CFP: "How we walk the talk: Action research and activist pedagogy; Past, present, and future"

[Sheryl-Ann Simpson]

Hope everyone is having a great start to the semester.
Just in case anyone was thinking about going to the AAG meeting in the spring, I thought this call might be of interest.
Cheers
Sheryl-Ann

 

Subject: CFP: "How we walk the talk: Action research and activist pedagogy; Past, present, and future"

Apologies for Cross Postings--Please circulate to anyone who might be interested.

Call for Participation

Themed Session(s):
How we walk the talk: Action research and activist pedagogy; Past, present, and future

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
9-13 April 2012 Los Angeles, CA

Co-Organizers
Christian Anderson, University of Washington-Bothell
Amanda Huron, University of the District of Columbia

In ways that both pre-date and exceed any formal disciplinarity, the development of geographic thought has long taken place in relation to countless active engagements with actually existing social, political, and environmental struggles. Foundational geographically inclined social thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus were not only intellectuals and researchers, but also activists and revolutionaries. “Radical” geographical ideas that are now widely acknowledged—even institutional in some cases—emerged in part through engagements such as the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute of the late 1960s and early 1970s, wherein university-based geographers collaborated intensively with community intellectuals and activists to produce a kind of knowledge that destabilized and decentered many of the ideas about race, inequality, and objectivity that were entrenched in the academic establishment at that time (see Bunge 1971, Horvath 1971, and Heyman 2007). The sometimes messy outcomes where action and activism meet research have continuously and crucially figured into the development of ever more nuanced radical and critical geographical approaches to knowledge production since, pushing the boundaries of our intellectual engagements with difference, subjectivity, collaboration, and political commitment (e.g., see Cahill et al. 2007, Gibson-Graham 2006, Gilmore 2007, Pickerill and Chatterton 2006, Pulido et al. 2012).

We invite participants to stage a productive conversation about such engaged research and knowledge production. In particular we welcome participants who would be willing to report on and discus current action research projects, activist solidarities, and related pedagogical initiatives towards the goal of bridging generations and approaches, finding common cause, and assembling a set of resources that could be useful in the continuation and proliferation of action research and activist modes of knowledge production in the future. We do not imagine this as a set of discrete and detached papers or formal presentations so much as an effort to create a space for a generative, organic conversation based on issues and ideas that different situated researchers and activist educators are willing to bring to the table. As such, the exact format of the sessions will depend on the number and interests of potential participants. Our hope is that it might be possible to stage sessions which actually enact, in their own form and organization, the collaborative principles that have been developed in and through the research and pedagogical practices we aim to discuss.

Potential Themes:
•       Reports from the field: What are we up to in terms of activist action research, knowledge production, and pedagogy?
•       What are the projects that we should or could be doing?
•       What kinds of common causes and concerns might we see emerging from the scrum?
•       How can we share resources and connect disparate struggles?
•       What are the intellectual/theoretical ramifications of this work in the context of contemporary debates around the common, precarity, and other potentially related concepts?
•       How can we find wiggle room for radical teaching in and through “service learning” frameworks?
•       How could we put our heads together to think of ways that we might bring action research into different classroom settings?

Please send a brief statement of interest describing your work and your ideal of participation to cande...@uwb.edu or amanda...@gmail.com by October 17th.

References:

Bunge W (1971) Fitzgerald. Geography of a Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman

Cahill C, Farhana S and Pain R (2007) Participatory ethics: politics, practices, institutions. ACME 6, 3

Gibson-Graham JK (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Gilmore RW (2007) Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University
of California Press

Heyman R (2007) ‘Who’s going to man the factories and be the sexual slaves if we all get PhDs?’ Democratizing knowledge production, pedagogy, and the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute. Antipode 39: 99–120.

Horvath R (1971) The “Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute” experience.
Antipode 1:73–85

Pickerill J & Chatterton P (2006), ‘Notes towards autonomous geographies: creation, resistance and self-management as survival tactics’ Progress in Human Geography 30: 6 730-746

Pulido L, Barraclough L and Cheng W (2012) A People's Guide to Los Angeles. University of California Press