Activist scholarship in human rights

ABSTRACT

Activist scholarship in human rights has made valuable contributions to the fulfilment of human rights globally but there is very little critical self-reflection on what activist scholarship in human rights means or how it should be pursued. This article seeks to open up discussion on these points by drawing on the wider discourse of activist scholarship. Activist scholarship is distinguished by new and critical approaches to knowledge production, whereby researchers and activists collaborate in politically engaged research and use research for the purpose of furthering justice and equality of various forms. While general human rights scholarship often shares these aims, activist scholarship in human rights goes further by adopting specific methodologies and employing critical theories. The article distinguishes between the pursuits of scholarship and activist scholarship in human rights and outlines the perils and dilemmas that activist scholars in human rights can face. The article ends by proposing what a human rights-based approach to activist scholarship in human rights might consist of, drawing from the core human rights principles of non-discrimination, the right to participation and the obligation of accountability.

KEYWORDS:

• Activist scholarship
• human rights-based approach
• human rights education
• human rights scholarship
• participatory action research
• knowledge production

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Corinne Lennox is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and Co-Director of the Human Rights Consortium. Her research focuses on issues of minority and Indigenous peoples’ rights protection, civil society mobilisation for human rights and on human rights and development. She has worked for many years as a human rights practitioner with various NGOs, including at Minority Rights Group International, and has been an advisor on minority rights to governments, the UNDP and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Yeşim Yaprak Yıldız is a Researcher at the Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute, LSE. She holds a PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge, where she is an affiliated researcher. Her current research focuses on testimonial and confessional forms of truth-telling in the aftermath of mass atrocities in Turkey. She has worked on human rights violations in Turkey for many years on a wide range of issues from torture and ill-treatment to freedom of expression, women’s rights and refugee rights in organisations including Amnesty International, Freedom from Torture, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, UN Women and European Roma Rights Centre.

Notes

1. Activist Scholarship in Human Rights: New Challenges, School of Advanced Study, Senate House, University of London, 28 June 2017.

2. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship (University of California Press, 2008).

3. Charles Hale, Engaging Contradictions; Katharyne Mitchell, eds. Practising Public Scholarship: Experiences and Possibilities Beyond the Academy (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).

4. Charles Hale, Engaging Contradictions.

5. Shannon Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research’, American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 66–76.

6. Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism, and Social Change (Oxon: Routledge, 2016).

7. For example: Studies on Social Justice Volume 9 (1) and (2), Scholar Activist Terrain in Canada and Ireland I and II (https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/issue/view/79); Social Justice Volume 36 (4), Activist Scholarship: Possibilities and Constraints of Participatory Action Research (https://www.jstor.org/stable/i29768555?refreqid=excelsior%3A7781f97e07d6fb9134a052dda24d9f65)

8. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions.

9. Radha D’Souza, ‘The Prison Houses of Knowledge: Activist Scholarship and Revolution in the Era of “Globalization”’, McGill Journal of Education, 44, no. 1 (2009): 19–38.

10. Ibid., 28.

11. Radha D’Souza, ‘The Prison Houses of Knowledge’; Aziz Choudry, this volume; 2015.

12. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions.

13. Radha D’Souza, ‘The Prison Houses of Knowledge’; David Croteau, William Hoynes and Charlotte Ryan, eds., Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Social Movement Scholarship (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

14. David Croteau et al., Rhyming Hope and History, xiii.

15. Sally Engle Merry, ‘Anthropology and Activism: Researching Human Rights across Porous Boundaries’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28, no. 2 (2005): 240–57.

16. Kamala Visweswaran, ‘Conclusion: Fragile Facts on Scholarship and Activism’, Cultural Dynamics 23, no. 1 (2011): 74.

17. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (UK: Penguin Random House, 1993).

18. Rhoda Rae Gutierrez and Pauline Lipman, ‘Toward Social Movement Activist Research’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 29, no. 10 (2016): 1241–1254.

19. Visweswaran, ‘Conclusion: Fragile Facts on Scholarship and Activism’, 74.

20. Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Activist Scholarship; Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguascha, ‘Bridging the Academic/Activist Divide: Feminist Activism and the Teaching of Global Politics’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no. 1 (2006): 119–37.

21. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions, 4.

22. Radha D’Souza, ‘The Prison Houses of Knowledge’

23. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 69 and 81.

24. See, for example, Orlando Fals-Borda, ‘The Application of Participatory Action-Research in Latin America’, International Sociology 2, no. 4 (December 1987): 329–47; Budd Lionel Hall, ‘In from the Cold? Reflections on Participatory Research from 1970–2005’, Convergence 8, no. 1 (2005): 5–24.

25. Robin McTaggart, ‘Participatory Action Research: Issues in Theory and Practice’, Educational Action Research 2, no. 3 (1994): 315.

26. Paul Chatterton, Duncan Fuller, and Paul Routledge, ‘Relating Action to Activism: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections’, in Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation and Place, ed. Sara Kindon, Rachel Pain and Mike Kesby (Oxon: Routledge, 2007).

27. Ibid.

28. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions, 98.

29. Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Activist Scholarship, 3.

30. For example see Andrea Smith, ‘Native Studies and Critical Pedagogy: Beyond the Academic Industrial Complex’, in Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Activist Scholarship; Assata Zerai, ‘Models for Unity between Scholarship and Grassroots Activism’, Critical Sociology 28, no. 1-2 (2002): 201–16; Craig Calhoun, ‘Foreword’ in Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions.

31. Katharyne Mitchell, Practising Public Scholarship, 3.

32. Cornel West, ‘Theory, Pragmatism and Politics’, in Consequences of Theory, eds. J. Arac and B. Johnson (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

33. Stanley Cohen, ‘Intellectual Scepticism and Political Commitment: The Case of Radical Criminology’, in The New Criminology Revisited, ed. P. Walton and J. Young, (London: Macmillan, 1998), 122.

34. Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 274.

35. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions

36. Stephan Couture, ‘Activist Scholarship: The Complicated Entanglements of Activism and Research Work’, Canadian Journal of Communication 42 (2017): 145.

37. Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights.

38. Doreen Massey, ‘When Theory Meets Politics’, in Practising Public Scholarship (see note 4), 142–3.

39. Stanley Cohen, ‘Intellectual Scepticism and Political Commitment’, in The New Criminology Revisited, 126.

40. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions, 13.

41. Rhoda Rae Gutierrez and Pauline Lipman, ‘Toward Social Movement Activist Research’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 29, no. 10 (2016): 1241–54.

42. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions, 10.

43. Shannon Speed, ‘At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology’, 66.

44. J. Sebastian Rodríguez-Alarcón and Valentina Montoya-Robledo, ‘The Unrestrained Corporatization and Professionalization of the Human Rights Field’, InterGentes: The McGill Journal of International Law & Legal Pluralism https://intergentes.com/the-unrestrained-corporatization-and-professionalization-of-the-human-rights-field/#

45. See Research Excellence Framework Impact Case Studies at the following link: https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/FAQ.aspx

46. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 177–8.

47. See Research Excellence Framework 2021, ‘What is the REF’ at the following link: https://www.ref.ac.uk/about/what-is-the-ref/

48. S. J. Grey, ‘Activist Academics: What Future?’ Policy Futures in Education 11, no. 6 (2013): 700–11.

49. L. R. Bloom, and P. Sawin, ‘Ethical Responsibility in Feminist Research: Challenging Ourselves to do Activist Research with Women in Poverty’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 22, no. 3 (2009): 333–51; Laura Pulido, ‘FAQs: Frequently (Un)Asked Questions about Being a Scholar Activist’ in Engaging Contradictions; Ornette Clennon, this volume.

50. Assata Zerai, ‘Models for Unity between Scholarship and Grassroots Activism’; Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions; Michael G. Flood, Brian Martin and Tanja Dreher, ‘Combining Academia and Activism: Common Obstacles and Useful Tools’, Australian Universities Review 55, no. 1 (2013): 17–26; Sandra Smeltzer and Sara Cantillon, eds., ‘Introduction: Scholar-Activist Terrain in Canada and Ireland’, Studies in Social Justice 9, no. 1 (2015): 7–17.

51. Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey, Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism, and Social Change, 2.

52. Charles R. Hale, Engaging Contradictions, 3.

53. Assata Zerai, ‘Models for Unity between Scholarship and Grassroots Activism’; Michael G. Flood, Brian Martin and Tanja Dreher, ‘Combining Academia and Activism: Common Obstacles and Useful Tools’; Stephan Couture, ‘Activist Scholarship: The Complicated Entanglements of Activism and Research Work’.

54. Henry J. Steiner, ‘The University's Critical Role in the Human Rights Movement’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 15 (2002): 317–28; Peter Rosenblum, ‘Teaching Human Rights: Ambivalent Activism, Multiple Discourses, and Lingering Dilemmas’; Elizabeth Ann Griffin, ‘The Dilemmas of the Postgraduate International Human Rights Law Educator’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 7, no. 1 (2015): 18–39.

55. The Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law (SRHRL) Program under the American Association for the Advancement of Science is one such example. See https://www.aaas.org/programs/scientific-responsibility-human-rights-law. Other examples of interdisciplinary studies on human rights include: Tiziana Panizza Kassahun, ed., Architecture & Human Rights: A Book on Urban Thinking (Sulgen: Niggli Verlag, 2018); Susan Perry and Claudia Roda, ed., Human Rights and Digital Technology: Digital Tightrope (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Rebecca J. Cook, Bernard M. Dickens, and Mahmoud F. Fathalla, eds., Reproductive Health and Human Rights: Integrating Medicine, Ethics, and Law. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

56. David Suárez and Patricia Bromley, ‘Professionalizing a Global Social Movement: Universities and Human Rights’, American Journal of Education 118, no. 3 (2012): 253–80.

57. Peter Rosenblum, ‘Teaching Human Rights: Ambivalent Activism, Multiple Discourses, and Lingering Dilemmas’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 15 (2002): 301–15.

58. David Suárez and Patricia Bromley, ‘Professionalizing a Global Social Movement: Universities and Human Rights’.

59. Ibid., 256–7.

60. Kevin Boyle, ‘Twenty-five Years of Human Rights at Essex’, Essex Human Rights Review 5, no. 1 (2008): 12.

61. In 1992, the UNESCO Chairs program was established to advance research, training and program development in higher education including human rights.

62. UN General Assembly, Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, 12 July 1993, A/CONF.157/23, available at: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/Vienna.aspx

63. Joanne Coysh, ‘The Dominant Discourse of Human Rights Education: A Critique’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 1 (2014): 93.

64. Elizabeth Ann Griffin, ‘The Dilemmas of the Postgraduate International Human Rights Law Educator’; Damien Short, ‘Researching and Studying Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Insight’, in Contemporary Challenges in Securing Human Rights (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London), 7–12.

65. See, for example, Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Birgit Schippers, ed., Critical Perspectives on Human Rights (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).

66. Joanne Coysh, ‘The Dominant Discourse of Human Rights Education’, 89–90.

67. Ibid., 106; Kieran McEvoy. ‘Beyond Legalism: Towards a Thicker Understanding of Transitional Justice’, Journal of Law and Society 34, no. 4 (2007): 411–40.

68. Damien Short, ‘Researching and Studying Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Insight’.

69. Radha D’Souza, ‘The Prison Houses of Knowledge’.

70. André Keet, ‘It is time : Critical Human Rights Education in an Age of Counter-Hegemonic Distrust’, Education as Change 19, no. 3 (2015): 46–64; Audrey Osler, ‘Human Rights Education, Postcolonial Scholarship, and Action for Social Justice’, Theory & Research in Social Education 43, no. 2 (2015): 244–74; Michalinos Zembylas, ‘Re-contextualising Human Rights Education: Some Decolonial Strategies and Pedagogical/Curricular Possibilities’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society 25, no. 4 (2017): 487–99; Coysh, ‘The Dominant Discourse of Human Rights Education’.

71. Upendra Baxi, ‘Human Rights Education: The Promise of the Third Millennium?’ (Paper presented at the Conference of the United Nations Member States and Non-Governmental Organizations New York, NY, December 9, 1994).

72. Coysh, ‘The Dominant Discourse of Human Rights Education’, 89.

73. Almost all human rights centres at the universities emphasise their role in bridging activism and scholarship. Some specific examples: University of York and University of Nottingham have fellowship programs for human rights defenders, LSE has an Activist-in-Residence program and the Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, hosts the Human Rights Researchers’ Network, which brings together researchers from the academy and the practitioner fields.

74. Ron Dudai, ‘Human Rights in the Populist Era: Mourn then (Re)Organize’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 9 (2017): 20; P. Cesarini and S. Hertel, ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Human Rights Scholarship in Latin America’, Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (2005): 793–809.

75. Griffin, ‘The Dilemmas of the Postgraduate International Human Rights Law Educator’, 24.

76. Cesarini and Hertel, ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Human Rights Scholarship in Latin America’, 793.

77. Joseph Oloka-Onyango, The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement; An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999 (Cambridge, MA: Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School, 2004), 10.

78. See, for example, Karen Kong, ‘Human Rights Activist Scholars and Social Change in Hong Kong: Reflections on the Umbrella Movement and Beyond', The International Journal of Human Rights 23, no. 6 (2019): 899–914. The article discusses the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

79. Audrey Osler, ‘Human Rights Education, Postcolonial Scholarship, and Action for Social Justice’.

80. Paul Gready, ‘Introduction – “Responsibility to the Story”’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 2, no. 2 (June 2010): 178.

81. Ron Dudai, ‘Human Rights in the Populist Era: Mourn then (Re)Organize’, 18

82. The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement; An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999 (Cambridge, MA: Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School, 2004).

83. Upendra Baxi, The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement; An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999, 28.

84. David Weissbrodt, The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement: An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999, 23.

85. Charles R. Hale, ‘Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology’, Cultural Anthropology 21, no. 1 (2006): 96–120.

86. Details on Cara are available at https://www.cara.ngo/ and Scholars at Risk at https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/.

87. Sanna Eriksson, ‘Temporary Relocation in an Academic Setting for Human Rights Defenders at Risk: Good Practice Lessons and Challenges’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 10 (2018): 482.

88. Rodríguez-Alarcón and Montoya-Robledo, ‘The Unrestrained Corporatization and Professionalization of the Human Rights Field’.

89. Makau Mutua, The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement; An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999, 27.

90. See, for example, Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole, eds., Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium: Towards a Theory of Change (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014); Peter Ulvin, ‘From the right to Development to the Rights-based Approach: How “Human Rights” Entered Development’, Development in Practice 17, no. 4/5 (2007): 597–606.

91. See several chapters of Lee McConnell and Rhona Smith, eds., Research Methods in Human Rights (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018); Norman K. Denzin and Michael D. Giardina, eds., Qualitative Inquiry and Human Rights (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2010); Kristin Reed and Ausra Padskocimaite, The Right Toolkit: Applying Research Methods in the Service of Human Rights (Berkeley: Human Rights Center at the University of California, 2012); Paul Gready, ‘Introduction – “Responsibility to the Story”’.

92. Sally Engle Merry, Human rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

93. Freire argues that ‘those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right [and] […] it is in speaking their word that people, by naming their world, transform it’. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 61.

94. Paul Gready, ‘Introduction – ‘Responsibility to the Story’’.

95. See, for example, Sharon Bessell, Harriot Beazley and Roxana Waterson, ‘The Methodology and Ethics of Rights-Based Research with Children’, in Children Out of Place’ and Human Rights, eds. A. Invernizzi, M. Liebel, B. Milne, and R. Budde Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research, vol 15. (Cham: Springer, 2016), 211–31.

96. See, for example, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies (2012); available at: https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/research-and-guides/ethics/gerais.pdf (accessed July 17, 2019).

97. Semi-structured interviews were used by 61% of human rights fellows, followed by 45% using case studies and 36% using ethnography; of human rights professionals (e.g. working in NGOs), 62% used case studies, 45% used archival research and 44% used semi- structured interviews. Human Rights Center, Kristin Reed and Ausra Padskocimaite, The Right Toolkit: Applying Research Methods in the Service of Human Rights (Berkeley: Human Rights Center, School of Law, University of California, 2012).

98. Hale, Engaging Contradictions, 4; Calhoun, ‘Foreword’, xxii.

99. Upendra Baxi, The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement; An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999, 58.

100. Wouter Vandenhole, Corinne Lennox, Paul Gready and Hugo Stokke, “Some Cross-Cutting Issues and their Policy Implications”, in Human Rights and Development in the new Millennium: Towards a Theory of Change, eds. Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 272–99.

101. Swedish International Development Agency, Human Rights Based Approach to Research (January 2015); available at https://www.sida.se/globalassets/sida/eng/partners/human-rights-based-approach/thematic-briefs/human-rights-based-approach-research.pdf (accessed June 25, 2019).

102. Philip Alston, The Role of the University in the Human Rights Movement; An Inter-disciplinary Discussion held at Harvard Law School, September 1999, 57.

103. Ron Dudai, ‘Introduction—Rights Choices: Dilemmas of Human Rights Practice’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 6, no. 3 (2014): 389–98.

104. Separating human rights scholarship from these disciplines is not a straightforward task, so distinction here is solely analytical.