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- Convenors:
-
Valeska Flor
(University of Tübingen)
Ove Sutter (University of Bonn)
Stephanie Schmidt (University Hamburg)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Resistance
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 23 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
In the current crisis of political representation in liberal democracies, social movements visibly challenge and transgress institutionalized and everyday knowledge. Although knowledge production has always been a part of political activism, it has been little explored as a separate issue.
Long Abstract:
The current crisis of political representation in liberal democracies is accompanied by growing mistrust of institutionalized knowledge production and dissemination. Amplified by the everyday use of digital media, which enables civil society actors to challenge professional media, non-institutionalized forms of knowledge production and transfer practices gain in importance. In these conflict-laden challenges of hegemonic worldviews, social movements play an important role as collective actors. Moreover, collective and political actors such as the climate justice movement not only confront hegemonic models, but also develop their own "repertoires of knowledge practices" (della Porta/ Pavan 2017) such as counter-expertise, alternative epistemologies, and experimental and participatory formats of knowledge production. Even though social movement studies have comprehensively investigated cultural processes of "framing", repertoires of knowledge practices have so far been studied less systematically.
We therefore invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following topics: Which practices include repertoires of knowledge practices? How do collective spaces and arenas of participatory knowledge production form? Which forms of counter-expertise and alternative expert-knowledge (especially in anti-racist struggles and environmental movements) become significant? What significance does local and experiential knowledge have in social movements and how does it form (e.g. as narrative)? How do counter-hegemonic knowledge regimes contest institutionalized knowledge regimes? What historical points of reference can be found for forms of knowledge production in social movements? Should we as researchers participate in these processes of knowledge production and what does collaborative research in social movements look like?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In this collaborative piece, we reflect on the transformed ways in which urban activists in Switzerland and the Fridays For Future movement in Mexico - and we as researchers - localize and shape our repertoires of knowledge in light of interrupted future-making in times of the SARS-CoV-2 crisis.
Paper long abstract:
Creating collective imaginaries of the future is a central practice we observe in our respective fieldwork with the Fridays For Future movement in Mexico and urban activists in Switzerland. In light of the global pandemic, these collective imaginaries and the practices that forge them, such as concerted action in public space, were interrupted and now stand transformed. In our work, we investigate the potentials of said temporal and spatial interruptions (e.g. the digitalization or hyperlocalization of activism), examining ways in which counter-hegemonic knowledge practices, central to the struggles for built and natural environments, have morphed during the SARS-CoV-2 crisis.
Similarly, our own research trajectories have been reimagined to fit the demands of this recalibrated present: We have observed an increased need to establish spaces of collective thinking within our research communities. The repertoires of knowledge (della Porta & Pavan 2017) that shape both activism and ethnographic practice have been altered in such a way that unexpected connections and conversations - such as ours - can occur.
Putting our respective fieldwork insights in dialogue with each other, we aim to highlight the emancipatory potential of collective knowledge practices both in ethnographic and activist work, during the pandemic and beyond. We hope to illuminate the ways in which a) activist movements inhabit and occupy space changed to reflect interrupted futures, b) knowledge and expertise has gained renewed importance in redefining nuanced subjectivities, and c) we can carve out a space of collective thinking for engaged research within the constraints of the pandemic.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates knowledge practices of civil society actors in the Rhineland’s coal mining region. While criticizing the political mode and concrete implementation of structural transition policies, their participatory approach transgresses institutionalized forms of representation.
Paper long abstract:
The current crisis of political representation is inextricably tied to the ongoing erosion of the narrative of modern progress. Since liberal democratic institutions depend on expectations of “growth” and “improvement”, they are fundamentally challenged by the temporal and spatial implications of the Anthropocene. These “clashes of scale” (T. H. Eriksen) are especially visible in Germany’s Rhineland region, where for a long time the coal industry stood for wealth and stability, but now faces closure – not, however, because of the accustomed “boom-and-bust” cycles of the global capitalist economy, but due to a political decision based on the industry’s material contribution to (visions of) ecological “doom”. This decision was negotiated in a federal government commission where the residents of the area around the coal mines were represented by a member of a local anti-coal initiative. My ethnographic research in this context focuses on a group of various critical civil society actors that assembled around this local commission member. Established around the ideal of participation beyond formal political institutions, this group of actors contests institutionalized knowledge production, which relies on technical solutions to tackle the problems of anthropogenic climate change. Their participatory knowledge practices – including regular discussion circles, educational forest walks, or the development of alternative concepts for the Rhineland’s future – constantly transgress official paths for civic participation in the impending process of “structural change”, while situating the global narrative of ecological crisis in embodied experience and creatively engaging local history for a more “down to earth” (B. Latour) approach.
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses the application of difference feminist knowledge production and its interactions with group dynamics and formation processes inside the movement Se Non Ora Quando?.
Paper long abstract:
The movement Se Non Ora Quando?, founded in 2011, propagated “starting from oneself” as mode for political opinion formation and decisions. This alternative form of knowledge production, adapted from historical women´s groups and the difference feminist philosophy of the 1970s, consisted of an interactive discoursive exchange, out of which a common, unanimous group will should manifest itself. This practice, as interpreted by Se Non Ora Quando?, promised to be distinct from the `masculine’ way of doing politics, to provide a situated expertise starting from (embodied) daily experiences, and to ensure the personal growth and the participation of all women, with the goal of transversality: the construction of a political subject on the basis of the category gender. Based on an ethnography of the movement, and drawing on the concept of social automatisms, I will show how the practice of “starting from oneself” interacted within group dynamics and processes of feminist and political differentiation inside the movement, contributing, despite the intentions of unity and base-democracy, to divisions, conflicts and the unplanned and sometimes masked emergence of hierarchies. Based on these findings and employing a postcolonial informed Critical Political Theory perspective, I will discuss the interconnectedness of identity policy and common political demands of feminist movements.