La Casa dels Futurs is working with academia and movements to integrate transformative and restorative research methods that see learning as a way to actively take part in changing the world so we may reinhabit and decolonise wounded places as we learn to live well on a damaged planet.
Inspired and originated from feminist critiques of research, Critical Pedagogies of Place have emerged as a critique of positivist methodologies that see separation and objectivity between the researcher and those being researched. Instead, Critical Pedagogies of Place seek to bring awareness of – and reflection on – preexisting beliefs and assumptions that one brings to research. These can include the understanding that people experience the world from different embodied, social, intellectual, and spatial locations – as well as acknowledging profoundly different ways of understanding power dynamics, ethical challenges, and worldviews.
Critical Pedgagies of Place offer a qualitative approach to research and knowledge-sharing practices that seek to ground research in a place, a context, a history, and social relations as it actively takes part in changing the world around us.
Situated Research Workshop Towards Climate Justice
In November 2022, La Casa dels Futurs coordinated an encounter between over a dozen researchers from ICTA-UAB (the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and local activists in the Valley of Can Masdeu. The goal of this encounter was to co-create knowledges around situated research pedagogies and their practical applications for the coalition that manages the valley.
Facilitated conversations explored: situated research as echoed in scholarly literature, with an emphasis on the way processes of co-creating research guidelines with researchers and activists can foster more just process which consequently can foster just situated research approaches; co-creation of knowledges as a tool to create create mutual-aid dynamics, as well as the challenges and limitations of such practices; and how working with social movements can open up caring and intimate spaces outside of the machine of neoliberal academia through which more just research practices can be (co)imagined and (co)enacted.
Building relationships for the long term was emphasised by many participants as fundamental for just and transformative situated research, as extended engagement is required to generate trust, establishing meaningful relationships, processes, and outcomes. Instead of singular evaluation based on publications and citations, it was encouraged that outcomes of research processes should also reflect a co-creation dynamic, with research findings disseminated in accessible, public-facing formats that are accessible by movements themselves.
The research process also underlines the need for establishing ontological and epistemological positions to mutually unfold in dialogue with the territory and communities, its spatial position, and its temporalities. This echoes what Wolch (2003: 646) points to as radical openness as method, which is also “a discipline of humility and courage” in the sense of trusting and following through on what allies and places need. Thus, the definition of research objectives and questions should play a key role in the process of engaging with movements/communities.
A world café event was facilitated to explore: How to set up just processes for scholar-activist/situated research with and within social movements? The outcomes of these sessions have been applied towards the construction of our ongoing educational work, our development of ongoing collaborations with academia, and the future vision for the Movement School.
Read an Antipode Article about this encounter here
Based on the outcomes of this workshop, La Casa dels Futurs is developing a pilot project to play a bridging role between movements and academia by harvesting research questions from movements and locating researchers and students interested in these areas. Researchers would be would be accompanied throughout the process and receive trainings in Critical Pedagogies of Place and Embedded Research so that they can make sure knowledges are useful and return to the communities where they are needed.
