Dip Kapoor - Research, Political Engagement and Dispossession

Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan have gathered a powerful set of writers who live and work, write and imagine, at the intersection of critical inquiry and radical action in the Americas and Asia. The complex and compelling chapters remind us of the academic obligation to engage the class struggle; calling for research that can historicize injustice and resistance movements; make visible capillaries of global capital and land grabs; connect campaigns and struggles across groups and place; articulating unapologetically the need for research that contributes to the critical and rigorous analysis of reality.

Michelle Fine, The Graduate Centre, CUNY, and author of Just Research in Contentious Times

The relationship between research and social movements is fraught with many potential pitfalls. Kapoor and Jordans collection offer strategies for politically engaged, useful research. Activist researchers, working in solidarity with struggles around the world share their experiences using various forms of Participatory Action Research, ethnography, and oral history to do public sociology. This book is both a critical resource for evaluating research methods, and for thinking about the power and politics of struggle.

Lesley Wood, York University, Toronto

RESEARCH, POLITICAL
ENGAGEMENT AND
DISPOSSESSION

INDIGENOUS, PEASANT AND URBAN POOR
ACTIVISMS IN THE AMERICAS AND ASIA

Edited by Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan

Research, Political Engagement and Dispossession: Indigenous, Peasant and Urban Poor Activisms in the Americas and Asia was first published in 2019 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR, UK.

www.zedbooks.net

Editorial Copyright Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan

Copyright in this Collection Zed Books

The right of Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan to be identified as the editor(s) of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

Typeset in Plantin and Kievit by Swales and Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
Cover design by Burgess and Beech
Cover photo Robert Wallis, Panos Pictures

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78699-440-0 hb
ISBN 978-1-78699-442-4 pdf
ISBN 978-1-78699-443-1 epub
ISBN 978-1-78699-444-8 mobi

CONTENTS

Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan

Alessandro Mariano and Rebecca Tarlau

David Meek

Irene Vlez-Torres

Dip Kapoor

Hasriadi Masalam

Bijoy P. Barua

Ligaya Lindio-McGovern

Patrick OHare and Santiago Sorroche

Pablo Pozzi

Robyn Magalit Rodriguez

Eurig Scandrett and Shalini Sharma

Hsiao-Chuan Hsia

Figures

Tables

(PhD, OISE/Toronto) is currently honorary fellow of Asian Center for Development. He is a former professor of East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He also served as honorary visiting professor at the International School of Advanced Studies/Mid Western University, Nepal/University of Pavia (Italy) Kathmandu Campus in Spring 2014. He has published in scholarly journals such as International Education (USA), Canadian Journal of Development Studies and Development Review (Bangladesh). He has also contributed book chapters in several edited collections. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Indian Association of Journalism and Communication, Delhi, India and former associate fellow of the Centre for Developing Area Studies (CDAS), McGill University, Canada. He has co-edited Globalization, Culture, and Education in South Asia: Critical Excursions (2012). Currently, he is conducting research with Adivasi and other rural communities pertaining to education, indigenous knowledge, social mobilization, and development in Bangladesh and Northern Thailand.

is professor at the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies of Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan. She was part of the institutes founding faculty and served as the director from August 2010 to July 2016. Her many publications analyze issues of immigrants, migrant workers, citizenship, empowerment, and social movements. Her publications in English include: For Better or For Worse: Comparative Research on Equity and Access for Marriage Migrants , the result of collaborating with member organizations of Alliance of Marriage Migrants Organizations for Rights and Empowerment (AMMORE) to address issues of marriage migrants in the Asia Pacific region; The Making of a Transnational Grassroots Migrant Movement: A Case Study of Hong Kongs Asian Migrants Coordinating Body; and Multiculturalism in East Asia: A Transnational Exploration of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (co-edited with Koichi Iwabuchi and Hyun Mee Kim). Hsia is also an activist striving for the empowerment of immigrant women and the making of im/migrant movement in Taiwan. She initiated the Chinese programs for marriage migrants in 1995, leading to the establishment of TransAsia Sisters Association, Taiwan (TASAT). She is also the co-founder of the Alliance for the Human Rights Legislation for Immigrants and Migrants (AHRLIM) in Taiwan. Internationally, she has been instrumental in forming AMMORE. She serves as a board member of Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) and was elected as the member of the Regional Council of Asia Pacific Women, Law and Development (APWLD), and a member of the international coordinating body of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA).

is chair and associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE), Faculty of Education, McGill University. He has worked with indigenous peoples and immigrant workers in Canada over the past 20 years using forms of participatory action research/evaluation (PAR/PE) and critical ethnography. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Action Research and will co-chair and chair the organization committee of the Action Research Network of the Americas conferences to be held in San Diego and Montreal in 2018 and 2019.

is professor in international development education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta, Canada and volunteer research associate and board member, Center for Research and Development Solidarity (CRDS), an Adivasi-Dalit popular indigenous and small/landless peasant rural organization in South Odisha, eastern India. His research and applied engagements in Odisha and with the CRDS have been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, facilitating prior non-funded Popular Participatory Action Research (PPAR) going back two decades. He is co/editor of several book collections including Against Colonization and Rural Dispossession: Local Resistance in South and East Asia, the Pacific and Africa (2017) and NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects (2014).

is a professor of sociology and the major co-founder of the Office for Sustainability at Indiana University Kokomo. A recipient of a Fulbright Research Award in 2017, she conducted research on the impacts of extractive corporate mining on indigenous communities in the Philippines and its implications towards an integrated framing of human rights and sustainability. With research and teaching interests on women/gender and globalization, Third World development, social movements and social change, and sustainability she is author of Filipino Peasant Women: Exploitation and Resistance and Globalization, Labor Export and Resistance: A Study of Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Global Cities . A former director of womens studies, she is co-editor of Globalization and Third World Women: Exploitation, Coping and Resistance , and Gender and Globalization: Patterns of Womens Resistance . She received her doctoral degree at Loyola University Chicago in sociology of development and gender, race, and class. Her activism centers on Philippine national liberation, human rights, and womens movements.