Abstract
Aziz Choudry’s Learning Activism is an exploration into the “organic intellectual” and “indigenous knowledge,” in which he sheds light on the significance and value of the intellectual life, daily learning, and knowledge production of activists within social movements. As a scholar who began his career as an activist more than two decades before pursuing his doctorate degree, Choudry brings his experiential learning/knowledge to the topic of social change and the powerful learning and theory building that takes place among activists within social movements. Throughout the book, he shares his experiences as an activist scholar, arguing that social movement learning and knowledge creation does not only occur within academia but rather when people unite and work together to learn from each other and create change.
The book is composed of four chapters. Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter that discusses how everyday learning, knowledge creation, theorizing, and movement practice can be interconnected. In this chapter, he emphasizes a dialectic nature between “traditional” and “organic” intellectuals and argues that learning and knowledge production cannot be separated from daily social movements. In the next chapter, Choudry poses a critical viewpoint on existing studies of social movements, highlighting that academic theories cannot always provide an appropriate lens to better understand diverse, emerging social actions and movements. In chapter 3, he overviews types of learning among formal, nonformal, and informal learning and claims that more meaningful social movement learning takes place in nonformal and informal settings rather than formal schooling. Choudry then deeply reflects on what research is in chapter 4. By considering the importance of grounded practical research, he points out that research and theorizing are not activities merely conducted by only academic professionals.
Choudry provides several points that critically reflect how understanding adult learning and knowledge has been taken-for-granted. He argues that learning and knowledge production about social movement groups, those that occur through research from within the academy, are disconnected from the learning that takes place within social movement activists/groups. Through several examples, he shows that people learn by doing and being a part of these movements, and that ordinary people can produce extraordinary change. Indeed, he brings a critical question of how to deal with challenges/contradictions within social movement activities. His examples reveal that daily social reflective learning and practical knowledge among participants play a pivotal role in resolving challenges/contradictions. Thus, experiencing true learning, and producing useful knowledge, can be more effective than academic theories and knowledge. This book contributes to the deconstruction of the dominant ideologies and political environments that have shaped the historical contexts of social movements, politics of learning, and knowledge production, while arguing that this type of knowledge production is a challenging effort and should be considered valuable scholarship.
Although Choudry is a faculty member and a part of the academy, he acknowledges his positionality as a lifelong activist throughout his book. The book’s congruency is evident in the careful decisions Choudry made in order to achieve his goal of providing new knowledge on social movement groups and challenging the current field of adult education. The perspective that he brings forth regarding social movements is well developed and especially important in today’s current happenings. Because of the current landscape of academia, and the social movements that are occurring globally, scholarly work of this type can help instill not only new directions for research, but also practical knowledge that can be utilized to further the goodness of these groups. The information that Choudry discloses in this book gives social movement groups the credibility he feels they deserve for the scholarly work that they do. He accomplishes his goal of creating a space where activists are also seen as intellectuals. The personal experience that Choudry brings to this book, and the commitment he has to being an activist amid all of his scholarly work, is the biggest strength to his book.
This book may be uncomfortable to people who understand that learning is not a social but an individual’s cognitive process and/or outcome, which largely occurs in formal settings rather than outside of schools/academia. Nevertheless, this book helps educators see how nonformal and informal learning is important and how it happens outside of the classroom, which could affect their pedagogical practices in the classroom. In addition, scholars, educators, and students who are interested in deconstructing the dominant paradigms of the academy and wish to pursue more activist scholarship would benefit from the book. Last, this book is a contribution that is not repetitious of other works in the field of adult education. It contains new perspectives on knowledge production that occurs from within social learning movements and includes a critical analysis of adult education scholarship as it currently stands in the academy. Overall, Choudry sheds light into the praxeology that many scholars do not discuss or take part in.