Learning Activism

What do activists know? Learning Activism is designed to encourage a deeper engagement with the intellectual life of activists who organize for social, political, and ecological justice. Drawing on his own personal experiences in activism, and from a variety of social movements, Choudry suggests that these movements can best be understood if we engage with the learning, knowledge, debates, and theorizing that goes on within them. Examples include anti-colonial currents within global justice organizing in the Asia-Pacific, activist research and education in social movements and people's organizations in the Philippines, migrant worker struggles in Canada, and the Quebec student strike. This accessible and original book explains the power of the worldviews generated through projects of change, as well as the dynamics of learning processes and research within social movements. It fills the gap between social movement practice as it occurs on the ground and social movement theorizing. Drawing on Marxist, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial perspectives on knowledge and power, it highlights how activists and organizers learn through doing. It addresses theoretical questions in ways relevant to organizers, activists, students, and scholars, carving out a new space for intellectual life in activist practice.