Sara Motta
THE PEDAGOGICAL
PRACTICES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Call for Papers Volume 6 Issue 1 (May 2014)
Interface: A journal for and about Social Movements
The pedagogical
practices of social movements
Sara C Motta and Ana Margarida Esteves
In this special issue, we aim to deepen conceptualisations,
analysis and practices of critical and radical pedagogies in our struggles for
transformation. We seek to explore the pedagogical practices of movements by
expanding our understanding of knowledge and how movements learn beyond solely
a focus on the cognitive to the ethical, spiritual, embodied and affective.
Our aim is to systematize and document these practices and
to provide conceptual, methodological and practical resources for activists,
community educators and movement scholars alike. We are really keen to receive
creative pieces including longer articles, dialogues, critical reflections on
practice/particular projects etc and pieces that use visual art, photography, and
video as means of critical reflection.
The May 2014 issue of the open-access, online, copyleft
academic/activist journal Interface: a
Journal for and about Social Movements (http://www.interfacejournal.net/)
invites contributions on the theme of The Pedagogical Practices of Social
Movements.
The pedagogical, understood as knowledge practices and
learning processes, often takes a pivotal role in the emergence, development
and sustainability of social movements and community struggles. In this issue
of Interface we seek to explore the pedagogical practices of movements by
expanding our understanding of knowledge and how movements learn beyond solely
a focus on the cognitive to the ethical, spiritual, embodied and affective. Our
aim is to systematize and document these practices and to provide conceptual,
methodological and practical resources for activists, community educators and
movement scholars alike.
Pedagogical practices can constitute important elements in
the process of unlearning dominant subjectivities, social relationships, and
ways of constituting the world and learning new ones. They can be central in
the ‘how’ of movement construction and community building in spaces such as
workshops, teach-ins, and through popular education. They can contribute to the
building of sustainable and effective social movements through music,
storytelling, ritual or through processes that surround strategy building, the
sharing of experiences or simply friendship. They can help activists and
organizers to learn through their participation in counter-hegemonic,
grassroots initiatives such as community banks, local currencies and workers
cooperatives. They can also be important aspects of movement relevant research.
In this special issue of Interface
we ask the broad question, ‘What role do pedagogical practices have in the
praxis of social movements and their struggle for political change and social
transformation?’ The practices we would like to explore include formal
methodologies such as Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry (OSDE), participatory
action research, as well as methodologies of popular and community education
inspired by feminist, Freirean, post-colonial and Gramscian approaches, among
others, but also the more informal pedagogical practices which remain
under-conceptualized and theorized and which include the role of the affective,
the embodied (the body and earth for example) and the spiritual.
However, we also understand the politics and dynamics of
movement and community education and learning to be contested terrain. We see
how mainstream institutions and actors have co-opted the language and methods
of popular education and movement methodologies. These processes of co-optation
often neutralize their radical and political potential. We also understand that
social movements often end up reproducing, through these practices,
inequalities based on factors such as class, gender, race/ethnicity,
educational level, expertise and role within movement organizations. Therefore,
we would be very interested in receiving contributions based on “insider”
knowledge about power dynamics behind knowledge production and learning within
social movements (i.e. relationship between experts and non-experts, leaders
and other members, impact of gender, class, race, educational level and
expertise), and how such power dynamics determine whose "voices" end
up being represented in the process and outcome of knowledge leaders and other
members, impact of gender, class, race, educational level and expertise), and
how such power dynamics determine whose "voices" end up being
represented in the process and outcome of knowledge production and learning,
and whose voices end up being silenced.
Among the more specific questions we would like to address
in the issue are:
What
learning processes and knowledge practices are developed by movements?
What is
the role of formal methodologies and pedagogies in movement praxis?
What is
the role of informal pedagogies of everyday practice in the building of
movements, the development of their political projects and fostering their
sustainability and effectiveness?
What is
the role of the affective, embodied and spiritual in learning processes?
What is
the role of ethics in movement learning?
What is
the role of counter-hegemonic economic practices, such as those classified as
“Solidarity Economy”, in learning processes within social movements?
In what
way do activist researchers contribute to the learning of movements?
What
politics of knowledge underlie the politics of social movements?
Do the
processes of ‘alternative’ education within social movements and collective
struggles transform, disrupt or replicate hegemonic social relations?
What
pedagogical and political insights can be gleaned from exploring education for
mobilization and social change?
Submissions should contribute to the journal’s mission as a
tool to help our movements learn from each other’s struggles, by developing
analyses from specific movement processes and experiences that can be
translated into a form useful for other movements.
In this context, we welcome contributions by movement
participants and academics who are developing movement-relevant theory and
research. Our goal is to include material that can be used in a range of ways
by movements — in terms of its content, its language, its purpose and its form.
We thus seek work in a range of different formats, such as conventional
(refereed) articles, review essays, facilitated discussions and interviews,
action notes, teaching notes, key documents and analysis, book reviews — and
beyond. Both activist and academic peers review research contributions, and other
material is sympathetically edited by peers. The editorial process generally is
geared towards assisting authors to find ways of expressing their
understanding, so that we all can be heard across geographical, social and
political distances.
We can accept material in Afrikaans, Arabic, Catalan,
Croatian, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian,
Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish,
Turkish and Zulu.
Deadline and Contact Details
The deadline for initial submissions to this issue, to be
published May 1, 2014, is November 1,
2013. For details of how to submit to Interface, please see the “Guidelines
for contributors” on our website. All manuscripts, whether on the special theme
or other topics, should be sent to the appropriate regional editor, listed on
our contacts page. Submission templates are available online via the guidelines
page and should be used to ensure correct formatting.
**END**
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