Chapter 4 Research from the Ground Up Reflections on Activist Research Practice and Political Activist Ethnography

Expertise? Professionalism and Professionalization of Research

Kinsman (2006) is right to challenge the separation of social movement life from research and binaries of theory versus practice and researcher versus activist constructed through academic disciplines, professionalization, and institutionalization, and this view was echoed in the reflections of many of those whom I interviewed. A frequent assumption in scholarship on activist research, research for social change, and community-based research, including in some strands of IE, is that university researchers with professionalized, specialist academic training must conduct it. Despite considerable academic focus on the involvement of scholars in forms of popular/community education, activist research, academic activism, engaged scholarship, and research partnerships, relatively little work documents, explicates, or theorizes the actual research practices of activist researchers in concrete locations outside of the academy in activist groups, social movements, and some NGOs. This is consistent with the ways in which the intellectual work, knowledge production, learning, and forms of investigation/research undertaken within activism are sometimes overlooked or unrecognized in activist movements themselves, in the academic studies of activist movements, and in the scholarship of academic researchers who work with activist movements. Nonetheless, these practices and relations in movements are inextricably linked to the activities of a wide spectrum of social and political action. Perhaps, then, these fabricated separations between roles are less about an actual division of labour between “ideas people” and “movement activists” but rather reflect the alienation of many ordinary people from their intellectual labour and from the ideas and visions produced in collective action. Is knowledge only valued if people with qualifications or professional status produce it in certain institutional settings? We might ask this question of social movements and other forms of activism just as we pose it to academia. While being cautious about “common-sense theorizing,” we cannot just assume people do not know anything and need a research professional to enlighten them.

Professionalization is a concern that is taken up by institutional and political activist ethnographers (D. Smith 1987; Kinsman 1997; Campbell and Gregor 2002). For Dorothy Smith (1987, 216–17), “Professionalization uses knowledge to restructure ‘collective noncapitalist forms of organization’ into hierarchical strata, detaching them from the movements they originate in and connecting them to the relations of ruling.” Kinsman (1997, 228) explores how dominant (in this case, the Canadian federal government) discourses define HIV/AIDS as a medical problem and thus privilege “the power and knowledge of the medical profession and its ‘expert’ status.” We should examine not only professionalization as it applies to government policies and the workings of international financial and economic institutions but also the ways in which certain activities, such as research, and certain people and classes of people (e.g., academics, trade lawyers, and economists working within or consulting for NGOs) are constructed as “experts” not only through academic scholarship but within some NGOs and social movement networks (Choudry 2008, 2010, 2015). By an exploration of actual NGO and activist practices, we must ask how, why, and by whom certain kinds of knowing are organized in these networks—and for what purpose. These questions are important if we want to understand how knowledge is useful or not to activist movements (or moves within them) and how knowledge also serves to regulate and suppress what is possible within activist contexts. As Kinsman (1997, 228) notes, professional relations are “power/knowledge relations of exclusion” and are tied to the social organization of class, gender, and race. Campbell and Gregor (2002, 70) argue that professional discourse contributes “a language and authorized practices for conducting the work of an institution [and] provides a framing of the way work is thought about and undertaken.”

While, as argued elsewhere (Choudry 2008; Hussey 2012), social movements and activist groups do not somehow exist outside of ruling relations, nonetheless, the organizations and movements on which I have focused are, in general, considerably smaller, less well-resourced, and less professionalized than the transnational alternative policy groups that William Carroll (2013) discusses and are drawn from outside of this rather elite layer of policy research organizations that are often arguably disconnected from social movements. The profiles of those interviewed for this chapter within these movements and the NGOs that specialize in research as a major activity—including educational backgrounds—varied. While some had undergraduate degrees, a smaller number had graduate degrees, and others had neither, few had undertaken what would generally be conceived as formal academic training in research. Most contended that they learned significantly through doing research for and in organizing and that any formal academic training was of limited value to them in their work. Drawing from my own long-standing relationships in social movement and activist networks, to put it in institutional and PAE terms, my research explicitly investigated the practices—the social organization—of activist knowledge production from the standpoints of people in smaller organizations closer to grassroots movements rather than the larger professionalized NGO spaces.

In terms of the organizational/movement contexts in which these activist researchers work, broadly speaking, those organizations with a stronger “research” identity conduct internal research training and train other social movement / NGO activists on data collection, analysis, and dissemination. Yet for organizers in social movements in the Philippines, for example, social research and class analysis are key first steps in effective organizing at the grassroots. Activist research practices are far from homogeneous and exist across a continuum—from work conducted by research-focused organizations that is readily identifiable as “research” to those everyday, less obvious forms of on-the-ground research done while organizing and mobilizing.

I spoke with PAMALAKAYA (Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas / National Federation of Small Fisherfolk Organizations in the Philippines), a mass movement organization that claims over eighty thousand individual members and forty-three provincial chapters (PAMALAKAYA, n.d.). A PAMALAKAYA researcher shared that the process of movement research must happen

in the company of organizing, because you cannot talk to those small fisherfolk if they’re not organized. For a scientific collation of the data we need to have an organization for a specific and holistic approach on all of the data coming in, what’s happening with them through the economic status, and regarding also the environmental impact from those years up to the present and how this is done by the supplement or the new policy that the government wanted to change specifically in [the] Laguna area, so our research work [involves] accompanying and organizing. (Interview, December 2012)3

Thus, for PAMALAKAYA, the work of organizing at the grassroots is key to the production and collection of information and experiences necessary to inform further mobilization, strategy, and pressure for change.

In a similar vein, for Arnold Padilla—who, at the time of our interview, was the public information officer and researcher for the umbrella alliance of mass movement people’s organizations in the Philippines national democratic left, BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan / New Patriotic Alliance)—social investigation by organizers at the grassroots is crucial for research, education, and organizing. He said, “That is the first step actually when you’re involved in the organizations of BAYAN that are doing community organizing work.” Organizers must understand the community by identifying relationships within the community and people’s class background and source of livelihood

because it guides them in their organizing work, it guides them in terms of which people to approach and what issues are most prominent that affect the people and will mobilize them to action. So, the mass movement and its growth and its strength depends on effective organizing and effective organizing is impossible without social investigation because it gives you the guide—when conducted properly and effectively—it gives you vital information that will help you in your organizing work. (Interview, December 2012)

This kind of continuous, mutually constitutive process of research and organizing blurs the boundaries of those often categorized as organizers and researchers and carries into all phases of the cycle of such activist research. Thus, there is a spectrum of what research does, where it takes place, and indeed what is understood by or recognized as research.

Reflections on Research Processes

While many of those I interviewed noted differences between their approach to research and approaches taken in academic inquiry, theoretical frameworks and methodology still clearly mattered to them. These researchers articulated these features of their research processes in different ways, sometimes making explicit reference to established categories of analysis and theoretical traditions, sometimes in language grounded more in practice (see Choudry 2014 and 2015 for a more extended discussion). Some offered critiques of both academic and dominant NGO research approaches that they believed to be disconnected from and of questionable relevance and utility to the communities and sectors of society most impacted by the issues investigated.

At the time of our interview, Kevin Thomas was a researcher with the Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN), a labour and women’s rights organization that supports efforts of workers in supply chains, mainly in the Global South, to win improved wages and working conditions and a better quality of life. Thomas outlined how MSN and local activists, organizations, and unions in the Global South had worked together to contest working conditions and other abuses in the global supply chain. He highlighted the ways in which research strategies are developed out of people’s experiences and the sharing of their knowledge. He explained that

the people we work with on the ground have developed a methodology of how they document cases. They have experience of having done this time and time again—unfortunately, of having to do it time and time again. That’s not a good thing, but it does mean you develop the skills and tools to do it well. You know that if you put forward a case and make allegations about abuses at a particular factory, you’re gonna have to back those up with X, Y, and Z, and that’s where the research has to focus. For MSN, we tend to document the power relationships: where are the points of influence? A lot of local groups know about the local labour tribunals or other local tools that are available, or they know a lot about the local management of the factory, as well as the dynamics of the movement and actors in their own country, but they don’t always know how to link international buyers, northern consumers, or other institutions to that local reality. In many cases those outside links can be a real force to reckon with in a factory because we’re dealing with global supply chains based on decentralized and contracted production. These factories may depend entirely on foreign buyers to give them orders, and therefore those foreign buyers have a lot of sway. We always look into the buying relationships first because buyers have an ability to push the factory in a way that even the local government often doesn’t have. (Interview, April 2013)

Thomas’s description of this example of a strategic and systematic knowledge production and use process—in this case, developed by labour activists through experience and trial and error, as with other examples in this chapter—points to the wealth of intellectual/research work practices that are rarely documented. My research indicates that this intellectual and research work tends to be largely unrecognized because of the undervaluing of knowledge produced within activism and because of a dominant tendency for academic research on social movements to objectify movements in ways that view them more as “raw data” than as sites that produce analysis.

Founded in 1990, with a decentralized structure (offices/staff in Europe, the Americas, and Africa), GRAIN is a small, international organization working to support small farmers and social movements in struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Broadly, its research examines connections between agribusiness and the current global food crisis, food sovereignty, and the role of the industrial food system in land grabbing and creating climate change. At the heart of GRAIN’s research process are relationships and dialogue:

The research process is always ongoing. You are always connected with people that you are going to be working on the issue with and in developing the analysis and bringing in whatever information you see as important. . . . Of course, there is the publication of the research but what is happening all the time throughout that whole process is dialogue with other groups. In this case you might have certain sections you want to check with other people and see if it corresponds with what they say. You might want to ask them to have a box that is part of your publication and you are giving people space for that and then afterwards you are . . . together trying to figure out what are the processes that we need to be a part of . . . what can we do next and what is possible, and then that will probably stimulate other research at a certain point because things will be identified. (Interview, February 2012)

In the examples discussed here, decisions about framing research are shaped and influenced by dialogue and collaboration and ongoing relationships with/in social movements. Those with whom I spoke often emphasized that their research processes depended on built/extended networks and social relations and that these were key parts of the work that could not be separated from what might be commonly called “research outputs.” Many activist/movement researchers make decisions and develop research in dialogue with others based on experiential knowledge and analysis arising from active involvement in and relationships with struggles on the ground.

This is not in any way to suggest that these practices and processes are without tension. Dale McKinley, a researcher/activist with the (now-defunct) Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in South Africa, discussed how taking movement knowledge seriously and a commitment to democracy and participatory process can also necessitate that all aspects of the research be subject to intense scrutiny, vigorous debate, and challenge within a movement, as was the case in the APF. McKinley recalled the process through which APF members conceptualized, carried out, and validated research collectively. This entailed all research, reports, and updates being fed back into the APF’s larger democratic structures for discussion. He likened bringing research into a collective democratic process to internal movement planning and debates about different tactics for a march to confront the authorities:

The entire research project from the very beginning of the conceptualization to each of its stages, went through a democratic debate and discussion and that made it participatory beyond simply the researchers and those participating in the research project to those who were in the organization themselves, this was an organizational project. The participation was of everybody. Every two months we had the coordinating committee, which was ten members of every single organization that belonged to the APF. That’s 150 people, [if] you take fifteen [organizations], two hundred if you take twenty organizations. Sitting in a room, all weekend long discussing these things. When the research came, there were massive fights and debates about “no, now you’re asking the wrong question, why aren’t you doing this . . . ,” and that is participatory, it’s constant feedback, constant shifting of the research project and the way you’re doing [it] as a result of the participation of those in that organization, that was our understanding of participatory research in its fullest organic sense, as opposed to just saying, “we choose ten of you to participate in this research because you’re from there,” which is a more functional relationship. (Interview, December 2012)

In his PAE work, George Smith (2006) suggests that activist researchers derive a wealth of research materials and signposts for exploring the ways that power in our world is socially organized from their participation in political organizing and moments of confrontation. He contends that being interrogated by insiders to a ruling regime, like a crown attorney, brings a researcher into direct contact with the conceptual relevancies and organizing principles of such regimes. Confrontations with the state, then, can be very rich entry points from which to explore the ways that government, domestic and transnational capital, and other extra-local forces socially organize power.

Those engaged in this work make decisions in dialogue with others as well as they can based on experiential knowledge and analysis that emerge from people’s active involvement in the struggles on the ground as they attempt to change their material conditions and overcome exploitation and oppression. Such practices often employ grounded approaches to rigour, knowledge production, and validation of research that differ from the ways in which these notions tend to be viewed through scholarly lenses. I suggest that attending to the actual practices and knowledge produced by activist researchers and the movements that they are in is key to extending our understanding of research for social change.

For all of those with whom I spoke, taking the time to “get the research right” is crucial. If done poorly, better-resourced protagonists and media can easily and publicly discredit it. This in turn can undermine efforts to build a campaign through reaching and mobilizing a broader base of people. BAYAN’s Arnold Padilla shared that

if you do not have solid research, launching a campaign and mobilizing people and getting the attention of the people that you are targeting would be much more difficult because they could easily have dismissed activist groups [like] us as propaganda. But if you are able to back it up with solid research, you’re able to cite experiences and macro-data that can support your advocacy, then they will be forced to engage with you, and you will be able to influence public opinion. (Interview, December 2012)

Such processes of validation and fact-checking are in practice often inseparable from organizing and education. Reflections on doing activist research, as well as research for activism itself, often emerge from collective, collaborative relations and discussions with a wide range of actors. While some activist research targets policymakers and international institutions, the main goal in the cases discussed here has been to support and inform social change through popular organizing. Implicit within this work is an understanding of the importance of building counter-power against domination by the interests of capital and states. The activist research processes described here are embedded in relations of trust with other activists and organizations that develop through constant effort to work together in formal and informal networks and collaborations. These networks are spaces for the ongoing sharing of information and analysis connected to action. They allow for the identification of research that is most relevant to struggles and the communication of that research in ways that are meaningful and useful for movement building. They are invaluable in the production, validation, vetting (or “getting the research right”), application, strategic considerations, and dissemination of the research. But they are also spaces for organizing. As those interviewed noted, the research process itself can be a form of organizing, building, and strengthening communities, movements, and alliances and, in turn, needs an organized grassroots / rank and file to foster and develop research for struggles. This is an ongoing process that informs action and, in turn, continues to be produced and used strategically, drawing upon new knowledge and challenges that arise during confrontations with, for example, transnational corporations, state policies, or impositions by international financial institutions. It is not a process that necessarily ends when research is “written up” and a report or some other document is published. In this sense, there is a way in which building research into political organizing itself serves to counteract how the “conceptual relevancies and organizing principles” of the ruling regime are designed to recognize and discredit knowledge that is produced outside the terms set by those in power. While building broader public support may be one goal, these processes are not based on an assumption or a hope that producing critical research outputs that conform to certain externally organized professional standards will influence policy or otherwise effect change without organizing and building counter-power.

The organizations and movements discussed here are engaged in long-haul struggles, so it should not be surprising that those interviewed emphasized the links between short-term campaign- or crisis-driven research for mobilization and longer-term processes of research for and in the context of strategies and tactics for movement building. This is not to claim that all activist research is “good” or useful research. Indeed, critical appraisal of research is in the interest of struggles (Bevington and Dixon 2005), even if this might not always be well received in movement or activist networks. But one might make the same observation of all research, including academic forms.

Much of the research described here is part of a continuous process, where information and analysis are shared and processed constantly with others—from beginning to end. Some of the most important products of this research may come from email exchanges, meetings, and time spent on picket lines, in affected communities, or in workshops that happen before anything is formally written down. This process strengthens the research, as collaboration brings out more information, deepens the analysis, and connects the research with others working on the issue. In sum, the research process itself is often critical to building networks, long-term relationships, and organizing. It is also critical for enabling the research to have a greater impact, as the groups and individuals involved will be more connected to the work, and there will be more reason for them to use it and then share it with their networks. Such research informs and shapes and is, in turn, informed and shaped by other forms of incremental, informal, and non-formal learning and knowledge production that take place in social movements.

As noted earlier, research practices are frequently constructed in ways that are abstracted from actual material conditions and contradictions, with “research” seen as an activity separated from the material/social world. Applying Colley’s (2012, 99) articulation of dialectical thinking to research, we should critique “the separation of ideas or concepts as abstractions, disembodied from the actual social relations in which they are produced, and disarticulated from the actual social practices in which they are enacted.”

Connecting Political Activist Ethnography with Existing Activist Research Practices

While in my academic writing I am wary of imposing paradigms on practices and/or reading PAE into different activist research work, I think it is useful to continue to bring some of these already existing practices into dialogue with this approach to social research. There has been dialogue and exchanges between university-based political activist ethnographers and activists / activist researchers located outside of the university for some years (Frampton et al. 2006; Choudry and Kuyek 2012).

Gary Kinsman (2006, 135) illustrates how PAE “requires challenging the ‘common-sense’ theorizing that can often be ideological in character—uprooted from actual social practices and organization—put forward in movement circles.” George Smith (1995, 23) writes of a “move away from idealist theorizing and speculation to investigating empirically the everyday world.” Idealist theorizing in “global justice” circles sometimes takes the form of assuming or constructing the diverse range of players in social movements and NGOs as all sharing the same ideals and aspirations. In this practice, certain voices and organizations are privileged over others. Similarly, apparent moves made by governments and international financial and economic institutions toward partnership and consultation with “civil society” must be analyzed by empirical investigation of these institutions’ actual practices, paying close attention to the forms of social organization embedded in texts and discourses that they produce. Concretely, this means an analysis that begins with what happens and that goes beyond the idealist theorizing of many NGOs. Such theorizing, for example, might assume that “civil society” consultation undertaken by governments signifies a genuinely responsive government, or embodies democratic values, as opposed to seeing it as a practice of managing dissent (see Choudry 2010). The politics of various forms of activist research are impacted by challenges related to mobilizing and maintaining support, continuity, and accountability among and between activist researchers and broader social struggles. Funding and institutional recognition of movement research is not necessarily proportionate to the utility of such work, especially if it is disconnected from the task of building and supporting movements but rather oriented toward outputs intended to influence decision-makers in government, private sectors, or international organizations. Indeed, some NGO research is driven by project-centric cycles and/or compartmentalized logics that are disconnected from social struggles and more reflective of tensions around funding priorities.

Kinsman (2006, 154–55) suggests, “Political activist ethnography can be very useful in extending the capacities of activist researchers and in clarifying that these activists in movements are already doing research. They are already intellectuals when they are active in social movements.” He argues that research about the social forces that movements confront is always ongoing and that PAE is “able to be continually open-ended and remade as new voices and new movements come forward to join in struggles for social transformation” (155).

One challenge to extending understandings about activist research and bringing PAE into dialogue with already existing research practices of the kind I have been exploring is that much of this practice is not documented. To extend Diana Coben’s (1998) assessment of popular education, often it seems that innovative research practices and processes can remain unknown to anyone outside the networks of those engaged in it. Ideas and dilemmas may be worked out every day in different areas of practice, but if they are not recorded and they are not readily available for others to share, debate ends. What is researched, written up, presented at conferences, or submitted for assessment toward a degree, and the even smaller amount of writing that is published, is a small and not necessarily representative sample of a much larger enterprise. Yet documented or not, there is an already existing and significant body of research and range of research practices and experiences by engaged activists/researchers located mainly outside of the academy who begin their research from a standpoint within social, political, and ecological struggles. Dialogue among activist researchers occurs both within formal coalitions and campaigns and in informal webs or networks of various kinds. Such research is indeed sometimes driven and informed by immediate confrontations with ruling relations (for example, a struggle against a specific corporation or a proposed policy or law) or seeks to explicate and expose underlying ruling practices that socially organize institutions or actions on a longer-term or historic basis.

This tension also connects to the ways in which such research is socially organized through funders’ expectations. MSN’s Kevin Thomas shared some reflections on external pressures to produce research in ways that are not necessarily the most conducive to supporting wider dissemination, education, and action:

There is a bias sometimes in research around written materials in the activist world . . . some of the audiences which really like written stuff and some who really don’t make use of it in any useful way. I find that the best dissemination tends to be in terms of a workshop format, or speaking format, even one on one, but in some ways where you’re working with the group, going over the findings and the outcomes and the strategies that come out of it. The problem with that [for most NGOs] is that the funders like written, published materials that they can link to on their websites. [There is] a bias in terms of funding towards written material, documentation, and there’s a bias in terms of actual effectiveness in my opinion in terms of the group work where you are actually thinking about and discussing what the research means. So the written document is, I find, fairly dry—I work very well with [the] written word; I can take that and think about it and disseminate it. I think in terms of activist stuff, the best stuff happens in groups, and the best kind of strategy happens in groups, and so research feeding that process is usually better. (Interview, April 2013)

For researchers in organizations such as GRAIN, MSN, and IBON International, which work in and across several countries / movement networks, multiple standpoints in different locations can be used to collaboratively work up a detailed and textured analysis of an institution such as a transnational corporation or a trade and investment liberalization agreement. The late feminist scholar Roxana Ng (2006, 187), who collaborated with MSN, contended that IE is collaborative and “requires that people share information on what they know on the basis of their locations within institutional modes in order to gain an overview of how the system works as a whole and how to challenge and transform it.” Such a collaborative approach draws on, for example, different experiences of confrontation in multiple sites as research resources and tests analysis by comparison with that of similarly located activist researchers. To democratize and transnationalize PAE—to continually remake it—necessitates recognition and validation of these diverse forms of activist research that start from a standpoint of everyday engagement in social action in concrete settings, as well as further examination and explication of existing activist research practices. It requires a respectful dialogue and a commitment to an “expansive” view of PAE as articulated by Frampton and her associates (2006, 16).

Conclusion: Listening and Learning from One Another

Many people see activism as practice and education, theory, and research as something generated elsewhere. Yet through their practices, activists generate various forms of sophisticated knowledge and engage in significant learning and research during their activism. People struggle, learn, educate, and theorize where they find themselves. The forms may change, but spaces and places for collective action, learning, and reflection seem crucial, along with an openness to valuing processes of informal and non-formal learning and knowledge produced from within people’s everyday struggles and experiences. As some of those interviewed here suggest, in practice, boundaries among research, education, and organizing are often blurred to the point of non-existence. Such understandings challenge binary thinking, which separates, fragments, and compartmentalizes activities into categories of “research,” “education,” and “organizing” and actors into “researchers,” “popular educators,” and “organizers.” Can we demystify “research” itself as an activity that is implicit in so much social action, whether recognized or not? In what ways can activist researchers operating outside of universities, private sectors, or official infrastructures (and the resources that come with these locations) collaborate to strengthen and broaden activist research and their own research practice in the service of social struggles?

To return to the question of the relationship between these various practices and approaches to research and PAE, it seems that while there are points of apparent convergence, we should stop short of claiming that this research is PAE. While PAE might come close to explicating the research processes of activist milieus that I have been part of and of the research practices shared in this chapter, this is an approximation rather than a clear description. A central aspect of the activist research discussed here is the relationships of trust and engagement built up with social struggles and movements. To reiterate, we should challenge the notion that there must be a separation between what some have called the “brain” and the “brawn” of movements, since intellectual work, knowledge production, and forms of investigation/research that take place within activism are often related to action and the everyday life of struggles. Rather than attempting to categorize activist research processes into neat, finite models, I think that it is important to capture and understand the dynamic interplay between activist research and organizing.

I find the approaches to and promises of PAE to be compelling, and I support the work of those who wish to make its tools and methods useful/relevant for activists and to democratize research. While I felt a strong sense of affinity and recognition when I first encountered George Smith’s and Gary Kinsman’s contributions to PAE because they articulated practices and concerns that resonated with my own experiences in activist research, most of what I know about research came from my own praxis and engagement with other activist researchers, struggles, and movements. My more recent research into activist researchers also confirms a range of theoretical and methodological approaches that underpin these practices within and alongside the broader struggles that they relate to. Thus, while PAE may be valuable to present and future struggles (and for analyzing historical ones), it is important to acknowledge that concepts and theory/theoretical thinking circulate in and sometimes emerge from the everyday activities of social movements, activists, and organizers. The few examples discussed here give at least a sense of the scope of some of these practices and do not require that they fit neatly into an existing research paradigm for them to have validity. Further study of methodologies and theoretical frameworks at use in activist research practice in relation to those approaches in academic literature claiming to be “activist” methodologies has the potential to develop powerful tools for struggles against capitalism and imperialism. Insights from the kinds of activist researchers I discuss here have great potential to enrich, broaden, and challenge understandings of how, where, and when education, learning, and knowledge production occur, as well as provide critical conceptual tools with which to understand and advance social change.

References

1. Bevington, Douglas, and Chris Dixon. 2005. “Movement-Relevant Theory: Rethinking Social Movement Scholarship and Activism.” Social Movement Studies 4(3): 185–208.
2. Campbell, Marie L., and Frances Gregor. 2002. Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography. Toronto: Garamond.
3. Carroll, William K. 2013. “Networks of Cognitive Praxis: Transnational Class Formation from Below?” Globalizations 10(5): 691–710.
4. Choudry, Aziz. 2008. “NGOs, Social Movements and Anti-APEC Activism: A Study in Knowledge, Power and Struggle.” PhD thesis, Concordia University.
5. Choudry, Aziz. 2010. “Global Justice? Contesting NGOization: Knowledge Politics and Containment in Antiglobalization Networks.” In Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production, edited by Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor, 17–34. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
6. Choudry, Aziz. 2014. “(Almost) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Activist Research but Were Afraid to Ask: What Activist Researchers Say About Theory and Methodology.” Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest 1(2): 75–88.
7. Choudry, Aziz. 2015. Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
8. Choudry, Aziz, and Devlin Kuyek. 2012. “Activist Research: Mapping Power Relations, Informing Struggles.” In Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice, edited by Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, and Eric Shragge, 23–34. Oakland, CA, and Toronto: PM Press / Between the Lines.
9. Coben, Diana. 1998. Radical Heroes: Gramsci, Freire, and the Politics of Adult Education. New York: Garland.
10. Colley, Helen. 2012. “Learning to Mentor Young People: A Saintly Vocation or an Alienating Experience?” In Educating from Marx: Race, Gender, and Learning, edited by Sara Carpenter and Shahrzad Mojab, 87–111. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
11. Frampton, Caelie, Gary Kinsman, Andrew K. Thompson, and Kate Tilleczek. 2006. “Social Movements / Social Research: Towards Political Activist Ethnography.” In Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements / Social Research, edited by Caelie Frampton, Gary Kinsman, Andrew K. Thompson, and Kate Tilleczek, 1–17. Black Point, NS: Fernwood.
12. Hussey, Ian. 2012. “‘Political Activist as Ethnographer’ Revisited.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 37(1): 1–24.
13. Kinsman, Gary. 1997. “Managing AIDS Organizing: ‘Consultation,’ ‘Partnership,’ and ‘Responsibility’ as Strategies of Regulation.” In Organizing Dissent: Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice, edited by William K. Carroll, 213–39. 2nd ed. Toronto: Garamond.
14. Kinsman, Gary. 2006. “Mapping Social Relations of Struggle: Activism, Ethnography, Social Organization.” In Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements / Social Research, edited by Caelie Frampton, Gary Kinsman, Andrew K. Thompson, and Kate Tilleczek, 133–56. Black Point, NS: Fernwood.
15. Ng, Roxana. 2006. “Exploring the Globalized Regime of Ruling from the Standpoint of Immigrant Workers.” In Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements / Social Research, edited by Caelie Frampton, Gary Kinsman, Andrew K. Thompson, and Kate Tilleczek, 174–88. Black Point, NS: Fernwood.
16. PAMALAKAYA. n.d. PAMALAKAYA (website). Accessed June 10, 2014. http://pampil.wordpress.com/about/.
17. Smith, Dorothy E. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
18. Smith, George W. 1995. “Accessing Treatments: Managing the AIDS Epidemic in Ontario.” In Knowledge, Experience, and Ruling Relations: Studies in the Social Organization of Knowledge, edited by Marie Campbell and Ann Manicom, 18–34. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
19. Smith, George W. 2006. “Political Activist as Ethnographer.” In Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements / Social Research, edited by Caelie Frampton, Gary Kinsman, Andrew K. Thompson, and Kate Tilleczek, 44–70. Black Point, NS: Fernwood.