Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements by Aziz Choudry

Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements Reviews

• 
  Malcolm

  I have spent many years working in and around social movements, and a sizeable part of my academic work deals with activism. In this academic world I have long been struck by two things when looking at analyses of social movements; first, how spectacularly mundane so much of it is, littered with statements of the obvious to anyone who has spent much time in those movements, and second, how little that literature engages with ideas, knowledge and theory that emerges from within those movements and their struggles. It was therefore a treat to find this excellent exploration of learning and knowledge development within social activism. I had read other work by Choudry, mainly more movement-oriented material, so this more structural-analytical work is a treat.
  
  Choudry’s starting point is that social movements are hives of analysis, of learning, of intellectual and political development that is often passed over or seen as ‘just activism’ rather than more rigorous theory and knowledge development (my point above about the absence of movement theorising in academic analyses), yet the movements I explore – mainly as an historian – developed their own approaches and in their international activism built rich and complex understandings of imperialism and colonialism as well as tactics and strategies for geo-political intervention. Choudry’s critique centres on the limitations of many analyses, be they academic or from the professionalising world of NGOs. These limitations, he suggests, emerge in part because of the analytical positions of researchers, but also from the limitations of theories and modes of analysis, suggesting that working from an established theoretical frame might be analytically helpful but it also closes off lines and modes of analysis, limits identification of data/evidence and tends to have more to do with the objectives of scholarly research than it does to do with the objectives of activists.
  
  The substance of the case turns on two lines of argument, both richly informed by movement-based evidence including drawing on Choudry’s extensive experience in global justice activism and interviews with movement activists. The first aspect of the case explores informal and non-formal education through action, highlighting forms and modes of learning that weave their ways through social activism as those in and around movements confront new scenarios and experiences, have to deal with shifting political forces, relations and developments and find themselves working in new and unexpected alliances. The second aspect centres on research carried out with, by and in movements highlighting the ways that movement research is seldom separate from education, organising and all those other things social movements do. Here he continues the critique that much of what happens outside social movements fails to recognise the power of learning and theorising within those movements, but also may be exploitative where movement voices ‘add colour’ to the work of professional researchers. This chapter is especially rich, drawing on interview evidence with social movement researchers in a number of settings in both the North & the South to highlight the embeddedness of movement research and the institutional dynamics of participatory research.
  
  The case is elegantly woven together with two challenges. One is to question the meaning and notions of ‘expertise’ often seen in movement-related discussions; the second is to academic teachers to consider what it means to be learning and teaching from the struggle. This is a compelling and powerful argument calling on us to rethink the ways we approach social movements, to recognise the limitations of our approaches, to get beyond the notion that ‘relevance’ can be formally constructed (such as by research design or methodology) rather than a product of how the research is used, and to take careful account of the knowledge, expertise and learning developed within and by social movements. Choudry doesn’t cite him, but Lenin argued that without revolutionary theory there could be no revolutionary practice, with many subsequently interpreting this to mean (as Lenin probably meant) that the role of intellectuals was to ‘take revolutionary theory and ideas to the masses’; this case is an direct challenge to that idea, arguing that a major weakness in much of the work we have done on social movements is that it largely ignores the intellectual work of those movements.
  
  I don’t therefore read this as a case that if only ‘professional’ analysts used a better model (grounded theory, participatory action research or whatever) they’d/we’d do better at making sense of social movements, but as a call for a profound rethinking of our approach – something that my worry about the banality of much academic analysis of social movements leads me to conclude is well overdue. This is a sharp, insightful, rigorously informed and argued case that should have a profound impact on how we work in and with social movements, but I fear higher education’s drive to commercialisation and the NGOisation of social activism will weaken whatever progress we can make – which shouldn’t stop us trying.
• 
  Drick

  The author is a long time activist who went back to school, earned a PhD, and now is a college professor. However, he is writing to charge and challenge his fellow academics on seeing the value of learning and knowledge created in social movements through informal and nonformal means. While much of the book was hard to follow, simply because I was not familiar with many of the issues and organizations to which he referred (his activism was largely in parts of South Asia and New Zealand), his point was clear. Research, theorizing and knowledge creation is happening all the time in social movements and is largely ignored or overlooked by social movement scholars. Choudry wants such scholars to more fully appreciate the contributions of "ordinary people" and activists who populate this movements and learn with them rather than remain aloof in the name of "research." In essence, without saying explicitly Choudry is calling academics to take a ground theory approach to their understanding of social movements, rather than superimpose their theories on existing movements. Each movement is unique and while they can learn from past experience, there is also an ongoing process of learning occurring within movements. Drawing on adult education theory, popular education, Marxist dialectics, Paulo Freire, Antonia Gramsci and numerous contemporary activists, Choudry makes a strong case for academics to join with and listen with and learn with those on the ground working for significant social change.
• 
  Sabrarf

  Big Fan of his works. Very interested in the topics he discussed in his articles such as learning activism, learning in grassroots movements, community organizing and etc. Highly recommended to people who are in different social movements or interested to learn from them
• 
  Scott Neigh

  Re-read review from 2021: The last of my current work-related re-reads, so again I'll keep my comments brief. I originally read this one quite a bit more recently than the others – only about five years ago – and not only did I do my usual review but I actually interviewed the author about this book and related things for an episode of @TalkingRadical Radio (
  https://talkingradical.ca/2016/01/20/...). Despite that, I'd still kind of forgotten how resonant this book's ideas and preoccupations are with my own. Choudry draws on his extensive experience in working within social movements as an organizer, researcher, and educator, combined with his more recent experience doing similar tasks in university contexts, to write about knowledge production, theorizing, and learning in and by movements. He argues that we need to take the knowledge produced by movements and the learning that takes place in the course of struggle much more seriously than we do, and explores why that is and what it might mean for those doing related work in a variety of contexts. Not that we should relate to knowledge produced by movements any less critically than we do to knowledge produced elsewhere – this is not about romanticizing movement knowledge, about ignoring the ways it can substitute ideological mystification for grounded investigation, about pretending that it doesn't sometimes reproduce the same oppressive hierarchies among knowers and known that happens everywhere. But we must resist the mainstream (and scholarly) tendency to just dismiss such knowledge, and instead recognize just how valuable it can be for our efforts to understand the world and each other, and for our struggles for colletive liberation.
  
  My interview with the author from early 2016:
  https://talkingradical.ca/2016/01/20/...
  
  Check out my original 2015 review
  here.