Louise Gwenneth Phillips - Storying Social Movement/s: Remaking Meaning in the Mobilization of Identity

This series is a new and innovative proposition in the nascent and growing space of movement studies. Emerging and established scholars who are beginning to work within the contemporary practices and methods of movement, seek resources such as this series seeks to provide. Education is very much tied up within an awareness of space and place, for example, a school can begin to take on an identity of its own, with as much learning taking place within its corridors and playgrounds as occurs in the classrooms. As learners interact with these environments through movement it is essential for researchers to understand how these experiences can be understood, allowing for a very interdisciplinary approach. This series specifically explores a range of movement approaches, including but not limited to walking research, a relatively new and exciting field, along with several other paradigmic lenses. The series will be commissioning in the Palgrave Pivot format.

Cover illustration: Pattern Melisa Hasan

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

What does it mean to stand up, stand against, stand with and stand for some-thing in this moment we find ourselves? What does it mean to be one who stands, one who under-stands, one who can with-stand and one who takes a stand? The stories in this book stand. They stand strong, they stand proud, they stand tall and they stand togetherstanding, anything becomes possible. These stories of standing are stories that we rarely hear. They are stories that we need to hearover and over again, until we have heard them. Standing, stories sneak up on truths we barely understand as we try to figure them out in order to make a cruel world a more just and bearable place. Standing, stories tell their own truths in their own way and those speaking the stories are never left standing on their own.

My maternal grandmothers family were coal miners in Cornwall, women who remained standing long after their husbands shoes were placed on the kitchen table. Still today, there is an unwritten rule in my house that new shoes are never to be stood on a table anywhere in the house, not least of all the kitchen. I asked my Mum recently where this custom had come from and she very proudly explained, Well, its all to do with your great grandfather, he was a Union man and a delegate to boot. I wish I knew more about my great grandfatherand my great grandmother, the story is that she too stood for justice but by standing by, with, for and up for the rights of women workers. This little-known story of standing stands strong in the blood and bones of my memory. It has stood the test of time and has often return to stand beside me in in my own work as a Unionist feminist in the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) of Australia. Standing: refusing to be a bystander even though you know the work is hard and your feet are going to hurt. Standing: holding your ground and position in places where the might and right of power and privilege push you right onto the edges of fear and precarity. Standing: an ethical and performative activist force which is not willing to keep on going with the flow, regardless of the risk. Standing: with a megaphone in your hand and heart negotiating the right to speak to make sure that others can. Standing: making a call and making a claim to something because standing there in that moment matters in ways we can only begin to imagine. Standing: because not standing is