Organize!: Building from the Local for Global Justice - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604864338 ISBN 13: 9781604864335

Verlag: PM Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

What are the ways forward for organizing for progressive social change in an era of unprecedented economic, social, and ecological crises? How do political activists build power and critical analysis in their daily work for change?

Grounded in struggles in Canada, the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as transnational activist networks, Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice links local organizing with global struggles to make a better world. In over twenty chapters written by a diverse range of organizers, activists, academics, lawyers, artists, and researchers, this book weaves a rich and varied tapestry of dynamic strategies for struggle. From community-based labor organizing strategies among immigrant workers to mobilizing psychiatric survivors, from arts and activism for Palestine to organizing in support of Indigenous Peoples, the authors reflect critically on the tensions, problems, limits, and gains inherent in a diverse range of organizing contexts and practices. The book also places these processes in historical perspective, encouraging us to use history to shed light on contemporary injustices and how they can be overcome. Written in accessible language, Organize! will appeal to college and university students, activists, organizers and the wider public.

Contributors include: Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, Eric Shragge, Devlin Kuyek, Kezia Speirs, Evelyn Calugay, Anne Petermann, Alex Law, Jared Will, Radha D’Souza, Edward Ou Jin Lee, Norman Nawrocki, Rafeef Ziadah, Maria Bargh, Dave Bleakney, Abdi Hagi Yusef, Mostafa Henaway, Emilie Breton, Sandra Jeppesen, Anna Kruzynski, Rachel Sarrasin, Dolores Chew, David Reville, Kathryn Church, Brian Aboud, Joey Calugay, Gada Mahrouse, Harsha Walia, Mary Foster, Martha Stiegman, Robert Fisher, Yuseph Katiya, and Christopher Reid.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Aziz Choudry is assistant professor of international education in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University. He is coauthor of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood, 2009), and coeditor of Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He has over two decades experience working in activist groups, NGOs, and social movements in the Asia-Pacific and North America as a researcher, educator, and organizer.

Jill Hanley is assistant professor in the McGill School of Social Work, where she teaches community organizing, social policy, and applied research. Her research focuses on access to social rights for precarious status migrants and the organizing strategies used by migrants to access these rights. She is cofounder and an active member of Montreal’s Immigrant Workers Centre. She is coauthor of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants.

Eric Shragge teaches at the School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University, in Montreal. He remains active in grassroots organizations and he is coauthor of Fight Back Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood 2009) and coauthor of Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing (Rutgers 2010).

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Organize!

Building from the Local for Global Justice

By Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, Eric Shragge

PM Press

Copyright © 2012 Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, and Eric Shragge
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-433-5

CHAPTER 1

Activist Research: Mapping Power Relations, Informing Struggles

Aziz Choudry and Devlin Kuyek

Introduction

Research is a major aspect of many movements for social change. There has been much academic literature written on "activist research" and "activist scholarship," partnerships between university-based researchers and community organizations/activists, including the challenges and tensions inherent in this work. But there has been relatively little written to articulate or document the actual research practice of activist researchers operating independently of formal partnerships or collaboration with academic researchers. In some cases, this work is conducted by activist researchers who have no formal research training. The intellectual work and knowledge production that takes place in the course of social activism has often been overlooked. In this chapter we draw upon our own work as activist researchers, with examples from movement research on transnational corporate power and resistance to capitalist globalization, and our various involvements within movement networks. In doing so we will explore how some activist researchers understand, practice, and validate our/their research and processes of knowledge production, and how such research contributes to the struggles of social movements. We argue that research is often a fundamental component of social struggles.

Research: Relationships and Process

We contend that building relationships is a central aspect of every stage of effective activist research. From the outset, we acknowledge and emphasize that many of our reflections on doing activist research, as well as research for activism itself often emerge from collective, collaborative relations, discussions, conversations, and exchanges with a wide range of actors (including each other). For both of us, the main goal of our research has been to support and inform social change through popular organizing. Implicit within our work is an understanding of the importance of building counterpower against domination by the interests of capital and states, and our own active engagement in this struggle. This provides an overarching framework that helps to define what to write about and the focus of analysis to provide research for struggles. Our research processes come out of, and are embedded in, relations of trust with other activists and organizations that develop through constant effort to work together in formal and informal networks and collaborations. Such relationships are sometimes years in the making. These networks are spaces for constant sharing of information and analysis. They allow us to identify research that is most relevant to the struggles we are engaged in, and to communicate that research in ways that are meaningful and useful for the building of movements. And they are invaluable in the production, vetting/"getting the research right," application, strategic considerations and dissemination of the research. For us this is an ongoing process which informs action and in turn continues to be produced and used strategically, drawing upon new knowledge and challenges that arise in the course of confrontations with, say, transnational corporations, state or intergovernmental policies, international financial institutions, free trade and investment agreements, or, sometimes, nongovernmental organizations. Sometimes activist research seems akin to unraveling a ball of string — but it is the analysis and overarching sets of understandings about how states, capital, and various agencies and institutions function which help to guide the unraveling process, alongside ongoing relationships and discussions with social movements.

Activist research should be a continuous process, where information and analysis is shared and processed constantly with others, from beginning to end. A publication is only one part of this process. Some of the most important outputs may come from e-mail exchanges or workshops that happen before anything is formally written. This process strengthens the research, as collaboration brings out more information, deepens the analysis and connects the research with others working on the issue. The research process itself can be critical to building networks and long-term relationships. It is also critical for enabling the output to have a bigger impact, as the groups and individuals involved will be more connected to the work and there will be more reason for them to use it in their own work and to share it with their networks.

At times, however, the objective of the research may be to draw attention to new significant information that the researcher has become aware of. The research and the publication of that research have an urgency to it, and are often carried out with an explicit objective of sparking reactions and actions. There are thus strategic considerations in how the information is pulled together and how it is released that are rarely central to academic research.

A Word on Sources and Search Strategies

While Internet searches can yield helpful information, activist research can often draw on a variety of sources and search strategies. Open sources such as media reports and other activist/NGO research can be helpful, but it is important to carefully read primary sources, and to double check and substantiate claims and assertions made in secondary materials. Corporate documents such as annual reports, briefings and media statements, and official government documents, read alongside the business pages of news publications can be extremely helpful sources. If search strategies, directions and further potential sources of information are driven by the needs of what is useful for movements and campaigns, this can help to define the kinds of questions to ask, of whom they should be asked, as well as relationships with activist networks being a vital source of information and contacts for furthering this research. Sometimes initial investigation and data-gathering throws up new information, which can focus or redirect research, strategy, and action. On occasions, in some contexts, academics, journalists, and opposition politicians may be willing to assist either through helping with research through access to databases and official information or asking questions in Parliament/Congress.

Patience is also an important resource for effective research: sometimes things take time to gather and analyze, notwithstanding the urgency of many of the problems we face. Besides material, which is readily available, activist researchers sometimes use access to information laws. Long before Wikileaks hit the headlines, documents from secretive organizations and negotiations had been leaked by functionaries uncomfortable with these processes. Websites have been one useful tool through which to share such documents — and analysis — when they do surface, but equally, phone calls, face-to-face conversations, and effectively building and drawing upon trusted contacts, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places, can yield dividends.

Research for What?

To be clear, we do not claim that all "activist research" is inherently progressive or rigorous, any more than all "academic" research can claim to be rigorous and immaculately constructed. Nor are we arguing that academic and activist research necessarily exist in finite, separate worlds,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PM Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1604864338
• ISBN 13: 9781604864335
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Herausgeber: Choudry Aziz, Hanley Jill, Shragge Eric
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: eucomply OÜ; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; Pärnu mnt 139b-14; Tallinn; 11317; Estland