‘Being useful’ after the <scp>I</scp>vory <scp>T</scp>ower: combining research and activism with the <scp>B</scp>rixton <scp>P</scp>ound

Taylor, Myfanwy

doi:10.1111/area.12117

Cited by 41 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Workshop discussions (Chilvers and Pallett, 2015) considered, for example, the extent to which researchers should couch interventions and commentaries in the language and framing of currently dominant regimes, or whether the stance of academic theories such as Actor-Network Theory should be considered apolitical or deeply normative. Workshop discussion also spoke to the need for (social) scientists to take up a diversity of roles when interacting with and intervening in practices of energy democracy including: the formation of distant or more radical critiques (Shove, 2010), the provision of more abstract and systemic conceptual frameworks (such as those outlined in the section on Relational Concepts and Theories), providing expert advice in more policy relevant ways (Owens, 2015), to adopt more activist positions and engaging with social movements (Taylor, 2014), through to the development and mediation of new forms of energy democracy (such as the examples provided in the section on Reflexive and Experimental Energy Participation above). However, some of the workshop presentations and plenary discussions reported on in Chilvers and Pallett (2015) also hinted at further dimensions to this well-worn debate, in particular highlighting the importance of being aware of long term driving forces, systemic stabilities, and political situations when forming academic and practitioner interventions and deciding when is an appropriate time to act.…”

Section: Responsible Energy Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Democracies and Publics in the Making: A Relational Agenda for Research and Practice

Chilvers

Pallett

2018

Front. Commun.

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Mainstream approaches to energy democracy and public engagement with energy transitions tend to adopt specific, pre-given meanings of both "democracy" and "publics." Different approaches impose prescriptive assumptions about the model of participation, the identity of public participants, and what it means to participate well. The rigidity of many existing approaches to energy participation is increasingly being challenged by the ever-multiplying diversity of ways in which citizens participate in energy systems, as consumers in energy markets, protesters against new infrastructures and technologies, as initiators of community energy projects, and as subjects of behavior change interventions, amongst others. This paper is concerned with growing areas of scholarship which seek to understand and explore these emerging energy publics and forms of energy democracy from a relational perspective. Such work, grounded in constructivist and relational ontologies, views forms of participatory democracy and publics as being co-produced, constructed, and emergent through the performance of collective practices. It pays closer attention to power relations, politics, materiality, exclusions, and effects in both understanding and intervening in the making of energy democracy. This in turn shifts the focus from studying discrete unitary forms of "energy democracy" to one of understanding interrelations between multiple diverse energy democracies in wider systems. In this paper, we chart these developments and explore the significant challenges and potential contributions of relational approaches to furthering the theories, methods, and practices of energy democracy and energy public engagement. The paper draws on an expert workshop, and an accompanying review, which brought together leading proponents of contending relational approaches to energy participation in direct conversation for the first time. We use this as a basis to explore tensions between these approaches and set out a relational agenda for energy democracy research in terms of: developing concepts and theories; methodological and empirical challenges; and implications for practices of governance and democratic engagement with energy transitions.

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Section: Responsible Energy Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Democracies and Publics in the Making: A Relational Agenda for Research and Practice

Chilvers

Pallett

2018

Front. Commun.

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“…Research questions constructed with investment in Oblong's core values – equality, collectivism, empowerment, being community‐led, sustainability, and respect and care – and co‐designed research activities drew on the ‘“more‐than‐research” relationship[s]’ between participants (Evans , 218). The care, reciprocity and shared values underpinning these activities meant research processes could have meaningful, generative effects on the organisation during the project, instead of producing a critique afterwards to theoretically instruct others (Taylor ; North ). The outcomes in this study refute the notion of impact as something researchers do to or for others.…”

Section: Learning From Community‐based Co‐productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making space for co‐produced research ‘impact’: learning from a participatory action research case study

Darby

2017

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There is growing emphasis in the UK on promoting research that creates a positive impact on society. Research Councils UK, the major national research funding agencies, have recently defined a framework for promoting and measuring this impact. This paper contributes to current debates about this developing agenda and, particularly, the problematic intersection of the impact agenda and co‐production research approaches. I argue that processes of negotiating values, aims and power relations are essential to creating relevant, ethical impacts with research participants. In contrast to the emphasis placed on linear and top‐down change by the impact agenda, my experience doing participatory action research with a UK community group shows that co‐produced research produces different kinds of impacts: co‐produced impacts are emergent and non‐linear; responsive and relational; and empowering when rooted in reciprocal collaboration with research partners. This paper questions the implicit values the impact framework imposes on academic researchers and community partners, calling for continued critical engagement with the impact agenda to encourage the value‐rational reflection, deliberation and collaboration needed for creating socially transformative research.

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“…Most recently, geographers seem to have become less concerned with how to navigate tensions of positionality, arguably because being an academic‐activist has become so commonplace over the last two decades, and more focused on exploring how activist research can exist in relation to the neoliberal university (Autonomous Geographies Collective ; Mason and Purcell ; Russell ; Taylor ). Researchers are often less interested in understanding what activist research is and more focused on exploring what it can do.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Militant research against‐and‐beyond itself: critical perspectives from the university and Occupy London

Halvorsen

2015

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This paper examines the increasingly popular approach of militant research and argues for the need to conceptualise it as a contradictory approach that exists against-and-beyond any form it takes. It understands militant research as a committed and intense process of internal reflection from within particular struggle(s) that seeks to map out and discuss underlying antagonisms while pushing the movement forward. Based on the author's experiences of doing militant research with Occupy London from both inside the university and through the Occupy Research Collective created outside, it argues that there are no ideal sites for doing militant research. It explores the opportunities of doing militant research within the university, pointing towards the potential for subverting the resources available, and highlights the barriers, in particular with relation to ethics. The Occupy Research Collective (ORC) is then examined as an alternative space for doing militant research. In turn, a number of limitations of ORC are noted, including both its lack of resources and tendency to (re)create a form of doing militant research detached from broader struggles. While recent work has highlighted the need for militant research to operate antagonistically to the neoliberal university, and there have been calls to create new institutions outside it, this paper extends previous arguments by emphasising the need to criticise all forms of militant research in order to push struggles forward. It draws on John Holloway's widely referenced 'in-against-and-beyond' dialectical approach to emphasise the inevitable challenges of institutionalising militant research, no matter where this takes place. It concludes by suggesting that militant research should not shy away from embracing critiques of particular struggles and that further theoretical work needs to be done in terms of developing a more open and relational understanding of militancy.

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‘Being useful’ after the Ivory Tower: combining research and activism with the Brixton Pound

Cited by 41 publications

References 27 publications

Energy Democracies and Publics in the Making: A Relational Agenda for Research and Practice

Energy Democracies and Publics in the Making: A Relational Agenda for Research and Practice

Making space for co‐produced research ‘impact’: learning from a participatory action research case study

Militant research against‐and‐beyond itself: critical perspectives from the university and Occupy London

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