3519 - Activist knowledge and movement research

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

Social movement scholars usually prioritize research questions, theories, methods, and findings of interest to others in the discipline; engagement with activists and with scholars who study social movements outside the formal discipline of social movement studies has taken lower priority. Accordingly, scholars and activists may not share a conception of “activist knowledge” or of its importance. Additionally, while social movement scholarship remains thin when engaging questions about effective strategy and methods for achieving systemic change, activists often look to scholarship anyhow. Activists seek information and concepts that can be used immediately; larger-scale analytic frameworks through which to understand their collective struggles; and historical reinterpretations of received activist wisdom. Thus, movement scholars’ contributions are sometimes picked up, reconfigured, and deployed by activists in building their own “theories of change.” Often, this occurs when scholars are personally involved in movement projects. Other times it is primarily the result of the diffusion of academic scholarship through teaching or popular media. And sometimes it results from the direct engagement of scholars studying the dynamics of particular movements. The effectiveness of such research lies both in the research itself having access to activist knowledge (and thus, a sensibility to how diverse activists might think about their activism) and also a means of disciplined interaction with activist-intellectuals themselves. This session renews the cause of movement-relevant research by bringing together respected scholar-activists and activist-intellectuals to consider how scholarship on movements can articulate with, strengthen, and be strengthened by ongoing engagement with activist knowledge.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Session Organizers

• Ben Manski, University of California, Santa Barbara

• John Krinsky, The City College of New York

Presiders

• Ben Manski, University of California, Santa Barbara

• John Krinsky, The City College of New York

Panelists

• Jane McAlevey

• Suren Moodliar, Independent Scholar

• Randy Stoecker, University of Wisconsin

• Lesley J. Wood, York University

• Tithi Bhattacharya, Purdue University