social movement learning.pdf

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Studies in the Education ofAduits Vol. 43, No. 2, Autumn 2011 251

Social Movement Learning:From Radical Imagination toDisempowerment?MALGORZATA ZIELISKA, PIOTR KOWZAN AND MAGDALENA PRUSINOWSKAUniversity of Gdansk, Poland

AbstractSocial movem ents at universities have recently flourished as a response to the BolognaProcess and austerity measures at universities, but studies on learning within thesemovements are still scarce. Our goal is to describe one m ovement w hich started at theUniversity of Gdansk in 2009 and aimed at democratising the university and imple-menting various changes concerning space management and decision-making proc-esses both within academia and in terms of the future of education in general, Theresults show that knowledge and new skills came mostly from othe r European move-ments. Much learning was related to conflicts and tensions within the movement. Atthe same time as the m embers have learned to take responsibility for their place, therehas also been another, less positive side of learning in this particular movem ent. Manymembers have burned out and learned that no significant changes could happen.Moreover, they experienced that cooperation between people with various ideas andvalues could be very difficult. The authors feel that this less positive side of learningneeds also to be addressed in educational theory related to social movem ents.Keywordssocial movement learning, collective learning, collective inquiry, post-human learn-ing, stigmergy, empowermentIntroductionHistorical social movements in Poland, such as Solidarity, have become a subject ofstudy for many researchers (see Touraine, 1983; Laclau, 2005), and a symbol of civildisobedience in the country. Both in social movement studies, and in the Polish publicimagination. Solidarity has overshadowed other movements and made them appear


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252 Maigorzata Zielinska, Piotr Kowzan and Magdalena Prusinowskaexplains why recent social movements, emerging in Poland since 1989, are charac-terised by the diffusion of movem ent know ledge from groups of activists in the Westand not from local past practices (Piotrowski, 2009; Zuk, 2001). In this context weare going to describe one contemporary movement, which emerged at the Universityof Gdansk 30 years after the city became the 'cradle of Solidarity'. We will focus onlearning and knowledge prod uction inside the movem ent, as well as the diffusion ofknowledge to those outside of it.The educational aspect of social movements has been recognised by a number ofauthors (Cunningham and Curry, 1997; Clover and Hall, 2000; Dekeyser, 2000), butprocesses of collective learning are still often difficult to explain in concrete ways.In formal institutions, educational theory is traditionally preoccup ied with individualsubjects, whereas social movements by definition exercise collectivity. Cunningham(1998) rejects the 'individual' as being the starting point for social and educationalanalysis, because it results in the 'psychologisation' of adult education and conse-quently in a neutralisation of the social aspects of learning. The domination of anindividualistic perspective for analysing learning processes is not neutral, how^ever,because it draws boundaries of what can be legitimately studied and what can beignored. Therefore, we choose to follow researchers who a re studying less recognisedaspects of social and collective learning and its role in social movement action.Hall et al. claim that '[q]uite a lot has been w ritten on the educational and learningaspects of specific social movements such as education in the labour movements, thewomen's movements or the environmental movements' (2006: 5). University move-ments have received less attention in this respect, possibly because in their case it ismore difficult to distinguish an extraord inary dimension of learning (not included inthe curricula) from the formal one (e.g. university courses). In general, social move-ment learning is mostly informal and, consequently, difficult to measure within tra-ditional approaches to education and learning (Illeris, 2006: 151-152). Paradoxically,from the social movement perspective it is forrhal education that produces vagueoutcom es, because it rarely results in tangible collective action that seeks to make realdifferences in people's lives (Kowzan and Prusinowska, 2010: 228).

OKUP - Open committee for the liberation ofeducational spacesOur goal is to focus on one movement which started at the University of Gdansk in2009 and aimed at democratising the university and implementing changes concern-ing space management and decision-making processes both within academia and inthe higher education system.New surveillance and security m easures at the university w ere introduced simul-taneously with the process of campus modernisation. When a new building of theFaculty of Social Sciences was opened, the issue of security became more visiblebecause of changed practices. The introduction of surveillance cameras and a newfence built around the campus were explained as precautions aimed at protec ting the


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Social Movement Learning 2 5 3collection. However, all decisions were made without wide consultation with theuniversity com munity, but through structure s of decision m aking where , as we w illexplain later, undergraduate and postgraduate students are poorly represented. Inthis context, most actions that create the possibility of expressing the students' voiceand strengthening their visibility in order to be recogn ised and have an impact on theauthorities' decisions can be perceived as part of a process of dmocratisation.Although talks and discussions about the need for a university movem ent (includ-ing students and lecturers) took place for some months (inspired by the InternationalStudent Movement's calls for action), it was not until March 2009 that th e first m eetingof OKUP was organised. It was advertised in the campus and by e-mails to friendsand acquaintances. This call addressed issues of: the recently built fence around the campus, wh ich made crossing the campusmore difficult and suggested to many of us that the university wanted to detachitself from the outside world; restrictive security measures in the new library; the introduction of surveillance cameras inside :university buildings.At the first meeting, participants also addressed other problems, such as gender dis-crimination, and more issues came with time, including protesting against the newhigher education reform wh ich threatened to subordinate universities to corporations.The perceived lack of a collective student voice at the university linked all these issuestogether. Students, PhD students and academic teachers who joined the movementwere dissatisfied with the supposedly dem ocratic structu res at the university, 'w'hichleft the m ajority of people feeling pow erless. The student represen tation consisted ofa couple of people out of around 30,000 students. For PhD students and universityteachers the proportions were marginally better, but even members of the PhE) stu-dent council felt powerless and rarely listened to. Giving voice to this dissatisfactionwas one of OKUP's goals, but the group had also concrete ideas for changes at thecampus and decided to share them with the authorities, other members of the aca-demic staff, and the local community.After the first m eeting of OKUPE, working g roups w ere organised to deal with par-ticular problems that had been identified and an online mailing list was established.Methods of action included open letters, petitions, a flash mob, demonstrations anddirect actions. The group had approximately 50 members and 37 of them were stillon the list after two years. However, the movement was most active for only a fewmonths - later activities were ra re and, eventually, conflicts among participants m adecommunication limited and strained. Reasons for this demobilisation may have beenthe result of the foUow^ing: fulfilling some stated goals (some changes in the library; more students in decisionmaking bodies; scholarships for PhD students) and raising debate about other issues

(the fence and surveillance cameras) without any chance of significant change; internal conflicts about values and methods of action, different understand ings of


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2 5 4 Malgorzata Zieliska, Piotr Kowzan and M agdalena PrusinowskaCurrently, while the movement is dormant, we wish to discuss what we have learnedfrom this experience.Research methodOur article is an attempt to reflect on and theorise our experience as members ofOKUP. Since OKUP's actions happened mostly two years ago, and we did not makeresearch notes at that time, we have supported our memories with an analysis ofInternet discussions which occurred through the m ailing list. Content analysis of com-puter-mediated communication via the mailing list, including an analysis of expres-sions of feelings, social cues and pow er cues (as in Abbasi and Hsinchun, 2008), is ourmain research method. This is supplemented through a description of major events,which we have participated in ourselves, so that our exp erience is also a vital part ofthe analysis. Whilst our position as participan ts may limit our claims to objectivity wehope that it raises our claim to authenticity and therefore to basing an analysis andevaluation of the movem ent on an 'insider's' insight.Additionally, to elicit an evaluation of the movement, we sent a list of the followingopen questions to 37 mem bers whose e-mails we had:1. What have you learned in OKUP?2. Would you take part again in similar actions or in another university movement?Why?3. What could be done better in such a movement?Participants could answer anonymously throu gh an online survey. However, only fivepeople answered the questions and we will quote them below. Since the responserate is small, it is important not to generalise from these few answers. We believe,however, that the responses are interesting exam ples of what has been happen ing toparticipants in th e group , even if they show th e feelings and op inions of only a limitednum ber of those who w ere active.Here, we ought to explain w hat we understand by a member. In many social move-ments 'One is a member if one considers him or herself to so be!' (Hall et al, 2006:8). Also in OKUP, there w as no official membership, bu t to count ourselves and planactions, we considered everybody on the m ailing list as a mem ber. Moreover, we willuse the word 'member' and 'participant' interchangeably. While relating to OKUP,we will call it both a group and a movement. We feel tha t OKUP fulfilled all the cri-teria for being a social movement, presented by della Porta and Diani (1999: 20-22),that is: dense informal networks, conflictual collective action (aiming at social changeor resistance to it) and a collective identity. Even though the movem ent was not large,it had a strong vision of changes needed at the university and in society, exceedingthe scope of small campaign g roups (compare Kurantowicz, 2007). In various actionsorganised by OKUP, from a few people to more than 1,000 were involved.


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Social Movement Learning 2 5 5member, who had experience of public action in the context of his political activity,told others ho w to work with the media and attract their attention, during an actionwhere this was done. This action was later analysed and members could evaluate theconsequences of gaining media attention and making the conflict open to a widerpublic.Methods used in OKUP were introduced mostly by members who had e^cperi-ence in other movements, including ecological, feminist and anarchist ones, and theirmultiple membership influenced learning and organising in OKUP. For example,methods of facilitating discussion, consensus decision-making, hand signals (for easiercomm unication during events) and the w orking-group m ethod w ere employed by tw omembers who had experience of these at international ecological camps. Not onlydid members learn by doing, there were also more overtly educational presentationsorganised within the movement - during which knowledge about other movements'methods was transferred. Besides, members were familiar with methods used by theSolidarity movement, as well as in student protests in Gdansk in the 1980s; indeed,some of the participants had even researched them. Strikes and occupations usedat that time and present in other European student movements were constantly dis-cussed. However, they did not fit eithe r the goals we had or the reality we were facing,particularly as we felt that nobody would care if we were on strike or not. In otherwords, in times of mass tertiary education, stopping studying or doing research doesnot pose any immediate threat (at that time most PhD students did not teach under-graduates, as they do now in Poland). Consequently, m ethods of action from univer-sity movements abroad were used, as they had the potential to make a more obviousimpact on events.Such learning as identified above might also be called incidental learning, as itis not planned. Jesson and Newman write that incidental learning 'is very real andempowering, but the learning is incidental to, although necessary for, the socialaction taken. Reflection after the event helps participants recognise what kind oflearning has taken place. This may not be articulated as learning until someone helpsthem make it conscious' (2004: 255). Foley (2000: 276) analysed many examples ofincidental learning in social movements which 'generated instrumental skills andknowledge, self-awareness and social and political understanding'. He also showedthe consequences of such situated learning, which include learning 'the need to sup-port each other, the nature of the stress involved, how action can polarise a com-munity and reveal its structures, and how unsettling it is to challenge your own andothers' assumptions' (cited in Fenwick, 2001: 41). All of this functions as unintendedlearning and according to Foley such learning does not occur only on the individualpsychological level, but com es out of the interplay within a com munity of actors dur-ing collective actions.Locking the university gate as post-human learningSudden fencing of the previously open university campus triggered OKUPE's activism.The severe change in architecture and the impact of this on the lives of students was


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2 5 6 Malgorzata Zieliska, Piotr Kowzan and M agdalena Prusinowskaacademic discourse against fenced communities was vigorous, it seemed that such asignificant change would pass unchecked.The fence was still under construction when the university's open days for pro-spective students were organised. On this occasion, activists locked one gate, forcingmasses of people coming from trams to look for gaps in the still unfinished structureof the fence. Activists left leaflets and put a banner on the locked gate: 'kampus =obzF' [campus = a camp?]. They tried to show that slight architectural changes mightresult in severe consequences in the way the university acted and was perceived bythe external public. Direct action was conducted clandestinely, even though the placewas m onitored by surveillance cameras. Activists took a photo and sent it to the localpress, which published an article about the event. Their anonymity allowed Internetdiscussions to be focused on the fence as an artifact and a product of certain policies,without bringing attention to the people taking action.Locking the university gate belongs to a broader category of typical protest tacticsbased on interfering in regular flows of people, cars, capital, etc. The assumptions arethat a) any contemporary political order depends on flow and speed which, subse-quently, create perception, so the flow 'governs the event' (Virilio, 2006: 60), and b)critical and conscious action - 'consctentizao ' (Freir, 2005) - which can rise fromcracks in the regularities of daily life, because these tend to expose contradictions andoppression. We cannot say what visitors learned from their anger and surprise thatthey had to find another way into the university. Nevertheless, using environmentalconditions to provoke action and relyirig on the capability of a crowd to solve prob -lems indicates that we may talk about 'stigmergy' (Clark, 1997) - a form of learningwhich potentially took place when people tried to find new ways of dealing withthe blockade. The term com es from joining two words: 'stigma', a sign in Greek, and'ergon' - action. This concept describes a 'phenomenon of indirect communicationmediated by modifications ofthe environment' (Marsh and Onof, 2007: 136) and wascoined by Grasse (1959) to solve the paradox of coordination between agents who -by trying to achieve their individual goals - create collective patterns of action. It ishard to tell if these structures of behaviour are purposely designed. This was the casewhen the university was confronted with streams of people who found new waysinto the campus. It might have looked like a demonstration in itself, because incom-ing people w ere reading the movement patterns of the previous ones from the landand following them. Such massive actions, when sustained, could result in landscapemodifications, e.g., pathways on the grass, graffiti on the walls, new entries in thefence, and, subsequently, every new agent would be confronted with 'the accumula-tion of prior agent activity' (Marsh and Onof, 2007: 137), even without the actual pres-ence of the previous agents.Navigating through trails left by others is beyond any master plan and, thus, stig-mergic effects serve as examples of cognition and knowledge that are distributed(ibid.: 142) in time, in the environment, and among both humans and non-humans.Following Edwards (2010), in his analysis of the possible impact of Karen Barad andBruno Latour on education, we can describe such a direct action as 'an experiment in


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Social Movement Learning 2 5 7to unlock the gate, the idea.of open days, the photo which resulted in an article,published online together with a poll where readers could vote. Comments tinderthe article became intensive and served as incentives to further protests. A monthlater, this led to a conference about the fence, organised by PhD students. Activiststurned objects into 'med iators' (Latour, 2005: 37): they 'convinced' the gate to play'an active role; its 'refusal' to be open forced com muters to 'negotiate' the ir own tnotil-ity with the whole fencing system. The 'emancipatory ignorance' (Biesta, 1998) ofsuch experim ents means that, even though a social movement does not claim to knowanything, it opens the place to possibilities. This situation increases the unpredictabil-ity and uncertain ty of life (con trary to Edw ards' expectations), because any collectiveat any time can call people to learn, without their consent. Instead of 'an invitationto set out on the journey' (Edwards, 2010), the gathering of humans and non-humanswas challenged to set out the walk around the campus. The 'price' for the 'prematureassemblage' (Latour, 2005: 171) of hum ans and non-humans at the gate, was having to'pay' attention, which is a general precondition of any conscious learning - hopefully,a result of this action.Collective intervention: reversing power relationshipsAfter a few months of focusing mostly on the university's policy, OKUP's activistsbroadened their interests, linking local struggles to other Polish and internationalmovements. On 22 April 2009, OKUP organised a public reading and discussionof the project of proposed reforms in Polish higher education. PhD students formedthe majority of participants. Incidentally, the day of the discussion preceded thePolish Government's Minister of Science and Higher Education's visit. The visit wasnot broadly announced, even though it was a part of the 'public consultations' onthe project. Deans of faculties w ere asked to b ring 20 students each. Since OKUP'smeeting was the only public discussion about reforms, activists were able to c


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2 5 8 Malgorzata Zielinska, Piotr Kowzan and Magdalena Prusinowskadescribed as 'an intervention into the dialectic relation between a human being andthe world; it regulates their reciprocal relations by [taking] creative interaction con-cerning development of society and the individual' (Miller, 1981: 122). Students withbanners created a context in which comm unication betw een the professor/minister-lecturer and professors/students-listeners looked awkward. Thus, they played a roleof an educator-provocateur (Rutkowiak, 2011: 124), who (contrary to the 'transforma-tive intellectual') - in Rutkowiak's words - favours 'effective surprise' (Bruner, 1997:18) of the subject (in th is example, th e audience). The claim is that the subject, thus,detects ambiguities of the world and therefore opens up the possibility that resultsin learning how to recognise and potentially resist pressure from the dominan t ideol-ogy. This happens because the content of the effective surprise usually representssome obviousness, which enables subjects to explore - after the initial astonishment- unsuspected connections betw een different domains of their experience (ibid.). Butbefore an effective surprise happens there are provocateurs, i.e., committed peoplewho recognise the conventions of the place and decide to alienate themselves fromthe rest by starting th e action, which encourages the audience to go beyond commonways of understanding the w orld.The unexpected presence of banners challenged the audience to negotiate thewords they heard from the authorities with the words they saw from the activists.Moreover, the inconvenient banner claimed to tell a universal truth: 'Knowledge is nota commodity'. This 'de-identification' (Masschelein and Simons, 2011) of knowledge,i.e., saying what it is not, could be understood as an 'event' in Badiou's terms (2007)- something that suddenly confronts one with somebody's truth. Nobody was tryingto define what knowledge actually is, but the banners suggested that some peoplein the lecture hall rejected the Minister's vision of science, even though she had notmade this vision explicit during the lecture. In other words, even if she had not talkedabout comm odification of knowledge, the banners suggested that she actually meantit. Moreover, by the form of the pro test, that is, by trying to say one's m eaning, even ifno time w as provided for this, the activists have shown that 'social consultations' werean illusion for them . This rup ture of the lecture's rules revealed, therefore, the politicalnature of the meeting. However, we cannot say what people have actually learned.Such interventions into binary relations between those who speak and those wholisten can be understood as exercising dem ocracy. Students, as those having no right(i.e., too young, with no academic titles, not chosen as legitimate representatives ofa student body) to do anything but desire (in Latin 'studere') knowledge, were sup-posed to sit and listen to the M inister's lecture together w ith professors. Instead, theyrejected the hierarchy of teacher-student relations, proving that anybody can occupyany given place. In Rancirian terms, such action introduces the logic of the scandalof democracy (2008: 63), because for him democracy is a transgression of any order inwhich power positions depend only on specific virtues, not on pure luck (or fortune,or a lottery). In Gdansk the scandal of democracy w as achieved by transgressing bo ththe university and government/state hierarchy, where professors and ministers werethose w ho could speak and wield power. In such an order, students have to earn the ir


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Social Movement Learning 259hall, there is a core p resum ption of equality (anybody can talk), which constitutes thelegitimacy of the hierarchy, or - more generally - the usual 'police order' (Rancire,2008). In this perspective, democratic learning is meant to lead to taking a 'wrong'position and talking from it, e.g., students disrup ting the M inister's lectu re in o rder topresent their oppositional views. Consequently, such a democratic dimension of edu-cation is hard to institutionalise, because if there are more positions that are legitimatefor students, they are less likely to talk from the w rong one.Collective inquiry and theorisingOne of the most vital areas of OKUP's activity was in th e field of knowledge produc-tion. Members learned to take responsibility for their place of study, which resultedin further learning in the form of collective inquiries into issues concerning boththe university and the local community. These inquiries concerned: the fence's influ-ence on residents of the area; the university library (its services, terms of use atid thew^orking conditions); students' attitudes tow^ards the university and engagement in'co-creating' itand university regulations.Most of OKUP's inquiries indicated a reference to the method of co-research - 'aform of research that tears down the division between the subject-researcher andobject-researched' (Malo deMolina, 2004). Cot, Day and de Peuter (2007) describeco-research as a response to an urgent need for critical analysis of a particular situ-ation and its change, emerging out of and staying embedded in everyday practice.Members of OKUP, coming from different backgrounds, were all concerned withtheir relation to the university. Their inquiries were a ttemp ts to recognise the p resentsituation and analyse it inorder to implement changes with the use of newly discov-ered/created knowledge, skills and agency.The inquiry concerning fencing of the campus seems to be the pivotal productof our collective learning. Its main record can be found in logs from the online list.E-mails related to this issue involved very little conflict, and one question about thespecification of the fence (size, price, etc.) led to collection of data, such as regulationsand procedures about tenders at the university, detailed technical information and thesource of funding. This rapid online activity, over a few days, was followed by fttrtherco-research , w^hich contributed to the aforementioned conference. Essential input atthis level came from arch itecture students from Gdansk Polytechnic, ^vho gave a pres-entation about the implications of both existing and possible architectural designs,but also from the faculty staff and other invited guests, who referred to socio-politicaland educational aspec ts of fencing in general. Simultaneously, this issue was studied ata series of meetings w ith the authorities, w^hich revealed that regulations concerningtenders were inconflict with ideals of dem ocratic participation.All this gathered information and knowledge enabled us to function more effec-tively at the university and more adequately address the prob lems w e wanted to solve.Another example illustrating such learning is OKUP mem bers' inqu iry into doctoralscholarships (e.g., analysis of the university budget, investments, and scholarships'legal status at the national level). Thanks to these simultaneous activities of OKUPand the PhD Student Council (including, e.g., writing applications, conduc ting meet-


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2 6 o Magorzata Zieliska, Piotr Kowzan and Ma gdaiena PrusinowskaMoreover, this article is also a long-term product of OKUPE's collective inquiriesand collective theorising. The academic background of OKUPE's participants influ-enced collective theorising which originated from the movement. The key elementof this theorising appeared at the beginning of the movement, when one member,

a sociology graduate, classified our movement as an 'empty signifier'. According toLaclau (2005), an empty signifier can be, for exam ple, a movem ent or a slogan, wh ichhas little or no meaning/referents on its own, but functions as an umbrella unitingand representing the demands of diverse groups via a chain of equivalence, where anempty signifier beg ins to stand for all particular interests. W hen one m ember w rotean e-mail explaining how OKUP could function as an empty signifier, the conceptstarted to be used from this time on in our movement's strategy and it is still valid forour analysis of OKUP. The importance of theorising is emphasised by Brookfield:[W]e need theoretical insights to help us understand how the same destructive scenarioskeep emerging in our lives, despite our best efforts to prevent these. [...] theory helps usname or rename aspects of our experience that elude or puzzle us (2005: 5).

Hall stresses the value of social movements as not merely 'sites of learning', or itscontext, but also a key element constituting 'the content of learning itself (2009),wh ich m eans that movements can produce knowledge themselves. The broad outlineof what theorising in social movements means can be found in Foley's work:This process of critical learning involves people in theorizing their experience: theystand ba ck from it and reo rder it, using conce pts like powe r, conflict, structure, valuesand choice. It is also clear that this critical learning is gained informally, through expe-rience, by acting and reflecting on action, rather than informal courses (2001: 78).

Employment of Laclau's theory by OKUP was an exam ple of such distancing fromthe actions in progress in order not only to rethink already initiated actions, but alsoto plan future projects and campaigns.To summarise, theoretical insights and inquiries enabled OKUPE's participantsto reflect constantly on the actions undertaken and at the same time improve thechances for these actions' success. What is important is that this process of learningand creating knowledge was never separated from the movement's activity - it wasrooted in its social actions.Collective learningWe wish to focus on th e collective level of learning by referring to Gramsci's theoriesof cultural hegemony and interpretative frames within which social movements arise(Scandrett et al., 2010). In such an approach, social movements are sites for crea tingknowledge and 'organic intellectuals', and the process of learning is anchored in net-works of 'social groupings', as w^ell as political and ideological reality (Cunningham,1998). We see knowledge creation as an essential part of collective learning in socialmovements. Therefore, we would like to concentrate on this aspect of collective


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Social Movement Learning 2 6 lauthorities, formal letters, etc.) were included in the formal structures of the univer-sity's procedu res, which in Gramscian term s would m ean incorporation by the domi-nant culture (Cunningham, 1998). As a result, some democratic procedures at theuniversity were streng thened , bu t with little chance of major changes. Only activitieswith in the spectrum of claims and discou rse acceptable at the university were :incor-porated (e.g. small changes in the library, inclusion of underg radua te and postgradu-ate studen ts' representatives to some collective bodies).Examples of other social movements show that the process of collective learningmay have a 'snowball' effect. In other words, fields of social movements' inquiry' maytransform a movem ent of one cause into a collector of othe r social claims or struggles.This was the case at Bhopal, where diverse struggles including ones concerning theenvironment and women's rights, emerged from w orkplace issues after a disaster causedby a pesticide factory accident. Bhopal Gas Affected Women Workers' Union startedas a trade un ion with dem ands for economic rehabilitation, but due to the process oflearning about the unionists' situation, and its connection to a broader social and envi-ronmental perspective, new demands were incorporated into the formerly workplaceprotes t. Additionally, learning about relations to other groups and other struggles led tocooperation and solidarity with them (Scandrett et al., 2010). We found a similar patternin OKUP, as more and more grievances were b rought to the activists' attention.As Foley argues, the most significant type of learning based in social movem ents islearning tha t is often not recogn ised as such, that is, incidental learning, wh ich 'ena-bles people to m ake sense of and act on their environment, and to come to understandthemselves as know ledge-creating, acting beings' (Foley, 2001: 78). Regardless of con-flicts and obstacles in forming a strong and stable movem ent, OKUP mobilised peo-ple to act and feel responsible for places they inhab ited (the university and th e city),which we can analyse in term s of critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003), withits two main concepts: decolonisation (involving reclaiming particular places, iden-tifying sources of their 'injuries' and dealing with them) and reinhabitation (whichmeans to 'identify, recover, and create material spaces and places that teach us howto live well in our total environm ents' [p. 9]). Claiming th e responsibility for the un i-versity - marking its space as their ow n - led to OKUP's participa nts' m obilisation tointroduce changes. Therefore, OKUP's collective efforts and, consequently, learningprocesses were determined by the place: its specificity and the ambivalent sense ofbelonging exercised by the participants.Collective learning involves any individual member's and group's development,wh ich are reciprocally determined. Also interactions w ith o ther groups through col-lective actions shape the process of learning in social movements (Kilgore, 1999).In this respect, OKUP gained much because of its members' multiple membt:rshipwh ich provided diverse knowledge and a ground for knowledge production in OKUP.The advantage lies also in the fact of bringing such knowledges and experienc es intothe university and using them in interactions with the authorities. In our opinion,academia lacked this type of collective learning background since, before OKUP,open conflicts with the authorities were avoided.


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2 6 2 Maigorzata Zieiiska, Piotr Kowzan and M agdalena Prusinowska(Ruitenberg, 2010: 375) in order to build a convincing im pression that the movem entrepresents 'people', i.e., to achieve 'hegemony'. In OKUP we could see this duringdiscussions on the mailing group (for more see Prusinowska, Kowzan and Z ieliska,submitted paper). By com paring two thread s of discussions, one regarding the fenceand the second - against gender discrimination, we could observe how '[t]he pos-sibility of hegemony [which] rests on the operation of empty signiflers, that is, onrepresentations without concrete referential meaning' (Szkudlarek, 2011: 115) waslost in the latter discussion, by contrast w ith the former one . As men tioned before,the focus in the thread about the fence was on gathering data and ideas for action.Contrary to such ingathering of ideas, the discussion of discrimination focused ondefining and designing the competences of a special office at the university, whichwould be responsible for constant monitoring and prevention of gender discrimi-nation. This demand was analysed with careful academic scrutiny. The discussioncreated suspicions of tacit hostility among members (since some questions wereperceived as reductio ad absurduni), but at the same time contributed to the under-standing of the equality issue. Eventually, discussants even defined and broadlyagreed on the c om pete nce s of the not-yet-existing equality officer. Surprisingly, afterthis position w as defined, the dem and disappeared in OKUP's discussions and thepeop le wh o had initially suggested it we nt on to cam paign for it w ith a nothe r organ-isation. One explanation for this is the m utual hostility which arose among mem bersduring the defining process. Another, in line with Laclau's (2005) theory, is that theprocess of learning - understood as filling 'empty signifiers' with concrete mean-ings - led to the isolation of the demand. The more the demand was defined, themore difficult it was to link it to other demands, since it lacked the 'blurred' part,wh ich w ould m ake it seem similar to othe r issues discussed. Eventually, the dem andwas not open ly excluded but stood alone, which contributed to the final dissatisfac-tion of participa nts.Another source of conflict was the lack of clear rules. Pierre Walter in his com-mentary on the actions of the Peace Camp during the struggle for the ClayoquotSound Rainforest, draws attention to the fact that the main rules at the camp(equality, nonviolence, and decisions by consensus) were clearly stated from thebeginning:

Knowledge of these rules began with the welcome handout given to newcomers on theirarrival at the camp [...].The philosophy and practices of learning, education, and activ-ism within the Peace Cam p and blockades were key to its ability to provoke transforma-tive learning, both individual and collective, on the part ofprotestors and the public atlarge CWalter, 2007: 255, 260).

OKUP's example is quite different, as far as collective delibe ration and mak ing ofthe group rules are concerned. There were no written rules and this resulted inmany conflicts and, possibly, in OKUP's failure to be active for a longer tim e. Onerule that was lacking was a pro cedure for excluding mem bers who offended othe rs(including making racist and sexist remarks) or were perceived by the majority as


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Social Movement Learning 263of them (A) answered our survey quest ion about what she had learned in OKUP inthe fol lowing way:

A : 1. A grassroots movement does not equal a democratic m ovement. In order to beable to act, it needs a leader and clearly stated goals, or else it is inefficient.2. A grassroots movement can mirror the patriarchal order and structures of domina-tion existing in society. OKUP became dominated by men, w ith patriarchal symbolism,even a Messianic one ('jumping over the fence'; once somebody even sent a logo relatingto the Solidarity movement); (...)3. It is unrealistic to create a grassroots m ovem ent that brings together different inter-est groups.4. A lso, trying to achieve consensus is unrealistic, if all mem bers don't take it as astarting point. Otherw ise, the group's actions can easily be overtaken by those who a restrongest and can shout loudest.

Another person answered similar ly, showing how a movement should not beorganised:B: My initial assumptions about people organising themselves have been confirmed,that is, a group that doesn't specify the goal of its actions degenerates and becomes atravesty of a movement.

Othe r v iews were m ore posi tive:C: I saw and metpeople wh o think a bit differently rom the rest, who are active, engagedand rem onstrating. This was actually interesting and educational.D: [I have learned] group coopera tion, collective decision-ma king, planning.

Still , we feel that this possibly demotivating side of learning - learning that coopera-tion was impossible w^ithout clear rules - needs to be emphasised as well. Failures tocooperate, such as ours, show that social movements can sometimes be both empow-ering and disempowering.According to Bauman (2005), empowerment:is achieved whe n people acquire the ability to control, or at least significantly influence,the personal, political, econom ic and social forces b y which their life trajectory w ouldbe otherwise buffeted [...]. To put it bluntly, genuine 'empow erme nt' requires [...] theacquisition of skills that would allow [people] to influence the game's objectives, .Hakesand rules; not only personal, but a lso 'social' skills (2005: 23).

We can argue that the movement we are describing al lowed us to inf luence the rangeof available choices , and m ayb e even th e gam e's rules at the university, but it failed togive power over social forces; on the contrary, it has shown that social forces are moredifficult to control than we had originally believed. For Bauman (ibid.) empoweringalso means (re)building:


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2 6 4 Malgorzata Zieliska, Piotr Kowzan and M agdalena PrusinowskaEven the very small survey we conducted shows that in OKUP some peop le actu-ally started to feel more encouraged to engage with others to change their situation,as they had not tho ught it possible before. Others were, on the contrary, discouraged,and - according to Bauman's definition - disempowered, seeing that it was not pos-

sible to coope rate w ith some peop le.What can help us analyse the issue of conflict in OKUP is Kilgore's remarks about theprocess of recruitment to social movements. She emphasises that 'collective social actionis not necessarily the result of individual critical reflection' of all participants, because'the greatest source of new members is existing mem bers' social networks' (1999: 195).Therefore, participation in a movement might not be connected to knowledge and accept-ance of its goals and philosophy. In OKUP's case, friendships and acquaintanceshipsfrom contexts other than social activism, as well as the superficial similarity of goalsand standpoints, resulted in a deadlock w hen production of the movement's philosophy,strategy and coherent p rogramme was hindered by the existing differences.The fact that difference and conflict are essential to learning, especially collectivelearning (ibid., 1999), has to be balanced w ith a sense of solidarity among m embers ofa movement. If the conflict outw^eighs the sense of solidarity, as happened in OKUP,a social movement ceases to work.Taming radical imagination with know ledgeDespite the many reasons for collective action and individual participation, there are alsomodes of imagination which precede thinking and become affected by the outcome ofstruggles. Our individual and collective senses of what is inspiring and what is possibleare both results and preconditions of leaming. Both educators and social movem ents

by necessity, theorize the imagination in their efforts to provoke, inspire and activasocial change. These theorizations take ma ny forms. Sometimes they are explicit anconcrete discussions about strategy and vision within and between movements. Moroften than not they are unspoken assumptions about how people's political imagina-tions function. (Haiven and Khasnabish, 2010: xxvii)Beginnings of mobilisations are often marked, as in OKUP, by radical imagination(Castoriadis, 1994: 321), because at the beginning we are able to create ex nihilo. Whenwe started, we did not go along the dichotomy of fiction and reality. Everything waspossible and this influenced the way we understood places. At this stage, imaginationwas governed by the provocative Rancirian question 'what if (Ruitenberg, 2008).Interestingly, after months of intensity, we rather tended to cool each other, asking 'whatfor' instead and, consequently, our imaginations became organised around calculationsof interests. Although it may be true that many movements experience a latent phase intheir life cycle, there may be many reasons for this situation. In our case, the change inour collective imagination opened us to being co-opted into existing institutions. Thisshift m ostly depends on the significant increase of knowledge about thefield- in OKUPit was about power relations at our university and in the higher education system in gen-


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Sociai Movement Learning 2 6 5no lasting changes can be made. [...] you need to decide if you want to use your energyon conflict or on some form of conciliatory transformation.

Sometimes, by sharing our knowledge, we demobilise peop le w ho would otherwisechallenge the 'police order' again. Maybe they would even succeed, because some-thing might have changed meanwhile or because our knowledge was 'wrong'.Concluding remarksSocial movements often try to teach others and, thus, they need to attract attention.Therefore, they also employ non-humans, and manipulate the environment, produc-ing stigmergic effects. By intervening in the dialectic relation betwee n people and theworld (Miller, 1981), social movem ents also educa te the public.It is often difficult to distinguish be tween individual and collective learning. Wefeel that, in order to find out if collective learning has taken place, we need to lookat social movements throug h their actions, whereas individual learning can only berecognised through personal reflection. This reflection varies from member to mem-ber; some may learn to act, others - that action is not worth the cost of conflicts.Some of OKUPE's participants have learned that, in order for action to take place,the exclusion of some people is needed; o thers, that structure s are too strong to bechanged without entering them. We argue that this demotivating and disempower-ing side of learning needs also to be addressed in the educational theory related tosocial movements.ReferencesAbbasi, A. and H sinchun, C. (2008 ) 'Cybergate: A Design Framework and System for Text Analysis of

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