Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements

These are important histories that need to be read and honoured. This book needs to be read by anyone seeking to understand social change and the relationships between political activism, education and the pursuit of justice.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Professor of Education and Maori Development, University of Waikato, author of Decolonising Methodologies

‘At a time of serious assault on education and reason, Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally have produced a crucial book of essays that are a protest against that attack and that offer the road towards expanding what we expect of our world. Studies of struggles help us recognize how essential they were in producing the few decent things that exist about our world. That’s a spur to new struggles – and to new possibilities’.

Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: a possible history of the Global South.

‘This is an exciting collection of essays by prominent activist scholars, who critically reflect on the production of historical knowledge, radical pedagogies and social movements from various geographical vantage points. Importantly, the edited volume draws attention to the often neglected educative role of social movements thus offering innovative insights into the character of these movements. A salient thread in the book is the exploration of the role of radical histories in shaping the imaginations and praxes of contemporary movements. By foregrounding the use and production of historical knowledge and of archives of struggles in the course of enacting emancipatory politics, the collection shines new light on activism and social movements. The book will inspire contemporary activists to rethink the place of historical knowledge in movements as they engage in the struggle of imagining and creating a socially just future.’

Noor Nieftagodien, South African Research Chair (SARChI): Local Histories, Present Realitie