Nisha Thapliyal

Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements

The work of knowledge production, albeit embedded with contradiction and contestation, is intrinsic to the work of organizing and mobilizing masses of people. However, the neoliberal knowledge economy refuses to acknowledge that all social practices, including activism, involve learning and knowledge construction (de Sousa Santos, Nunes, & Meneses, 2007). Aziz Choudry’s latest book focuses on the cultural politics of knowledge in the neoliberal knowledge society. More specifically, Choudry asks us to consider how we could value ‘knowledge for its difference (rather than its similarity to academic expertise)’? (pp. 56–57). In framing this question, he addresses the title of the book and indicates the sociohistorical contexts which inform the scholarship that lies within: capitalist globalization and recolonization, ecological crisis, war and underlying fragmented and compartmentalized ways of knowing which construct and maintain hierarchies of knowledge. This narrow and power-blind approach to knowledge production excludes the Two-Thirds World (Esteva & Prakash, 1998; Mohanty, 2003) and restricts agency, participation and imagination for the remaining social minority to the marketplace. This question also indicates the author’s position as an engaged critically sympathetic activist–researcher whose goal is to look beyond the ‘artificial divides between theory and practice’ (p. 11) to highlight the ‘learning and radical imagination found in movements as vital conceptual resources to change the world’ (p. 10). ‘Learning Activism’ is informed by a vast swathe of intellectual thought concerned with politicization, political learning and collective struggle including critical adult education, popular education, institutional and activist ethnography and anti-colonial, feminist, anti-racist, indigenous, immigrant, migrant and working class struggles. Not surprisingly, Marxist dialectic analysis, along with the concept of praxis as developed by Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, have a strong influence on Choudry’s approach to theory and theorizing. He draws on this literature to develop and support two key and interlinked arguments namely: a critique of ahistorical theorizing about activism, and the imperative of doing research that acknowledges and legitimizes activist knowledge. The first argument is articulated across the first two chapters of the book (including the Introduction). The last three chapters explore learning and knowledge production in activist spaces. Given that the readership of this journal is familiar with critiques of mainstream adult education and related social movement theory, I have focused this review around the author’s discussion of critical history and activist know-ledge production. INT. J. OF LIFELONG EDUCATION, 2015

“Until We Get Up Again to Fight”: Education Rights and Participation in South Africa

This article reflects on the possibilities for democratic and direct participation that have emerged through socially engaged research on education rights in South Africa. The Education Rights Project is located in a university-based research and advocacy center for education rights and social justice that has been working with township communities to monitor the implementation of right to education legislation. In this article we examine the ways in which rights-based participatory research combined with citizen struggle and community mobilization can contribute to new understandings of rights-based education policy, citizen participation, and democracy.

Unacknowledged Rights and Unmet Obligations: an Analysis of the 2009 Indian Right to Education Act

Despite the work done over four decades to elaborate the full scope of the right to education in the international legal human rights framework, national legislation in many countries has been marked by symbolic and minimal commitments to a quality education for all. Globally, while 135 countries have constitutional provisions for free and non-discriminatory education for all, as few as 20 countries have laws guaranteeing free and

The weaponisation of language: English proficiency, citizenship and the politics of belonging in Australia

Calls for greater protection of national boundaries – both physical and ideological – and the politicising of immigration and citizenship are increasingly characteristic of the global geo-political landscape. Several signatory countries to the UNHCR refugee convention have sought to legislate higher levels of language proficiency for citizenship eligibility. Most recently, this has been attempted in Australia, reigniting controversy about the use of language testing to assess a potential citizen’s ‘worthiness’. In this paper, we identify contested conceptions of belonging and citizenship, manifested in mediatised debates around language proficiency and citizenship which emerged following the announcement of proposed changes to Australian citizenship rules. We use Graff’s (1981) concept of the ‘Literacy Myth’ to analyze associations between language proficiency and ‘morality’ evident in Australian media articles, to explore the underpinning discourses of these proposals, and to probe the relationship between citizenship, belonging and language. We argue that these myths work discursively to frame language proficiency as a proxy measure of the morality of prospective citizens and their willingness to ‘integrate’ or ‘assimilate’ into resettlement contexts. Relatedly, these myths can be deployed to justify the denial of the possibility of belonging to those who do not possess the linguistic capital privileged by policy and media elites.

#Eduresistance: A Critical Analysis of the Role of Digital Media in Collective Struggles for Public Education in the Usa.

ABSTRACT From Facebook-coordinated high-school walkouts to compelling Internet-based protest art that has accompanied recent teacher strikes, grassroots education activism in the USA has gone digital. Despite the proliferation of research on the mediatisation of education policy, few studies have explored the ways in which activists for public education engage with Web 2.0 technologies. This paper makes a contribution to this under-researched area by exploring selected activist accounts including Parents Across America, United Opt Out National, and the PS 2013 campaign in New York City. I draw on critical, feminist, and cultural studies theories of education and social movement media to analyse activist media practices in a policy and political milieu dominated by corporate media and neoliberal governance structures. The analysis reveals that progressive education activists strategically deploy digital media to amplify voice, build collective identity, and disseminate alternative knowledge to enable direct action. A situated analysis also reveals significant differences in activist media practice which are shaped by particular political histories and geographies. The paper concludes with a discussion about future lines of inquiry into the role of digital media in collective struggles for public education.

We Shall Fight, We Shall Win: An Activist History of Mass Education in India

Social movements for public education challenge neoliberal claims that there is no alternative to the market—to the inevitability of the privatisation of education. This article analyses the ways in which education activists in India deploy critical histories in their struggles for a public and common school system. It is empirically grounded in a critical analysis of a 2016 activist documentary film called We Shall Fight, We Shall Win. The film was produced by a grassroots activist coalition called the All India Forum for the Right to Education (AIFRTE) as part of their ongoing struggles against the commercialisation and communalisation of education. The film provides a rare opportunity to explore different kinds of historical knowledge produced in collective struggles for equity and social justice in India. In particular, this analysis examines the ways in which activists link the past and the present to challenge and decentre privatised narratives of education and development. In doing so, this research offers situated insights into the critical histories that inspire, sustain and co-construct one site of ongoing collective struggle for public education in India.

‘Let’s hear how students feel …’: Representations of schooling on news television in India

The aim of this article is to posit children as political beings and becomings in every aspect of their lives including schooling. This discussion explores the multiplicity of ways in which children actively make meaning about themselves in relation to the actors, institutions and discourses that constitute their lived worlds. It is empirically grounded in critical media analysis of two 2009 prime-time English language television news programmes about school reform. Both these programmes presented ‘what kids think’1 through interactions between a total of 22 private secondary school students and Human Resources Development Minister, Kapil Sibal. The analysis draws on a relational reading of the politics in childhood as constituted and enacted in the domain of schooling. In this context, it focuses on how children perceive and negotiate the subject positions and subjectivities presented to them by their families, the state and media. More specifically, this article argues that children are aware of and competent to engage with extent power relations and structures as represented in discourses of schooling.