On Knowledge Production, Learning and Research in Struggle

In this article I discuss the politics of learning, knowledge production and research "from the ground up" -- that which takes place in social action/social movement contexts. While on the one hand, scholarship on social movements owes significant intellectual debts to the learning, knowledge production and theorizing which occur in the course of social struggles, on the other, the intellectual work, ideas and analysis which emerge from concrete engagement in these struggles are often overlooked and undervalued by the dominant theorizing practices of the academy. Further, drawing firstly from the authors involvement with research and activism around Montreal's Immigrant Workers Centre and wider struggles for immigration/labour justice, and secondly from global justice/anti-colonial organizing in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region, for this discussion, this paper argues that critical scholarship should strive to be engaged concretely with social struggles and the knowledge produced in these contexts for both political and intellectual reasons. Adapted from the source document.