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, although sometimes this might seem to be the case.

What we contend is that much activist research of the kind that we are engaged in involves a process of research in which information has to serve a purpose, is ongoing, and not usually channeled toward the production of one particular research output. Taking the time to “get the research right” is crucial — whether in the case of adequately researching details of a meeting venue in order to mount an effective protest action, or in the more formal sense of research on a corporation, policy or practice, which, if poorly researched, can be easily, and publicly discredited by a far better-resourced protagonist and media outlets. This in turn can have serious effects on efforts to build a campaign through reaching a broader base of people. We are cautious of claims that certain methodological approaches and research methods are necessarily “radical” and more oppositional than others and therefore always lead to emancipatory outcomes. For us, a central aspect of effective activist research is the relationship of trust and engagement built up with social struggles and movements. Articulating or explicating activist research methodologies from our own practices (and those of colleagues) is an interesting, and perhaps challenging task which falls outside of the scope of this chapter. But we are both committed to challenging the notion that there must be a separation between what some have called the “brain” and the “brawn” of the movement, since we see intellectual work, knowledge production, and forms of investigation/research which take place within activism are often inextricably linked (and sometimes overlooked or unrecognized) to action in many mobilizations. Douglas Bevington and Chris Dixon argue that “[d]irect engagement [of researchers] is about putting the thoughts and concerns of the movement participants at the center of the research agenda and showing a commitment to producing accurate and potentially useful information about the issues that are important to these activists.”

Gary Kinsman warns, “Sometimes when we talk about research and activism in the academic world we replicate distinctions around notions of consciousness and activity that are detrimental to our objectives. We can fall back on research as being an analysis, or a particular form of consciousness, and activism as about doing things ‘out there,’ which leads to a divorce between consciousness and practice.” In turn, we should be wary of replicating such dynamics in activist milieus.

There are emerging traditions in some areas of academic scholarship which seem somewhat congruent with aspects of the kind of activist research described in the two examples from our own work (see Box 1 and Box 2). Notably, in his work on political activist ethnography, the late activist and academic George Smith suggests that for activist researchers, there is a wealth of research material and signposts derived from moments of confrontation to explore the way that power in our world is socially organized. He contends that being interrogated by insiders to a ruling regime, like a crown attorney, brings a researcher into direct contact with the conceptual relevancies and organizing principles of such regimes. In both Aziz’s anti-APEC work and Devlin’s work on seeds in Canada, confrontations with the state have been a very rich entry point from which to explore the ways that governments, domestic and transnational capital, and other extralocal forces socially organize power. So too have been confrontations within activist milieus, conferences, and workshops or in the course of campaign work in relation to framing, strategy, and tactics. As Kinsman notes, research and theorizing is an everyday/everynight part of the life of social movements whether explicitly recognized or not: “Activists are thinking, talking about, researching and theorizing about what is going on, what they are going to do next and how to analyze the situations they face, whether in relation to attending a demonstration, a meeting, a confrontation with institutional forces or planning the next action or campaign.”

Building Networks and Organizations of Research for Resistance

Dialogue among engaged activist researchers, and research itself occurs both within formal coalitions and campaigns, and also in informal webs or networks of various kinds. Such research is sometimes driven and informed by immediate confrontation with ruling relations (for example, a struggle against a specific corporation, a proposed policy or legislative change, or an upcoming APEC meeting) or seeks to explicate and expose underlying ruling practices which socially organize institutions or actions on a longer-term or historic basis. Such research is enriched by and builds upon multiple standpoints and entry points into the explication and challenge of ruling regimes and social relations. For example, research work on APEC or transnational corporations conducted among activist networks in different locations can approach these institutions and processes through specifically local/national entry points (government trade ministries, academic or business think tanks dedicated to economic and trade liberalization, or local offices of transnational corporations) and combine their insights through dialogue and collaboration with other activist researchers similarly located, yet in different settings.

There are a range of ways and forms in which movement research occurs, which includes the establishment and maintenance of specialized research and education institutions by social struggles to support social movements — such as the IBON Foundation in the Philippines, which has been a powerhouse of a range of knowledge production and critical research which has informed domestic and international movements contesting a wide range of injustices (http://www.ibon.org). For example, IBON supplied much of the data and analysis for Philippine people’s movement campaigns against the deregulation of the oil industry and oil price hikes which increased profits for transnational corporations at the expense of ordinary people. In turn, IBON has been a major player in developing and supporting a growing network of research NGOs and institutional research arms of social movements in the Asia-Pacific region, many of which are deeply implicated in movement struggles, the Asia-Pacific Research Network. This has also strengthened opportunities to work together transnationally to build analysis and research tools that serve the needs and aspirations of struggles against corporate power, domestic and transnational capital, and neoliberal economic and trade agreements, for example.

In recent years, we have also been involved with research activism to support social movements against bilateral free trade and investment agreements (FTAs). People’s movements to stop FTAs are often isolated from each other, a direct reflection of the “divide and conquer” strategy that bilateralism thrives on. A number of anti-FTA movements have made it a priority to break the isolation and link with others fighting such agreements in order to share analysis and learning’s from each other’s struggles. The Thai anti-FTA movement has been quite proactive in this respect, organizing several events that have brought activists from different countries together to strategize on FTAs. FTA Watch, a Thai coalition, invited bilaterals.org, GRAIN and the Bangkok office of Médecins sans Frontières to help coorganize a global strategy meeting of anti-FTA movements. Dubbed “Fighting FTAs,” the three-day workshop was held at the end of July 2006 in Bangkok. It brought together around sixty social movement activists including many who are active in some aspects of research and knowledge production activities from twenty countries of Africa, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific region to share experiences in grassroots struggles against FTAs and to build international strategies and cooperation. For many participants, it was the first time that they had been able to physically sit down with other movement activists fighting FTAs and discuss strategy and experiences. In February 2008, GRAIN, bilaterals.org, and BIOTHAI (Biodiversity Action Thailand) produced a collaborative publication and launched a multimedia (including audio and film resources) website called “Fighting FTAs: the growing resistance to bilateral free trade and investment agreements” which provides both a global overview of the spread of FTAs and maps the growing resistance and learning’s from people’s experiences of fighting FTAs. This resource was merged into a relaunched and redesigned bilaterals.org website in 2009. In this way, knowledge, research, strategy, and action in these struggles was documented and disseminated, enhancing connections between them.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Organize! by Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, Eric Shragge. Copyright © 2012 Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, and Eric Shragge. Excerpted by permission of PM Press.
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