultures outside their own which, in the context of post-colonialism and ‘development’ has meant experiencing stark political and economic inequalities, they/we have long been grappling with the ethical circumstances of their/our work. For many, this has carried an attendant desire to effect some sort of ‘public service’: to speak out – to do something – about observed injustices. We become part of the contexts we work within, we are taken up as political currency within these contexts and we would be naïve to imagine that by being part of a ‘northern’ academic tradition our research is thereby, or should be, apolitical. But we face enormous institutional and other obstacles to our ability to contribute: ranging from a lack of support from formal academic institutions to publish work in local contexts, to threats of litigation of we publish analyses that expose local resistance to powerful international NGOs, donors and corporations.
./english/259.txt:37:I greatly appreciated the supportive space of the Barcelona meeting to share such thoughts with other activist-academics and academic-activists, and particularly with the other anthropologists present. Workshops and roundtables in which I participated with interest included one on the organisational implications of networks, in terms of both theory and practice, and an afternoon spent reflecting on the socio-political implications of particular activist tactics, from direct action to mass marches. As with most conferences, however, the scheduled meetings were greatly enhanced by sharings in the spaces outside these meetings: sitting on the steps outside the conference one evening discussing the analytical relevance for social movements of conceptual metaphors drawn from physics and the life sciences; building links over tapas in a cheap restaurant with academic-activists from Greece, Israel, France, and the UK; and talking with fellow anthropologists about the problems, both personal and professional, engendered by an ethnographic and participatory orientation to research.
./english/259.txt:40:Independently of this an ‘anarchist:academics’ e-list emerged from a meeting at the Anarchist Bookfair in London, October 2003. Currently there is some cross-over of participants occurring between the two lists and the beginnings of discussion regarding shared interests and intent. The theoretical and pragmatic interests of these events and discussions, groups and individuals, are reflected in a process of ‘talkshops’ supported by CSGR due to take during 2004, under the title of academia, activism and postanarchism: theory and practice in (anti-)globalisation politics. All these initiatives build and magnify existing UK-based theory:practice initiatives such as Signs of the Times (www.signsofthetimes.org.uk) and Shifting Ground Collective (www.shiftingground.org). It is tempting to see in them some renewed vigour in the recursive relationship between theory and practice, as well as between the ivory tower of academia and the real world ‘out there’.
./english/260.txt:22:means for example, that a common assumption in both academic and activist circles that
./english/260.txt:74:At the same time this research was an attempt to question mainstream academic
./english/260.txt:76:one is rewarded with a degree signifying that we now rightfully ‘belong’ to an academic
./english/267.txt:31:This modality of knowledge production puts us before an evident dilemma. Traditional academic research –with its object, its method of attribution and its conclusions- obtains, of course, valuable knowledges –mostly descriptive- in regard to the objects it investigates. But this descriptive operation in no ensues the formation of the object, because the form of the object itself is already the result of objectification. This is so to the extent that academic research is much more effective when it best uses these objectifying powers. In this way –science- operates much more as separation –and reification– of the situations in which it partcipates than as as an internal element in the creation of possible experiences (both practical and theoretical).
./english/267.txt:37:We have mentioned commitment and militancy. Are we perhaps proposing the superiority of the political militant in regard to the academic researcher?
./english/275.txt:21:What we are interested in here, however, is not so much the specific ‘lines’ developed in these traditions as a particular understanding of what politics is, and hence of the nature of the social situation that we find ourselves in as activists. We have developed this separately7 around the proposition that Marxism is, at its core, a theory of organised human practice, and thus an alternative theory of social movements, very different in its shape from the academic school of that name. In this paper, we want to explore an outline of that understanding and see what it can have to offer other activists, whether Marxist or not.
./english/275.txt:53:Let’s pause for a moment and ask a very basic and very important question: what is theory? We start by answering in the negative: the production of theory is not necessarily a scholastic exercise; the site of production of theory is not necessarily the ivory towers of academia; the producers of theory are not necessarily academically trained personnel in possession of qualifications that bestow on them the status of ‘officially approved theorists’.
./english/275.txt:146:In the aftermath of defeat, movements shifted rapidly towards particularism and ‘identity politics’, a process aided by the new cultural capitalism’s willingness to commercialize particular kinds of revolt and by a process of academicization which favoured symbolic competition and distancing. This identity politics, it should be said, was not restricted to feminism or to black politics: in many ways the cadre Marxism of the early 1970s formed its own kind of identity politics, fiercely claiming universality in theory but often bitterly exclusivist in practice.
./english/275.txt:171:Barker, Colin and Cox, Laurence 2002 ‘What have the Romans ever done for us? Activist and academic forms of movement theorising’ in Eighth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest, edited by Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University.
./english/276.txt:41:The compulsion towards insurgent architecture, I submit, could also be a central aspiration and a fundamental knowledge interest in social movement research. As Barker and Cox (2002: 7) have pointed out, there is a schism dividing academic theorizing about social movements and activist theorizing for and within social movements. The former is dominated by a drive towards providing “explanations” of the “normal”, “scientific” type, and the debates within the discipline centre around the type of explanations required, and the theory it generates, is thus of a contemplative nature. Social movements are defined as objects of study to be subjected to observation, description and explanation; they are not conceived of as active processes with which people, engage, experience and transform (ibid.: 4, 5). The latter centres not on providing general scientific explanations, but on generating ‘case propositions of a very definite and practical nature’ (ibid.: 4), that is, movement theorizing produces practical and concrete proposals for action in a given, conflictual setting. Social movement practice is thus characterised by a form of knowledge produced in an attempt to answer questions emanating from an active engagement with a particular context, be it other movements or more generally the social world ‘within which those movements move’ (ibid.: 6). By positing insurgent architecture as a knowledge interest in social movement research this schism might be transcended. For social movement research this would entail putting the focus of attention of the movement process and thus on activists’ attempts to “join the dots” between the particular struggles they are directly involved in and the totality in which these struggles are embedded, and the development of practices and ideas that can match the joining of the dots. In short, social movement research as insurgent architecture would seek to develop theoretical knowledge that can enhance activists’ capacity for transcending militant particularisms, build campaigns, and develop social movement projects9.
./english/276.txt:105:One last point needs to be made. One could quite easily imagine that the critical realist approach to social movement research sketched out above can be viewed as being marred by an elitist or even totalitarian impulse. Doesn’t the above argument reflect an attitude of letting the high priests of critical realism, wielding the sceptre of privileged access to ‘the real’, loose on the imperfect world of activists, and then, after they have determined the nature of the enduring structure that causes the occurring phenomena that people react to, and inferred from this the narrow path that needs to be followed to transform this structure, having the activists follow them like obedient disciples? Well, no. There are three reasons why this argument does not hold up. Firstly, critical realism is not marked primarily by a belief in scientific knowledge where the hubris of certainty and infallibility strike the dominant chord. On the contrary, scientific knowledge – the transitive object of science – is ostensibly posited as being fallible and the scientific endeavour is not about attaining closure but about a perennial process of digging deeper, in turn rooted in the humility of the admitted fallibility. Secondly, as I hope has been made clear in the above argument, the relationship between activist attempts to “go beyond” and critical realist attempts to discern ‘the real’ is not one of qualitative difference, but of homologous affinity, which, hopefully, can constitute the basis for developing and strengthening the capacity of activists to build social movement projects. Thirdly, the knowledge interest which motivates the kind of critical realist movement research outlined in this essay – insurgent architecture – presupposes solidarity and participation – as opposed to superiority and subordination – between “researcher” (academic) and “researched” (activist). Indeed, it seeks to breach this divide as such; the insurgent architect can be an activist as well as an academic, if not both at once. However, this argument moves into the territory of research ethics and methodology, and will have to be explored elsewhere19.
./english/277.txt:126:A good example might be the German Green Party. Unusually within the ecological movement, it had during the 1980s a fair smattering of academics of its own, where the new movements are more commonly dependent on sympathetic and often over-enthusiastic outsiders. Nevertheless, it made extensive and systematic use of outside researchers, particularly during its internal crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, publishing collections of contributions from sympathetic political scientists (Frank 1991) and inviting them to address party meetings.
./english/277.txt:137:A brief research project does not necessarily contribute much in this direction. There are, then, some intellectual advantages to research on movements we are committed to and people we live with: the more important our communication with the people we are researching is to us, the more we will work on it and the harder we will think about it. “Smash-and-grab research” is precisely the activity of researchers who have no intention of maintaining contact with participants, and who only have to convince academic peers of the value of their research. This is, I think, a stronger form of reflexivity than the simple sharing of backgrounds.
./english/277.txt:166:Since writing the first version of this paper in 1998, much has changed. In the space between submitting and defending my PhD, which argued that developing networks between social movements was not only a real possibility, but also a logical development for those movements, the “Battle of Seattle” took place, and the current phase of what has become called a “movement of movements” opened. Following Irish participation in the Prague (2000) and Genoa (2001) summit protests, an Irish wing of these movements developed, and quite a number of activist / academics have been involved in one form or another.
./english/281.txt:9:world’ a new surge of radical theory. As a result within academia, especially in Northern Europe and USA, there is apparently more space for critical debate. When I began to get in touch with the ‘first side of the first world academe’, this process seemed to me, as a South-European PhD student, very impressive. However, as an activist, I very soon came across many people theorising Social Movements (SM) who were only familiar with the work being done within academia. Thus the initial optimism soon disappeared. Some questions then presented themselves: What is the meaning of our radicalism? Who is our critique for? Are we really in a radical age or is it becoming fashionable to be radical? This article provides me with the opportunity to reflect on these themes. Still I have to admit to a certain trepidation since I don’t see myself as a political theorist and writing in a foreign language will limit my ability to express myself clearly1. But I’ll try to write to the best of my ability, eroding academic jargons and talking not from the perspective of an abstract Knowledge but from my experiences (including all the voices who debate issues of relevance with me from time by time). I hope my reflections2 will be of interest to some of this journal’s readers. This paper aims to look at us. To me, being critical must start from self-criticism. ‘Self-criticism and personal change are not apolitical- refusing to be what the system requires you to be is a profound and powerful form of direct actions’ (Subbuswamy & Patel, 2001, 541-543). …Situating myself In truth, responding to the initial questionnaire was very hard for me, since I hate giving rapid judgements and I am acutely aware that a short response cannot escape generalisation. I did fill in the questionnaire at the end because as I understand the idea was for us to permit the reader to know where we are coming from (politically), in order to comprehend and critique our work more easily. But I feel I need to spend some more time elaborating my answers since some of the terms used in the questionnaire seem ambiguous to me.
./english/281.txt:21:achieve a cross fertilisation between ‘critical psychology’ and ‘anti-capitalist movements’, we should start by streamlining the definition of ‘anti-capitalist movements’. To complicate matters a further set of questions occur to me: Is there a relationship between academia’s general interest in social movements and the media’s sudden fascination with the ‘anti-globalisation movement’? Are self-defined anti-capitalists really subversive? And, finally, is academe the proper arena for discussing such issues? On this note, let’s start with some concrete reflections on the problematic. Being within or being for... What are we talking about? Why are we talking? When I decided to write a thesis on gender relationships of militants in the radical social movement7, I wanted to work from within (Plows, 1998; Wall, 1999). The aim for me, as an insider was to understand and improve our gender relations and to reduce sexism in all its manifestations8. I was completely unaware of theories on social movements and I immersed myself in the literature. I found both really interesting texts and awful ones, but there was something that was escaping to me, and I wasn't able to put my finger on it. Then I participated in my first Social Movement congress and then, and only then, did I see the light.☺ In my opinion, the problem was that the majority of participants were SM outsiders and were, in any case, trying to explain SM dynamics to academia, to society in general or to a political party, instead of trying to create a debate within SM. In a recent contribution, Barker and Cox (2001-02, page 2), analyse the relation between research on SM and being activists. They use the Gramscian distinction between ‘traditional’ (in this case, academic) and ‘organic’ (activist) intellectuals and pose three fundamental questions in order to decide which side the researcher represents. These are: 1. What kind of knowledge do they produce?
./english/281.txt:25:2. What’s their ‘relevant community’?, and 3. Who plays the part? They believe that ‘traditional intellectuals’ tend to produce a system of knowledge, which is more static and explanatory so that it can be validated by academia. In contrast, ‘organic intellectuals’ develop a more situated and dynamic analysis related to the possibility of action, which then has to be debated and accepted by militants. I find this distinction interesting despite the authors’ romantic vision of activists9, and also despite their more expansive definition of activism (they include trade union stewards and leftist party apparatchiks as activists). Nevertheless, I believe this situation is not specific to Social Movement studies. It emerged from an ethical position within academia (Biglia, 2000). The problem occurs if we set out to explain and justify the SM point of view instead of using its theoretical tools to subvert mainstream knowledge. We, as activist-academics, have to ensure this by introducing the Radical Social Movement’s (RSM) ideas into academia. Some of us have already attempted to do that with feminism10, researching and producing knowledge in all areas (and not just women’s issues) using an ‘autonomous’ feminist perspective. We need to tread carefully otherwise activist theories become ‘rapidly recolonized’ and may even become ‘a source of new, sexy courses and research subjects whose purpose is to attract students, funding and status’ (Barker and Cox, 2001-02, 9). When the Radical Social Movement (RSM) was powerful and involved large sectors of society, the interaction between the two kinds of intellectuals was particularly strong. For example, the Italian anti-psychiatric movement of the 1970s, was firmly connected to street protests. It was characterised by an intense interaction between ‘professionals’ and ‘non professionals’. There was no separation between theorists and activists- theories were constructed collectively and shared practices played a big part in the process. In this context we could locate the Calate di Reggio Emilia11, characterised for the interaction between some psi-
./english/281.txt:33:spokespersons of the movement and dismiss the rest as ‘too radical’. I don't think it is necessary here to analyse the effects of these dynamics on the movement. Although it is important to note that declarations from alleged progressive intellectuals is intended to divide the movement and undermine alternative groupings. All this raises considerable doubts in me regarding the possible contributions of disciplines such as critical psychology (especially in English speaking countries), that are becoming academically acceptable. Moreover, we have to recognise that many intellectuals and academics jump on the radical bandwagon and try to take advantage of it, especially since there are so few specialists in this field. As an Italian militant involved with academia reports,13 Spring 1998 [...] explosion of the squatting phenomenon [...] many university barons show a sudden interest in ‘understanding’ squatters and I am called as a possible advisor [...] If I put myself forward as a squatting expert I will surely enhance my career prospects. Intellectual contribution to division and reabsorption In analysing the achievements and failures of Radical Social Movements we have to consider the tools, which the System employs to undermine the subversive power of activities and imagination. In my opinion two of the more successful strategies adopted by the System are reabsorption and splitting; in both, the part played by intellectuals and more specifically, academics, is determinant. Here I wish to examine these processes in more detail. When struggles gain public support the System puts into practice various strategies to re-colonize some of the more explicit demands. They take the demand, turn it upside down, empty it of meaning and use it as a slogan to shut up ‘popular protest’. Even some of the ‘human resources’ of the Movement, that is some of the activists, are reabsorbed into the body politic. This probably occurs for different reasons: some militants enter the movement not because they are completely disenchanted with formal politics but because they are not able
./english/281.txt:37:to enter it directly; some may genuinely believe they can subvert the System from within; some may not realise until much later that they are being used by shady political parties or groups; others still may feel frustrated by the ‘flawed’ strategies adopted by the Radical Social Movement or may even diverge politically from the new positions. In any case, since the System has been able to both recycle part of the movement’s demands and directly recruit some of its leaders, it can de-radicalise the militants. This is what I call reabsorption, in which both populist dictatorships and modern phallo-centric democracies specialise in, with academics as the state’s accomplice. Two painful examples can show how the process works. The first is the inclusion of ‘feminist’ discourse, within societies that arrogantly call themselves ‘first world’, into mainstream socio-political discourse. Politicians are now careful to be politically correct14 and encourage women participation in a world constructed on hetero-patriarchal philosophy. Some feminists lend themselves to such manoeuvres in order to obtain a ‘power quota’. And some may even pretend to be feminists as a matter of policy. Consequently we have positive discriminatory laws by which governments and trans-national organisations enhance their dominating positions and act as Father-figures to their subjects. So we witness in North Europe and the USA15 many gender study departments have completely compromised politics and use women as objects (rarely subjects) of study. This creates a vacuum in the intergenerational transmission belt and at the same time permits the marginalization of rebellious women who refuse to accept the lie of equality16. Moreover, Feminist philosophy has not escaped the pull of the univocal concept of power and the results are clear. It has entered into a dynamics in which the allegedly radical discourse travels on the same false path as traditional misogynist discourse... the self-serving lies of patriarchal discourse are converted into alternative discourse and projected as naturalism (Valcárcel, 1994, 81). 14 ‘Conceptual change not directly reflected in a transformation of practices and behaviours’ (Fernandéz, 2000, p 65). 15 In South Europe it is difficult make a similar analysis because there are so few Women Studies departments. 16 We are encouraged to believe that equal opportunities exist in the ‘civilised world’; we can abort unwanted pregnancies, we can work in the public domain. However, the government’s dominating attitude towards us remains intact which is typical of the hetero-patriarchal capitalist system we are living under.
./english/281.txt:40:In this sense activist critics of academia are still relevant; for example, Cecilia17, criticises academic Italian feminists who did not come out against the reformists who wanted to forbid abortion. The second painful example comes from the Italian anti-psychiatry movement. Law 18018 which in theory aimed for a more open model of psychic pain, left three enormous legislative holes: First, it retained the TSO19; second, it didn’t close the criminal ‘madhouses’ (Barbieri, 1995); and, finally, it supported the inabilitazione20 (Biglia, 1999). The government passed these laws with the approval of society since they were seen as liberating. The supposed empowerment either didn’t materialise or was pushed through in a reformist manner (Telefono Viola21). In this way the government boycotted all the genuinely alternative approaches. First, subsidies were eliminated and later on draconian laws were employed to shut down individual and collective radical projects. Ironically, the Italian psychiatric laws are still deemed ‘progressive’ by some. These were two examples from the past but I believe the germ of a very similar process can be seen in various sectors of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Academic writings have often favoured reabsorption of critics by recolonising collective knowledge within the borders of ‘scientific space’. The second phenomenon, which needs discussing, is the ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics of the state. Within autonomous groupings the development of a collective identity has always been a necessary component of recognising a common struggle and the fight against oppression. We need a group consciousness in order to be subversive, since ‘any group that leads an autonomous existence [...] constitutes a constant danger for the dominant group’ (Apfelbaum, 1999, p 269). Obviously if the identity becomes homogenising it could suffocate the group and the subjectivity within it (Biglia, 2003). As I explained before, various occasions are used to
./english/281.txt:43:instigate difference amongst groups (the banal discourse on violence is one of them, see Lopez-Adan, 1996). However, I firmly believe that the division between ‘physical’22 and theoretical activists is the most significant factor. This is a division that academics actively encourage. This is because the intellectuals tend to reproduce exclusive jargons that continue the very technical and social divisions of labor they purport to want to deconstruct. Fearing academic manipulation, groups then tend to either evolve around identities devoid of theoretical elements, or exalt theories. Both alternatives when not destroying the subversive power of the collective imaginary at least limit its scope. An additional problem is that the ‘anti-capitalist movement’ still contains figures who consciously or otherwise wish to resurrect Marxist-Leninism’s desire to ‘educate the people’. Its more intellectual dimension tends to normalise certain positions and by default exclude other struggles as secondary. For example, women have frequently been asked to subordinate their struggles against discrimination to those of the class (Charles, 2000, Diaz, 1983, Sardella, 2001, Schuman, 1998, Vázquez et al., 1996). All this causes a separation between the alleged intellectuals and those who practice politics from within their own skin. In this context the comments of some Chilean activists that I interviewed in 2001 are of relevance23. These pobladoras24 have been fighting for years firstly against the dictatorship and today against the falsehood of the democracy and the various discriminations (class, ethnic and gender ones) that persist. They may not possess academic knowledge but if you stop and listen to their words an entire world of wisdom unfolds before your eyes. They have recounted several experiences to me when they felt excluded by professional feminist activists: They don’t look at you badly, but the discourse they use is not pluralist … it is not a discourse that involves pobladoras women…there are just a few professional women who ‘come down’ to
./english/281.txt:47:the level of the people, [but you get the impression they feel] if you aren’t a professional you are nobody. They become more enraged on hearing pious progressive discourse on an abstract poverty, ... when we are here fucking hungry and are fed an excellent discourse … [you realize how empty it is] and that you are defrauded by It … for that reason organized women don’t trust professionals very much… In this case feminist professional attitudes caused feelings of exclusion. Similarly, various anti-capitalist groups create discourses and practices that exclude people who are not used to theories. Once again the role played by intellectuals is to erect barriers that maintain the separation between ‘popular’ energies and ‘revolutionary’ discourse. Critical contradictions and travelling within/out movements Some may agree with my criticism of mainstream theories but argue that they cannot possibly apply to critical theory since the latter operates within a different schema. I believe, however, that my criticisms do apply to critical theory as well. Below I will try to expand on this. The critic frequently engages in normative practice and more specifically academics expect their students to follow their lead in their work. At the beginning it may be necessary to create a group identity to protect the minority group from the incursions of ‘official’ theories (Biglia, 2003), but later on it becomes a way of monopolising the power. One of the reasons for this process maybe the necessity of working in a relaxing way. As Ussher makes clear: […] Today critical psychology means something different to me. It is not fighting for small change, for recognition, for an inroad into the mainstream of psychology. Those endeavours are admirable, and I have nothing but respect for those who wish to pursue that path […]. But I don’t have the energy, or the inclination, any more. I have come to the conclusion that innovative, meaningful research or teaching cannot be carried out, at least without great personal cost, if critical psychologists are having to justify their existences on a daily basis; if they are having to explain, persuade and cajole, rather then engage
./english/281.txt:50:in dialogue with others of a similar disposition and intellectual bent; if they have to watch their back (p 19). It is significant that even the Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) which Hakim Bey (1985) wishes to see transformed into Permanent Autonomous Zones (PAZ) are generally characterised by two or three individuals in charge of hefty ideological decisions. So dialogues that Ussher wants to see develop become closed dialogues where it is advantageous to conform to the critical ‘party line’. The biggest problem is that, within supposedly horizontal groups, which are not explicitly authoritarian, it is difficult to recognise leadership and subject it to criticism. This is a strange process in which we are all ‘free to think’ as our unacknowledged leaders, otherwise we are out. Moreover, such groups tend to become endogamous in order to avoid contamination from other critical sources and frequently end up not co-operating with each other because they all believe they possess the deeper and more radical critique of the status quo. Theoretically there may not exist a separation between knowledge-theories and activism. We are critical academics so we must be on the same side as activists. We organize horizontally and we don’t want to manipulate the movement. But we celebrate our arrival to a meeting with half an hour of theoretical chat not understood by non-specialists. I want to mention two experiences in this regard, one from my activist space and the other from my academic milieu. The first experience comes from an assembly of activists I was involved with around ten years ago in Italy. In theory it was a closed group (just for militants with similar politics), organized horizontally as a response to an upcoming protest. The group consisted of about 30 people. Most of us, between 18 and 24 years old, learned about the meeting just a few days in advance. The meeting started with a 90-minute talk by two academic-activists who read from a written paper. After their talk they ask if there was any disagreement with their analysis. I felt as if they were mocking us. Obviously for me, as for most of my friends, it was impossible to understand let alone provide an impromptu critique of a highly complex analysis. Faced with this interrogation all we could do was to try to decide whether we should remain in the group or leave. Another example comes from a few years ago in Spain, during a meeting between critical teachers and students who wanted to change academia. All
./english/281.txt:53:the students sat at the back of the room and remained silent throughout. In contrast, the lecturers occupied the front row and monopolised the ‘discussion’. When I complained that if we want to change the authoritarian dynamics of academia we have to make an effort to create a space in which everyone feels free to talk, one of the lecturers retorted, ‘here everybody can talk freely and if student don’t feel free it is their problem’. At this stage one student did say that it was difficult to talk under such conditions, but he was ignored. What I am trying to say is that this ‘TAZ’ frequently becomes a closed ghetto that tends to produce a static critique- a critique that can be ‘easily’ reabsorbed by mainstream academic discourse. Our inability or unwillingness to be self-critical tends to normalise our contribution. At the same time not-so-critical academics see the autonomous zones created as an opportunity to acquire power. It seams that having acquired an academic position most criticals start to feel tired of fighting and prefer to maintain their little privileges and end up becoming auto-referential and a bit pathetic. Having analysed some of the limitations and negatives influences of academic discourse, I want to end by returning to the question posed by the editors of ARCP. It seems to me that in both academia and the ‘anti-globalization’ movement the ‘radicalising’ process mainly consists in emptying the content of criticism. Given this situation, is a cross-fertilisation between critical psychology and the anti-capitalist movement possible? I feel the only positive fertilisation possible is achieved through being a person- I mean the voluntary performing of ourselves and our bodies and not our professional ‘persona’. That doesn’t mean we cannot bring to the University ethics and practices developed by us as militants. Moreover, we can serve our activism through knowledge gained in academia and the privileges of our status. But we have to be careful not to instrumentalize Radical Social Movement practices and theories for the benefit of academics nor engage with the Radical Social Movement with a superior attitude. I believe if we want to be useful to the Radical Social Movement we should not aim to do something for RSM as academics, but instead work within them and act as activists. Perhaps the best thing Critical Psychology, as a ‘theoretical group’, could do is to let the anti-capitalist movement get on with its work without interference. As persons with a psychological background and a critical attitude we can use our knowledge within RSM
./english/281.txt:56:to subvert academia by taking a radical position in the classroom and research. I agree with the criticisms friends made regarding the pessimism of this paper. Perhaps we have to look at the positive experiences being developed outside Academia. Although this article is not the space to enter into a deep analysis of that space, I like to mention it briefly. Research-militants from different disciplines are fighting against the commercialisation of knowledge and are producing shared-knowledge (e.g., the GNU Project, Copy left), organizing autonomous teams of research (e.g., Universidad Nomada, Laser, Facoltá di Fuga, Universidad de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo). And many people use shared-knowledge in their neighbourhoods or work places. Reappropriation of knowledge is a necessary tool for social transformation, nevertheless, I believe it is just as important we maintain a strong self-critical attitude. And finally what we should do as researcher-academics? …A bit less talking, a bit more doing!● Acknowledgment It would take an entire book to mention all the people that, in some way, have contributed to the formation of opinions expressed in this paper. For this reason I just make a collective acknowledgment. Firstly, to all the activists that shared with me their analyses especially friends from Italy, Catalonia, Chile, Britain, Spain and Argentina. Secondly, I owe a real debt of gratitude to autonomist feminists particularly to UEP and MPKbarna groups. At the same time I have to thanks all the people that without defining themselves as activists have a strong social commitment to everyday life. Moreover, thanks to Erica Burman and Ian Parker who introduced me to the most committed parts of critical psychology. Last but not least I would like to acknowledge Jordi Bonet-Martin, Ricard Moreno-Alegret and Laurence Cox, who commented on the first draft of the work. To all of you lots of hugs and cariños, grazie! 80
./english/281.txt:58:References Amoroso M. (2002) Barcelona entre valles y flores, DIY: Recursos Oscuros Apfelbaum, E. (1999) ‘Relations of domination and movements for liberation: an analysis of power between groups (Abridged)’, Feminism & Psychology 9 (3): 267-72. Barbieri D. (1995) Un lager italiano. Quei matti da slegare en Avvenimenti del 20 Settembre 1995. p. 54-56 Barker C., Cox L. (2001-2) What have the Romans ever done for us? Academic and activist forms of movement theorising en http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/afpp/afpp8.html Bey H. (1985) T.A.Z. Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, NY: Autonomedia Bey H. (1993) Permanent TAZs, NY: Autonomedia Biglia B. (1999) Buscando hilos: l’Antipsichiatria italiana, El rayo que no cesa nº 1 Biglia B. (2000) Universidades: ¿espacios de creación o recreación de conocimientos? on Athenea Digital, revista de pensamiento social, April 28th. Biglia B. (2003) Women in mixed SMs, experiences of contradictions in their subjectivities & individualities, in press Bonet-Marti J. (2003) A l’altre costat del mirall o per que m’interessen unes jornades de conrecerca des del Moviments Socials. Photocopies. Bucalo G. (1997) DIzionARIO ANTIPSICHIATRICO. Esplorazioni e viaggi attraverso la follia. Sicilia: Punto L Charles N. (2000) Feminism, the State and Social Policy. London: McMillan. Colacicchi P. (1993) Le Calate di Reggio Emilia in Antonucci G. Critica al giudizio psichiatrico, Roma: Sensibili alle foglie Diaz, G. (1983) ‘Roles and contradictions of chilean women in the resistence and Exile’, pp.30-38 in Davies M. (eds) Third World Second Sex. London: Zed Books Fernández Poncela A.M. (2000) Mujeres, revolución y cambio cultural. Barcelona: Anthropos Gordo-Lopez A. (2001) De la Crítica al Academicismo Metodológico: líneas de acción contra los desalojos sociocríticos: photocopies. LASER (2002) Scienza Spa. Scienziati tecnici e conflitti. Roma: Derive Approdi. Law I. & Lax B. (1998). What is critical psychology? An interview with Erica Burman & Ian Parker. En Geko Vol 2: 51-61 Lopez-Adan E. (1996) Terrorismo y violencia revolucionaria. Bilbao: Likiniano Elkartea.
./english/282.txt:2:Academic and activist forms of movement theorizing
./english/282.txt:6:We want to pose some questions about the relationship between social movements and 'social movement theories'. The questions reflect the sense of unease experienced by some 'academic intellectuals' who are also activists in movements, and the scepticism sometimes expressed by activists about the value of 'social movement theory.' Both of us having a foot in each camp, we share the unease.
./english/282.txt:8:1. ACADEMIC & MOVEMENT INTELLECTUALS
./english/282.txt:9:Academics and Movements
./english/282.txt:10:No one could sensibly argue that academic work - and journalism - is of no use to movements. When studies of the inequality of income and wealth distribution appear, for example, we often use them to strengthen our case. We gain usable technical knowledge from ecologists about the workings of pollution, and from geneticists about the dangers of GM foods. The knowledge we have of movements in the past - with which we sometimes identity, and from which we sometimes draw practical 'lessons' - is mostly derived from the work of academic historians. Journalists and academics provide vital information about movements in other countries. Anthropologists - and SF writers! - help us build vision of different ways our species has lived, might live.
./english/282.txt:12:However, more problematic questions arise in relation to a specific area of academic study, signaled by the title of the new journal: Social Movement Studies. Over the last few decades, a whole institutional academic apparatus - even including this conference! - has arisen, whose central focus is the theorization of movements and popular struggles. In North America, the Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the ASA has, reportedly, some 500 paid-up members. There are several journals devoted to this kind of work, and many other professional sociology and political science journals regularly carry articles in the field. Here there occur ongoing debates about how to theorize the (possibly changing) experience of movements, their ideas, their activities, their forms of organization, and their contests with the powerful. This is the area we want to ask questions about.
./english/282.txt:16:Let's begin with the slightly uncomfortable observation that academic work is in a sense parasitic on facts mostly produced by movements (and their opponents and allies). Social movement theory is not peculiar, of course, in this parasitism: the whole of the philosophy of science, for example, is parasitic in the same sense on the work of scientists.
./english/282.txt:18:It is sometimes suggested that the relationship between academics and movements is simple: academics provide 'knowledge' and movements produce 'access'. That this won't do is obvious: for movements and their activists also produce 'knowledge'. So, what perhaps needs more exploration is the nature of and the relationship between the two kinds of knowledge and between their two kinds of producers.
./english/282.txt:21:We owe to Gramsci (1999a: 134ff) a distinction between 'traditional' and 'organic' intellectuals. The former term refers to those who played an 'intellectual function', essentially as part of the status quo in early 20th century Italy, and the latter to those who played a similar function in popular movements and parties. By the first term, Gramsci denoted such people as university professors, lawyers, priests, and others; by the second, above all, activists of the Communist and other workers' parties. Gramsci emphasizes the 'directive' activity of intellectuals of both types - as e.g. engineers and small-town doctors but also as organizers. Eyerman and Jamison (1991) make a similar distinction between 'established' and 'movement' intellectuals. These distinctions seem quite useful. Here we will distinguish between 'academic' and 'movement' intellectuals, suggesting an initial polarity between them, in terms of the tasks they undertake and the goals they pursue, their audiences and their relationships with them, their accreditation, and - perhaps most important - the forms of knowledge they produce. And we can notice one immediate difference. To be an academic intellectual is, in a sense, always to be a member of the 'intelligentsia'; but a worker or a peasant can be a 'movement intellectual.'
./english/282.txt:23:In the real world, of course, the types are sometimes combined together in individuals and groups. Many of those who are drawn to this field of academic study are themselves former or continuing activists and participants in actual movements and movement organizations. It's been suggested (e.g. Morris and Herring 1987; Mayer in Lyman 1995) that part of the impulse to the American shift away from 'collective behaviour' to 'resource mobilization' and 'political process' theories was a response to the movements of the 1960s.(2) Those with feet in both camps are often aware of contradictions and tensions in their different roles. Thus Nancy Naples notes a demand placed on the authors in her collection on Community Activism and Feminist Politics, to 'find a balance between the passion they felt for the community action or activists they were working with and the detachment needed to present their analyses' (1998b: 7).
./english/282.txt:25:Nick Crossley (1999) suggests that sometimes academicism can cause problems in movements. Academics involved in movements, he notes, have their own style or hexis which is tacitly recognized by those who share it, and who are drawn towards each other. More to the point, that hexis is explicitly recognized by others who don't share it, and who find it strange and alienating. These may fear that the 'intellectuals' will turn the movement into a 'talking shop' (where they will be skilled and comfortable) rather than a place where things get done.
./english/282.txt:27:A more extreme but by no means unknown example occurs where academics' interest in movements is motivated primarily by an association with the forces of state repression. 19th century cases include individuals such as the Prussian theorist of police Lorenz von Stein (usually credited with coining the expression 'social movement') and the French police informer Gustav Le Bon (noted for his theories of 'the crowd'). More recently, Oskarsson and Peterson (2001) - in the wake of the shooting of three activists (one of whom was critically wounded) at G?org - came to the following practical conclusions:
./english/282.txt:34:These conclusions suggest one extreme opposition between academic intellectuals and movement intellectuals, which can perhaps best be summed up in the theoretical question 'which side are you on?'
./english/282.txt:36:Provisionally, we can distinguish several dimensions of distinction between academic intellectuals and movement intellectuals: first, what kind of knowledge do they produce? second, what's their 'relevant community'? and, third, who plays the part?
./english/282.txt:39:Academic and movement intellectual work tend to demand rather different kinds of intellectual output.
./english/282.txt:41:So far as academic work is concerned, consider a couple of examples from leading social movement theorists. Lofland (1996:66-9) holds up as a goal ('the higher quest' to which the academic researcher should aspire) the formation of generic propositions - that is, propositions fitting several cases of social movement organizations, as distinct from mere case propositions which apply only to the case at hand. The search for generic propositions is also signaled by McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, who seek forms of explanation involving 'the identification of causal chains consisting of mechanisms that reappear in a wide variety of settings but in different sequences and combinations, hence with different collective outcomes' (2001: 23). In both examples, the focus is on explanation of a normal 'scientific' type. Argument among social movement scholars, as in other areas of the social sciences, tends to focus on the nature of the explanations required.
./english/282.txt:43:As Geoghegan and Cox (2001) put it, academic theorizing is embedded in specific institutional relationships. It attempts to explain both individual facets of movement activity and to create or add to a 'field of knowledge' (such as 'social movement studies'). Therefore, it produces certain types of theorizing, whose strengths (at their best) include a broad conceptual armoury but whose weaknesses (from an activist point of view) lie in the tendency to treat what are, precisely, movements as static 'fields', to embed their understanding in an uncritical acceptance of the givenness of those institutions which movements often set themselves against, and to marginalize the position of the actor.
./english/282.txt:45:If the academic quest is for the well-formed generic proposition or the superior explanation, that is, for the theoretical concept or generalization which covers a set of seemingly dissimilar cases or processes, it is not the case that movement intellectuals have no interest in these. However, their primary interests do not lie here. Rather, generic propositions perform a subordinate function in their reasoning, not as goals in themselves but rather as merely parts of an apparatus of activist argument whose central concern lies elsewhere - in formulating 'case propositions' of a very definite and practical nature. These take the form, in essence, of practical proposals, i.e. propositions that 'This is what we should do.'
./english/282.txt:47:Consider a couple of examples. The first concerns two treatments of the question of 'revolutionary situation' - in Lenin and in Tilly. Lenin (1966) argues that it is vitally necessary to recognize what is and what is not a revolutionary situation. And he offers a famous generic proposition: revolutionary situations involve the simultaneous presence of two crucial elements, the ruling class's inability to rule in the old way and the people's refusal to be ruled in the old way. If either of these is absent, says Lenin, there isn't a revolutionary situation. Lenin's definition, suitably adapted and developed, can be taken as the basis for an academic disquisition on revolutionary situations (witness Tilly 1978, 1993).
./english/282.txt:49:However, the purpose and the meaning of Lenin's definition cannot be separated from its context. It occurs in a pamphlet with the decidedly non-academic title, Left-Wing Communism : An Infantile Disorder. Lenin's is intervening in a practical argument within the newly formed Communist International, to argue that [a] the situation in 1920 is no longer as immediately revolutionary as it had been in 1919, [b] communists must know the difference between revolutionary and non-revolutionary situations, since each requires different kinds of organization and activity and [c] communists in the new situation need to learn how to form united fronts with reformists. The generic proposition is subordinate to the practical case proposition, which is concerned with 'what is to be done,' in this concrete circumstance. (3)
./english/282.txt:51:The second example also involves the relation of theory and practice. Discussing 'mechanisms and processes', McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001) propose that mechanisms 'concatenate into processes', which represent larger-scale objects for theoretical comparison. As it happens, Lukacs (2000), in his last 'Leninist' text), addresses related issues about theorization of processes. Only his case is, essentially, that processes 'concatenate' into what he terms 'moments of decision.' Lukacs's argument is not, of course, with contemporary American academic theorists, but with two representatives of what might be termed 'Second International Marxism', whose view of the historical process is rather inevitabilistic and 'processual'. The issue between them is how to explain the failure of the 1919 Hungarian revolution, in which the young Lukacs had been a committed participant. His opponents account for the defeat in terms of a set of 'processes' which were somehow beyond human intervention. For Lukacs, however, such general processes do no more than set the parameters, as it were, within which Hungarian communists could and had to work; indeed, these generated a variety of immediate 'moments of decision' when the actions of the Hungarian Communist Party leadership proved decisive.
./english/282.txt:63:It's not at all clear that the 'new structuralism' proposed by McAdam and his colleagues, any more than the 'old', can overcome this limitation on its own knowledge. What we are arguing is that, at some point in its theoretical development, academic social movement theory must hit up against some such limit to its understanding of its object, because - perhaps because of its 'extra-knowledge' concerns and commitments - it denies itself the role of 'active subject'. (7)
./english/282.txt:71:Two kinds of argument are looked for in the theoretical contributions of movement intellectuals. The first is the ideological and moral justification of the movement, the promotion and elaboration of its ideas and their defence against attack. Here it is not only the content of ideas, but also their rhetorical form which is significant, for much of the ideological work of movements consists of ripostes to critics and answers to the doubtful. Indeed, much of the actual development and clarification of movement ideologies often occurs in dialogical exchanges with opponents and potential allies (Steinberg 1999). The linguistic and literary forms - and the settings - in which movement ideas are expressed are much more varied than is the case with academic ideas. They range from books and pamphlets to newspapers, leaflets and posters, from sermons and speeches to slogans and songs on demonstrations, from formal orations to informal conversations, and so on. Appropriateness of form depends much more on the actual and varied speech settings. The underlying purpose of ideological justification is practical: it is an inherent aspect of movement mobilization and organization.
./english/282.txt:82:For the academic intellectual, including the social movement scholar, the primary 'community' that validates her or his work qua academic is that composed of other academics, who form their own hierarchies of reward and respect, and their own criteria of success. Bluntly, getting past a PhD committee, an academic interview panel or the editors of the American Sociological Review is a different enterprise from gaining the ear of a strike committee or a campaign to save ancient trees from logging. Indeed, the former involves a kind of sucking up which is largely missing in the latter. For, in return for suitable intellectual performance, the academic world dispenses something which is largely missing from the world of the movement intellectual: material advantage. (The fact that the level of material advantage is on a different scale from that obtaining in, say, the world of finance or law does not make it unimportant; and it is of course attached to very significant symbolic advantages.) Criteria of academic success include such significant intangibles as 'citation' in other academics' work. Once achieved, status has a relatively high degree of permanence: PhDs and (the better) academic posts stick to the possessor for life; a successful book or article may still be cited thirty years later.
./english/282.txt:84:Another way of putting this is to say that there are important pressures at work in academia which constrain intellectual independence: the need to achieve a permanent post or senior lectureship (and so impress superiors), the pressures of research assessment exercises and performance-related funding (which involve a number of forms of 'horizontal pressure'), the increasing proletarianization of academic work, and so on.
./english/282.txt:88:The rewards for success are mostly intangible, though nonetheless valued: laughter, applause and the approval of fellow-activists are heady gifts. In a way that is far less true in academic life, some movement intellectuals may never achieve any kind of public prominence: it is not uncommon for individuals and groups to perform vital 'backstage' intellectual work (as strategists and tacticians, as 'bridge leaders' and mobilizers, as the anonymous designers of posters and slogans, etc) without ever gaining any kind of personal recognition. Moreover, while there is an important sense in which movement intellectuals are 'credentialed,' their credentials are awarded by the relevant movement, and in a manner which is in principle far less fixed and stable than is the case in academic life. The role of 'movement intellectual' has to be won and won again as a much more uncertain qualification. For the settings in which movements act and argue and the strategic and tactical problems movements they face, and in which movement intellectuals make their contributions, are such as to demand constant rethinking and innovation.
./english/282.txt:91:The making of an academic intellectual is a complex enterprise, involving the imbibing of formal education and a whole set of 'manners'. The academic must learn to write within a narrow range of literary styles, and to make plentiful reference to work by other academics (as well, in our field, as some reference to the work of movement actors). To become an academic is to adopt a middle-class professional hexis, a way of speaking, writing, a mode of dress etc., as well as a set of formal ideas. There is not much, in this respect, that differentiates 'social movement scholars' from academic intellectuals in other fields. (10)
./english/282.txt:99:Although there is a sense in which we can see academic intellectuals forming 'schools of thought,' the chief focus falls on individuals and their career achievements. However, in movements, while the 'intellectual function' (Gramsci) may be played by a notable individual, it is commonly played by an activist group, a 'cadre organization' (Piven and Cloward 1977). If we ask, who gets 'cited' as the source of a movement argument or idea, it is commonly not so much named persons like 'Dave Spart' or 'Moon Blossom' or 'Naomi Klein' as movement organizations like 'SNCC', 'Earth First!,' 'the SWP,' or movement media like Green Anarchist or 'the Manifesto group' or even 'the anti-globalization movement' etc. Such groups possess and develop their own internal structures and divisions of labour, and their activist members regularly engage in ongoing discussions about the form and content of the ideas they should argue for within the wider movement, about the most effective means of their presentation (what Snow and Benford term 'framing'), and about appropriate forms of activity. Such groups typically engage in mutual monitoring of the movement's responses to itself as a means of checking its own performance. Movements in turn validate such groups' collective outputs of ideas and their shared practice, rather than simply their individual performances; at the same time, of course, the individual performances of group members reflect on the general credit of the group.
./english/282.txt:101:Relating activist and academic theorizing
./english/282.txt:102:The relationship between activist and academic theorizing is not simply that of a static contrast. As social processes, they are closely intertwined, in processes of colonization and resistance which operate in both directions. 'Theory', in the sense of the symbolic languages generated by these processes, is then affected in important ways both by the primary social locations of activist and academic theorizing and by the processes of (conflictual) dialogue which occur between them.
./english/282.txt:119:It can also, however, find itself subject to a 'brain drain', in which people associated with movements 'migrate' to universities. This process is no doubt very different as between different movements and activists (class, for example, makes a major difference), and the nature of the migration varies: attempting to fit in to the new culture, making careers out of public critiques of ex-comrades, turning activist knowledge to academic uses, or (more positively) finding a 'day job' that enables particular kinds of activism to continue, or becoming a 'sympathetic expert'. We could then turn our initial question around and ask, 'What have activists brought to academia?'
./english/282.txt:133:A second example is Amory Starr's Naming the Enemy, a much less mainstream text in that Starr is straddling the gap between movement and academia without passing the 'Go' of the media. Not only is the content much less readable, but the publishing house (Zed) is a smaller one dedicated to radical academic texts and theoretically-minded activists (an area important to our discussion).
./english/282.txt:135:Arguably Starr pursues a double purpose in Naming the Enemy. On the one hand, she attempts to use her activist knowledge and background as a resource to achieve recognition within academia - and the fact that her book is the first work by a sociologist on the 'anti-globalization movement' is likely to stand her in good stead in this process. On the other hand, and more interestingly, she also uses the apparatus of academic research to argue for particular positions within the movement and against others. (15) However, we have yet to see any evidence of success in this. (Perhaps the book's strong defence of fundamentalist responses to globalization may explain something of the silence that has settled over it since September 11th.) Nevertheless, it is worth signaling both that some academics do try to break out of the 'contemplative' mode and that they are not necessarily very successful in doing so.
./english/282.txt:137:Finally, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's Empire marks a particularly complex practical relationship. Negri is orignally a left-wing academic who fell foul of the post-1968 witchhunts of 'terrorist sympathizers' carried out by the Italian state, a process which led hundreds if not thousands of Italians to seek exile abroad (Ruggiero 1999). Negri continued academic work in Paris, but returned to Italy - and jail - a few years ago to highlight the plight of less well-known exiles.
./english/282.txt:141:Klein, Starr and Hardt / Negri illustrate the complex interactions between activist and academic theorizing, and the tensions between their different purposes. These tensions appear above all in the shape of the theory - its active or contemplative form - rather than in its subject matter or ostensible political 'side'. Indeed, it could perhaps be said that the practice of the authors mentioned as individuals is at odds with their theorizing, to their credit as human beings and activists, if not as theorists. This is perhaps not surprising in a period of movement 'upturn', in which practice can be expected to outstrip theory. But what does it imply for theorizing itself?
./english/282.txt:150:This weakness is most obvious in the question of 'who controls' the institutions of Marxist and feminist theorizing. Both schools possess movement-controlled institutions, but the proportion of this theorizing which takes place within academic-controlled institutions, for primarily academic purposes and more or less according to academic rules, is striking.
./english/282.txt:152:As theories migrate, they come to operate according to very different rules and purposes. This is obvious, for example, in the question of which theorists are quoted and for what purposes. Within Marxism, the practical radicals of the 1920s (with the partial exception of a largely misunderstood Gramsci) are abandoned in favour of the isolationists of the Frankfurt School. On a subtler level, Marxism and feminism tend to lose their aspect as theories of movement organization within the academic context, and to act simply as explanatory theories of social structure: theories of patriarchy and capitalism which often induce despair in students. While stressing the systematic nature of these structures, as activists also do in order to encourage more radical action, their academic versions lose precisely this focus on active opposition and wind up as forces for demobilization.
./english/282.txt:161:Two important things happened to the theory at this point (Geoghegan and Cox 2001), both of them characteristic of what Alvin Gouldner (1971) describes as a 'scholastic' approach to theory, in other words one geared to the structural requirements of teaching, textbooks and literature reviews. Firstly, a contrast was constructed between 'new social movement theory' and 'resource mobilization theory', in the process homogenizing the former considerably (and often restricting it to suitably 'academic' authors such as Touraine and Melucci). This contrast, repeated ad nauseam in introductions to edited collections and 'overviews of the literature', was usually proposed as a debate between generic propositions ࠬa Lofland: 'resource mobilization theorists argue that?' while 'new social movements theorists argue that?.'
./english/282.txt:167:Where this 'historical background' - as it had significantly become from the viewpoint of academic theorizing - was recognized, it was used to say that NSM was a critique of 'Marxism' - thereby accepting the Stalinist claim to be the true guardians of Marxist authenticity, much as 'post-structuralists', reacting against the Althusserian legacy of PCF theology, often phrase their critiques as critiques of 'Marxism' tout court.
./english/282.txt:174:Having sketched out some of the contrasts and relationships between academic and activist forms of movement theorizing in the first part of this paper, we now want to look more closely at activist theorizing on its own terms. What is it? How does it relate to its social context? Why is it 'theory'?
./english/282.txt:221:To abstract the 'cosmological' is of course also to present movements in the form in which they can be most easily appropriated by 'traditional' intellectuals of all kinds - not only the academic discussion of e.g. the 'philosophy' of the ecology movement, but also the policy-maker's cooptation of a 'green agenda' when environmentalists push strongly enough.
./english/282.txt:238:In its production and distribution, then, it is activist theorizing rather than academic, and this also holds true for its reception: academic discussions of anarchism (including those by anarchist activists) tend to prefer to focus on 'dead classics' or the more abstract-minded activists such as Murray Bookchin or Hakim Bey; by contrast, the Anarchist FAQ is quoted in discussions on newsgroups and mailing lists unrelated to anarchism or academia (18), in the context of essentially political arguments about anarchism.
./english/283.txt:9:In March 2004, a number of ‘academics’ and ‘activists’, ‘academic-activists’, and ‘activist-academics’ spent a long weekend in the west of England, talking shop. This was part of a series of four weekend ‘talkshops’ supported by the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick, which attempted to offer a space for a group of ‘activists’ and ‘academics’ to talk with each other on a range of issues relating to contemporary radical politics and theory. As an initiative, it started from an affirmation of the role(s) of theory/ideas/reflection/philosophy/writing in effecting and contributing to radical politics; and from a position that resistance politics also is, and requires, a ‘revolution’/rebellion of ideas.
./english/283.txt:11:In other words, it was a place for people who desire engagement with theory/philosophy as both a practice that informs radical politics and as a locale for activism. Of course, this is not at all the same thing as saying that this is the only space for activism that ‘we’ might value or engage in. Further, a hope was for the initiative to provide an opening where it might be possible for people to communicate across - and unravel - both disciplinary divides and the activist/academic boundary.
./english/283.txt:13:While something of this did happen, the first talkshop, involving 18 participants, was surprisingly fractious. ‘The academics’ felt accused of not being hardcore enough when it came to activist practice. ‘The activists’ felt alienated by the poststructuralist jargon and perceived pretensions of ‘the academics’. Tears were cried, corners were sulked in, jokes were interpreted as insulting attacks, and insecurities were heightened as egos were dented. But there also was a lot of laughter and late nights, and an emerging closeness through the year as those who stayed with the process began to know and respect each other as simply fallible friends.
./english/283.txt:15:In this contribution, we offer some notes taken from a long meeting exploring relationships between academia and activism. The notes are ordered from multiple flipcharts and include some direct quotes (in italics) from these charts to provide something of the dynamic flavour of the discussion. Our intention is multiplicitous – to use current jargon. It is to make a note of one ephemeral attempt at conversation between activists and academics, in a context of some anti-intellectualism in the UK political scene. And it is to highlight the conflict that can emerge in such discussion across boundaries, as insecurities morph into accusations and attack. It is to emphasise that opening up to each other requires safety and softness, although defensiveness and deepened identities frequently are what arise instead. And it is to nevertheless affirm a challenge to keep placing ‘ourselves’ in the presence of different views; to keep learning and unlearning, in our attempts to disperse boundaries and enclosures, conceptual and otherwise.
./english/283.txt:18:18 activists and academics ‘talk shop’ in March 2004: notes from a meeting
./english/283.txt:24:All of us are located in different spaces in relation to both activist and academic practice. So how do these spaces contribute to our political engagement - and to how we see and identify ourselves as, or as not, activists?
./english/283.txt:26:This discussion opened with the observation that academia and academics present structural limits in relation to radical/activist potential. Should those of us currently located in academia leave our jobs so that we can do the things we talk/think/write about? Can we ‘talk the talk and walk the walk’? Or, by staying within ‘the system’, are we just knocking at the system’s edges with our work without contributing meaningfully to socio-political change? For example, our ability to infect the particular academic institutions in which we work always is going to be constrained by the broader structures - particularly funding structures - within which these are located. Alternatively, the pedagogical spaces offered in the academy provide opportunities for ‘outreach’, via which some of us validate our teaching and writing as possibilities for radical/activist practice and engagement.
./english/283.txt:28:In other words, for those of us attempting to utilise and practice academic/teaching/writing/theory spaces as spaces for radical and critical engagement, these in themselves constitute activist practice. But distance from this view was apparent from the comment, midway through this particular meeting, that ‘we’ve hardly talked about activism at all’! In return, several people articulated their problems with a sense of the moral burden and high ground assumed by ‘activists’. This generates insecurity about being ‘hardcore’ enough in relation to the ‘hierarchies’ of activist engagement. Some also felt that the moral high ground assumed by some activists can become a mask for other problematic behaviours (as someone said, ‘I know a fuck load of activists who are assholes’; obviously, the same is true for academics … ). Plus, as commented on in relation to Reclaim The Streets, people become involved with activist groups and networks for a whole host of reasons (social contact, desire for community, something to do, a space for the expressing of anger with multiple causes .. etc. ). Thus it might be problematic to privilege the moral as driving and explaining peoples’ (including our own) activist engagements over other reasons.
./english/283.txt:30:More broadly, wherever we are located, the ‘busyness’ of feeding ourselves/making a living constrains our potential for ‘making revolution’ (i.e. it is not only in academia that this happens). (Although maybe we could also say that it is in the ways in which we feed ourselves and get by that we make revolution). As we moved through the discussion we arrived at a clearer position that ‘criticising the academic world ¹ criticising individuals, i.e. is not intended to imply guilt by association’. And also that there is a corresponding problem in cynical dismissals of the genuinely felt passion of activist praxis.
./english/283.txt:34:A problem with the academic/activist dichotomy is that it reproduces alienating ‘us’ and ‘them’ categories (‘labels/categories - we hate ‘em’). It thereby fosters a dualistic structuring of social worlds that is consistent with modernity and that surely is part and parcel of what ‘we’ are contesting. In other words, these categories, and ‘our’ various identifications with them, do not in and of themselves make for radically transformative political engagement, and may even work against this. (Indeed, this talkshop initiative began as an attempt to unravel these problematic categories, not to reproduce them! .. in the hope that by making a space for communication and collaboration we might do something collectively that assists with shifting the hegemonic conversation in a funky direction .. ).
./english/283.txt:42:Conversely, it might be that ‘demoting’ the validity of theory and intellectual engagement is itself an exclusionary stance; one that is not consistent with a radical political orientation that emphasises (rhetorically at least!) inclusion and diversity. To think, to theorise, to write, to read etc., are all verbs too, i.e. they are modes of constitutive engagement with the world. For academics desiring socio-political transformation it’s the institutional structures within which we work that are problematic, not necessarily the actual work/research/writing etc. that we do and like to do.
./english/284.txt:59:After a year of engaging some of the most referential texts on socio-cultural theory, one can appreciate the multiple instances when the discipline of Anthropology has stopped to rethink itself. Two of the strongest moments that are important to recall are the internal criticism over the impact of the colonial encounter’s heritage in the “practicality” of the discipline (Asad, 1973), and the intense calls to be aware of the situatedness of the knowledge industry-especially the practice of representation instantiated by Anthropology, and its political and quotidian consequences (Said, 1989). Those challenges have been addressed and considered seriously by many, producing a discipline marked by its high degree of reflexivity. The mechanisms of self-criticism, internal debate, healthy distance from the discipline, awareness of author’s positionality, experimental methods and literary devices, all contribute to construct a self-conscious discipline alerted to the interstices of power and knowledge. Anthropology then appears as an academic field where new ways of thinking and doing can be accommodated. This history of reflexivity questions the stipulated objectivism of academic thinking, attempting to create a ‘situated discipline’ that stimulates the rethinking of its own research practices.
./english/284.txt:77:Unlike traditional folklore, Limón’s ethnography of the everyday live of a Mexican working-class community at the border is intensively reflexive. As a Mexican-American and a socially committed scholar, Limón’s presence in the text is very distinct. Since the beginning of the chapter he positioned himself at the heart of a barbeque scene. The fact that he is taking part in that intimate and exclusive activity –making tacos and laughing at chingaderas- on top of his continuous use of Spanish illustrates his intent to prove himself as not only an anthropologist but a member of that community as well. He emphasizes his sense of belonging to this subaltern class several times, presenting himself as part of it through stories and explicit terms. However, he is aware that he is not the same due to his educational and professional background as well as other opportunities which “his people” probably did not have. With the same intense feeling of belonging, he is emerged in the academic and intellectual debate showing us his knowledge about the authors and analysis of this particular topic. This tension is revealed throughout the chapter, for example:
./english/284.txt:78:“These [particular academic] discourses troubled me then for they did not speak well of these, my people, and perhaps do not speak well of me, for frankly, although with some ambivalent distance, I had a good time that Saturday afternoon” (my italics 1994: 129).
./english/285.txt:9:routes, both for the knowledge, and for us, its 'agents', next to none of which can immo be found inside of the academic institutions as we know them today.
./english/285.txt:11:To illustrate, but also to help you better understand (and possibly dismiss ;-) my point, I may be permitted to sketch briefly my rather long passage through the academic system. After high school - a very fine training in do's and don'ts in itself - I started my university career in 1972, 'reading Classics' as the nice English formula goes. I was not fresh from high school then, but had spent a year traveling in (West and South)Asia. Taking such a 'gap year' was not common in those days, nor was it very much appreciated by my professors, since it further diminished the,in their view, paltry command of Greek and Latin grammar imparted to us at the 'gymnasium'. Hence I was told that despite the Latin maxim inscribed on the frontispiece of my high school, life is for learning and not the reverse. I was also told, in no uncertain words, that the prime purpose of studying the classics at university was to become a certified secondary school teacher in the same, in order to "salvage the antique culture from the barbarian forces in society". Finally I was to discover that one
./english/285.txt:12:can run an academic discipline without any regard for the tenets of the scientific method, provided one does so in a sufficiently authoritative manner: my philology department had thus no trucks whatsoever with modern linguistics or any extraneous epistemology. A fine mess.
./english/285.txt:14:When I quit classics, like the majority of my fellow students (in Dutch, the appellation 'classicist' is usually followed by 'gesjeesd' - dropped-out), I had acquired the disabused cynicism that enabled me to become a passable, then average, and finally quite a brilliant geography student. I learned a few more 'tricks of the trade' along the way, most if not all related to the management of the remorseless but malleable power balances within the academic establishment. Whatever I did learn about geography, (and a host of other subjects, since I was always a multi-disciplinarian, again, not a popular position), I taught myself, not thanks, but despite the institutional environment. On completion of my thesis (which was the first to be published and accepted as such, without need for revisions, by the Royal (!) Dutch Geographic Society), I was offered a position at my institute, but due to budgetary constraints without pay. I made 'them' to regret this decision ever since as I always stuck to that status. My critical stance being not very popular, there is precious little I was made to contribute to the actual running of the institute, leading to the comical situation that when the outfit was rechristened after the umpteenth 'reorganisation' as "research institute on global issues and development studies", I was probably the only person to have an overall view of what 'global'(-isation) actually meant - never mind development...In the meanwhile I pursued my own research objectives, mostly liaising with innovative, usually self-organised ventures in the 'new social movements'. These had the uncanny knack of always propelling themselves at the forefront of current societal developments, and someway behind, of academic research, and also always turned out to have a clear geographic component, just as routinely ignored by the mainstream, but
./english/285.txt:15:picked up by the more progressive, discerning and, outside the Netherlands at least, prominent representative of the discipline. And so it came that I met, collaborated, and always became befriended with academic 'celebrities' my colleagues would only dream of being acquainted with -
./english/285.txt:20:But for the fact that there exist other parallel possible income streams apart from being born with a sliver spoon in the mouth, this would be a first class disqualifier - and finance remains all the same a grave obstacle in the way of autonomy. But now for the matter of activist research. What is activist research (in my view), and what are its relationships to the mainstream academic research environment?
./english/285.txt:24:academic powers that be - while arrogantly pretending otherwise - that has disqualified vast parts of established research, while our success in being activists benefiting from our research hinges on our ability never, ever, to make it subservient to our political opinions - or much worse
./english/285.txt:27:That the other, 'instrumental', approach is a blueprint for disaster is amply demonstrated by the tribulations of actual, mainstream (social) science. Allow me for this demonstration to dive again in my own academic environment, 'development studies', which is the discipline that
./english/285.txt:34:The demise of theory is in fact what I perceive as the telltale sign of the downfall of academic institution in general, and why they cannot any longer be trusted with the task to create and maintain true knowledge. Yet for those who read in this sentence a nostalgic longing for the
./english/295.txt:5:David Graeber, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, and the author of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, among many other scholarly publications. Last week Prof. Graeber was informed that his teaching contract at Yale would not be extended. However, it was not Graeber's scholarship that was ever in question; rather it was his political philosophies that may have played a heavy hand in the administration's unwarranted decision. Graeber, a renowned anarchist scholar, recently spoke with CounterPuncher Joshua Frank about the fiasco. As one of our other favorite anthropologists David Price put it, this "is a ghastly look under the hood at how academic knowledge is manufactured at America's 'finest' institutions."
./english/295.txt:29:JF: So are academics not supposed to be activists then? I'm thinking of Ward Churchill's recent controversy at the University of Colorado and Joseph Massad's at Columbia. Do you think your case is symptomatic of a larger problem in the US where radical professors are being targeted for their unpopular political views? Or are these just isolated incidents?
./english/295.txt:31:DG: If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have probably said "academics can be activists as long as they do nothing to challenge the structure of the university," or anyone's power within it. If you want to make an issue of labor conditions in Soweto, great, you're a wonderful humanitarian; if you want to make an issue of labor conditions for the janitors who clean your office, that's an entirely different story. But I think you're right, something's changing. I mean, I'm sure it's not like there's someone giving orders from above or anything, but there's a climate suddenly where people feel they can get away with this sort of thing, and the Ward Churchill and Massad cases obviously must have something to do with that. I've been hearing a lot of stories, in recent weeks, about radical teachers suddenly being let go for no apparent reason. They don't even have to dig up something offensive you're supposed to have said any more - at least, in my case no one is even suggesting I did or said anything outrageous, in which case, at least there'd be something to argue about.
./english/298.txt:39:TT: In your writings on US academic labour, you emphasise the increasing polarisation between tenured academics (of which many exercise mainly administrative/managerial functions of ‘directors of transformation’) and a large casualised teaching force of graduate students and temporary workers.
./english/298.txt:88:MB: That piece just observes that the informationalising or perma-temping of academic labour is not a neutral condition with respect to the knowledge that the academy produces. We call this the problem of ‘Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers.’
./english/298.txt:91:TT: So the tendency is for a collapse of the academic and managerial function in the service of institutional and social reproduction?
./english/298.txt:92:MB: Yes, but the real change is that it’s more than just reproduction. Academic managerialism is increasingly in the direct service of extracting surplus value from students as well as staff. The university is an accumulation machine. It employs students directly and it farms cheap or donated student labour out to its ‘corporate partners.’
./english/298.txt:104:All of this is true, of course, but I think that it only captures a fraction of the huge depletion of resources that is thus perpetrated at the expense of a mass intellectuality. By making tuition fees variable, as you know well from the US, you also automatically make working conditions (and pay usually follows) dramatically different across different layers and sections of academic labour.
./english/298.txt:108:TT: In a way. In another way, this notion of equality still identifies knowledge too much with access to a limited cultural capital – rather than the huge, diverse and mutating flux of specialised knowledges and transversal connections which is a trademark of social production in network societies. It is not only a matter that the best lecturers will tend to flow towards the institutions where working conditions are better (less students and admin; more money for research; access to international academic networks etc.). It is mainly about how a large part of the living labour within the higher education system will be impeded by higher workloads, scarce resources and tighter managerial control from actively engaging and experimenting with the massification of socialised labour power. Such power does not express itself simply as a unified or even fragmented class, but also as a constellation of singularities connected by communication machines and informational dynamics. All of this at a moment when organised labour is lagging behind (or is being easily accommodated by) the huge transformations induced by post-fordism and globalisation.
./english/298.txt:138:TT: We could maybe close by talking about the place of academic labour within the labour movement at large (including all those mutant forms of labour that the trade union movement cannot reach).
./english/298.txt:140:MB: The one thing I would say is that it couldn’t be a privileged place. To give academic labour a vanguard position would be a disaster. A big part of the academic ‘labour of reproduction’ is the production, legitimation, and policing of inequality. I think academic labour, including organised academic labour, needs to submit itself to the tutelage of more radical forms of labour self-organisation. More radical than the trade union movement, as you say. Mass intellectuality implies a revolutionary transformation in the academic consciousness, faculty especially.
./english/298.txt:143:TT: I don't know about 'tutelage' but I would definitely be for a greater effort to open up connections with other forms of labor on the basis of what academic labor shares with them (from the common plague of managerial command and its attack on the time of life to the common implication in the diffuse social factory). On the other hand, there is also a specific contribution that academic labor can provide. This specificity is part of its role as a key site in the production and reproduction of knowledges and forms of control (from policy-oriented social research to scientific patents and new technologies); in its contribution to the production of specific forms of labor directly implicated in the reproduction of the social (from doctors to computer scientists, from managers to artists and social workers); but also in its relation to a wider abstract social labour power (informated, affective and communicational), which exceeds the disciplinary power of the work/wage relation. As you said, a big part of the university's work is still institutional: reproducing hierarchical differences and producing docile subjects, so hacking the machine of social reproduction in Higher Ed is bound to be complicated work. I doubt whether a successful engagement with this process would produce another 1968 - the latter was still a revolt against the institutions, while we know now that power operates in and through networks. But it will definitely be a challenging process to be part of - requiring commitment and imagination.
./english/298.txt:158:Marc Bousquet
./english/300.txt:12:With this in mind, this essay will attempt to follow (in an illustrative way) the history of collaborative research methodologies utilized in radical geography as a ‘contact zone’ (Merrifield 1995; p. 64) between the academy and activism. The idea of the ‘contact zone’ can basically be seen as a point of ‘contamination’ and hybridity. While many academics are and have been social activists and vice versa, they often participate in the academy and activism as spheres of life which are differentiated psychologically, socially, institutionally, etc. The ‘contact zone’ in this case helps to breakdown the mental ‘wall’ between the academy and activism, and helps deconstruct the notions of an isolated site of knowledge creation and diffusion (i.e. the autonomous Kantian university). In order to be clear it should be stated that not all participatory research is necessarily radical nor is all radical geography participatory but rather when these two tendencies meet they can create this unique space of interaction referred to here as a ‘contact zone’.
./english/300.txt:25:As stated in the quote above, it was at this intense moment of protest that the tradition of the new Geographical Expedition came about under the initial guidance of William Bunge. The Expedition projects came to be an extremely interesting experiment at uniting both community concerns and mobilization with academic expertise and research. In fact, during the first several years of the development of radical geography, simultaneous to a period when high levels of social mobilization were maintained, the pages of Antipode often reported the experiences of the expeditions, the complexities around ‘advocacy geography’ and community involvement, and even an entire issue was dedicated to ‘radical methodologies’ with several of the articles addressing similar questions. During this initial period of the critical tradition, the idea of constructing those bridges between activism and the academy were in the forefront along with developing more general critiques of either society or the discipline itself. We will now proceed to a brief ‘exploration’ of these experiences, focusing on the ‘expedition’.
./english/300.txt:29:The tradition of the new Geographical Expedition and the ‘Society for Human Exploration’, came about largely as a result of the contacts and initial exchanges of ideas between William Bunge and Gwendolyn Warren- the main academic representative and community representative initially (Horvath 1971; p. 74). It was an engagement between the serious problems of marginalization (of all sorts) in an African American community in Detroit, and engaged faculty and students at the University of Michigan. The idea was to combine academic and local expertise to create effective political tools, community empowerment, consciousness and provide educational opportunities (suited to greater or lesser degrees) for those inner-city communities. After several years of initial forays and exchanges-the final result became the D.G.E.I. Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute which lasted approximately from the summer of ’1969 until the fall/winter of 1970.
./english/300.txt:35:Those members of the community participating in the expedition had a leading role in defining the issues and problems to be researched and where the efforts of exploration would be concentrated (Stephenson 1974). Possibly one of the most interesting and stickiest points of the expedition project dealt with the point of community control: “And, most importantly, the power of the expedition itself, who hires and fires, who writes checks and so forth must be in the hands of he people being explored, risky as that sounds to academics,” (Bunge in Peet 1979; p. 39 italics original). Since these expeditions also served to provide college education in ‘explored’ neighborhoods one can imagine the issues that this would raise with university administrations in terms of management, oversight, funding, etc. and this in fact came to be one of problem points where universities could pressure and speed along the closure of an expedition (Horvath 1971). Another interesting point of methodology, when comparing to historic expedition culture, was that the desire for exploration had to come primarily from organizations and activists within the community in question. “This proved to be as crucial step: we had been invited into a community; we did not simply arrive announced. An expedition must not be an invasion,” (Stephenson 1974).
./english/300.txt:37:Although the work done by the expeditions could result in tools or evidence for concrete political campaign work, it was made clear that the goal of the expedition was not to ‘organize’ the community. With an awareness of the implicit power relations between the ‘academic’ geographers and the ‘folk’ geographers that seems a premonition of later feminist critiques there was a clear slant against the idea of paratrooping into an place with a clear political program, even if the work was implicitly political and recognized as such (Stephenson 1974; p. 101).
./english/300.txt:38:The experiment in expeditions tried to break down the dichotomy of researcher-researched which was already being felt fairly keenly it seems, by some of the communities where expeditions later occurred. As Stephenson writes of the early days of the Toronto Expedition, the ‘initial reaction’ on the part of many in the neighborhood was similar to “…’go away we are studied to death’” (Stephenson 1974; p. 99). Through the establishments of base camps, community control, and the creation of categories like ‘folk geographer’ the expedition began to be recognized as a useful institution and a cooperative partner. With respect to the back and forth between professional and folk geographers “beyond learning the technical skills of the academics, these folk geographers learn to generalize their experiences to a larger world. In return, the campus explorers gain valuable knowledge and insights into the community. There is a commerce between the community and the campus explorers, not a dominance of one by the other,” (Stephenson 1974; p. 99).
./english/300.txt:40:As mentioned earlier, it was the pressure of intense social mobilization, and geographers’ participation therein, that prompted creative responses such as the Expedition movement. In a work from 1979 were Bunge reflects on some of his own experiences and influences, he cites participation in the Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrations in Chicago during 1966 as being a particularly powerful experience. Bunge’s later encounters with community organizing in Detroit, especially through the work of Gwendolyn Warren, convinced him that people were analyzing and interpreting the world all around him and that to make his own tools and expertise more relevant he had to engage with and embrace this organizing work going on (Merrifield 1995; p.53). At least in part it seems then that the recognition on the part of Bunge of the analysis and interpretation already occurring, informed the design of an expedition model were there would be a mutual recognition of knowledge and this could lead to a collaborative mix of academic and activist work.
./english/300.txt:42:Bunge’s thinking on this is interesting since he believed in the usefulness of academic geography (which was fairly rooted in quantitative methods) but increasingly felt “the urgent political necessity to ‘bring global problems down to earth, to the scale of people’s normal lives,’”. Academic geographers for him “tend to sever theory from practice and prioritize citing over sighting,” (Merrifield and Bunge in Merrifield 1995; p. 53). To help overcome this distance for Bunge then the geographers participating in the expedition could take a journey that would bring them into contact with a new reality. “The seven mile journey from rich suburban Detroit to its poor inner city is a trip half-way around the world in terms of infant-mortality rates,” (Merrifield 1995; p. 54).
./english/300.txt:44:While the expedition is one of the most salient examples and is cited by many who write histories of critical geography the discussion of how to bring together the production of research within the university and mobilization occurring in different sectors of society was occurring at a more general level amongst those geographers who were attempting to respond to the social reality they were embedded in. Many articles in the early editions of Antipode reflect this spirit, for example an article on ‘advocacy geography’ speaking to a wider audience on how to challenge notions of advocate-advocee and allowing communities to articulate their own ‘problems’ to be solved instead of the advocate dictating the problem. Mention of popular education and the methods of radical pedagogy of Paolo Freire come up (Campbell 1974). The experiences of critical planners attempting to work with community organizations are another example. In fact, the second issue of Antipode was dedicated to discussions of ‘radical methodology’. While that is a very broad term and included articles on bringing critical analysis into geography more generally, discussions also took place of how to make research more participatory and develop new ways of interfacing official academic work with non-official intellectual/political work.
./english/300.txt:57:Possibly the most important development in geography during this period being playfully called the ‘Long March’ with regards to challenging the degrees of separation between academic knowledge and other sources of knowledge comes from the development of feminist geography. The influence of the women’s movement and the challenges it posed to many pre-held notion in society was brought to geography during this time as the gains made by the movement facilitated the entrance of more women into the discipline that had been previously feasible. Those same destabilizing challenges were brought to research in order for feminist geographer to be able to do research on women as women.
./english/300.txt:61:Feminist geography has thus been able to provide very profound critiques of the process of research and the dynamics between observer and observed, the academic institution, and the audiences that receive academic knowledge. These critiques develop in a more profound way some of the same issues that came up during the experiments with participatory action research that emerged during the late sixties. Yet issues of direct community participation (much less control) in the research process have still been a problem in terms of meeting some of the ideals stated above by some feminist geographers. In another symposium on feminist participatory research by Farrow, Moss and Shaw these geographers mentions some of the problems and constraints of their own work in terms of how participatory it was or could be. Issues such as that of paratrooping into a community or struggle without a clear mutual relationship with those being researched, predefining research questions and methods without much ‘community’/‘researched’ input, issues of who the research is produced ‘for’ and whose needs does it meet (even if it is participatory is it addressing the community’s concerns or only the researcher’s?). Limitations in doing this sort of participatory research were also brought up by the authors for example: the difficulty of doing profoundly participatory research in order to meet degree requirements, and the issue of needing to predefine issues and questions to a funding agency and being constrained if those same questions need to be changed due to community needs. Feminist geography has provided many theoretical tools for dealing with issues of participatory action research thus contributing to the production of ‘contact zones’. However, the attempts at concretely ‘deconstructing the barrier’ often surrounding the academy are continuing to struggle to find bridges.
./english/300.txt:65:In recent years (at least since the mid 90’s) there have been an increasing number of critiques coming from within geography of the degrees of separation between critical sectors of the discipline and activism going on ‘outside’ (see Blomely 1994 & 1995, Tickell 1995, Castree 1999 and Wills 2002). Blomely, during some early volleys on the subject discusses the disconnect he feels between his own critical geography work and his community activism: “I have been struggling with the linkages between that academic world and my community activism. The two clearly feel like they should be linked-many of my interests in one sphere fold over into the other.” He goes on to state “there seems to be a notable lack of discussion about progressive activism and the academy. In geography we used to worry about it a lot more, as witnessed by early issues of Antipode, or the examination of ‘relevance’,” (Blomely 1994; p. 383). Castree, citing work by Chouinard, Katz, Smith and Routledge on the same issue states that these articles “indicate a more general awareness of, and concern to discuss, the apparent disjuncture between our learned discourses and our seemingly impoverished political practices,” (Castree 1999; p. 81). Both authors (Blomely and Castree) mention the idea of opening spaces for mutual learning, the same sorts of ‘contact zones’, between the academy and activism. Castree in particular cites some interesting work in this regard- specifically Routledge’s work on “…a ‘third space’ of engagement, which subverts the separation of activism and the academy,” (Castree 1999 & Routledge in Castree 1999; p. 82).
./english/300.txt:74:Radical geography may be better placed now than during the sixties to engage with this apparently new round of social mobilization in a collaborative and participatory manner. While the tradition that began in the sixties had to ‘start off from scratch’ in some sense, critical geography has now had many years of development and has become a respected part of the general geographic inquiry. Feminist geographers have also elaborated complex critiques of methodology that could provide the necessary theoretical and practical considerations for the reconstruction of spaces to link the academy and activism. This could lead to a very productive engagement with the ‘here and now’ of current political praxis, that is if academic ‘path dependency’ (of the sort that authors above were complaining about).
./english/300.txt:82:[1] It is interesting to note, that as this period in history of demobilization continued, and the Reagan era began David Harvey, in his 1984 manifesto “On the History and present Condition of Geography” makes a call for creating an “applied people’s geography” and a “popular geography” that could “open channels of communication” presumably outside of academic circles (Harvey 2001). Harvey even goes on to state that “geography is too important to be left to geographers,” (Harvey 2001; p. 116). This tone could be seen as making a call to reestablish some of the same sorts of contact zones that had occurred in the late sixties. Some time would have to pass before this interpretation of Harvey’s text would gain its due currency though.
./english/303.txt:12:Militant ethnography breaks down the distinction between observer/intellectual and activist/practitioner. By organizing protests and gatherings, facilitating meetings, participating in strategic and tactical debates, and putting one’s body on the line during mass direct actions, militant ethnographers can better understand complex movement dynamics, while remaining active political subjects. Rather than generate sweeping political directives, collaboratively produced ethnographic knowledge aims to facilitate ongoing activist (self-) reflection about movement goals, tactics, strategies, and organizational forms. At the same time, there is often a marked contradiction between the moment of research and the moment of academic writing, publishing, and distribution, which involve vastly different systems of rewards and incentives. Indeed, the horizontal networking logic associated with anti-corporate globalization movements represents a serious challenge to the institutional logic of academia itself. Militant ethnographers must constantly negotiate such dilemmas, while moving back and forth among different sites of writing, teaching, and research.
./english/303.txt:50:During one session, a British activist mounted a harsh attack on academics studying movements from the outside. He was somewhat appeased when we explained that we were using engaged methods, but he remained skeptical about how the research would be used, pointing out that, “You go back to the university and use collectively produced knowledge to earn your degrees and gain academic prestige. What’s in it for the rest of us?”
./english/303.txt:54:Part of the issue has to do with how we understand the figure of the intellectual. Barker and Cox (2002) have recently explored differences between academic and movement theorizing. These authors present a critique of traditional objectivist theories that are about rather than for movements, partly explaining the differences in terms of the distinction between “academic” and “movement” intellectuals, which corresponds to Gramsci’s “traditional” and “organic” varieties: the former operate according to the interests of dominant classes, while the latter both emerge from within and work on behalf of subordinate groups. However, not only does this distinction often break down in practice, which the authors recognize; beyond that, it seems to me that the relationship between activists and intellectuals within contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements is more complex. Indeed, when nearly everyone engages in theorizing, self-publishing, and instant distribution through global networks, the traditional function of the organic intellectual- providing strategic analysis and political direction- is undermined. In this sense, militant ethnography does not offer programmatic directives about what activists should or should not do. Rather, by providing critically engaged and theoretically informed analyses generated through collective practice, militant ethnography can provide tools for ongoing activist (self-) reflection and decision-making, while remaining relevant for broader academic audiences.
./english/303.txt:67:Finally, the question remains as to the most appropriate context for practicing militant ethnography and how to distribute the results. One obvious place is the academy, which despite increasing corporate influence and institutional constraints, continues to offer a critical space for collective discussion, learning, and debate. Indeed, as Scheper-Hughes (1995) suggests, those of us within the academy can use academic writing and publishing as a form of resistance, working within the system to generate alternative politically engaged accounts. Moreover, as Routledge (1996: 400) points out, there are no “pure” or “authentic” sites, as academia and activism both “constitute fluid fields of social action that are interwoven with other activity spaces.” Routledge thus posits an alternative “third space,” “where neither site, role, or representation holds sway, where one continually subverts the other.” The more utopian alternative is suggested by the rise of multiple networks of autonomous research collectives and free university projects, including the “activist research” conference cited above. In my own case, by examining the cultural logics, networking activities, and utopian imaginaries within contemporary anti-corporate globalization movements, I hope to contribute to both academic and activist spheres through exploring, as the Argentine Colectivo Situaciones puts it, “the emerging clues of a new sociability within concrete practices (2001: 39).”
./english/303.txt:71:Barker, Colin and Laurence Cox. 2002. “What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?” Academic and Activist Forms of Movement Theorizing. Retrieved from on August 13, 2004.
./english/306.txt:53:The Karakola has housed projects investigating the working conditions and urban experience of migrant women, debates about the transformations of the LGBT movement, lesbian marriage and the ‘pink market’, discussions about the feminist grounding for antimilitarist interventions. We have introduced the workshop ‘Tools against Racism’ into local social movements, encouraging ourselves to constantly investigate our own discourses. We have initiated an ongoing campaign against violence against women which insists upon looking at the many and complex ways in which ‘violence’ and ‘security’ are constructed. We participate in a neighborhood network proposing socially inclusive urbanistic alternatives to the ‘rehabilitation’ currently under way. We have participated actively and critically in the lock-ins of ‘sin papeles’ in Madrid. These and hundreds of other investigations, mobilizations, discussions and publications have arisen from the crucible that is the Karakola. We insist that all these apparently diverse concerns are intimately related, and we attempt to trace the lines of their relationship, articulating them within the feminist and the global resistance movements, refusing to separate the academic from the activist, the local struggle from the global context.
./english/312.txt:3:Globalisation, academic flexibility and the right to research:
./english/312.txt:10:The last few months have seen the rise of a new collective actor in Italian universities: the movement of ‘precarious’ researchers. Mobilisations and struggles of the precarious/temporary researchers have followed in the wake of the presentation to the Italian Parliament of a law project aiming to revise the status of university teaching and research personnel. The law has been presented by the currently ruling centre-right coalition, but has also been (covertly) sustained by moderate sectors within the centre-left parties. Its main purpose, in brief, is to abolish permanent positions at the level of university researcher/lecturer and to replace them with fixed-term tenures (based on a four-year contract renewable only one time). Furthermore, it advances a number of typically neo-liberal reforms including the cancellation of any distinction between full-time and part-time professors (which allows academic staff to pursue their own private interests without this will afflict their public salary) and the strengthening of the role played by private capitals in financing the higher education system.
./english/312.txt:12:This (counter-) reform project couples with the one about the school system, both presented to the Italian Parliament by the Minister of Education, University and Research (led by Mrs. Moratti), which has also been fiercely contested by school teachers and pupils for its tendency to dismantle the role of public sector in the education system. While the latter has been already approved by the Parliament, albeit contestations are still going on, the university reform is now under discussion in Italian Parliament and it is likely (unfortunately) to be approved in the coming weeks, despite a widespread and heterogeneous movement composed by all sectors of the academic community (from precarious researchers to chancellors) that is still active in Italian universities.
./english/312.txt:16:- a critique of academic flexibility as a strategy of disciplinisation and fragmentation of public research: flexibility is used today by ruling powers within government and the academia in order to exert a firm control over emerging scientific subjectivities and to reduce them to a condition as mere research/teaching labour-force;
./english/312.txt:24:First, since the late 1980s demands for an internationalisation of research activities have been advanced in the form of an emerging academic capitalism which has profoundly transformed the way in which scholars undertake research activities: market-like behaviour, the principle of performativity and the power of management in the administration of research funds have become crucial in this regard. What has been considered by the dominant forces and elites as the challenge of the market-economy to the university system has led to greater resource concentrations and, as a result, to the development of a range of ‘centres of excellence’ and ‘corporate universities’ capable of attracting these resources to the detriment of ‘ordinary’ (public) universities. These developments have produced increasingly deeper inequalities at an international scale between the more prosperous countries and regions, where allegedly ‘high-quality’ universities are mostly concentrated, and those that are lagging behind.
./english/312.txt:30:The last months have seen the development of movements asserting the right to public research in many European countries. The movement of ‘precarious researchers’ in Italy and the ‘sauvons la recherche movement’ in France have been the most visible in Europe, but there has been some form of mobilisation also in other European countries such as Britain and Spain. What is new and especially noteworthy in all these mobilisations is the central role played in them by the younger generations of researchers. However, what is still missing in such movements is the formulation of a supra-national, European perspective on the issue of scientific research. Europe appears to be viewed as a space of constrictions and limitations, a perception that can be explained in light of the developments described above, rather than as a space of self-organisation and collective mobilisation for the less powerful actors within the scholarly and academic community.
./english/313.txt:13:We found the primacy to the action, not to interpretation the world but to organize its transformation, developing researches towards the action for the critical transformation of the present reality. Research that pursues the creation of a knowledge that transforms reality when generating a new reality; a knowledge that is valued for its practical effectiveness in generating changes. As opposed to an objective and contemplative theoretical knowledge in the traditional academic fashion.
./english/313.txt:17:This subject-investigator participates in the situations investigated, is open about his motives and opinions, and is not necessarily a person with a specialized university education. Unlike this, the traditional role of the academic-investigator, that is questioned, is that of the prudently distant, supposedly objective and individualist specialist.
./english/313.txt:18:It is based on non-disciplinary, it looks for the overcoming of the fictitious academic compartmentalization of reality. On the contrary, reality is understood as a totality that combines manifold interconnected aspects.
./english/313.txt:91:In a process of collective creation, it is nurtured by a spirit of experimentation and cooperation through an open network structure. The Guide is developed from a network of very politically and organizationally diverse nodes, such us, social movements internal research groups (Transform¡ Italia, Transnational Institute, Glocal a-research centre) or organizations of the social movements (ARCI, EYFA, UNITED for Intercultural Action), collaboration of academic departments/centres (The Centre for the Study of Global Governance- LSE), hackers support teams (Pangea), civil society institutions (IISH - International Institute of Social History) and a cluster of 40 advisers. With the collaborative interaction and recognition of the internal SF working groups, mentioned above.
./english/313.txt:126:Centres establish as Think Thanks, supporting the figure of “activist-scholars committed or critical analyses of the global problems of today and tomorrow, with a view to providing intellectual support to those movements concerned to steer the world in a democratic, equitable and environmentally sustainable direction”. “They include journalists, independent researchers and writers, academics and policy consultants. Some are directors of like-minded institutes and most have direct working relationships with social movements” (Transnational Institute).
./english/313.txt:132:Is it possible and how, to make an instrumental use of the academic institutions in benefit of the social movements? Which are the perverse effects of the academy studying social movements? Which is the role, played by academics, in the mechanisms of the power such as the re-absorption and division of the movement into physical activists and theoretical activists, or between non-violent and violent activist? Which are the resistant practices against the academy initiated by social movements?.
./english/313.txt:134:Baker and Cox (2001) presented the key different between activist theorizing and academic theorizing is that the second one is essentially contemplative, “the academic quest is for the well-formed generic proposition or the superior explanation, that is, for the theoretical concept or generalization which covers a set of seemingly dissimilar cases or processes” and “movements are seen as objects of study to be observed, described and explained, not active processes which people engage with, experience and transform” (Baker and Cox, 2001).
./english/313.txt:136:But here I would like to referee to the “academivism” search as an ideological corpus and individuals that being active at social movements and from a critical approach to the academic institution, but researching from its framework, search to find ways to contribute to the movements with the research “about” movements they are developing.
./english/313.txt:137:Some questions that rise among them: Is it possible and is the academivist willing to contribute to the transformation of the academy through ethically based practices? Is it possible to carry out activist research from an academic institution? Do we establish synergies with the fights against the precarity (from precarious) at the academy?,
./english/313.txt:139:The anthropology and ethnography for its field work immersion methods of “being there” (Clifford Geerts) is more proclive to this questions as Jeffrey Juris rise “How can we make our work relevant to those with whom we study?”. Juris presents Militant ethnography as “a politically engaged and collaborative form of participant observation carried out from within rather than outside of grassroots movements”. But also consider its limitations, “If ethnographic methods driven by political commitment and guided by a theory of practice largely break down the distinction between researcher and activist during the moment of fieldwork, the same cannot be said for the moment of writing and distribution. Indeed, one has to confront vastly different systems of standards, awards, selection, and stylistic criteria”. That could explain the anger of this activist at the I International meeting on activist research and social movements: “You go back to the university and use collectively produced knowledge to earn your degrees and gain academic prestige. What’s in it for the rest of us?”.
./english/313.txt:177:Cox, Laurence and Colin Baker, 2001 “What have the Romans ever done for us? " Activist and academic theorising.
./english/315.txt:15:But people kept on coming. By an hour later all the chairs were taken, and our intimate circle had expanded to fill the periphery of the room. The last time I took a note of numbers there were more than 50 people (37 men, 24 women), from a range of European countries (Finland, Denmark, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, the UK, Yugoslavia – apologies if I’ve missed any), as well as a few folk from North America. That such a diverse collection of individuals - streetwise activists, university lecturers, performance artists, students – should be drawn to a meeting entitled ‘Radical Theory’ in itself reflects a contemporary blurring of boundaries between the conventional (and impossible) theory/practice divide. Add to that the range of academic disciplinary backgrounds represented – cultural studies, organisation studies, anthropology, ecology, geography, media studies, political science, art, performance, critical theory (anything else?) - and we were at the brink of finding ourselves either a melting pot of radical intellectual activist potential, or an incoherent mess.
./english/315.txt:17:Given the burgeoning size of the group, and with our intentions for the workshop to provide a meeting and improvisational space rather than be directed by a clear and predetermined agenda, a decision was reached to divide into three smaller discussion groups and then report back in the larger group in the last half-hour of the workshop. Questions and issues raised related to things like: what do we mean by ‘Radical Theory’ anyway? What areas of thinking, what theoretical frames, might be included in this term? How to enhance our shared political and moral concerns through finding some sort of common discursive space when we come from such diverse intellectual and other backgrounds? How to provide a ‘learning space’ for those unconfident and perhaps distanced by the language and conceptual terms employed by theoreticians, but nevertheless drawn towards the radical potential of radical theory? And conversely, how to engender a similar space for those leaning more towards the ivory tower dimensions of academic life to encounter a perhaps more corporeal experience of activist practice?
./english/315.txt:61:‘This list was born during the European Social Forum in Paris. The group intends to publish a "Radical Theory Journal" which will be neither academic, nor activist. It will try to create a tension laden and dynamic new form of theory informed by action that arises from, helps to understand and bring benefit to the altermondialiste movements. This list is the working forum for the journal.’
./english/316.txt:74:The Portuguese researcher, Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2003), who concentrates on the WSF, suggests its radical implications for the surpassing of traditional left strategies, academic sociology and even Western epistemology. He argues that any significant new emancipatory movement cannot be understood in pre-existing terms, and proposes the necessity, in our epoch, of developing a ‘sociology of absence’ and a ‘sociology of emergence’. This is to surpass the sociologies of the existent and apparent, and allow voice to what has been ignored or suppressed. These new sociologies are also necessary to surpass ‘conservative utopias’, whether of the right or left.
./english/323.txt:37:capitalised Women’s Studies when specifically referring to Women’s Studies programmes in an academic
./english/323.txt:62:the debate: a generation of students those journey into feminism started with an academic
./english/323.txt:64:Studies as they would any other academic subject, their political interest in feminism was
./english/323.txt:71:countries where women’s studies/Women’s Studies has hardly gained any academic
./english/323.txt:87:context, that a bold venture launched 30 years ago to transform academic and social
./english/323.txt:90:institutions was itself transformed by them? Her interrogation of academic feminism does not
./english/323.txt:92:knowledge production cannot rely on a similar academic recognition. But the question does
./english/323.txt:94:structuring effects of academic formats on our critical knowledges/politics. Feminists have
./english/323.txt:95:understood all to well the power of academic institutions to suppress, Messer-Davidow notes,
./english/323.txt:97:go forward with our projects.3 She refers to the power of the academic disciplinary format,
./english/323.txt:99:academic-knowledge ventures, puts women’s studies genealogical impulse at risk. This
./english/323.txt:118:the academic disciplinary game ensured only certain ways of framing a subject, certain ways
./english/323.txt:126:have been put on the academic agenda by Women’s Studies, that has been marked, along with
./english/323.txt:133:3 Messer-Davidow, Ellen. (2002). Disciplining Feminism. From Social Activism to Academic Discourse.
./english/323.txt:153:deconstuctivist theory and postmodernist critiques of the ‘subject’ in the US academic
./english/323.txt:161:also advanced pivotal insights into the ways in which academic disciplinary format continues
./english/323.txt:169:category where these go under-utilized, and finally upholds an “apartheid of academic
./english/331.txt:53:Economists don't often deal with morals, and academic criticism of the neo-liberal viewpoint tends more towards the slippage between theory and economic reality (eg. Rodrik, 2002). Here, Sally states explicitly, that which is usually left implicit: freedom in and of itself is a universal moral value. I hesitate to criticise an eminent scholar such as Sally. But how can this argument stand when access to choices can never be equal? Liberty in itself may be a fundamental human right, but if I exercise my freedom to choose and it conflicts with your human rights, then I must be constrained by recourse to a truly universal value: justice.
./english/331.txt:147:b)Such approaches do not accommodate the transition from knowledge and understanding to action. While pupils may be able to apply previously acquired ethical principles to inform a reasoned viewpoint, it remains a purely academic exercise and does not deal with the moral imperative to follow a course of action based on that understanding. Again, we fall short of our aim.
./english/331.txt:159:Through consideration of and reflection on a range of literature in this area, personal observation and reflection on teaching experiences, and my own academic background in developmental psychology I have outlined a developmentally grounded approach towards the fostering of moral values and development of critical thinking skills. I believe that this model would provide the optimum circumstances for the use of the teaching approaches recommended by the Crick Report. These approaches should be used initially in very specific circumstances and with limited concrete examples at Key Stages 1 and 2. The range of issues would need to be gradually expanded through Key Stage 3 and 4 - from examples grounded in personal experience through hypothetical interpersonal dilemmas, to dealing with the ethics of abstract issues such as economic globalisation. The circumstances I would suggest as being most effective would involve the following aspects of personal development in this order:
./english/344.txt:73:Peter Waterman (London 1936) worked for the WFTU in Prague, 1966-9. As an academic (1972-98) he specialised on labour and other internationalisms. His latest book, in Spanish, is The New Nervous System of Internationalism and Solidarity (2006). Much of his other work can be found by a web search on
./english/363.txt:3:The full talk is a bit of a monster, and in the meantime a lot of things have changed. So here are links to a quick summary (11k), an update (2002, 4k) and a report on the William Thompson Weekend from the social-movements list (9k). For here, it's enough to say that the William Thompson Weekend School is an annual academic / activist get-together in Cork.
./english/363.txt:53:These three programmes, in the long years of defeat, have very different histories and very different spaces of survival: very schematically, these were found in alternative cultures oscillating between criminalisation (McKay 1996) and co-optation (Storey 1994) for the "1967 project"; in urban "temporary autonomous zones" (Bey 1991) where the "1968 project" could still generate concrete anti-authoritarian projects, particularly in west European metropoles (Katsiaficas 1997, Ruggiero 2001); and ultimately in a certain kind of left intelligentsia for the "1969 project", which could turn its hard-won skills into academic cultural capital and the skills of institutional infighting.
./english/363.txt:103:Within the Anglo world - the UK and white America in particular, and perhaps other "settler societies" such as Australia - the primary definition of "the Sixties" seems to have been cultural, from the "hippie moment" (Hall 1968) through the retreat to the countryside (Pepper 1991) to the politics of identity. A dominant theme is unconventional opposition to a cultural mainstream. The cultural entrepreneurs - from musicians via academics to the niche marketers - who developed both the language and the forms of organisation that structured this way of seeing things thus generated a paradoxically anti-hegemonic counter-hegemony (and, not coincidentally, a deep suspicion of large and abstract organisations with the important exception of that ultra-abstract organisation, the capitalist market).
./english/363.txt:188:The English-language reception of Gramsci's formulations on intellectuals and hegemony suffers from a tendency to idealism (about intellectuals) and pessimism (about hegemony) which is obviously linked with its history of reception through a primarily academic left intelligentsia in a period of defeat. To take the idealism first of all: "hegemony" is routinely understood as a matter of the articulation of ideas, of "theoretical" activity. But Gramsci (1975) puts this side by side with (and ultimately, as a good materialist, subordinates it to) "directive" activity, in other words practical organising and leadership.
./english/370.txt:41:Before returning to our discussion of agent-based interfaces, there is one more point that needs to be stressed. As both Simon and Deleuze and Guattari emphasize, the dichotomy between bureaucracies and markets, or to use the terms that I prefer, between hierarchies and meshworks, should be understood in purely relative terms. In the first place, in reality it is hard to find pure cases of these two structures: even the most goal-oriented organization will still show some drift in its growth and development, and most markets even in small towns contain some hierarchical elements, even if it is just the local wholesaler which manipulates prices by dumping (or withdrawing) large amounts of a product on (or from) the market. Moreover, hierarchies give rise to meshworks and meshworks to hierarchies. Thus, when several bureaucracies coexist (governmental, academic, ecclesiastic), and in the absence of a super-hierarchy to coordinate their interactions, the whole set of institutions will tend to form a meshwork of hierarchies, articulated mostly through local and temporary links. Similarly, as local markets grow in size, as in those gigantic fairs which have taken place periodically since the Middle Ages, they give rise to commercial hierarchies, with a money market on top, a luxury goods market underneath and, after several layers, a grain market at the bottom. A real society, then, is made of complex and changing mixtures of these two types of structure, and only in a few cases it will be easy to decide to what type a given institution belongs.
./english/372.txt:11:Revolutionary thinkers have been saying that the age of vanguardism is over for most of a century now. Outside of a handful of tiny sectarian groups, it's almost impossible to find a radical intellectuals seriously believe that their role should be to determine the correct historical analysis of the world situation, so as to lead the masses along in the one true revolutionary direction. But (rather like the idea of progress itself, to which it's obviously connected), it seems much easier to renounce the principle than to shake the accompanying habits of thought. Vanguardist, even, sectarian attitudes have become deeply ingrained in academic radicalism it's hard to say what it would mean to think outside them.
./english/372.txt:21:One might argue this is because anarchism itself has made such small inroads into the academy. As a political philosophy, anarchism is going through veritable explosion in recent years. Anarchist or anarchist-inspired movements are growing everywhere; anarchist principles--autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, direct democracy--have become the basis for organizing within the globalization movement and beyond. As Barbara Epstein has recently pointed out, at least in Europe and the Americas, it has by now largely taken the place Marxism had in the social movements of the '60s: the core revolutionary ideology, it is the source of ideas and inspiration; even those who do not consider themselves anarchists feel they have to define themselves in relation to it. Yet this has found almost no reflection in academic discourse. Most academics seem to have only the vaguest idea what anarchism is even about; or dismiss it with the crudest stereotypes ("anarchist organization! but isn't that a contradiction in terms?") In the United States--and I don't think is all that different elsewhere--there are thousands of academic Marxists of one sort or another, but hardly anyone who is willing to openly call herself an anarchist.
./english/372.txt:25:One need only compare the historical schools of Marxism, and anarchism, then, to see we are dealing with a fundamentally different sort of thing. Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotksyites, Gramscians, Althusserians... Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French professors. Pierre Bourdieu once noted that, if the academic field is a game in which scholars strive for dominance, then you know you have won when other scholars start wondering how to make an adjective out of your name. It is, presumably, to preserve the possibility of winning the game that intellectuals insist, in discussing each other, on continuing to employ just the sort of Great Man theories of history they would scoff at in discussing just about anything else: Foucault's ideas, like Trotsky's, are never treated as primarily the products of a certain intellectual milieu, as something that emerging from endless conversations and arguments in cafes, classrooms, bedrooms, barber shops involving thousands of people inside and outside the academy (or Party), but always, as if they emerged from a single man's genius. It's not quite either that Marxist politics organized itself like an academic discipline or become a model for how radical intellectuals, or increasingly, all intellectuals, treated one another; rather, the two developed somewhat in tandem.
./english/375.txt:95:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 11We traditionally have as an alternative to that in the various academic and intellectual notions of class what is thought of as a liberal model in which is about a pluralism of classes. This liberal model says there is not just one category of labour but rather there is a variety of classes in society, none of which has priority over the other. This is the liberal pluralistic model as opposed to Marx’s unitary model.
./english/379.txt:20:In this paper, I will engage some issues involving globalization, technological revolution and the alleged rise of a new economy, networked society and cyberspace in relationship to the problematic of revolution and the prospects for a radical democratic or socialist transformation of society. Globalization and the rise of a new computer and information technology-based economy and society is interpreted in both popular and academic literature as a revolution in which new technologies are transforming every mode of life from how individuals do research to how people communicate and interact socially. There is some truth in this notion, but it is also true that the technological revolution perpetuates the interests of the dominant economic and political powers, intensifies divisions between haves and have nots, and is a defining feature of a new and improved form of global technocapitalism.
./english/386.txt:50:Much academic debate on poverty and deprivation in India focuses on income-poverty. Current evidence suggests that income-poverty worsened in India between 1991 and 1994. Using data on consumer expenditure from recent rounds of the NSS, S.P.Gupta suggests that poverty and inequality have worsened in the 1990s. The proportion of poor households declined from 39.3% in 1987-88 to 34.3% in 1989-90 and then rose to 40.7% in 1992-93. In absolute terms, there were 310 mn persons living below the poverty line in 1987-88. By 1992-93 the number of poor had risen to 355 mn.
./english/388.txt:8:What are the main points of disagreement – and agreement – among the world’s social movements? In the first book in English on the World Social Forum, two American activist/academics talk about the process, the people, and their vision for a future world. Thomas Ponniah and William Fisher spoke to openDemocracy's Solana Larsen under a tree in Porto Alegre.
./english/399.txt:82:Using appropriated union funds, 10,000 copies of the pamphlet were printed and handed out at the official ceremony, to mark the beginning of the Strasbourg academic year. There was an immediate outcry. The local, national, and international press condemned it as incitement to violence, which of course it unashamedly was. The Rector of the University said they should be in a lunatic asylum. The students responsible were expelled and the student union closed by court order.
./english/400.txt:87:The Campaign B pages similarly included protest links, this time primarily to email addresses and web sites of the Russian government and intergovernmental financial institutions. The Web pages had a greater informational component than the industrial campaigns. They provided detailed background information and briefings on the developing economic and political situation in Russia, with a strong emphasis on the protests of Russian trade unions (derived both from first-hand reports from affiliates and from international newswires and news databases). As with the other campaigns, the pages invited visitors to send protest messages, this time to national and international institutions involved in or influencing Russian economic policy. Given the emphasis on providing information to an international audience, the pages were predominantly in English though some were also available in Russian. The site attracted substantial interest from academics, business people and labour activists with an interest in Russia. The campaign attained a greater profile on the Internet with prominent links from major sites with an interest in Russia, as well as recommendations and listings in Russian sections of Web directories such as 'Excite' and 'Yahoo!', and the Web sites of conventional media organisations. Numbers of visitors to the campaign pages showed substantial increases during high-profile activities in Russia such as the national Day of Action by Russian trade unions on October 7, 1998 and the campaign pages continued to attract substantial traffic into early 2000.
./english/401.txt:189: Lambert and Webster/Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights. This paper deals with a particular attempt to create a new kind of union internationalism, originating in and primarily oriented toward the South. ('South' is here defined not geographically but politically, as a common project of 'some of the world's most exploited working classes, many…denied basic ILO…rights') SIGTUR is a network of old and new left or radical-nationalist unions, 'which would still claim to be fighting for a socialist transformation'. Under the provocation of neo-liberal globalization, it is taking direct and common action across, or regardless of, particular party-political affiliations locally, or international affiliations globally. Rooted in the left and internationalist traditions of Perth/Fremantle, in Western Australia, it began life around 1990, as an Indian Ocean network. It was, and is, most effectively linked at this ocean's two extremes, the other one being Durban, South Africa. However, the network has expanded, with growing links to Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea. And then, with a link to the Brazilian CUT (which has its own warm relations with South Africa's COSATU), it adopted its present name. It has seen a series of effective solidarity campaigns, including those of the South African and Indian with Australian workers and unions. The network claims to combine the old (union institutions) with the new (networking, campaigning, computer communication). L&W – both of them academics long-involved with the South African and/or West Australian and international unionism – set up an opposition between the Old Labor Internationalism (hierarchical, centralized, bureaucratized, formal, diplomatic in orientation, workplace-focused, etc) with the New Labor Internationalism (networked, decentralized, de-layered, oriented to mobilization, focused on coalitions with new social movements and 'Southern'). SIGTUR is presented as exemplifying the latter. Despite earlier opposition from the ICFTU internationally, and from rightwing unionists or neo-liberal governments nationally, SIGTUR evidently meets a common desire for leftwing unions confronted with globalization and aware of the ineffectiveness of the existing internationals. Recognizing, on the one hand, the severity of the neo-liberal offensive, on the other the commonly weakened condition of unionism, SIGTUR is working out a modest and practical alternative:
./english/403.txt:33:While still modest in scope, movement media has been on the rise in many places over the past few years, in many cases building upon an already existing undergrowth of communication channels, from print to radio (Downing 1984). Nonetheless, opinions differ as to the moment when computer-mediated communication became fundamental for global social movement activities. Cleaver (1997, 1998, 1999) has both written eloquently of the ‘electronic fabric of struggle’ woven around the Zapatistas, while himself playing a pivotal role in establishing and maintaining that fabric. Peter Waterman (1992) and Eric Lee (2000) have traced the online activities during the eighties of rank-and-file and dissident union members in the West, as well as those of ‘official’ unions, while others (Frederick 1993, Myers 1998) have sketched out the development of organisations such as the Association of Progressive Communication in the years before the Internet was opened up to a mass audience beyond US defence and academic circles.
./english/405.txt:26:Besides providing an open space for the articulation of common action, the editions of the WSF have been important laboratories of social science, where theories of transformation are being constantly re-elaborated. This power plant of ideas has at least two remarkable characteristics. It puts all emancipatory streams into contact with each other. Marxisms, Gandhiism, feminism, liberation Christianity, Gaia theories, thirdworldism, humanism, and others all dialogue and enrich each other constantly. They are present, as theoretical influences, in the self-organised activities during the Forums, where more and more we see the common factor is the meeting of participants from diverse countries and cultures. But this is exactly the second relevant idea: the debate of ideas does not happen only at an academic level, or within political parties. The Forum breaks barriers between intellectuals and activists. Intellectuals of international importance and leaders of different
./english/405.txt:30:Equally, this is where Social Forums and alterglobalisation are producing their first results. The refusal to repeat old formulas, the openness to learn from different points of view, and the reduced importance given to old political and academic hierarchies are allowing the birth of a new political
./english/405.txt:33:The new political culture tends to reject any attempts of creating hierarchy (that contest equality) or uniformity (that violate diversity) both directions that set it apart from capitalism and the ideas that come from the old forms of struggle against it. There are no "historic" social categories that are more capable than others to lead the world transformation. There are no campaigns that are a priori, more relevant than others. There are no directions ? either academic, or from political parties ? that are legitimised to define such campaigns in our names, outside our dialogue spaces.
./english/409.txt:58:But there were sometimes sixty of these workshops going on simultaneously, while the main-stage events, where there was an opportunity to address more than 1,000 delegates at a time, were dominated not by activists but by politicians and academics. Some gave rousing presentations, while others seemed painfully detached: After traveling eighteen hours or more to attend the forum, few needed to be told that "globalization is a space of dispute." It didnt help that these panels were dominated by men in their fifties, too many of them white. Nicola Bullard, deputy director of Bangkoks Focus on the Global South, half-joked that the opening press conference "looked like the Last Supper: twelve men with an average age of 52." And it probably wasnt a great idea that the VIP room, an enclave of invitation-only calm and luxury, was made of glass. This in-your-face two-tiering amid all the talk of people power began to grate around the time the youth campsite ran out of toilet paper.
./english/409.txt:67:With a sweeping new round of WTO negotiations set for the fall, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) being negotiated in April, these questions about process are suddenly urgent. How do we determine whether the goal is to push for "social clauses" on labor and environmental issues in international agreements or to try to shoot down the agreements altogether? This debate--academic at previous points because there was so much resistance to social clauses from business--is now very real. US industry leaders, including Caterpillar and Boeing, are actively lobbying for the linking of trade with labor and environmental clauses, not because they want to raise standards but because these links are viewed as the key to breaking the Congressional stalemate over fast-track trade negotiating authority. By pushing for social clauses, are unions and environmentalists unwittingly helping the advancement of these negotiations, a process that will also open the door to privatization !
./english/502.txt:26:Besides providing an open space for the articulation of common action, the editions of the WSF have been important laboratories of social science, where theories of transformation are being constantly re-elaborated. This power plant of ideas has at least two remarkable characteristics. It puts all emancipatory streams into contact with each other. Marxisms, Gandhiism, feminism, liberation Christianity, Gaia theories, thirdworldism, humanism, and others all dialogue and enrich each other constantly. They are present, as theoretical influences, in the self-organised activities during the Forums, where more and more we see the common factor is the meeting of participants from diverse countries and cultures. But this is exactly the second relevant idea: the debate of ideas does not happen only at an academic level, or within political parties. The Forum breaks barriers between intellectuals and activists. Intellectuals of international importance and leaders of different
./english/502.txt:30:Equally, this is where Social Forums and alterglobalisation are producing their first results. The refusal to repeat old formulas, the openness to learn from different points of view, and the reduced importance given to old political and academic hierarchies are allowing the birth of a new political
./english/502.txt:33:The new political culture tends to reject any attempts of creating hierarchy (that contest equality) or uniformity (that violate diversity) both directions that set it apart from capitalism and the ideas that come from the old forms of struggle against it. There are no "historic" social categories that are more capable than others to lead the world transformation. There are no campaigns that are a priori, more relevant than others. There are no directions ? either academic, or from political parties ? that are legitimised to define such campaigns in our names, outside our dialogue spaces.
./english/529.txt:12:The idea for the World Social Forum was born out of the enormous, unprecedented grassroots demonstrations which materialized at the Seattle WTO meetings in November 1999. It was founded in 2001 by community organizers, youth groups and academics as an alternative to the establishment World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Seattle demo’s were enormously motivating and successful, but they were spontaneously organized if organized at all, leaderless, free-structured, free-flowing, individualistic, non-committal and non-dependent on funding, all of which of course, are anathema to the NGO, or any other structured human organization. There is some kind of catalytic critical mass convergence that arises from time to time, which brings people together to demand change. We need to learn to recognize, predict and make those catalysts happen. Nobody has ever defined what exactly worked at Seattle, but I believe it set a prescient example that the clear majority of humanity can become focussed and channel its energies and imagination into action which can change the status quo. It reiterated that humanity can spontaneously mobilize to powerful, non-violent action, beyond any of the extant, status-quo social organizational structures. But action is simply not enough without a new vision for the world.
./english/532.txt:25:political delineation into the traditional political categories of left, right or centre [...but] has been embraced by a wide range of people [...] This has enabled FLOSS to explode from a niche and academic endeavour into a creative sphere of socio-political and technical influence bolstered by the internet.[9]
./english/532.txt:29:The chief purpose of this article is not to answer these questions by examining the ‘self-evident’ truths of open source production. Such studies are already being carried out in forums like Oekunux [http://www.oekonux.de]; indeed, in this issue of Mute, Gilberto Camara, Director for Earth Observation at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, publishes research that challenges some key tenets of the FLOSS model. His research exposes the possibility that, in many cases, FLOSS does not innovate significantly original software, or sustain projects outside of corporate or large scale academic involvement. Instead this article seeks to address the intense political expectation around open organisation among diverse elements of the diffuse activist organisations which, post-Seattle, have been loosely referred to as ‘the social movement’ or ‘social movements’. In referring to the social movement, this article concerns itself primarily with groups such as People’s Global Action, Indymedia, Euraction Hub and other such non-hierarchised collectives; it does not have in mind more traditionally structured organisations like the Social Forums, Globalise Resistance or so-called ‘civil society’ NGOs.
./english/548.txt:6:Every year at the end of January, the world’s corporate and government elite gather under tight police security in the Swiss resort town of Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) to plot the future of corporate-led globalization. Five years ago, community organizers, trade unionists, young people, academics, and others began to meet in Porto Alegre, Brazil to rethink and recreate globalization so that it would benefit people.
./english/548.txt:13:A series of panels on “Breaking Down the Ivory Tower” examined the role of universities in the creation of another world. The discussions viewed relationships between scholars and social movements, moved to an examination of the role of academics in the struggle for social justice, and ended with the formation of a transnational network of scholars and activists to promote collaborative actions around common concerns. Another group of critical scholars held a series of informal meetings and created an activist-oriented research network.
./english/571.txt:21:The WSF 2004 in Mumbai, India, made the social forum process more truly world-wide (5). In fact, Mumbai meant opening up the space of the forum in two distinct ways. Firstly, since most participants tend to come from the region surrounding the venue, the flavour of Mumbai was rather different from Porto Alegre. In the previous three forums, Latin Americans and Europeans dominated the scene, and therefore the move to India was a symbolic opening towards the world as whole. Secondly, this time a significant portion of the participants were dalits, i.e. the casteless people of India, and other marginalized groups. Academic intellectuals and NGOs were in minority, with the exception of the workshops, panels and roundtables in English (simultaneous interpretation facilities were not available to the same extent as in Porto Alegre).
./english/578.txt:14:The African Social Forum's founding principles recognise the primacy of social movements over non-government organisations in the struggle against neoliberalism. NGOs, research institutes, individuals and academics are important but they must play a supportive role. It is the masses themselves who possess the power to liberate themselves — hence the importance of social movements and other mass organisations such as trade unions, grassroots women’s and youth groups, informal traders' associations and homeless people's federations. But it seems that the African delegations to the WSF still largely consist of NGO types. This was clearly the case in the meetings of the ASF council held in Porto Alegre during the WSF 2005.
./english/580.txt:43:The Asian Forum in 2003 had also departed from the WSF format in another key area. There was a conscious effort to build in cultural programmes within the basic format of the Forum. From all accounts this was seen by a bulk of the participants as a welcome addition to the Social Forum format, and especially facilitated the active participation of marginalised groups by providing them with an alternate form of expression with which they were both more familiar and more comfortable. This does not mean that we are recommending a privileging one kind of participant (the more academically oriented for example) over another (marginalised groups, perhaps less equiped for an academic discourse) or that we are trying to privilege one type of discourse (more “academic”) over another (more rooted in popular culture). Both kinds of participation and discourse are important and necessary to promote the inclusive spirit of the WSF.
./english/580.txt:92:The second reason has to do with the non-interactive nature of discussions in the larger events. After a point this acted as a constraint in enthusing participants to attend these events. However it may be noted that some of the larger events were very well attended and hugely successful. Success, in terms of larger participation often depended on the issue being discussed (how much it appealed to large sections – whether thematic or sectoral) and the quality of speakers (not necessarily the academic content, but their quality as “public speakers”).
./english/580.txt:126:· The speakers of WSF organised events be finalised by September, and the concerned WG also takes up the task of co-ordinating between the speakers for a specific event – circulating their papers/views to others in advance. Of course, given that in the WSF we would like speakers to also be spontaneous, we should not expect speakers to “read” formal papers. However speakers should be encouraged to circulate their views on the topic they would be speaking on in advance, not necessarily in the form of formal papers as happens in academic discussions. Care be taken to choose good public speakers for the largest events who can inspire a large audience.
./english/589.txt:28:Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK), member of CADTM international network, is a secular voluntary organisation established in 1981 to be an interface between Scholars, Academics and Social Activists; to initiate the process of social awakening through critical reflection and alternative discourse thereby contributing to strengthening people’s struggles towards the goal of a just and more humane social order.
./english/594.txt:6:Generally, it was felt that the World Social Forum in India was a gathering of the “Left”, in a plural sort of way, not some neutral space for academic discussion, and for many people who attended, the open debate and shared experiences should result in some sort of action towards building a better world. The fact that it was acknowledged that it was “the Left”, is a welcome development when compared to the “peoples’ assemblies” in Thailand.
./english/614.txt:25:Its not a matter of turning the WSF into a deliberative space that decides among options under debate, nor of approaching the alternatives elaboration through academic meetings that submit to WSF a proposal to conclude as a alternative paradigm, the “Porto Alegre consensus” against the “Washington consensus”, but that, preserving the open and plural character of the WSF, to begin a common reflection on the concrete problems that the struggle against neoliberalism and war faces and to move to the WSF the debates present in the real dynamics of the movements, as way to move forward in the building of alternatives in the distinct scales in which this movement is expressed: global and local.
./english/614.txt:31:· Second, the notion that the conferences should be the space for the presentation of personalities, makes a series of unbalances that need correction to consolidate within the Forum. From those related to personalities and movements activists to those that exist among men and women, and those among the less represented young generations, the invisibility of the social sectors most affected by the system, the almost complete inexistence of certain continents…, what makes that, with unlikely frequency these central spaces within the Forum are converted into private space for intellectuals and academics, that submerge into invisibility the most affected social sectors and that kidnaps the participation of social movements.