Voicing researched activists with responsive action research

Purpose: What it is like to experience being the subject of the research process when you are an actor within a new social movement organization? And what lessons can be learned for researchers engaging with members of New Social Movements? Debates on engagement and the relationship between the researcher and the researched so far have taken the perspective solely of the researcher. Based on insights gained by full participation in a horizontal worker cooperative, we aim at contributing to the facilitation of more fruitful, mutually engaging research relations between organizational theory scholars and members of New Social Movement organizations by voicing the researched in this debate. Design/methodology/approach: After providing some accounts from the researched point of view, the paper focuses on crafting an appropriate research process based on Participatory Action Research (PAR) ethos and experience. Findings: Since our research findings suggest that PAR combines elements that both trouble and inspire research participants, namely workload/availability and relevancy/contribution in practice, we introduce and provide a case study of Responsive Action Research (RAR) that emphasizes adaptation and responsiveness in the research process instead of shared governance. Originality/value: The originality of this article lies in voicing the research participants with the aim to aid both scholars and social movements adopt appropriate research designs for the mutual benefit of both theory/action and researchers/researched (even when researchers are already active in the field)

What are we fighting for? Ideological posturing and anarchist geographies

Recent debates in radical geography seem determined to be oppositional and in so doing simplify what is at stake. We need to celebrate and maintain the openness of geography to multiple perspectives while simultaneously developing more action-oriented, hopeful ways forward. Anarchist perspectives hold plenty of promise for radical geography, but only if we critically interrogate their principles and empirics

Scholar-activists in an expanding European food sovereignty movement

This article analyzes the roles, relations, and positions of scholar-activists in the European food sovereignty movement. In doing so, we document, make visible and question the political dimensions of researchers' participation in the movement. We argue that scholar-activists are part of the movement, but are distinct from the affected constituencies, put in place to ensure adequate representation of key movement actors. This is because scholar-activists lack a collective identity, have no processes to formulate collective demands, and no mechanisms for inter-researcher and researchers-movement communication. We reflect on whether and how scholar-activists could organize, and discuss possible pathways for a more cohesive and stronger researcher engagement in the movement.</p

Resourcing Scholar-Activism: Collaboration, Transformation, and the Production of Knowledge

In this article we offer a set of resources for scholar-activists to reflect on and guide their practice. We begin by suggesting that research questions should be triangulated to consider not only their scholarly merit but the intellectual and political projects the findings will advance and the research questions of interest to community and social movement collaborators

Austerity urbanism and Olympic counter-legacies: gendering, defending and expanding the urban commons in East London

This article reflects on an occupation led by single mothers to contest the destruction of social housing in post-Olympics East London. In the process, it argues for a more gendered theorisation of the urban commons. Drawing on auto-ethnography, participant observation and qualitative interviews, the article argues three central points: First, that the occupation demonstrates the gendered nature of the urban commons and the leadership of women in defending them from enclosure; second that the defence of an existing urban commons enabled the creation of a new temporary commons characterised by the collectivisation of gendered socially reproductive activities; and third that this commoning has had a lasting impact on housing activism at the city scale and beyond. This impact is conceptualised as an ‘Olympic counter-legacy’ that is characterised by the forging of new relationships and affinities, the strengthening of networked activism and circulation of tactics between campaign groups

Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism

Drawing on an analysis of an ongoing collaboration with rural peasant movements in Bangladesh, we explore the possibility of forging solidarity through practices of scholar-activism. In so doing, we consider the practice of reflexivity, reconsider forms of solidarity, and draw on the concept of convergence spaces as a way to envision sites of possibility. We mobilize the notion of situated solidarities to propose an alternative form of reflexive practice in scholarship. We then posit that there are six ‘practices’ that provide a useful schematic for thinking through the opportunities for the construction of these solidaritie

Co-production: towards a utopian approach

This article outlines how co-production might be understood as a utopian method, which both attends to and works against dominant inequalities. It suggests that it might be positioned ‘within, against, and beyond’ current configurations of power in academia and society more broadly. It develops this argument by drawing on recent research funded through the UK’s Connected Communities programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; and by attending to arguments from the field of Utopian Studies. It explores particular issues of power and control within the field of co-production, acknowledging that neoliberalism both constrains and co-opts such practice; and explores methodological and infrastructural issues such that its utopian potential might be realised

‘Being useful’ after the Ivory Tower: combining research and activism with the Brixton Pound

This article draws on research and activism with a local currency group, the Brixton Pound, in order to extend discussions of scholar‐activism to encompass broad and inclusive notions of activism. As broad and inclusive notions of activism dislodge the boundaries between academia and activism, they have enabled scholars to challenge the idea that it is necessary to keep activism separate from research and to explore why and how activism and research might be combined. Despite this, however, the academic literature on scholar‐activism is presently dominated by ‘capital A’ activism and activists, suggesting there is more to do to embed inclusive notions of activism within it. This article makes a contribution to such efforts, positioning involvement in a local currency group, the Brixton Pound, as combining activism with research, in order to provide motivation and resources to a more diverse audience, particularly those who may not have previously combined research with activism or who may be ‘put off’ by narrow notions of ‘capital A’ activism. In light of the continued centrality of concerns about the usefulness of academics in debates about activism and the academy, I choose ‘being useful’ as a rubric through which to organise this article. My involvement with the Brixton Pound suggests that the loss of the privileged position of critique atop the ‘Ivory Tower’ opens up a range of other contributions extending across boundaries between activism and research and between theory and method. I identify three ways of ‘being useful’, including practising ethics of reciprocity, developing embedded research projects through engagement and building more generative critical (geographical) scholarship. Together, these ways of being useful make a contribution towards transforming critical geography into a more hopeful, generative (sub‐)discipline, more closely connected with issues of practical significance to (broadly understood) activism

“By ones and twos and tens”: pedagogies of possibility for democratizing higher education

This paper concerns the relationship between teaching and political action both within and outside formal educational institutions. Its setting is the recent period following the 2010 Browne Review on the funding of higher education in England. Rather than speaking directly to debates around scholar-activism, about which much has already been written, I want to stretch the meanings of both teaching and activism to contextualise the contemporary politics of higher learning in relation to diverse histories and geographies of progressive education more generally. Taking this wider view suggests that some of the forms of knowledge which have characterised the university as a progressive institution are presently being produced in more politicised educational environments. Being receptive to these other modes of learning can not only expand scholarly thinking about how to reclaim intellectual life from the economy within universities, but stimulate the kind of imagination that we need for dreaming big about higher education as and for a practice of democratic life