Social Movement Knowledge Production

Abstract

Social movements and social, political, and environmental justice activism are important sites of knowledge production. This may include ideas, insights, and visions produced by people collectively working for social, economic, and political change and reflecting on their experiences and what has preceded them. This is often knowledge about systems of power and exploitation developed as people find themselves in confrontation with states and capital. However, the forms and significance of this knowledge production are often overlooked by social movement scholars and even activists themselves. Focusing on the intellectual work that takes place in struggles for social and political justice, and drawing from engaged scholarship and a range of movements and activist contexts, this chapter discusses the processes, possibilities, and tensions of social movement knowledge production for providing tools for organizing and critical analysis. It discusses the relationship between learning, action, and knowledge production; research in social movements and political activism; the production and use of historical knowledge as a tool for organizing; and popular cultural/artistic work that takes place within activism.