Social Movements, Resistance, and Participatory Research in Postapartheid South Africa

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: Learning, Knowledge Production, and Research in Social Movement/Civil Society Milieux

Abstract

South Africa has a proud history of resistance in and through
education. This resistance has generated popular epistemologies and
pedagogies against apartheid. The ‘peoples’ education movement’,
‘worker education movement’ and ‘popular adult and/ or community
education movement’ are examples. This praxis, relative to the
struggle against apartheid has diminished but still exists, and its
centre of gravity today has shifted to the new independent social
movements as they resist the impact of neo-liberalism and increasing
poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa.

This paper discusses the interaction between ‘popular’ research and
resistance in poor and working class communities. It uses
participatory action research as an epistemological challenge to the
established and formal endeavours of the social sciences in South
Africa today. We concur that “those who have been most systematically
excluded, oppressed, or denied carry specifically revealing wisdom
about the history, structure, consequences, and the fracture points in
unjust social arrangements”(Cammarota and Fine, 2008:215).

We present various studies over the past few years and instances of
the interaction between community praxis, popular research and
resistance. The paper concludes with a discussion of what this praxis
suggests about educational transformation and the relation of socially
engaged research to community activism in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Author

• Salim Vally, University of Johannesburg