Social Justice
As scholar-activists from or working on the Global South, we are committed to social justice.
Global South Crises
Some of the gravest crises of our time involving land, food systems, labor, displacement and migration, natural resources extraction, and human rights among others are inextricably linked to the political economy of capitalist extractivism and climate change. The factors which underlay these challenges are complex which disproportionately renders the Global South most vulnerable. Academics and scholar-activists everywhere are committed to research and may be seen to connect themselves to social movements of various kinds to address some of these crises. Collective mobilization and collaboration is key to countering some of these seemingly insurmountable challenges. Therefore, how these challenges are studied, debated, researched and disseminated is important to deepen our understanding of them.
Our Commitment to Social Justice
As scholar-activists from or working on the Global South, we are committed to social justice. We envisage Scholactivism as academic work or committed activist work including strategic practice or policy work that is informed by rigorous academic research, and which is explicitly connected to political projects or movements. Scholactivists operate from multiple positionalities and fields. They are primarily but not exclusively located in academic institutions. They produce knowledge, do activist work and are connected to political projects or movements that seek to reconstitute legal institutions from the lived experiences of marginalized, oppressed and impoverished groups through scholarship or collaborative pursuits. Their frontline roles in advocacy and legal reform to either support or catalyze action, or challenge the inequities in-built within governance frameworks are crucial for knowledge mobilization and access.
The Scholactivists Network (SAN) seeks to advance scholarship and debate with regards to scholar-activism and knowledge production in the Global South. It reflects upon the work done by scholars/activists and the fields in which they operate across various geographical, sociopolitical and temporal contexts. In so doing, we explore how 1) scholar/activism becomes prevalent in the Global South and how scholars/activists deal with institutional, social, political and any other constrains; and 2) what kind of counter hegemonic narratives, methodologies and alternative knowledge practices scholar/activist produce that subvert imperial concepts and epistemologies, and what narratives and ideas they replicate to reinforce them.
Connecting Scholars Worldwide
