Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/19654
Title: "We do not need outsiders to study us". Reflections on activism and social movement research
Authors: Tarlau, Rebecca
Keywords: Movimento dos Trabalhadores sem Terra (Brazil)
Political activists -- Brazil
Social movements -- Brazil
Social movements -- Research
Issue Date: 2014
Publisher: Postcolonial Directions in Education
Citation: Tarlau, R. (2014). "We do not need outsiders to study us". Reflections on activism and social movement research. Postcolonial Directions in Education, 3(1), 63-87.
Abstract: In this article I analyze the tensions and difficulties that activist-scholars face in developing collaborative and critical social movement research. Through a series of reflections on my own trajectory into the academy and seventeen months of field research with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, I cautiously offer some ways forward for social movement researchers. Contextualizing these reflections in the rich literature on the ethics of social movement research, I argue that activist-scholars should attempt to design research questions that generate movement-relevant theory, leverage our (limited) influence to study powerful actors, move beyond dichotomous understandings of the “researcher” and the “research subject,” and be continually self-reflective about the unresolvable contradictions that come with being an activist-scholar. I end the article by suggesting that no matter how movement-relevant or collaborative our scholarship, this does not replace the “action” part of the action-theory praxis.
Description: Abstract in Portuguese by Rebecca Tarlau included.
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/19654
ISSN: 2304-5388
Appears in Collections:PDE, Volume 3, No. 1
PDE, Volume 3, No. 1



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