Relations and positions from and towards the Academy

Radicalizing academia or emptying the critics?  by Barbara Biglia

What is the meaning of our radicalism? Who is our critique for? Are we really in a radical age or is it becoming fashionable to be radical? This article provides me with the opportunity to reflect on these themes.
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Romans and rebels: academic and activist forms of movement theorising by Cox and Barker

In this paper the aithors start from comparing the organic and traditional intellectuals, to present the difference between the activism and academic theorizing.
Link from the Tools for change website English Version

Academia <-> activism: what might they offer each other? by Fluke Collective

In March 2004, a number of ‘academics' and ‘activists', ‘academic-activists', and ‘activist-academics' spent a long weekend in the west of England, talking shop. This article aims to present the exchanges and debates during those days.
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Can the Activists Speak in the Academy?, De-centering the Politics of Representation by Maribel Casas-Cortés

This essay explores the shifts in the practices of representation within the discipline of anthropology driving its author to reflect in which way she wants to participate to it and suggests that the developing relationship of Anthropologycial movements opens possibilities of a new politics of representation.
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Why I like activist research and why I tend to consider myself an activist researcher by Patrice Riemens

A personal overvieuw about the trajectory of an activist researcher through academy and activism, fun and optimistic.
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Les maisons de la recherche me donnent la chair de poule par Alexandra Haché

Cet article désire se faire l'avocat du diable et présenter quelques éléments de réflexion afin de lancer un débat avec les acteurs de la recherche académique contemporaine.
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An Interview with David Graeber. Without Cause: Yale Fires An Acclaimed
Anarchist Scholar: “We're moving from the neoliberal university to the
imperial university” By Joshua Frank

David Graeber was fires from Yale University without clear reasons. It was not Graeber's scholarship that was ever in question; rather it was his political philosophies, a renowned anarchist,that may have played a heavy hand in the administration's unwarranted decision. We wanted to include this interview at the Newsletter to express our solidatiry with David Graeber and our worry ness because this case is symptomatic of a larger problem in the US where radical professors are being targeted for their unpopular political views.

Link from the webpage You can support Prof. Graeber by signing an online petition More information Here!

Recomposing the University by Tiziana Terranova & Marc Bousquet

In the name of democratisation and equality, the university has become a cross between a supermarket and a factory whose consumers are also its hyper-exploited labour force. Here, in an email exchange, Marc Bousquet and Tiziana Terranova, themselves employed in US and British universities respectively, describe the way the system works from the inside and look at the possibilities for getting out of it.

Link from the webpage Metamute English Version

The Academy in Activism and Activism in the Academy: Collaborative Research Methodologies and Radical Geography  by Sebastian Cobarrubias,

History of the USA radical geography at the moment that the activism and academy came together throw new action and research methodologies.
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Practicing Militant Ethnography within Movements against Corporate Globalization by Jeff Juris

This paper explores militant ethnography as research method and political praxis based on Jeff Juris’s experience as activist and researcher among anti-corporate globalization movements in Barcelona. What is the relationship between ethnography and political action? How can we make our work relevant to those with whom we study?
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The Popular University Of Social Movements by Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Some consider the term “University” elitist. Others think that the term “Popular University” entails identification with initiatives of communist parties and other left organizations of the first decades of the twentieth century. School? Academy? Open University of the Social Movements? Global University of Social Movements? At some point the organizations that decide to take upon themselves the task of actually creating the popular university will have to come to an agreement as to its designation
Link from the Centre de studios sociais (Coimbra)
Portugues Version and English version 

University, knowledge and global movements by Mayo Fuster i Morell

In this paper the author presents the elements that swarm around the social movement knowledge creation and present the pros and contras of the relation among University and Social movements from the situation at Catalonia point of view.
Castilian and Catalan Version

Globalisation, academic flexibility and the right to research: A call for a European network of precarious/temporary researchers and for the free circulation of knowledge by Rete Nazionale Ricercatori Precari (Italy)

A call to create an international network for precarious searchers
Read it! English Version For more details ricercatoriprecari