Suchergebnisse

"How social movements learn in struggle, produce knowledge, and provoke public paradigm shifts have become an important focus of critical adult education in our contemporary turbulent times. And yet, African social movements, and their learning are largely absent from this literature. This work, therefore, provides a rare and much needed African contribution to this field. African Social Movement Learning: The Case of the Ada Songor Salt Movement speaks to this gap in the literature, laying out an entry-point to an African-centered account of learning in struggle on the continent. However, this entry-point quickly turns to an in-depth sharing of one particular case of African social movement learning. Based on 9 years of research with the Ada Songor salt movement in Ghana, the book provides a detailed account of learning through defending communal access to West Africa's largest salt yielding lagoon in the face of local, national and global efforts to expropriate this resource. The book shares the knowledge production of the movement, as well as the ways in which the movement has restoried its struggle to meet new challenges. Songs, tapestries, demonstrations, manifestoes, popular education approaches, and book production all feature in these efforts"--

While participatory research methods, especially participatory action research, are a recognized approach to the study of social movement learning, the way in which this participatory relationship is framed and designed has deep implications on the collaborative nature of the research. Studies overly framed and designed by academics, as opposed to collectively designed with movements, run the risk of mining movements for information as opposed to contributing to their goals and learning. This paper describes a co-owned design process, based on established relationships, with a social movement in Ghana where being based in movement-articulations helps the research move with the movement. This co-owned process sets the stage for the emergence of movement embedded knowledge democracy.

International volunteering and experiential learning programs provide important opportunities for personal and academic growth for students, universities and communities, however, they also have the potential of reinforcing neocolonial frameworks of power and privilege. Furthermore, these programs occur more and more in an academic context where short-term experiences are promoted, and long-term programs abandoned in the wake of neoliberal university policies. This paper is a reflection on the politics, possibilities and challenges of starting a new experiential learning endeavor through the Service Learning Program at St. Francis Xavier (StFX) University from a critical standpoint by exploring tensions and power dynamics of such programs whilst working from a decolonizing and solidarity-based pedagogy of development.

Struggles for environmental justice involve communities mobilising against powerful forces which advocate 'development', driven increasingly by neoliberal imperatives. In doing so, communities face questions about their alliances with other groups, working with outsiders and issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender, worker/community and settler/indigenous relationships. Written by a wide range of international scholars and activists, contributors explore these dynamics and the opportunities for agency and solidarity. They critique the practice of community development professionals, academics, trade union organisers, social movements and activists and inform those engaged in the pursuit of justice as community, development and environment interact