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124 Studies in the Education of Adults Vol. 42, No. 2, Autumn 2010
Theorising education and
learning in social movements:
environmental justice campaigns
in Scotland and India
EURIG SCANDRETT
Queen Margaret University, UK (EScandrett@qmu.ac.uk)
JIM CROWTHER
University of Edinburgh, UK
AKIKO HEMMI
University of Edinburgh, UK
SUROOPA MUKHERJEE
University of Delhi, India
DHAR MESH SHAH
Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study, India
TARUNIMA SEN
Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study, India
Abstract
There is a need for a theoretical understanding of education and learning in social
movements which takes into consideration the diverse ways in which learning
occurs as well as the social, economic and ecological conditions in which move-
ments emerge. These material conditions set opportunities and constraints for
the generation and distribution of knowledge which subsequently reflects social
interests resulting from these conditions. Theory, which aims to explain learning
in this context, must recognise that in social movements there occurs col lective as
well as individual learning and sustained, formalised education, as well as infor-
mal and spontaneous learning. Social movements also make use of lay and spe-
cialist knowledge, often selected and combined in innovative ways to ensure that
‘really useful knowledge’ is put at the service of emancipatory projects. This has
significant implications for educators who see their work as contributing to social
justice. The comparatively neglected work of Ettore Gelpi provides an important
foundation for a dialectical understanding between these material conditions and
lifelong education in social movements. Moreover, this dialectic can be under-
stood to occur at multiple levels: between micro-level learning; meso-level frame
construction and macro-level culture-ideology. Empirical work in environmental
Theorising education and learning in social movements 125
justice movements in Scotland and India provides illustrations of these levels of
learning.
Introduction
Several approaches to a theory of learning in social movements have been devel-
oped in the literature (e.g. Foley, 1999; Kilgore, 1999; Holst, 2002; Hall, 2009).
Any such theory would need to recognise several realities. First, learning is not
restricted to formal educational systems but occurs both formally and informally,
within and without, institutions of education. Second, that multiple knowledges,
standpoints and epistemologies have legitimacy, whilst at the same time the range
of knowledges is not infinite and is constrained by material conditions. Third, that
changing social, political and ecological contexts impact both the kind of social
movement activity and the kind of knowledge that is possible. Fourth, any ethic-
ally acceptable educational theory must discern how education and educators can
contribute to change in both knowledge and material conditions in a direction
towards social justice. A theory of social movement learning must aim to apply to
the breadth of social movement activity which is possible in different social and
political contexts and observed in concrete situations, as well as relate to a real
material as well as symbolic understanding of social justice.
Social change is not directionless, although it is complex and dynamic. Social
movements make important contributions to the direction of change and they do
so in relation to deeper structural issues. By focusing on the learning that goes on
in social movements there are insights which can be gained for educational theory.
Moreover, the somewhat neglected lifelong education theory of Ettore Gelpi (1979,
1985) can contribute to a more dialectical understanding of the relationship between
learning and social change. Here, Gelpi’s analytical approach is used to help explain
and frame the learning that takes place within environmental justice struggles in
Scotland and in India. Through a synthesis of Gelpi’s lifelong education, with cul-
tural and materialist social movement theory, a systematisation of learning in social
movements consistent with the empirically identified complexities is proposed.
Education and social movement theory
We argue that a fruitful dialogue between adult education theory and social move-
ment theory can lead to a synthesis which accounts for both learning and social
commitment. Much educational theory has concerned individualised experiences
of learning, to the exclusion of the collective and ethical dimension of education
as a resource for social justice. Moreover, a number of social movement theorists
have recognised that movements are epistemological communities engaged in
the generation and distribution of knowledge, theory and culture through ‘cogni-
tive praxis’ and the creation of spaces for social learning (Eyerman and Jamison,
1991). Although education theory and social movement theory have largely devel-
oped independently, valuable contributions to both have occurred where these
two bodies of theory interact. Foley (1999), for example, has contrasted formal
education which reflects the social relations of capitalism, with the informal
learning which takes place in community action and social movements opposing
the impact of capitalist restructuring and exploitation of the environment. Mayo
(2005) has identified lessons for adult education practice in the activities of the
126 Eurig Scandrett et al
global justice movement and Fisher and Ponniah (2003) describe the World Social
Forum as pedagogical space created by the ‘alternative globalisation’ movement
of movements. Kilgore (1999) drew on the learning theory of Vygotsky and the
social movement theory of Melucci in an attempt to devise a systematic theory of
collective learning located in identity formation of activists.
Theories of social movements have undergone a number of transformations
since the explosion of interest in the 1970s, with focus shifting from crowd
behaviour to movement organisations, to wider political processes which gen-
erate opportunities for movement activity (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, 1996;
McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001). However in recent years there has been con-
siderable interest in on the cognitive, cultural, symbolic, networking and ‘fram-
ing’ activities of movements (Snow and Benford, 1988; Melucci, 1996; Diani and
McAdam, 2003). This ‘cultural turn’ in social movement studies provides potential
opportunities for dialogue with adult education theory. In doing so however, it
is important to recognise the critique of this approach from some theorists, for
ignoring the structural political and economic conditions in which social move-
ments operate (Nilsen, 2006; Goodwin and Hetland, 2009). Kilgore, for example,
emphasises subjective factors of identity and motivation, and accepts uncritically
Melucci’s (1996) claim that class is no longer relevant to ‘contemporary’ social
movements (by which is meant North American and, by Melucci’s implication,
‘most advanced’ social movements). On the contrary, in both social movement
theory and adult education theory, it is important to address the relationship
between the cognitive-cultural dimension and the structural conditions of socio-
economic inequality.
Eyerman and Jamison (1991) argue that social movements can be defined by
their cognitive praxis through which their political practice is closely linked to,
and ultimately dependent on, the generation and distribution of new knowledge.
Constructing knowledge on the basis of alternative values, challenging what is
legitimated as knowledge and changing the way in which the world is known
socially are how, in Eyerman and Jamison’s analysis, the success of social move-
ments can be measured. This has enabled students of social movements with an
interest in education and social learning to analyse how knowledge is produced,
translated and negotiated in the interface between the political practice of move-
ment activists and wider social and political changes.
For many social movement researchers, the importance of the cognitive dimen-
sion has generated an interest in social movements’ construction of ‘interpretive
frames’ to the extent that frame analysis has become an important growth indus-
try in social movement studies (Johnston, 2002; della Porta and Diani, 2006).
Frames are the cognitive schemas which enable people to identify, interpret and
allocate significance to events and experiences. Frames are dynamic and the
activities of social movements are said to involve generating new frames and
shifting the interpretive frames of target sections of society – a process involv-
ing public education, social learning and other forms of learning and knowledge
gener ation . Sig n i f icant effor t i n socia l moveme nt re search is devoted to c ategoris-
ing frames, comparing them amongst different social movement organisations,
identifying how they change over time, assessing their ‘frame alignment’ with
target populations, and interpreting this in terms of their success or failure as a
social movement.
Theorising education and learning in social movements 127
Several authors have called recently for movement relevant theory (Bevington
and Dixon, 2005; Cox and Nilsen, 2007), a recognition that social movement
theory needs to be produced and judged by social movements themselves. This
resonates with the distinction used in adult education theory between ‘useful
knowledge’ and ‘really useful knowledge’ derived from the nineteenth century
radical working class adult education movement (Johnson, 1979). Really useful
knowledge is that which is selected by collective movements of the oppressed on
the basis of its value for their emancipatory progressive or revolutionary political
projects. It is here that the theoretical insights of Gelpi’s conception of lifelong
education are helpful.
The purpose of adult education in the tradition of Gelpi is to generate really
useful knowledge along with social movement actors, which can contribute to
the process of changing society towards greater social justice. The implication for
research within this education theory is that knowledge is generated dialect ically
and assessed through accountability to social movement praxis. For example, Freire’s
(1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed methodology concerns identifying ‘generative
themes’ from within the ‘minimum thematic universe’ of the learners through a
dialectical process of coding and decoding. Through interrogating codified situ-
ations, the dialectic of abstract and concrete engenders a learning situation rooted
in the material reality of the learners. Freire’s ‘minimum thematic universe’ in the
context of social movements approximates to Snow and Benford’s (1988) ‘frame’,
but with a greater emphasis on the dialectical relationship between the material
and cognitive dimensions. The relationship between the cognitive-cultural dimen-
sion and the structural-material conditions is explicitly addressed in Gelpi’s con-
ception of lifelong education.
Gelpi – neglected theorist of lifelong education
Ettore Gelpi was one of the foremost theorists of UNESCO’s concept of lifelong
education during the 1970s and 80s, during a period of significant upheaval in the
geopolitics and economics associated with neo-liberalism. It is perhaps because of
this, and the presumed success of neo-liberalism by major political actors at least
until recent years, that his insights have been comparatively neglected.
One of Gelpi’s major contributions to the analysis of lifelong education is that
learning needs, and consequently opportunities for deliberate and constructive
education based on these, occur in diverse contexts, both inside and outside of
educational institutions, but wherever they occur these needs and opportunities
must be understood dialectically. Without advocating or dismissing any particular
pedagogy, or institutional setting, or professional practice, his challenge is to under-
stand lifelong education in relation to the conflicts and contradictions embedded
in the wider context. Education’s role is not to impose a value system or ideological
analysis on learners (an accusation often made against radical adult educators, see
for example Scott and Gough, 2003, p. 49), but rather to make explicit the implicit
contradictions and to reflect the conflicts of the situation back to the social actors
so that all may learn to take appropriate action individually and collectively.
Education always takes place within a changing socio-economic reality driven
by systemic tensions and this reality both constrains and creates opportunities for
learning. This in turn generates new understandings and social practices which
128 Eurig Scandrett et al
can impact on social and economic conditions. Whether in the university or the
community, the workplace or the Internet, in a bourgeois democracy, fascist dicta-
torship or repressive communist regime, ‘in every society there is some degree of
autonomy for educational action, some possibility of political confrontation, and
at the same time an interrelation between the two’ (Gelpi, 1979, p. 11). Education
is directional, but the direction is determined by the opportunities for critical
reflection on the contradictions of the context.
Moreover, the internal contradictions of any social and economic situation are
most exposed where there is overt social conflict. If resistance occurs, protest is
provoked and social movements emerge, this is where fissures lie in the socio-
economic fabric which reveal underlying contradictions and generate important
opportunities for learning – and for education to contribute to progressive social
change. It might be expected that education theory has much to learn from social
movement theory and the understanding of how social movements develop and
change, the demands they make on the socio-economic conditions and the oppor-
tunities they have to transform them.
... the path from the concept of lifelong education to its realisation is characterised by
struggles in social life and educational institutions in such areas as: the type of rela-
tionship between formal and non-formal education, i.e. dialectical or dependent; the
contribution of such non-teaching educators as cultural, social and political movements to
education activities; the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of the educational system
both internally and externally; the extent to which self-directed learning is encouraged,
especially that of a collective nature. (Gelpi, 1985, pp. 8–9, emphasis added)
Lifelong education can therefore take place in a classroom, a community centre
or a climate camp, it can involve professionally trained educators, lay experts or
movement intellectuals, and it may even involve dialogical, didactic or experien-
tial teaching and learning methods. What is critically significant is that the cur-
riculum emerges from the contradictions inherent in the conditions that people
experience as problems to address. Such contradictions may occur between, for
example: knowledge and social interests; lay and specialist knowledge; social
structure and political agency; local and global concerns; particular and generic
issues; individual and collective experiences; differences in forms of value and
valuation.
Environmental movements and lifelong education
The environmental movement has provided a fertile subject for the study of social
movements and theory development. Eyerman and Jamison’s (1991) cognitive
praxis analysis was developed from a study of the European and North American
environmental movement. In their account, the lifespan of the environmental
movement originated in critiques of industrialism from scientific ecology, became
embedded in a cognitive praxis of alternative cosmological, technical and organ-
isational knowledge, and subsequently integrated into mainstream practice. ‘What
was once utopian practice has become commercial business. Such is the nature of
a social movement. It creates a space for new occupational activities to emerge.’
(Eyerman and Jamison, 1991, p. 76).
Theorising education and learning in social movements 129
Whatever analytical value the above holds for the movements of the ‘new mid-
dle class’ of the North, studies of environmentalism in the South and amongst
working class and oppressed groups, have exposed its weakness. A distinctive
str a nd of env i ron m e nt al i s m is pr a c tice d b y t he po o r t hr o u g ho ut the Glo b a l Sout h
(Agyeman, Bullard and Evans, 2003; Guha and Martinez-Alier, 1997; Martinez-
Alier, 2002) and by the working class, racialised and other oppressed groups
in the North (Bullard 1990, 2005; Stephens, 1998; Schlosberg, 1999; Agyeman,
2005). This ‘environmentalism of the poor’ or environmental justice movement
comprises social groups that are disproportionately affected by environmen-
tal pollution, yet are least represented in the white, middle class, mainstream
environmental movement of the North. Faber and MCarthy (2003) point out
the various strands of the environmental justice movement including not only
campaigns against environmental racism but also occupational hazard, com-
munity action, indigenous land rights, public health and international solidarity
movements.
In an economic ana l y si s o f e nv i r o n me nt a lism of the poor, M art i ne z - A lier (2 0 02)
has argued that ecological distribution conflicts become social movements when
affected communities reject the valuation of resources on the basis of a finan-
cial cost-benefit analysis. The tendency for economic activity to have unintended
negative impacts on the environment – externalities – is well established and
addressed in neo-classical economics by allocating a price to the environmental
‘goods’ so damaged. Martinez-Alier draws attention to two of the flaws in this
approach. First, is the economic logic of competition which requires economic
actors to shift costs into the cheapest available sink. Second, is the inability of
those with little leverage on the market to exact a commensurate price for the
environment which has value to them. Thus ‘one can see externalities not as
market failures but as cost-shifting successes which nevertheless might give rise
to environmental movements’ (Martinez-Alier, 2002, p. 257, emphasis in original).
Environmental justice struggles therefore emerge where capital expansion reaches
environmental limits set by the values of the poor and exposes the contradiction
between the interests of capital and of the poor.
In this understanding, what engages individuals to act collectively has little to
do with their motivation, identity, ‘inner meanings’ or ‘awareness of oneself as an
autonomous actor’ (Kilgore, 1999, pp. 200 and 197 respectively), but rather the
violation of one’s socially embedded values by the interests and logic of capital
accumulation.
The environmental justice movement therefore presents a challenge to the ‘cul-
tural turn’ in social movement studies as well as the social-psychological approach
to collective learning. In order to take into consideration the environmental justice
movement, it is necessary to recognise the relationship between the knowledge
and interpretive frames generated by social movements, and the material inter-
ests of the classes and social groups that constitute these movements. Drawing
on Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony, Williams (1973) describes how knowl-
edge and other forms of culture are introduced by movements of new socio-
economic actors and bear the imprint of the interests of these actors. Where
emergent culture is compatible with the interests of dominant social groups, then
these may become incorporated. If they challenge the ruling interests they remain
130 Eurig Scandrett et al
alternative, oppositional or repressed. Thus, without collapsing into a crude class
determinism, this analysis retains a critical relationship between the knowledge
and the collective material conditions of the knower.
Movement generated culture can be incorporated into the ‘corporate’ culture
through a process of negotiation and compromise (frame alignment) which, cru-
cially, only selects those elements that do not pose a significant challenge to power-
ful class interests. In the context of environmental conf licts, models of economic
development such as ecological modernisation or industrial ecology are based
on allocating artificial property rights, creating quasi-markets and constructing
price through ‘contingent valuation’. Carbon trading, for example, is a market
mechanism designed to generate profits from the reduction of greenhouse gases,
essentially by allocating property rights to pollution. Corporate culture therefore
reflects the historic bloc of class interests which has retained dominance through
selective incorporation of compatible subaltern cultures whilst engineering the
expulsion of those which challenge their hegemony. Such corporate culture never
precisely reflects dominant interests but is always contingent on these processes
of challenge and negotiation from social movements.
Thus, it can be argued that Eyerman and Jamison’s (1991) ‘successful’ envir-
onmental movement is also a partial failure because it involves the incorporation
of only those elements of an ecological critique that are compatible with the
material interests of the privileged classes in the continuing expansion of capital.
Green consumerism, for example, may have emerged from a critique of economic
growth but it leads to a reinforcement of the ‘culture-ideology of consumerism’
(Sklair, 2003) which sustains capital expansion and ecologically destructive cost-
shifting. Further, by studying the cognitive praxis of environmental justice move-
ments, those that emerge at the limits of capital expansion, it may be possible to
identify important insights into the material interests of subaltern groups which
have been excluded through incorporation and, according to Gelpi’s analysis,
we will expect to find the source of a curriculum which exposes the underlying
structures of oppression.
Research in environmental justice movements
We now turn to focus on two research programmes into learning in environmen-
tal justice movements in three distinct contexts comprising community action
against a polluting industry, a workers’ industrial hazards campaign and survivors
of an industrial disaster. The first two are in Scotland and derive from research
conducted by Crowther, Hemmi, Martin and Scandrett (Crowther et al., 2008,
2009) as part of a programme into the use of information and communication
technologies in learning in social movements (ESRC ref RES-000–22-2301). The
case studies are both campaigns against the environmental impact of multi-
national companies: against fish farm developments in the remote West Highland
peninsula of Scoraig, and a group of workers exposed to toxic chemicals in a
microchip production factory in the industrial town of Greenock. The remaining
data are from research in India conducted by Mukherjee, Scandrett, Sen and Shah
(Mukherjee et al., 2008; Bhopal Survivors Movement Study, 2009) with survivors
of the Bhopal gas disaster.
Theorising education and learning in social movements 131
These studies are documenting the diverse ongoing learning in these strug-
gles, how they connect with interpretive frames and the interests that are embed-
ded in contested knowledges. A few examples are given below into the ways in
which multiple knowledges are made ‘really useful’ through application to the
goals of the movement.
Environmental justice campaigns in Scotland
The Scottish environmental justice campaigns were selected from amongst com-
munities which participated in an initiative of Friends of the Earth Scotland known
as ‘Agents for Environmental Justice’, with which one of the team (Scandrett) was
closely involved. This project involved activists from community campaigns elect-
ing to participate in a specialised Higher Education Certificate course in environ-
mental justice, provided jointly by Queen Margaret University and Friends of the
Earth Scotland (Wilkinson and Scandrett, 2003; Scandrett, 2007). The key activists
in these campaign groups have therefore identified themselves with an environ-
mental justice interpretive frame and participated in activities with other cam-
paign activists who also identify with environmental justice.
Data have been collected through a series of site visits conducted in 2008
incorporating semi-structured interviews with key informants in each community
(30 in Scoraig, seven in Greenock), who were identified through ‘snowballing’
from the main activists (Crowther et al., 2008). Interviews were recorded and
subsequently analysed by the research team who identified key themes including
movement ‘frames’. A further selection of excerpts was conducted by one of the
team (Hemmi).
Figure 1. Map of Scotland with Scoraig and Greenock
Greenock
Scoraig
132 Eurig Scandrett et al
The campaign against fish farming
Scoraig is a small, remote village, in Wester Ross located towards the end of a
moorland peninsula between two sea lochs, Loch Broom to the North and Little
Loch Broom to the South, accessible only by boat or rough track. In 2000 these
lochs were identified as suitable for intensive fish farming by multinational cor-
poration Marine Harvest (see Forsyth, 2003), as has been the case with many sea
lochs on the West and North of Scotland during the latter decades of the twenti-
eth century. Similar to many remote Highland villages, the township of Scoraig
suffered depopulation until the mid twentieth century. From the 1960s, however,
incomers started to move in and rebuild neglected houses, start crofts (part-time
farms), small businesses and began to establish a new community.
Scoraig has its origin in the Highland crofting and fishing community plus the
counter-cultural and utopian socialist movement of the 1960s of people seeking an
alternative lifestyle. It has since become an established community with several of
the current occupants having grown up there and with a degree of integration with
neighbouring crofting communities. Some small, locally owned fish farms were
established in the loch, but with the arrival of Marine Harvest and the proposed
expansion to industrial scale of fish farming, the community mobilised against the
company. Fish farming is a controversial industry which involves highly intensive
concentrations of salmon in cages at a fixed location in the sea loch. Concentrated
f i sh me a l f oo d i s pr ov id ed to th e sa lm o n, in a dd it io n to ch em ic al p es tic id es to co nt rol
the spread of lice. Food waste, pesticide residue and fish excreta have a tendency
to build up in the locality of the farm or where tides concentrate them along the
shore. Regulation of fish farming is the responsibility of the Scottish Environment
Protection Agency which has had limited powers to control the industry’s expan-
sion and impact on the complex ecosystems of tidal sea lochs.
The industry of Scoraig is dependent on organic horticulture and crofting,
fishing, seafood gathering and tourism, including wildlife diving, all of which are
dependent on natural ecosystems and a pristine environment. Many of the local
residents use seaweed as fertiliser on their fields, which risked contamination
from fish farms. The community campaign therefore built an alliance of diverse
interests concerned about the rapid expansion of the fish farms. These included
trawler fishers, lobster and shellfish fishers, river anglers, landowners with fishing
rights for wild salmon, tourism businesses, and crofters, as well as professionals
with concerns about pollution.
The material conditions on which the community depended were to be violated
by the introduction of fish farming, and this led to local mobilisation across a range
of interests (not always explicitly, we learned that some groups remained silent in
public but offered support in private). As one of the campaigners describes it:
The close interaction with the land and the reliance on the natural environment is the
overriding quality of this way of life. A way of life that I find I am prepared to go to
length to protect, now assuming an active role [in the campaign] I probably would not
have filled, had the community not been threatened by proposed impending develop-
ments. (Scoraig campaigner, male)
Learn ing played a n important role in this campaig n. Some of t his involved access-
ing specialist knowledge from researchers, usually obtained by a few individuals
Theorising education and learning in social movements 133
through the Internet and e-mail contact with international fish farm campaigners
and distributed within the community through informal methods.
I learned a lot about salmon farming. There’s lots of documentation that I got hold of,
one way or another, from people who had done research on it and written reports ... I
got in touch with the Ullapool sub-aqua diving club ... The report they did on the effect
of the fish farm – you know, you just accumulate information. One contact leads to
another – I can show you masses of paperwork, by people doing research and environ-
mental policies. (Scoraig campaigner, female)
However, in many cases, learning through campaigning involved a complex inter-
action between specialist knowledge and lay knowledge derived from experi-
ence. An example of lay knowledge occupying a frame compatible with ecosystem
dependency being used to challenge the specialist knowledge of multinationals’
development frame is illustrated in the following quotation.
... [the salmon fish cages] had broken off in the storm, and I’ve actually got quite a lot of
debris that I have collected from the loch, like big pipes that are 200 or 300 feet long ... It was
the most ridiculous place to put a fish farm and when they put it there, we all said that’s
not going to last for long anyway because we get a north-westerly swell which is influenced
by the Atlantic. The seas that come around here – I mean it looks quite tranquil today but
in the winter months it’s the end of the earth, cold . You kind of get marooned as a commu-
nity because it’s too rough to cross and they put a fish farm right in that. It’s just inches off
the sea, it ’s not right up on a loch like most are or in a hidden place, it was right in the face
of the prevailing winds and currents; so they’re idiots. (Scoraig campaigner, male)
Lay knowledge, developed locally through direct experience of this particular
environment, was regarded as more contextually valid to the specialist scientific
knowledge accessed by the multinational and this seems to be justified by the
material conditions. This local knowledge is however integrated with, or at least
held alongside, specialist information accessed from the Internet to form a body
of knowledge that can be used to challenge fish farm expansion in Scoraig. The
following quotation gives an insight into the complexities of learning through the
critical interrogation of both lay, experiential knowledge and technical, specialist
knowledge, leading to a deeper understanding.
It made me think a lot and question things a lot more. I used to feel because I lived in
a place so remote and isolated here that I wouldn’t be touched by the outside world. It
would touch me but not so directly, not right in my face with the heavy pollution and
heavy industry. The fish farm ... would change this place ... completely. The landscape
would look the same but the noise, the stink, the pollution, the traffic in the sea and the
wildlife would be affected ... I think if there is oil, fish, money, there will be a ‘developer’
somewhere and it’s another way of colonialism. It made me think a lot more about this
experience globally. People whose lives are destroyed, in what ways, and it’s just going
on everywhere. (Scoraig campaigner, female)
PHASE 2
Greenock is a former shipbuilding town in Inverclyde, to the west of Glasgow,
steeped in male working class trades unionism. After the closure of the shipyards,
134 Eurig Scandrett et al
the National Semiconductor microchip factory largely employed working class
women in a fiercely anti-trade union environment. Many women who were
employed at National Semiconductor were exposed to toxic chemicals in the ‘clean
rooms’ and subsequently suffered ill health, including reproductive problems and
cancers (McCourt, 2006). In the absence of trade unions, a community-based
employment rights office supported affected workers and former workers who
organised, initially for the purposes of self-help but later became the campaign
group PHASE 2 (People for a Healthy and Safe Environment’, named after PHASE
1 in silicon valley in California with whom they made contact).
These women were able to draw on their direct experience of working in the
factory, along with their own experience of ill health and more specialist knowl-
edge from trade union officials, sympathetic academics and US anti-toxics cam-
paigners with whom they were in contact primarily through email. Such know-
ledge was used to challenge the expertise, and ignorance, that was being used in
the interests of the company.
I actually asked my own doctor, ‘do you think my exposure to these chemicals could
have cau sed my illne s s? ’ He sa id absolu tel y n ot. I had s ome pa per s wi th me t o s how him ,
research papers and stuff like that, and I said ‘have you read anything on the subject,
do you know there has been studies into it?’ He said no. But he was prepared to offer
me an opinion and tell me that my illness hadn’t been caused by chemicals. (Phase 2
campaigner, female)
Moreover, campaigners make a connection between knowledge and the class
interests of those who hold such knowledge, in this case the medical profession:
... the one area that I was surprised in, really surprised in, was the medical profession. I
didn’t realise it was so class ridden. Because I don’t believe that the medics aren’t aware
of the situation, I think they’re aware of it and choose to ignore it, for a whole lot of dif-
ferent reasons. But I think primarily it’s convenience and it’s a bias against blue-collar
male and female workers. I can’t see any other reason as to why they would ignore these
workers presenting themselves and not take an interest in the industry.... It’s surprising
how a local health board just accepts what a local employer says to them. They don’t
regulate health, with a view to protecting the local people, they treat the illness. They
don’t ask how the illnesses came about. (Phase 2 campaigner, male)
Supportive occupational health experts (see Waterston and Ladou, 2003) were
able to provide technical, scientific and research methodology advice which pro-
vided the campaigners with arguments that successfully forced the UK’s Health
and Safety Executive (tasked with the responsibility of ensuring health and safety
legislation is adhered to by companies) to undertake three separate studies into
the health hazards of working in what was regarded, until the Phase 2 campaign
began, as a safe and clean industry of the future.
In both of the two Scottish case studies, knowledges from various sources are
integrated and combined in a learning process to serve the collective interests of
the campaign. Moreover, these two contrasting local campaigns: one rural, iso-
lated and descended from 1960s counter-culture, the other, urban working class
with roots in the labour movement, are able to articulate their knowledges within
a shared frame of environmental justice. Indeed, as key activists in these and
other campaigning communities worked together through the formal programme
Theorising education and learning in social movements 135
of the Higher Education Certificate, they were increasingly able to articulate their
local campaign as part of a wider social movement (Agents for Environmental
Justice and Scandrett, 2003). Baviskar (2005) names this process as a ‘discursive
encounter’ whereby specific campaigns identify with a wider movement through
alignment with their frame and with its greater explanatory power and the poten-
tial to connect with a wider range of allies.
Bhopal, India
The Bhopal disaster occurred in December 1984 when a pesticide factory owned
by US multinational Union Carbide leaked toxic gas methyl isocyanate into the sur-
rounding communities, killing an estimated 8,000 people. Survivors of the disaster
have been campaigning for justice and rehabilitation since. The Bhopal Survivors’
Movement Study has been conducting semi-structured interviews with movement
activists in the three principal campaigning organisations (Mukherjee, Scandrett
and Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study, 2008; Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study,
2009; Mukherjee, 2010). Using methods of repeat interviews involving reflection
on video recordings of previous interviews, the study has attempted to integrate
the analyses of survivor-activists irrespective of their literacy skills.
One of the campaigns comprises a coalition of local grassroots groups and
unions with international supporters. The International Campaign for Justice in
Bhopal (ICJB) has demonstrated considerable capacity for discursive encounter in
its identification with an environmental justice frame as it negotiates know ledge
from both local, Hindi speaking, non-literate survivors and international, educated,
Internet-using supporters. A strand of the ICJB’s campaign has been for access to
clean water for communities living near to the factory site whose water source
was found to be contaminated. The group documented the experience of illness
amongst people living near to the factory site but who were not exposed to the gas
in 1984. This information was combined with specialist data on pesticide contami-
nation from state monitoring obtained through Indian Right to Information legisla-
tion, and additional samples analysed by Greenpeace and by the Centre for Science
and Environment (e.g. Labunska et al,. 1999; Johnson et al., 2009). This process is
described by Rashida Bee, an activist from the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery
Karmchari Sangh (Bhopal Gas Affected Women Stationery Workers’ Union), high-
lighting the role that a key movement intellectual, Sathyu, played in it.
There were many people who were falling sick beside the Union Carbide [factory] walls
and all around it. Why were they falling sick? Most of the women who I knew were from
these areas where people were facing new problems. I met up with Sathyu and he told
me about the contamination of the water. And after the reports in 1999 it was found
for a fact that the water was indeed toxic. In one of the hand pumps black water started
gushing out and everyone went to see. Greenpeace came in 2000 and it was after this
that we in the Stationery [Workers’ Union] joined hands with Sathyu. After hearing
about the contaminated water, and from what I had learned over the years, I started to
realise that this is about saving the world. What happened in Bhopal has already hap-
pened, but we need to join forces to stop it from happening again anywhere else in the
world. (Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study, 2009, p. 113)
Another campaign group Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (BGPMUS:
Bhopal Gas Affected Women Workers’ Union) was initiated as a trade union
136 Eurig Scandrett et al
and retains an economic rehabilitation frame, although it successfully mobilises
men and women in communities and workplaces to campaigns on a wide range
of issues. Mohini Devi describes how learning about environmental pollution
emerged from the immediate struggle in the workplace:
To start with it was just workplace issues, and then other things started coming up. For
instance, the lack of health care came up because people were missing work due to visits
to the hospital and we recognised that you need to be healthy to do anything else. With
time we understood things better and then people like [Abdul] Jabbar [lea der of BGPMUS]
and other educated people joined in who could guide us better and give us suggestions ...
Issues picked up by the women were never restricted to workplace issues, they were open
to the problems that people face over all . For eve ry problem, if you look at it on a larger
level, there is a problem that relates all other humans not just the ones suffering in that
place and time. This is why our solidarity went out to other campaigns also and likewise
got the same back from them. (Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study, 2009, pp. 71–2)
The issue of solidarity with other struggles as both an outcome of an educational
process and a means of learning more about the world occurs regularly. Hamida
Bee, who was married at 11 and a mother at 14 had very little formal education
but through her activism in BGPMUS made the connections with critical areas of
knowledge. She emphasises:
We used to raise all sorts of issues at our meetings concerning women’s rights, like
dowry, abuse etc. We have also supported movements like Narmada Bachao Andolan
[NBA: Save the Narmada (river, from dams) Movement], and Shankar Guha Niyogi’s
Bhilai movement [a land rights and environmental justice movement rooted in the
miner’s union of Bhilai, Chhat tisgarrh] have received support from BGPMUS. We also
supported the fishermen’s rights movement in Bhopal. We worked with the NBA and
even went to jail with them. (Bhopal Sur vivors’ Movement Study, 2009, p. 88)
These brief quotations from different case studies illustrate some of the ways in
which learning is taking place in social movements which is directional, negoti-
ated and dialectical, constantly negotiating between lay and specialist knowledge,
local and global contexts, particular and general issues. Nilsen (2006) describes
movement learning as a combination of ‘joining the dots’ (understanding how
issues are interconnected through common causes) and ‘joining hands’ (learning
that grievances in one community are not unique and can be countered by soli-
darity with others affected by the same oppression).
Towards conclusions
Having explored data from three contrasting campaigns, in two different national
contexts, we are now in a position to suggest an analysis of learning in social
movements which draws on our experience along with both social movement
theory and adult education theory.
First, taking the approach developed by Gelpi, environmental justice strug-
gles should be considered as a crucial locus for lifelong education. Such struggles
identify the points where the contradiction between economic (capitalist) devel-
opment and the socio-ecological environment lead to the emergence of discon-
tent and social movements. The people in this position have urgent and pressing
Theorising education and learning in social movements 137
needs to understand these contradictions with a view to, if not resolving them,
at least obtain some social and environmental concessions from those responsi-
ble. Second, the curriculum emerges from this contradiction. Such a curriculum
is likely to include the distribution of both material and symbolic environmental
resources across social inequalities and the conflicting valuations of the environ-
ment which result from this. Knowledge exists in dynamic interaction and dialect-
ical tension with political, social, ecological, economic and cultural factors, and
movement learning recognises the distinctive ‘epistemological advantage’ which
arises from the oppressed’s identification of injustice and collective struggle. This
process of collective learning in the context of social change can then reflect
back out to the wider society with insights for the urgent task of transforming the
relationship between socio-political decision-making and the ecological resource
base and physical environment on which all societies depend.
Having identified the significance of environmental justice movements, social
movement theory provides useful tools for understanding the learning which
occurs and it is proposed that this may be understood at three levels: micro (indi-
vidual, interactive); meso (frame, minimum thematic universe); macro (culture-
ideology; hegemony).
At the micro level, individual learning occurs during a campaign, as Phase 2
activists found out about their illnesses by accessing journal articles on the web,
confronting their doctors and obtaining information from sympathetic specialists
and workers who had had similar experiences. This is the level at which differ-
ent kinds of knowledge flows through the movement in constant translation and
combination between lay and specialist knowledge. So whilst individual learning
is often self-directed it is also occurring in a context where individuals are shar-
ing and interrogating knowledge claims with others. Such micro level learning
is categorised in different ways by authors (eg. Sterling, 2001; Crowther et al.,
2008). However, this micro-level knowledge only normally makes sense within
the meso level frame (sensu Snow and Benford, 1988). So it is made possible to
learn about a water contamination incident in Bhopal – both its existence and its
significance – when operating within an environmental justice frame.
Meso level learning occurs as reframing, which broadens the context and
analysis that is required by the learner to locate and explain experience. This
reframing may be stimulated through discursive encounters with powerful groups
outside the movement (Baviskar, 2005), or else as a ‘paradigm shift’ (Kuhn, 1962),
when frames change in order to make sense of unexplained experiences. For
example, the experience of illness amongst Bhopalis who had not been exposed
to the gas contributed to a collective realisation of the impact of water contamin-
ation and the adoption of an environmental justice frame. Moreover, the material
interests of the learners are embedded in the frame through being tested against
movement practice – i.e. ‘really useful knowledge’.
However this meso-level reframing process also interacts with the macro level
which is the corporate culture on which hegemony of powerful classes and groups
operate. Movement frames are in constant negotiation within the corporate cul-
ture, through discursive encounters with more powerful allies and through con-
frontation with enemies. The corporate culture-ideology ref lects the history of
movements, classes and sectors which have been incorporated through negoti-
ation with hegemonic alliances of class interests. Gelpi locates these material
138 Eurig Scandrett et al
interests in the relations of production although this may be expanded to include
the relations of reproduction and the environmental circumstances that they occur
within. Social learning can contribute to the shifting of these hegemonic alliances
in favour of the material interests of oppressed groups.
Freire’s (2007) conception of the ‘thematic universe’ is described as occur-
ring in concentric circles from the ‘minimum’, particular context of the learner,
through to the ‘general-historical situation of the epoch’. Our distinction between
individual-interactive learning, reframing and cultural-ideological change corres-
ponds to this. The meso level of reframing relates to Freire’s minimum thematic
universe, or ‘thought-language with which men and women refer to reality, the
levels at which they perceive that reality, and the way they view the world’ (ibid.
p. 97) from which generative themes are selected and employed pedagogically.
Such themes interact at a macro level with the
... ideas, values concepts, and hopes, as well as the obstacles that impede the people’s full
humanization, [which] constitute the themes of that epoch. These themes imply others
that are opposing or even antithetical; they also indicate tasks to be carried out and ful-
filled. Thus, historical themes are never isolated, independent, disconnected, or static;
they are always interacting dialectically with their opposites. Nor can these themes be
found anywhere except in the human-world relationship. The complex of interacting
themes of an epoch constitutes its thematic universe’. (ibid. p. 101)
Thus, incorporating the educational theory of Gelpi and Freire with the developments
in social movement theory which embrace cultural, as well as material analysis,
allow us to move towards an integrated theory of learning in social movements.
The environmental justice movement emerges in conditions where the expan-
sion of capital reaches limits in the environmental conditions of production and
where those who inhabit that environment resist. Through the practice of resist-
ance, learning occurs at micro, meso and macro levels, in dialectical relationships
between them and between each and the material conditions. Education, as delib-
erate, directed learning in formal or informal contexts, starting with contradic-
tions in the political ecology, can operate at all these levels and contribute to this
process.
Social movement learning is directional in the sense that campaigns have
objectives to obtain concessions from an exploitative system, and the logic of the
collective claim of the movement is a challenge to a system which denies the inter-
ests of the oppressed. Whilst the corporate culture, dominated by assumptions of
neo-liberalism, sets limits in what can be known and how it can be known, the
praxis of environmental justice movements serves to challenge these assumptions
with the interests of those who suffer from its effects. It is through reclaiming the
insights of Gelpi, which locate lifelong education in the structural relations and
conditions of production and addresses the possibilities of learning dialectically,
that social movement praxis can contribute to education theory.
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