Activated: Decentering activism in and with academia

Abstract

Who is an activist? With the advent of activism-related scholarship in HCI and CSCW, the current challenge involves thinking about what activism is, who an activist is, and the opportunities and limitations of activism. Recently, researchers in academia and industry, such as Timnit Gebru, demonstrate a commitment to stay activated for the structural changes we need, for example, diverse and inclusive scholarship, to address overlapping problems, e.g., sexism, racism, and tokenism. Additionally, there is a continuing dominance of Western, formally educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) perspectives. Countering this requires collective efforts in citational justice and decolonial computing, among others. But such complex issues do not yet cover the inner conflicts that we face, such as mental health struggles while dismantling the prejudices stemming from the ivory tower, locating our privileges as academics while traversing less privileged locales of research sites, or the dilemmas on whether we are doing enough to fulfill our responsibilities to the people who have trusted us enough to work with us in the face of "publish or perish"culture. This workshop explores what activism means within the CSCW community and how we can remain activated while harboring doubts and hopes in calling ourselves "activists".