Toward social movement activist research

Abstract

In this article, we grapple with possibilities and dilemmas of activist scholarship in the struggle for education justice and political power. As activists and scholars, our social movement praxis seeks to produce knowledge that shifts the dominant neoliberal policy discourse, exposes racism inherent in neoliberal education policies, and supports education justice struggles. Although our work is centered in Chicago, a focus of contestation over neoliberal education policy and the right to the city, we believe this work is relevant to other US and international contexts facing similar reforms. We discuss the value of multiple forms of activist scholarship, describe the Chicago context and the principles that guide our social movement praxis, and raise dilemmas we wrestle with. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of activist research in this historical moment of global capitalist crisis, austerity politics, racist and anti-immigrant attacks in conjuncture with social movements reaching for new humane, democratic, and egalitarian social alternatives.