The present period of effervescent social mobilization is accompanied by a proliferation of new searches and new practices, with multiple trajectories, located in the intersection between political action and investigation, that we could call activist research.

6 year after Seattle and 5 after the I Forum Social World, we have seen appearing, spreading and amplifying in the movement the concept of activist investigation. We will not stop to reflect specifically on the pros and against aspects of this definition.

In relation to the Activist Investigation, on one hand we see that it is a concept that it is enlarging with facility, that inspires and creates community and a common belonging, that stimulates the reflection on the own investigating practice and that impulses searches; but on the other hand we find it limited to orient ourselves in such a rich galaxy of interactions between political action and the investigation. One thing that is clear from the wide range of contributions to this newsletter is that a wide diversity of hopes and searchers exists under this concept. To name some of them: Resistance narratives; Co-research tradition and “consult” method; Research denounce and monitoring systems; Research on alternatives; Movement’s intellectuals contributions and collective strategic analysis; Movement’s archiving experiences and researches for a better self-knowledge; Systematization of information for the creation of (networking) tools; Collaborative research experiences through online collective creation; Mapping; Performative research; Research about social movements from an Academic framework aiming to create links with activists and the activism; Initiatives to make closer the science (Academic view) and society interactions; Actions for making free the knowledge created at the Universities and struggles in defense of the Public University and against the researchers’ precarity.

With this compilation of materials we wanted: to take a picture of the activist research that is expressing online and of the debates that it is generating in the spring 2005; to make the materials accessible, and to construct bridges. The newsletter is result of weaving a network between the materials already available online and the response to a call for contributions.

Why a Newsletter and not a book? The internet and electronic publishing enable the creation of public libraries of full text and data of any published research article, making them available free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world. Specially it is method indicated when you are opening trans/local/national discussions. Immediate unrestricted access will speed the progress of the research activist practice, and will more directly bring the benefits of the research to the public.

Who are we? The Action research network Euromovements. It is an European network for the systematization of the knowledge generated by the process of confluence of social movements at Europe. In this way we are trying to produce tools that reinforce this process. We started making an experiment of activist research. For that reason we have wanted to accompany it with a reflection about the activist research and to contribute to it by our experience. In the following section you can find a more detailed presentation about what we do concretely.

This compilation of articles has been generated by an open edition method. We have included all the texts and materials we have received, plus some links to the accessible materials already online. All together are more than 50 texts! Of course each author is responsible about the content of the single texts. We had to change our deadline and we would like to apologize towards those who did sent their articles in the time initially scheduled; nevertheless, everything comes at its time and this will be a spring time newsletter. Hope that you'll be able to enjoy it sitting down a tree or having a beam of light to cheer you up!!!

Also we wanted to express our gratefulness to the people who have sent us contributions. The first thing we notice is that the spreading of the call for paper did get unsuspected results: in fact, we received quite a big amount of articles coming from people we didn't know, and that was really interesting because it enlarged and questioned our own view on activist research. To receive those articles from « unknown » people was really nice because it did show us that there is still a lot of people to meet and a lot of actions and reflections to be collectively produced and spread.

With this compilation we wanted to build bridges within the reflection coming from several territories and in several languages. You can find texts in Castilian, Catalan, English, French, Portuguese and Italian. We made an effort to get at the same time materials in several languages, even if we knew we couldn’t have been able to translate the texts. We are sorry that most of texts are only in English. If you know a version of one of these texts translated we would be thankful to you if you could make it circulate.

We have distributed the materials by 4 sections:

Activist research reflections: another framework of and for social transformation.

In this section you can find a first group of contributions that specifically raise the question of to rethink the activist research, without displaying previous clear references, like tools for the social transformation (Gonzalez, Verger & Cortina), reports of reflection encounter on activist investigation (CASA; Sullivan), like the open questioning of the authority of the investigator and of the activist (Zavos), and the access to a website with many materials that raise the investigation-action from Australia (Dick). Also entering into United States, we can find possible activist research trajectories (Translocales).
A second group of contributions recover the tradition of Latin American action-participation investigation, presenting their expression in the Spanish State (Collective IOE); its reading from Brazil (Manolo) and the tactical mission of the systematization of experiences in Latin America (Verger). Next there is a group of contributions that retake the Italian Co-research tradition, the work inquiry and the situated thought (Nociones Comunes VVAA; Colectivo Situaciones), and an its application to the circuits of feminine precarity (Precarias a la Deriva).

Also you will find several texts about the question of the intellectual property in the globalization frame (Corsani & Lanzarote) and about the collective creation (VVAA). A text questioning about the theory (Shukaitis, Nilsen and Cox) and one which calls to the Marxist theory (Ollman). Also you can find a text referred explicitly to the investigation about corporations (Couey). And finishing, a contribution from New York (Barriers).

Relations and positions from and towards the Academy:

In this section you will find a rich dialogue, which tries to be constructive, between activism and the academy (Fluke, Casas-Corte's, Cobarrubias). With a text on the peculiarity of the ethnographic practice, that confuses the investigator and the activist in the work of field, but that creates distance in the writing time and in the distribution of its results (Juris). The dilemmas that raise from the new forms of creation of the knowledge in the social movements for the University (Fuster i Morell). A reflection about possible perverse effects in its approach (Biglia and Hache), and about the risks about being fired for your activism by the Academy (Joshua Frank); and in this way also we would like to express solidarity to David Graeme, recently fired from Yale.
An exercise of contraposition between the activist and the academic theorizing (Colin and Barker). To finish an invitation to the creation of a popular University of the social movements (Bonaventura Sousa de Santos) and a proposal of building an European network of precarious researchers (Rete Nazionale Ricercatori Precari).

Activist research on Social forums:

In this section we collected contributions specifically on the Activist research applied to the process of the social forums (Fuster i Morell; Haeringer). A report of a day of reflection on radical theory realized within the framework of the ESF (Sullivan). And texts that reflect on the process of the forums (Waterman; Aguiton and Cardon; Papadimitri). Also we included two previous compilations available online of materials: one realized by Euromovements on ESF future (Euromovements); and one made by Transform! Italia on the World Social Forum. As you will see there is quite a lot of interesting problematic presented inside the various articles. Enjoy them and interact!

Other research’s experiences:

In this section you will find an heterogenic and wide range of investigation experiences, presented by different articles, emphasizing texts on the potentiality of the new technologies for the collective creation (among the others, Gomez, Ferrer and Stallman),.

Where to be continued:

Our will to stimulate the reflection around the activist research does not end with this compilation. We are conscious of the many hollows not covered. For that reason we have created a page for the open text publication. You can find it in. We would like to thank to the network Mobilized Investigation (MI) for facilitating this space. Also we want specially to thank Merijn Osterboords, Uri Gordon and to Lawrence Cox, comrades of MI, for their support in a painful moment in our trajectory around the Activist Research.

Finally we created the e-list aresearch@lists.euromovements.info. It would like to be a space for the exchange of information, the joining of proposals and debating around the activist investigation, more info here. Thanks to EYFA to provide the e-list. And, last but not least, we have in march a directory of groups making activist research.

We won't keep on talking about what the contents of this newsletter are. We do invite right now to explore it; and don't forget that this is a first step in the constitution of a common, open and cooperative space of exchange for all of us passionate by activist research.

Good reading!