Full Description
How social movements learn in struggle, produce knowledge, and provoke public paradigm shifts have become an important focus of critical adult education in our contemporary turbulent times. And yet, African social movements, and their learning are largely absent from this literature. This work, therefore, provides a rare and much needed African contribution to this field.
African Social Movement Learning: The Case of the Ada Songor Salt Movement speaks to this gap in the literature, laying out an entry-point to an African-centered account of learning in struggle on the continent. However, this entry-point quickly turns to an in-depth sharing of one particular case of African social movement learning. Based on 9 years of research with the Ada Songor salt movement in Ghana, the book provides a detailed account of learning through defending communal access to West Africa's largest salt yielding lagoon in the face of local, national and global efforts to expropriate this resource. The book shares the knowledge production of the movement, as well as the ways in which the movement has restoried its struggle to meet new challenges. Songs, tapestries, demonstrations, manifestoes, popular education approaches, and book production all feature in these efforts.
Contents
Foreword
Anne Harley
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1: Introduction
Social Movement and Social Movement Learning Studies
Social Movement Learning in Ghana - A Gathering of Voices
A History of Movements Defending Communal Access
Moving with the Ada Movement
Structure of the Book
Chapter 2: African Social Movements and Learning
Social Movement Studies and Subaltern Movements
Social Movement Learning and Critical Adult Education
1st Wave: African Liberation Movements
From the 2nd Wave of Democratization to the 3rd Wave of Contemporary Ctruggles
2nd Wave: African Democracy Movements
3rd Wave: Protest Movements in Contemporary Times
Moving from Africa to Ada
Chapter 3: Ada Movement Knowledge Production, Questioning National Development
National Development and Neoliberalism as Topographies of Power
The Adas, a Salt People from the Start
Ada Songor Focus of British Colonial Divide and Rule Tactics in Area
Ghana Emerges from the Gold Coast Colony, but the Post Independence State Still Promotes the National over the Local
Adas Dispossessed, Fight back through Legal, Political and Physical Means
A New Dispossession on the Horizon Means New Tactics Are Needed
Resisting the National Development and Neoliberal Narrative
Chapter 4: Stories and Restorying as Social Movement Learning
Literacy of Struggle
Challenging How the Root Causes of Struggle are Framed
The Thumbless Hand, the Chameleon, and the Dog
Challenging Male Dominance through Rooted Restorying
The Struggle of the Songor Salt People Book Project
Restorying Struggle as Learning
Chapter 5: The Pedagogy of Creative Dissent: Using Creativity to Broaden and Deepen Social Movement Learning
Introduction
Creative Dissent and Pedagogy
Creativity, Learning and Democratizing Knowledge
Overlapping Registers of "Spreading" Learning and Creativity
Chapter 6: Conclusion
African Subaltern Movements Thinking and Acting on Their Future
African Subaltern Social Movements Producing Potential
Creativity and Non-Violent Activism
Where the Movement Is Headed Now, or the Latest Area of Learning
Learning in, through and to Struggle
Appendix A
References
Index
