Aziz Choudry - Böcker

The dynamics, politics, and richness of knowledge production in social movements and social activist contexts are often overlooked. This book contends that some of the most radical critiques and understandings about dominant ideologies and power structures, and visions of social change, have emerged from those spaces.

How do educators and activists in today’s struggles for change use historical materials from earlier periods of organizing for political education? How do they create and engage with independent and often informal archives and debates? How do they ultimately connect this historical knowledge with contemporary struggles?Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements aims to advance the understanding of relationships between learning, knowledge production, history and social change. In four sections, this unique collection explores: • Engagement with activist/movement archives• Learning and teaching militant histories• Lessons from liberatory and anti-imperialist struggles• Learning from student, youth and education strugglesSix chapters foreground insights from the breadth and diversity of South Africa’s rich progressive social movements; while others explore connections between ideas and practices of historical and contemporary struggles in other parts of the world including Argentina, Iran, Britain, Palestine, and the US. Besides its great relevance to scholars and students of Education, Sociology, and History, this innovative title will be of particular interest to adult educators, labour educators, archivists, community workers and others concerned with education for social change.

This book offers a vast range of grassroots perspectives on global migrant labour organisation in the twenty-first century. From workers' organisations in South African migrant worker resistance in the Gulf, from forest workers in the Czech Republic to domestic workers' structures in Hong Kong, this book brings together a wealth of lived experiences and hidden struggles for the first time.Highlighting the changing nature of frontline struggles against exploitation, Just Work? shows that migrant workers are finding new and innovative ways of resisting neoliberal immigration measures as they are forced to fight against the precarious nature of jobs from both within and outside of traditional forms of labour organisations. With contributions from scholars and activists from around the world engaged in this resistance, this will be an accessible collection based on grassroots experiences, placed in a political economy framework. The full list of regions explored are: South Africa, Latin America, Philippines, the Gulf Arab States, North America, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan, London, Nigeria, New Zealand, Canada and Switzerland.

The use of secret police, security agencies and informers to spy on, disrupt and undermine opposition to the dominant political and economic order has a long history. This book reflects on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervades the lives of activists, organisations and movements that are labelled as 'threats to national security'.Activists and scholars from the UK, South Africa, Canada, the US, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand expose disturbing stories of political policing to question what lies beneath state surveillance.Problematising the social amnesia that exists within progressive political networks and supposed liberal democracies, Activists and the Surveillance State shows that ultimately, movements can learn from their own repression, developing a critical and complex understanding of the nature of states, capital and democracy today that can inform the struggles of tomorrow.

The use of secret police, security agencies and informers to spy on, disrupt and undermine opposition to the dominant political and economic order has a long history. This book reflects on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervades the lives of activists, organisations and movements that are labelled as 'threats to national security'.Activists and scholars from the UK, South Africa, Canada, the US, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand expose disturbing stories of political policing to question what lies beneath state surveillance.Problematising the social amnesia that exists within progressive political networks and supposed liberal democracies, Activists and the Surveillance State shows that ultimately, movements can learn from their own repression, developing a critical and complex understanding of the nature of states, capital and democracy today that can inform the struggles of tomorrow.

Higher education has long been contested terrain. From student movements to staff unions, the fight for accessible, critical and quality public education has turned university campuses globally into sites of struggle.Whether calling for the decommodification or the decolonisation of education, many of these struggles have attempted to draw on (and in turn, resonate with) longer histories of popular resistance, broader social movements and radical visions of a fairer world. In this critical collection, Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally and a host of international contributors bring grounded, analytical accounts of diverse struggles relating to higher education into conversation with each other.Featuring contributions written by students and staff members on the frontline of struggles from 12 different countries, including Canada, Chile, France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the USA, the book asks what can be learned from these movements' strategies, demands and visions.

Higher education has long been contested terrain. From student movements to staff unions, the fight for accessible, critical and quality public education has turned university campuses globally into sites of struggle.Whether calling for the decommodification or the decolonisation of education, many of these struggles have attempted to draw on (and in turn, resonate with) longer histories of popular resistance, broader social movements and radical visions of a fairer world. In this critical collection, Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally and a host of international contributors bring grounded, analytical accounts of diverse struggles relating to higher education into conversation with each other.Featuring contributions written by students and staff members on the frontline of struggles from 12 different countries, including Canada, Chile, France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the USA, the book asks what can be learned from these movements' strategies, demands and visions.

The dynamics, politics, and richness of knowledge production in social movements and social activist contexts are often overlooked. This book contends that some of the most radical critiques and understandings about dominant ideologies and power structures, and visions of social change, have emerged from those spaces.

How do educators and activists in today’s struggles for change use historical materials from earlier periods of organizing for political education? How do they create and engage with independent and often informal archives and debates? How do they ultimately connect this historical knowledge with contemporary struggles?Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements aims to advance the understanding of relationships between learning, knowledge production, history and social change. In four sections, this unique collection explores: • Engagement with activist/movement archives• Learning and teaching militant histories• Lessons from liberatory and anti-imperialist struggles• Learning from student, youth and education strugglesSix chapters foreground insights from the breadth and diversity of South Africa’s rich progressive social movements; while others explore connections between ideas and practices of historical and contemporary struggles in other parts of the world including Argentina, Iran, Britain, Palestine, and the US. Besides its great relevance to scholars and students of Education, Sociology, and History, this innovative title will be of particular interest to adult educators, labour educators, archivists, community workers and others concerned with education for social change.

The dynamics, politics, and richness of knowledge production in social movements and social activist contexts are often overlooked. This book contends that some of the most radical critiques and understandings about dominant ideologies and power structures, and visions of social change, have emerged from those spaces.

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. Combining experiential knowledge from his own activism and a variety of social movements, Choudry suggests that such organizations are best understood if we engage with the learning, knowledge, debates, and theorizing that goes on within them. Drawing on Marxist, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial perspectives on knowledge and power, the book highlights how activists and organizers learn through doing, and fills the gap between social movement practice as it occurs on the ground, critical adult education scholarship, and social movement theorizing. 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 and immigrant worker struggles in Canada, and the Quebec student strike. The result is a book that carves out a new space for intellectual life in activist practice.

Examining immigration within an international context, this discussion explores the complex issues surrounding immigrant workers. Based on the collaboration between a group of university-affiliated researchers and community organizations, this detailed study explores the policies regarding immigrants and presents an account of an advocacy group constantly striving to improve their rights. Documenting actual experiences in a variety of workplaces, this is a valuable guide to fighting against injustice without jeopardizing the status of international employees.