[van-announce] Mapping Social Relations of Struggle to Produce Effective Forms of Activism

[Caelie Frampton]

Mapping Social Relations of Struggle to Produce Effective Forms of Activism

Free Workshop!

Sunday May 13th, 2007
1:00-4:00
SFU Harbour Centre, Room 1315,
515 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC

How can we as activists produce research that is useful for activist
movements? Confrontation, from a protest to a sit-in, can be a site of
research. Activists can use confrontation to research and learn more about
the social organization of the institutions we’re fighting. This workshop
uses participation and discussion to begin mapping the social relations of
struggle so we can produce more effective forms of activism.

Hour one: What activist research exists already, and how is it ‘hidden’?
how can we extend it and make the capacity for research and analysis more
extensive and critical?
Instead of speculation and ideological discussions of institutions, we’ll
start with people’s social experiences.

Hours two and three: How do participants’ experiences, their work, and
what participants know produce an effective research base for activism?
We will map the social organization and relations of struggle.

Gary Kinsman and Caelie Frampton are editors of Sociology for Changing the
World: Social Movements/Social Research (2006). Gary Kinsman brings to
this workshop experience as an activist in gay liberation, AIDS,
anti-poverty, anti-war, global justice and anti-capitalist organizing for
the past thirty years and teaches Sociology at Laurentian University in
Sudbury, Ontario. Caelie Frampton is a Vancouver based graduate student
and activist who has been involved in anti-capitalist, queer, student and
labour organizing.

Sponsored by the Action Research eXchange at SFPIRG