Whose Knowledge Counts, and Why Does It Matter for Social Movement Studies and Climate Justice?

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 3. Knowledge and Politics II

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger ongoing project that examines the interplay of Brazilian sociology and socio-environmental movements. While this work began as a project about knowledge production and popular education, in June 2024, it shifted to focus more explicitly on climate justice. Here, I examine the following questions: 1) How could the study of social movements be transformed utilizing methodologies other than theoretically based analysis that is produced exclusively inside the university, and within the “Global North,” and what might this mean for organizing for water and climate justice? 2) How is this political formation a part of a larger “translocal” struggle for climate justice? MAB offers crucial insights into the operation of systems of power and strategies of resistance for fighting climate justice. I examine these questions drawing on participant observation with the Brazil based Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB or Movement of People Affected by Dams) in various regions of Brazil between 2024-2025. Purely technocratic approaches to solving climate change will fail if they do not account for both the lived and theoretical knowledge produced and articulated by the people most impacted and if they do not address the systemic causes of climate change. I argue that Global North based scholars engaged in Social Movement Studies (SMS) need to value knowledge production from outside the academia, from social movements, and also from Global South based scholars. As MAB argues, we need to listen to (and join with) social movements around the world who have been saying “business as usual” and “solutions as usual” and “US imperialism as usual” is killing the planet; we need to listen to the voices of those most affected and build theory and praxis together.

Author

• Caitlin Schroering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte