Santos, A.C. 2012. Disclosed and willing: epistemological and ethical aspects of political engagement, in Social Movement Studies, 11(2) (special issue Ethics of Research on Activism), pp. 1-14. (original) (raw)

Engaged Queer Scholarship: Probing a New Paradigm of Knowledge Creation

Abstract: This paper features a reflexive iteration of engaged scholarship regarding the Queer Liberation Theory Project, a community-based research study with social justice group Queer Ontario involving academics, activists and artists, a number of whom are cross affiliated. We explore tensions and challenges in developing and creating knowledge via an engaged scholarship process that must cross reference the sensitivities of respecting historical philosophical perspectives of a social movement with today’s academic theories. Addressed are the challenges of developing new knowledge (a theory) that counters a powerful, neoliberal, mainstreamed segment of today’s LGBT movements, with implications for society at large. The layered issues associated with engaged scholarship are disentangled including vulnerability to neoliberalism, navigating competing perspectives and how academics/activists/artists understand and engage in knowledge creation. Résumé: Cet article propose une itération réflexive d’érudition engagée en ce qui concerne le Queer Liberation Theory Project, une étude de recherche communautaire avec le groupe de justice sociale Queer Ontario impliquant des universitaires, des militants et des artistes, dont un certain nombre ont de multiples affiliations organisationnelles. Nous explorons les tensions et les difficultés liées au développement et à la création de connaissances par le biais d'un processus d'érudition engagée, lequel doit faire le recoupement des sensibilités entourant le respect pour les perspectives philosophiques historiques d'un mouvement social avec les théories académiques d'aujourd'hui. Nous abordons les défis liés au développement de nouvelles connaissances (une théorie) qui s'opposent à un puissant segment néolibéral intégré du mouvement LGBT d'aujourd'hui, avec des implications pour la société en général. Les problèmes associés à l’érudition engagée sont démêlés, y compris la vulnérabilité au néolibéralisme, la navigation de points de vue divergents et comment les universitaires / militants / artistes comprennent et participent à la création de connaissances. French translation by Mathieu Marcil

Doing and Feeling Research in Public: Queer Organizing for Public Education and Justice

Grounded in activism – fighting the implementation of Department of Defense-run schools in a public schools system; organizing to fight the largest national teacher education accreditation agency’s removal of sexual orientation and social justice from its accreditation standards; and protesting a state’s decision to hold a public meeting for teacher educators at a private Christian college that ‘condemns’ homosexuality – this article highlights how education is being re-formed through appeals to ‘private choice’ and at the same time select public issues are devalued by being called private and outside the bounds of normative ‘professional’ attention. This reframing, a hallmark of contemporary neoliberalism, has specific ramifications for queers, as analysis of these cases indicate. Using collaborative participatory research that attends to emotions, the authors argue that feelings are political and problematizing, and useful – they can trigger tactics. With the goal of offering examples of tactics tried, the paper archives evidence – original texts including pledges, letters, flyers, and emails – of queer organizing in education.

Activist Research as a Methodological Toolbox to Advance Public Sociology

2023

Sociologists-and social scientists more broadly-have often resorted to 'public sociology' and 'activist research' (AvR) with the aim of producing useful knowledge for the common good and also supporting emancipatory social movements and progressive policies. I define AvR here as collective processes of cooperation between academic researchers and non-academics in order to benefit the latter. This approach bridges theory and practice in ways that enhance the consistency and legitimacy of sociology as an engaged science. Recent debates on public sociology, however, have overlooked the central role of AvR. To reverse this relative omission, I suggest a clear typology of AvR processes and practices that have been used and hold the potential to advance public sociology. I also contend that in contrast to views of AvR as a clearly demarcated method, it encompasses multiple research, collaborative and action techniques so that it may be better conceived of as a 'methodological toolbox'.

Introduction Reimagining research activism and rights at the intersections of sexuality health and social justice

Global Public Health, 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic inaugurated a new global order of public life and health marked by death, despair and alienation. As a crisis of a global scale, it made the task of (re)imagination simultaneously necessary and extremely difficult. It is this double bind of the difficulty and imminence of imagination that motivates the curation of this special issue. In this introduction, we map the connections between the theme of this volume and the key ideas that constitute its varied contributions, which we organised under three broad mobilising ideas: Rights and Resilience; Sexuality, Health and Justice; and Politics of Knowledge Production and Collaborations. Contributions cover myriad issues, engage in methodological innovations and play with diverse genres. Alongside more traditional academic writings, there are community-based research papers, activist conversations, visual essays, reflective pieces and interviews. The geographical span of the contributions brings insights from around the world and the number of topics covered in this issue are equally vast including, among others, mental health, disability, environment, sex work, violence, queerness, LGBTQ+ experiences, love and anger. The aim of this special issue, then, is to challenge the Manichean distinctions that are often drawn between research and activism, and by extension, between theory and practice.

Towards a feminist–queer alliance: a paradigmatic shift in the research process

Building on the advances made by feminist reconsiderations of methods, methodology and epistemology, this paper calls for an alliance between feminist social science and the emerging field of queer theory. By challenging traditional scientific approaches to research on sexual minority groups, a distinctly 'queer' approach is advocated that adopts a reflexive position on subjectivity and sexuality. While essentialist approaches privilege gay/lesbian, man/woman, and object/subject, this approach advances a framework of critical sexualities that moves social science into an arena of inclusivity and multiple identities, rather than reductionistic categorical thought. The implications are clear: a rethinking of identity categories that transcend stagnant dualisms. Objectivity is a term given to mean men's subjectivity. (Adrienne Rich) To understand the current reality(ies) and complexities of these postmodern times, the social sciences must continue to move with the changes made possible by a feminist rethinking of methods, methodologies, and epistemologies, so as to recreate and ground our understandings of how individuals make sense of their social worlds. We argue in this paper that the traditional, distinctly modern, social scientific approaches that adhere to objectivity, detachment and clear demarcations of the boundaries between researcher–researched, are inadequate to explore identity formations, such as sexualities, ethnicities, nationalities, genders and their myriad expressions that exemplify social life in these ever changing and uncertain times.