In this article, we critically reflect on the production and measurement of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ both in social movements and social movement research. We do so by focusing on the Radical ...Imagination Project, an experiment in politically engaged, ethnographically grounded social movement research we have sustained in Halifax, Nova Scotia since 2010. We discuss our methodological strategy of ‘convocation,’ distinguishing it from other social movement research approaches, and reflect on the difficulties inherent in practicing these methods within the austere realities and pressures of the neoliberal university. We explore the ways in which the particular complexities of the fraught field and habitus of the would-be academicactivist might be critically assessed and best mobilized to assist in the reproduction of movements, without also unduly reproducing the neoliberal university or its architectures of privilege and power.
Convoking the Radical Imagination Khasnabish, Alex; Haiven, Max
Cultural studies, critical methodologies,
10/2012, Letnik:
12, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article reflects critically on “The Radial Imagination: A Research Project About Movements, Social Change, and the Future,” an engaged social movement research project conducted with ...self-identified “radical” activists in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In so doing, the authors explore a research strategy that seeks not merely to observe the radical imagination—the ability to envision and work toward better futures—but to convoke it: to mobilize the singular location of academic inquiry to create a research environment within which the radical imagination can be better understood. Through a critical examination of the project’s theoretical architecture and methodological framework the authors investigate the promises, possibilities, and difficulties implicated in critical social movement research carried out through a strategy of convocation, contrasting it with more conventional approaches to social movement research.
This article addresses the role of imagination in social work education, practice, and research. Following a brief discussion of terms, the author attempts to identify the various contributions of ...human imagination to social change processes. The second part presents the argument that the cultural structure known as Social Darwinism significantly curtails the abilities of people holding (or held within) these patterns of thinking to imagine. The third section discusses the ways in which historical key figures, events, and alternative stories can be used to stimulate radical imagination in social work education, research, and practice.
Against a backdrop of austerity, securitization, and the rampant enclosure of public spaces and democratic processes including the university and scholarship, this article critically explores what ...prefigurative engaged research – research capable of not simply documenting what is but contributing to struggles for social justice and social change – might look like, what it can contribute, and what its limitations are. Beyond familiar calls for a “public” or “applied” social science and drawing on a two-year-long project focused on radical social movements and the radical imagination in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, this article explores what politically-engaged social science research might offer to social justice struggles aiming to construct a more just, democratic, dignified, liberated, and peaceful world.
Abstract
Purpose
To encourage radical social theory in a time dominated by a sense of cultural despair and the futility of social transformation to reimagine the possibilities for innovation inherent ...in such end times. Such a time of ending can also by its nature serve to inspire new beginnings.
Methodology/approach
To call social theorists as part of their vocation to look for signs of and cultivate such new beginnings.
Findings
Such an inquiry must pry and probe beneath the surface of cultural expression and political movements in a time of cultural repression to deeper aspirations for change and renewal, in particular in this case, to the culture of fantasy in literature, cinema and other complex and often veiled forms of expression.
Practical implications
To offer ways for theorists and teachers to begin exploring and encouraging wherever possible the release of the transformative imagination. The social implications involve the reanimation and rekindling of a radical social imagination: by generating dialogue and new ways of thinking it serves as one of the precursors of genuine social movements for change and specifically today for conceptualizing a post-industrial, post-liberal society.
Originality/value
As discussed directly, this essay is original not in asserting the profound role of the political, moral, and utopian imagination in spurring movements for change, but in characterizing this period – one of narrow factualism/literalism, instrumentalism, and pragmatism – as one ripe for such a renewal of the imaginative project.
This article addresses recent theoretical discussion about the state under conditions of globalisation, focusing in particular on recently popular 'world state' theory, as articulated by Martin Shaw ...and Alexander Wendt. It suggests that while world state theory is useful to the extent that it historicises the function of the state, it can be challenged for its uncritical approach to the question of how state power is actually constituted. To make this argument, the article refers first to an emerging Marxist critique that focuses on liberal hypocrisy and the role of imperial violence in the formation of the world state. However, while this approach reveals the elision of many forms of violence in world state theory, it shares world state theory's tendency to avoid exploring the role of more constitutive forms of power. Challenging this view, the article turns to Foucault's theory of governmentality and some recent applications of it to Imperialism, Empire, and the War on Terror. These works speak not only to the importance of governmental reason in determining modes of sovereignty but encourage us to adopt an open-minded attitude towards the sorts of resistances it might provoke.
The absence of a vision ecosophy and / or a manly minded entrepreneurs in the Colombian Caribbean has meant
the consolidation of the paradigm of Every Man for Himself aims to identify the ...characteristics and perspectives
of leadership in business androcratic Colombian Caribbean in times of globalization . Complexity is visible from
under a conceptual understanding workshop is about leadership among businessmen androcratic Colombian Caribbean
and this is without prejudice to the attainment strengthening inclusive or inclusive culture that will lead to
improved living standards for the majority of region.
Artículo Producto de Investigación. La ausencia de una visión ecosofía y/o una mentalidad androcratica en los empresarios
del Caribe colombiano ha significado la consolidación del paradigma del Sálvese quien pueda se propone
determinar las características y perspectivas del liderazgo androcrático en las empresas del Caribe colombiano
en épocas de globalización. Se vislumbra desde la complejidad, bajo un taller que hay comprensión conceptual
sobre el liderazgo androcrático entre los empresarios del Caribe colombiano y ello es óbice para que se logre consolidar
una cultura inclusiva o incluyente que nos conduzca a mejores niveles de vida para las mayorías de la región.
Résumé Cet article traite de la notion de « psyché » telle qu’utilisée par Louis Lavelle et par Cornelius Castoriadis. La clef de voûte de chacune de ces psychologies philosophiques, le moi comme ...« possibilité pure » chez Lavelle et « l’imagination radicale » chez Castoriadis, laisse apercevoir un horizon ontologique fuyant de type heideggérien. Bien que ces deux auteurs traitent du moi en termes postmodernes (Lavelle en précurseur, Castoriadis en théoricien), la seule ressemblance entre les deux, source de toutes les autres ressemblances, c’est que l’un et l’autre sont en réalité des « modernes ».
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