Surfacing solidarity praxis in transdisciplinary research for blue justice

ABSTRACT

In this article, we centre the knowledge and contributions of environmental justice social movements towards transformations for sustainability in Transdisciplinary Research. Scholar activists within research teams can help bridge networks of scholars with social movement networks to build strongly engaged and relational transdisciplinary research. We draw on reflections and learnings from the Coastal Justice Network, a scholar activist network working in solidarity with small-scale fishers and other blue justice movements in South Africa. We discuss some of the alignments, possibilities, and tensions inherent in this mode of TD research. Lastly, we suggest approaches for bridging the academic-activist divide within TD ocean research, including the inclusion of scholar activists who have established relationships with social movements in TD teams; ensuring adequate time and learning spaces for developing relational capacities such as reflexivity and solidarity; and embracing and learning from the messy politics of alliance building.

Edited by:

• Matthew Weaver

KEYWORDS:

• Scholar-activism
• transdisciplinarity
• ocean governance

Introduction

Transdisciplinary (TD) research is one of the ways that academia has responded to the global poly-crises we face (Hirsch-Hadorn et al. 2006; Lang et al. 2012). The growing urgency of the global environmental crisis has compelled sustainability researchers in particular to address the ‘science – society’ gap in socially engaged, transformative and reflexive ways (Jahn et al. 2012; Lang et al. 2012; Lawrence et al. 2022). TD research with a focus on sustainability advocates for the co-production of knowledge through participatory, inclusive partnerships with diverse stakeholders grappling with environmental concerns. TD research is a well-established (albeit still subject to a divergent range of interpretations and applications), and a well-funded mode of research that is viewed by some as the model for sustainability science (Hirsch-Hadorn et al. 2006; Görg et al. 2014; in Healy 2019).

One of the core practices of this kind of research is to establish multi-stakeholder networks (Hirsch-Hadorn et al. 2006; Lang et al. 2012; Lawrence et al. 2022). To sufficiently respond to intractable socio-ecological challenges and to encourage knowledge co-production, these networks include government officials, policy makers, NGOs and community-based organisations. There has been increasing recognition of the need to give careful attention to the relational aspects of these research partnerships (West et al. 2020). There remains, however, a relative lack of attention within TD theory and practice to critical and ethical engagements between TD researchers and social movements of marginalised people working in counter-hegemonic ways towards environmental justice (Temper et al. 2018).

In this article, we explore how a scholar-activist orientation might contribute to bringing sustainability TD research closer to grassroots social movements. We do this through discussing how the Coastal Justice Network emerged from a large TD research project, the GCRF One Ocean Hub, that works towards inclusive and just ocean governance. The Coastal Justice Network is convened by scholar-activists, including both authors, within an existing TD research network. The One Ocean Hub is an international transdisciplinary research programme across five countries with a vision of ‘fair and inclusive decision-making for a healthy ocean whereby people and planet flourish’. This TD project has as its mission to ‘bring together coastal people, researchers and decision-makers to value and learn from different knowledge(s) and voices’ to ‘collaboratively influence decisions and practices shaping the future of the ocean for justice and sustainability’ (One Ocean Hub 2022). Undertaking research of this kind must recognise South Africa’s violently racist history, established through colonialism and apartheid, that dispossessed Black people of coastal territories, livelihoods and relationships with coastal and ocean resources. Forced removals from coastal areas made way for White elites and private developments, but also occurred in the name of conservation of biodiversity (Peer et al. 2022). Under democracy there are ongoing manifestations and impacts of displacement and exclusion of coastal people from coastal spaces (Mafumbu et al. 2022). Ranging from the inadequate consultation and involvement of coastal users in decision-making, to the exploitation and marginalisation of small-scale fishers, to the criminalisation of customary livelihoods in Marine Protected Areas, these injustices continue to reproduce historic exclusions (Sowman and Sunde 2018). Ocean policy and governance in South Africa is deeply fragmented (Taljaard et al. 2019), resulting in contradictory and ineffective implementation of even the most progressive policies (Sowman and Sunde 2021), and enabling ‘Blue Economy’ frameworks to be rolled out in un-democratic and socio-ecologically unjust ways (Bond 2019). In response to all of this, social movements of small-scale fishers and other community groupings along the South African coastline have coalesced to mobilise for ‘Blue Justice’ (Isaacs 2019; Bennett et al. 2021). We argue that TD research that aims to work towards ocean justice and sustainability needs to engage with and be responsive to these social movements.

We begin the article by giving an overview of how and why the Coastal Justice Network emerged from the One Ocean Hub. We then offer a discussion on some of the opportunities for both TD researchers and social movements for creating networks and relationships that hold mutual benefits. This can expand the possibilities for strategically working together towards shared goals. We also discuss the challenges in this work that arise for different stakeholders around solidarity practices between academic researchers and social movements, as well as the politics of engagement that emerge with government and other stakeholders. Lastly, drawing from our own experiences convening and contributing to the Coastal Justice Network, we offer some suggestions for embedding scholar activists within TD research networks, as bridge builders (rather than gatekeepers) between academic and activist knowledge holders. We explore how, despite challenges in how TD practitioners encounter and negotiate the power dynamics and politics within their networks, these tensions can have productive learnings for TD researchers and environmental justice activists wishing to work together. We hope that this article contributes to reflections for how scholar-activism might bring sustainability TD research for inclusive ocean governance closer to social movements working for blue justice, in ethical, politically rigorous and productive ways.

The coastal justice network

‘Ideal-typical’ TD research processes as described by Lang et al. aim to ensure “collaborative problem framing and building a collaborative research team’ (Lang et al. 2012). The international group of researchers who designed the One Ocean Hub programme were successful in motivating to the funders the necessity of a ‘work package zero’ - a process-focussed package of activities that preceded the development of detailed research and co-design plans. This work package was intended as a space for establishing relationships and networks and to building a shared code of practice. This resonates with what Horcea-Milcu et al. call Phase 0 of TD research that is dedicated to ‘setting up a TD process’ before moving into the co-developing research agendas and plans with partners (Horcea-Milcu et al. 2022, p. 195). This ‘work package zero’ proved to be very important initial stage in terms of allowing the time and space for TD researchers to form relationships with one another. It also allowed space and time to bring pre-existing networks of collaborators into conversation about what they would like to work on together under the broad project vision of transformations in ocean governance.

Within the One Ocean Hub were a few researchers with established relationships with environmental justice organisations, and others with long-standing relationships with small-scale fishers (SSF) and their organisations, and some with networks spanning these groupings. These networks have been actively involved in defending the human rights of small-scale fishers, including; advocating for and contributing to a transformative small-scale fisheries policy (Sowman et al. 2014), raising awareness of and providing support against historical and contemporary exclusions from Marine Protected areas that overlap with traditional fishing grounds (Wicomb 2015; Sowman and Sunde 2018) SSF’s inclusion in fisheries governance (Kolding et al. 2014), and, more recently, supporting SSF’s resistance to seismic explorations for deep sea oil and gas which pose risks to their fishing grounds (Sunde 2022). Over the first year and a half of the One Ocean Hub, a group of around 10 One Ocean Hub scholar activist researchers (including both authors), from four different universities spread across the country, started to meet regularly online. In these meetings, which were initially focussed on articulating a critique of the Blue Economy, we discussed the pressing issues that were being identified by our social movement partners, and what we were able to contribute to these struggles from our positions as researchers within this TD network.

In March 2020, everything came to a standstill with the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdowns. It was quickly brought to our attention that there were human rights violations being experienced by small-scale fishers under the strongly enforced South African lockdown regulations. Remote coastal fishing communities were struggling to access food, drinking water and other basic services; and many fishers were being harassed or even arrested by law enforcement officials for carrying out the work that produced their livelihoods (Sunde and Erwin 2020; Sowman et al. 2021). The impacts of COVID-19 and lockdown regulations were exacerbating the existing marginalisation and vulnerability of small-scale fishers within ocean governance in the country. Some SSF leaders were reaching out to researchers in our group asking for support in terms of updated information about the lockdown regulations, and in advocating for their right to fish as an ‘essential service’. We decided as a matter of urgency to motivate to our funder that some of our research budget be re-allocated towards airtime and mobile data for small-scale fisher leaders around the coastline, so that they could be in contact with one another and with a wider network for sharing information, advice, and support in responding to the pandemic. Through advice and discussion with small-scale fisher organisations and researchers with existing relationships, nominations were made of small-scale fisher (SSF) representatives who were well positioned and mandated to share any information they received widely within their communities. We set up a ‘whatsapp’ group and added all the SSF leaders who had been nominated, as well as researchers and civil society partners committed to working in solidarity with SSF. ‘whatsapp’ is a mobile app widely used by social movements in South Africa, and is a low data, accessible platform for text-based communication. This ‘whatsapp’ group was an emergency solidarity intervention – we did not yet have a clear long-term vision for it, and it was not part of our planned research activities. Three years later, this group continues to form a core communication and strategy platform for the fishers and scholar-activists on the group.

The initial group of scholar-activist researchers now met more regularly (every week for the first few months, shifting to once a month, which continues to the present) to have reflexive and strategic discussions about our roles, responsibilities and response-abilities (Haraway 2016; Bozalek 2020) in relation to the ‘whatsapp’ group, and the issues raised on this group by the SSF leaders. Over 2021 and 2022 we became increasingly networked within an emerging social movement around environmental justice and the oceans and coasts. Through practicing solidarity with SSFs and civil society, we were publicly vocal about injustices that arose along the coast. In this learning through doing process, we experienced the challenges and opportunities that scholar activism and its relationships with social movements hold for TD research projects, and vice versa. Partly, in response to these challenges we came to call ourselves the ‘Coastal Justice Network’. The Coastal Justice Network enabled a core group of researchers, rooted within wider networks, to facilitate collective responses to advance blue justice around the South African coastline. The following sections outline some of the alignments and tensions between TD research projects and social movements, and how scholar activists can assist in navigating these.

Transdisciplinary research and social movements

Transdisciplinary research, discussed in this paper through the lens of the ‘social engagement’ school of transdisciplinarity (Lawrence et al. 2022), which seeks the involvement of different academic disciplines as well as knowledge holders outside of academia in co-developing transformative solutions to real-world problems, is inherently political. It is engaged in political work in the broadest sense – through having to do with activities of co-operation, negotiation, meaning-making and conflict within and between groups of people (Leftwich 2004). TD research is also explicitly political in that it seeks to make research more responsive, inclusive, influential, and ‘useful’ in societal decision-making. In its orientation towards addressing societal challenges and contributing to ‘transformations for sustainability’, TD research is guided by ‘specific normative socio-political goals’ (Lawrence et al. 2022) towards the realisation of ‘the common good’, where the common good is generally understood to include political justice (Lawrence et al. 2022). Marshall et al. (2018, p. 2) articulates ‘the processes of knowledge co-production in TDR as being influenced by and exerting influence over the wider politics of the knowledge – action interface’.

Although transdisciplinarity emerged from concerns about the ‘silo-ing’ of scientific disciplines and aims to address power imbalances in knowledge production, dominant TDR discourse can appear blind to its own centering of scientific paradigms even as it aims for more egalitarian knowledge co-production. This contradiction is present in the language of TDR – the term ‘transdisciplinary’, and the transcendence it implies (Cockburn 2022) of the boundaries between different disciplines, as well as of the boundaries between academic knowledge systems and all other knowledge systems, remains a very academic term. Knowledge holders outside of academia do not think of their knowledge as belonging to or emerging from a discipline. Furthermore, transdisciplinary literature often speaks about ‘academic and societal actors’ as if academia is outside of society; but this conception of academics as distinct from the rest of society is also problematic in its myopic centering and differentiating of academics. Within ‘strong’ transdisciplinarity (Max-Neef 2005; Ross and Mitchell 2018) there should not be this false binary of academic and societal knowledge, but rather a conception of social networks of knowledge and action, in which academic knowledge and contributions are one strand interwoven with many others.

TD research is an activity system that is itself ‘permeated with political dynamics’ as ‘differently empowered actors with competing aims and interests, negotiate to ensure their objectives are met’ (Healy 2019). The larger politics of knowledge–action interface is frequently acknowledged in TD research; however, the ways in which different knowledge holders encounter and negotiate the power dynamics and politics within their TD networks is an under-developed aspect of TD research (Cundill et al. 2015; Wolff et al. 2019). While the political nature of transformations to sustainability is acknowledged by some (Jørgensen 2012; Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015; Temper et al. 2018; Stirling 2019), most literature on TD for transformations to sustainability remains focused on discussions on the robustness, validity and integration of co-produced knowledge with minimal analysis on the politicized nature of working across disciplinary and academic-activist boundaries. There is also little literature within TD scholarly work on what it means to take a political stance when TD research projects come up against government or private business agendas that reproduce inequality and injustices.

The Coastal Justice Network emerged as a negotiation and navigation through some of the political tensions between disciplines and individual researchers within the TD network. Different researchers within the One Ocean Hub in South Africa have different relationships with government departments. Diverse networks and skills bases are a strength of TD research networks. However, it can also create tensions within these networks when some researchers wish to take more assertive political stances in their work. One of the reasons that the CJN came to be, was to create some distance from the broader One Ocean Hub community of researchers. Several justice issues had emerged early on in the One Ocean Hub, specifically around extractive oil and gas and its impact on fishers, and around the killing of fishers in marine protected spaces by conservation officers as supposedly ‘anti-poaching’ measures. We learnt that not all our colleagues were comfortable when we took a public stand against human rights abuses and against oil and gas applications in the oceans. A few colleagues felt that even if they agreed in sentiment, particularly against extractive mining, that adding their names to One Ocean Hub letters to Ministers or the press could compromise their existing relationships with government officials. Being seen as oppositional to government holds professional risk for many of the marine scientists who rely on types of government funding and networks to do their work. Creating a separate grouping within the TD network called the Coastal Justice Network enabled scholar activists to freely vocalise injustices and work in solidarity with our civil society and social movement partners. This allowed us to stand by our own political principals that sit at the core of our research projects, and importantly built trust and solidarity with our key partners. For example, when fishers in isiMangaliso were killed by conservation officers it was the Coastal Justice Network, not the One Ocean Hub, who wrote publicly about this oppressive violence impacting fishers. Increasingly we started to write/speak as the Coastal Justice Network, although always acknowledging being a part of the One Ocean Hub.

In larger One Ocean Hub meetings we reported back on the Coastal Justice Network activities and why these held relevance for the broader objectives of the TD research. Making spaces for discussion and dialogue within the One Ocean Hub enabled TD researchers throughout the network to collectively strategize on how those wishing to support socio-environmental justice activities could do so without compromising their relationships with government officials who were key partners on other projects. This is not to suggest that navigating these different positionalities and political strategies are without tensions. Certainly, there have been some frustrations and conflicts around different methods of engaging with stakeholders outside academia, around the role of science in taking a normative political stance, and around different interpretations of the role of transdisciplinary research.

Many transdisciplinary sustainability researchers remain uncomfortable, in inhabiting a political identity – the ‘explicit attention to normative goals is unfamiliar territory for many researchers’ (Lawrence et al. 2022, p. 51). Particularly for those with disciplinary training in the natural sciences, concerns about ‘remaining neutral’ and not ‘taking a political stand’ can be very challenging to shift (Latour 2004; Isopp 2014). This may partially explain why, even amongst TD sustainability researchers committed to values of participatory, inclusive, co-engaged research with diverse stakeholders responding to environmental concerns, there is hesitancy in acknowledging the importance of social movements (Temper et al. 2018); and a lingering discomfort about being associated with political action.

The radical, systemic shifts in values, structures and governance that is needed for sustainable and just socio-ecological systems do require high-quality TD research. Equally however, these systemic shifts require politically engaged, transgressive, at times unruly and disruptive approaches to the stubborn reproductions of inequality and exploitation inherent within current economic and social structures. It is frequently social movements who lead these kinds of politically engaged processes at global and local scales (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015; Martinez-Alier et al. 2016; Scoones 2016; Temper et al. 2018; Stirling 2019). Social movements, as distinct from broader civil society, are ‘a sustained mobilization of “challengers” (individuals and organizations) that are located in the subordinate positions of a social field that seek fundamental changes in the social field, and that encounter resistance to those changes from the “incumbents” located in the dominant positions of the field’ (Hess 2022, p. 58). In the Global South, and indeed for ‘subaltern’ (Gramsci 1957) communities throughout the world, social movements are crucial spaces of political organising, knowledge production and strategy for bringing about emancipatory transformations and alternatives.

Globally, fisher people and their communities have organised and mobilised to respond to the range of ‘blue injustices’ (Chuenpagdee and Jentoft 2019; Bennett et al. 2021; Ertör 2023). In South Africa, fisher people, their communities and wider alliances of civil society organisations and researchers, have also engaged in organised resistance to diverse justice issues in relation to ocean decision-making. These emerging social movements are particularly concerned about: rampant expansion of mining and oil and gas extraction along the South African coast and ocean; realisation and protection of the human, customary and environmental rights of small-scale fishers and their communities; and meaningful inclusion of coastal communities – particularly of women, whose contributions to coastal livelihoods are profoundly marginalised – in ocean governance and co-management. Grassroots social movements such as the one emerging in South Africa around environmental justice and the oceans are at the forefront of both experiencing environmental injustice and responding to it (Chesters 2012). Social movements have enormous, often unrecognised, learning and knowledge to contribute towards knowledge generation for sustainable practices (Choudry 2015). They hold ‘subjective knowledge’ based on their particular positions, identities and experiences (Brem-Wilson 2014); theirs are the eyes, ears and bodies on the frontline of socio-ecological injustices. They also collectively hold direct knowledge about broader social, ecological and political dysfunctions that reveal otherwise hidden social relations that hold ‘wicked’ socio-ecological problems intractably in place (Choudry 2020). The ‘systemic, multi-dimensional and intersectional’ approaches of environmental justice movements mean that they are particularly well positioned to contribute to just transformations for sustainability (Temper et al. 2018, p. 747).

TD research that positions itself as contributing to socio-ecological transformations therefore needs to prioritise inclusion and collaboration with social movements. Yet there are limited examples of how TD research connects with social movements to co-generate knowledge and impact decision-making. In addition to the historic discomfort of some scientific disciplines with taking a political stand to protect ideologies of scientific objectivity, some TD scholars have concerns about the ‘radical’ or ‘destructive’ nature of activists within social movements, and about the legitimacy and depth of representivity within social movements. As outlined earlier for some TD research scholars being seen as aligned to social movements creates immediate risks of damaging hard-won relationships with authorities towards whom social movements may take an oppositional stance.

This wariness to partner goes both ways – many activists within social movements are sceptical and guarded about partnering with academics and researchers. Based on past (and often present) dynamics of power and privilege, partnerships with researchers have been experienced as extractive and exploitative of social movements (Maxey 1999; Gutierrez and Lipman 2016; Vakil et al. 2016). Activists resent being viewed by academic researchers as objects of knowledge, rather than knowledge producers in their own right (Juris 2008). There is also a sense of being exploited for academic gain (Edelman 2009) where the research benefits academics career paths more than social movement objectives. Many activists are researchers in their own right, with their own theories and concepts (Choudry 2015; Martinez-Alier et al. 2016; Burt 2019), but their knowledge is often undermined by academics as being insufficiently rigorous. At other times, their knowledge alerts academics to important new areas of research but becomes co-opted and repackaged to align with academic conventions, without adequate acknowledgement or benefit sharing of the outcomes of the study (Cordner et al. 2012; Dawson and Sinwell 2012; Gillan and Pickerill 2012). This can leave strategic research needs identified by social movements as ‘unfunded, incomplete, or generally ignored’ (Frickel et al. 2010, pp. 444–445).

Despite the commitment in TD theory to equitable, deeply co-engaged knowledge production with diverse partners, in practice, approaches to co-engaged research (especially with marginalised groups) often proceed with the acceptance that inevitably the researcher is leading the process. Here, researchers try and be as ‘participatory’ as possible within the paradigm of researcher-led enquiries. Several reviews have highlighted that TD research in practice faces challenges in mitigating against power imbalances, and in implementing strong empowered engagement with non-academic partners (Lang et al. 2012; Wolff et al. 2019; Lawrence et al. 2022). Of serious concern to scholar activists is the risk that some TD research projects may co-opt the ‘appearance’ of social movement participation, without taking up the knowledge or struggles of these movements in meaningful ways. For example, Healy (2019, p. 521), writes about how social movements are used for conferring legitimacy on governmentality in a neoliberal policy environment, ‘enabling the [European] research policy community to lend “visible” support to projects with radical policy objectives … whilst leaving dominant, neo-liberal policy trajectories of ecological modernisation intact’.

How TD research projects navigate this tricky politics is particularly important to pay attention to in the context of efforts to transform ocean governance. Like elsewhere in the world, in South Africa, marine decision-making remains extremely unbalanced in terms of its reliance upon marine and fisheries science – disciplines that are dominated by normative scientific frameworks, and resistant to integrating knowledge and paradigms from the social sciences (Green 2022; Harden-Davies et al. 2022), and even less so the local ecological knowledge of coastal communities. There is a particular danger in ocean governance of ‘de-peopling and de-politicization’ (Bennett et al. 2021, p. 5), as if the ocean is an empty territory. The treatment of the ocean as an under-used frontier, usually under the banner of the Blue Economy, leads to claims for marine resources by powerful actors, through industrial fisheries, aquaculture, bio-prospecting, eco-tourism, maritime transport, deep sea mining, oil and gas extraction, carbon markets and other industries (Voyer et al. 2018; Bennett et al. 2021). This is a perspective which serves the interests of those seeking to stake new claims in the ocean, but which utterly negates the lives and life worlds of people who live in intimate, intergenerational relationship with the sea. TD researchers must be very careful to ensure they are not implementing a kind of tokenistic participation with non-academic partners that are used to legitimise untransformed power imbalances.

Scholar activism within TD research

To move beyond patronising or apolitical notions of non-academic citizens as ‘participants’ who we include in our research, we should take seriously the invitation to re-imagine ‘the conditions for ethical encounters … that challenge present conditions of colonization and inequality’ (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012, p. 50). If TD researchers are to build ethical, reciprocal partnerships with social movements, they need to be very conscious of the critiques and risks outlined above, and better appreciate the capacities that are needed for navigating these complex relational and political dynamics.

There is much to be learned from the literature and practice of scholar-activists, who have developed principles, methods and ethics for working in solidarity with social movements. Scholar activists seek alignment between their political values and their academic projects, through working directly with marginalised groups or social movements engaged in struggles for justice and social change (Routledge and Derickson 2015). Scholar activists work with and within social movements, to ensure reciprocity, to understand the situated knowledge of social movements, and to demonstrate solidarity. Solidarity is understood here as a moral relation that unites people acting on the basis of a commitment to challenge injustice, oppression and vulnerability (Scholz 2008). Situated solidarities (Nagar and Geiger 2007) enable researchers to co-produce knowledges that are useful for social movements in ‘ways that refuse but do not ignore the violent and imperialist histories of the academy’ (Routledge and Derickson 2015, p. 391).

Rather than following the typical first phase of ‘building the collaborative team and collaboratively framing the problem’ (Lang et al. 2012) scholar-activists in the Coastal Justice Network have immersed themselves in the full intersectional complex mess of the problems faced by marginalised coastal users, trying to understand these struggles as they emerge, and to understand how best we might contribute towards addressing them. In the emergence and coordination of the Coastal Justice Network, we have paid close attention to navigating the politics of alliance building (Marshall et al. 2018), with an explicit bias towards the amplification of the knowledge and strategies of marginalised people to challenge structural injustices in current knowledge systems around ocean governance. We have learnt that in scholar activist TD research, the primary ‘foundational’ work is not about a shared problem framing process; it is about researchers becoming part of a social movement. Instead of only co-developing research questions at the outset, this work is concerned with creating the conditions whereby research support can be leveraged by community-based activists, social movements and others, at strategic moments as local struggle evolve – for example in compiling evidence for court cases, policy engagement or advocacy work. This resonates with Croog et al. (2018)’s support for a ‘politics of resourcefulness’ whereby community partners can make their own demands of the research project.

Scholar activists can work towards strengthening and supporting existing relationships and processes that have been developed by social movements and community activists. Doing so means that, when the context requires, research and other capacities that researchers hold, can contribute towards responsive co-engaged action. This requires a range of activities and resources not usually associated with scholarly outputs. The Coastal Justice Network roles in relation to social movements of small-scale fishers and others working for Blue Justice are summarised in Box 1:

Box 1. Roles played by scholar-activists in Coastal Justice Network.

Network coordination role – convening meetings, using research funds to support gatherings of small-scale fishers and their allies, with a co-developed agenda and outcomes Advocacy role – challenging and offering alternatives to the ongoing marginalization of small-scale fishers and other coastal knowledge holders within ocean governance and ocean research, re-framing and recognising small-scale fishers as ocean defenders Knowledge mediation role – bridging social movements and government officials’ perspectives and experiences of policy and regulations, bridging academic and activist knowledges, developing popular education materials, sourcing and making available published research that can be used by small-scale fishers and blue justice activists to enhance their work (for example fisheries research showing deep sea breeding grounds of species in relation to zones of proposed offshore oil and gas production) Resource mobilization role – motivating for research funds to go towards supporting the activities of social movements; fund raising; orienting our funded research activities towards the needs identified by activist partners Communications role – writing press releases, letters, affidavits, policy submissions, appeals and other documents upon request by, and in dialogue with, social movement partners Policy Engagement role – reflexive facilitation of collective strategy development and participatory preparation of submissions Responsive Research role – undertaking, advocating for and making accessible academic research to support the above.

In this networked social movement space, we take the lead in some situations, and at other times we are led by our partners. In this dynamic, relational and responsive network we contribute what we are best placed to contribute. Most of this work fits well with Brem-Wilson’s (2014) proposed ways of practising scholar activism across a spectrum of activities; from direct action responses (e.g. letter writing, protests); supporting movements to understand their own practices and principles (facilitating organisational learning and reflection), bridging social movement knowledge into policy making arenas; and carrying out research requested by movements, or sourcing reliable and useful research done by others.

We do not want to romanticise scholar-activism work as a silver bullet for addressing issues of power within TD research networks. In pursuit of solidarity, scholar-activists run the risk of perpetuating the same power imbalances that they seek to disrupt, in a sense mirroring the tendency for researcher led agendas seen in TD research. What Vakil et al. (2016) call ‘politicised trust’ requires not only a mutually respectful working relationship but also an ongoing building of political solidarity. This conception of solidarity requires a strong critical reflexive praxis (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012). One practice that the Coastal Justice Network uses to assist us in critical reflection is to open ourselves to critique in several different forums. Firstly, through sharing work in our own monthly meetings to see how they are received and built on by other CJN members. Secondly, we present our research and activities not just at academic seminars, but both in public and in activist spaces, including national strategic workshops with SSFs and environmental justice organisations, and in online webinars with environmental justice scholars and activists working in related issues. Radical vulnerability within scholar-activist collaborations involves opening oneself up entirely, including to critique and backlash (both from colleagues in academia and in social movements). This radical vulnerability is an important mode of enabling ‘epistemic and ethical responsibility in relation to politically engaged alliance work’ (Chowdhury et al. 2016). Like all scholar-activists we grapple extensively with clarifying and understanding our positionality and practising reflexivity in a ‘dynamic field where knowledge production is but one of multiple expressions of power’ (Routledge and Derickson 2015, p. 392). Embodied, practiced values such as ‘solidarity and responsibility, trust and hope, vulnerability and reflexivity’ help scholar-activists to ethically navigate their identities and praxis (Nagar 2014). Opening the work in process to scrutiny by different stakeholders ensures that we are held accountable for our actions and learn from constructive critiques.

In the CJN, we draw inspiration from feminists’ ethos of care’ (De la Bellacasa 2012) emphasising the embodied, practical, politically engaged work of repairing and caring for the environment and each other (Staffa et al. 2022). This is done through engaging with conflict and difference, interrogating positionalities and power relations, building upon marginalised knowledges; and countering epistemic violence (Staffa et al. 2022). Equally, an ethos of care means ‘cultivating caring academic cultures’ (Staffa et al. 2022). The process of developing a deeper understanding of each other’s disciplinary framings and politics can be emotionally difficult. However, it can catalyse alliances between scholars from diverse disciplines who choose to stick with these challenging engagements and view them as spaces of learning and reflection for shifting practices. Over the last 3 years, some of our natural sciences colleagues have shown an increased willingness to actively include small-scale fisher issues into their planning and technical process. Some of these scientists, in responses to requests from us and from SSFs, have presented at Small-Scale Fishes workshop on how their research supports fishers’ opposition to oil and gas. Others are pushing from the inside to get SSFs included in the technical tools used in Marine Spatial Planning. Incremental shifts in disciplinary practices towards more inclusive and just engagements can feel frustratingly slow for social movements and the scholar-activists linked to them, but they are part of a strategic move for justice. We too have learnt a lot with colleagues from diverse disciplines who are open to engaging in the politics of working with social movements. We are grateful for how they have deepened our understandings of the constraints and possibilities from within government to improved ocean governance, and of the strengths and weaknesses of TD research.

How TD scholar-activist praxis helps to address some of the challenges in TD

TD sustainability research in South Africa will need to develop multi-stakeholder networks that include social movements to meet its objectives of equitable and inclusive research production. Embedding both scholar-activists and social movement representatives within TD networks enables the flexibility required of research to be responsive to urgent social and environmental justice needs on the ground. This flexibility is not easy nor possible for all researchers, but TD research networks that make space for scholar-activist researchers can get more comfortable with this kind of work. Including scholar activists within TD projects develops the broader capacity and literacy of networks for working with social movements, and vice versa. Ethical principles that guide scholar activists closely align with those identified by feminist and Global South TD researchers. The ‘relational turn’ within sustainability research (West et al. 2020) has brought into focus a paradigm shift towards more relational, process-oriented ways of thinking about transformations, that prioritise the nurturing of relationships for bringing diverse situated knowledges into environmental governance. TD researchers working in these closely engaged, politically rigorous ways need to develop relational competencies (Holden et al. 2019), and reflexive competencies (Brundiers et al. 2021) to navigate the complex socio-political terrain of TD research. This is necessary to address the challenging tensions that TD researchers can experience in playing multiple roles (Cockburn 2022). Lawrence et al. (2022) identify a previously unrecognised type of knowledge needed for navigating complex relationships within TD, which they have called ‘process knowledge’, which refers to the knowledge needed for integration of activities, orientations and systems of diverse actors, and for designing the structures to support continuous reflective, responsive learning. Marshall et al. (2018) write about ‘transformative space making’ as creating ‘openings within the cognitive, normative, social, and material arenas of knowledge systems for the coordinated exercise of propoor agency”. These important emerging aspects of TD praxis align closely with scholar activist praxis and need to be developed further through critical engagement with these concepts in practice. Scholar activists offer experience in navigating across the science/society and academic/non-academic binaries. Including scholar activists in TD research networks holds exciting possibilities to ‘learn democracy’ (Walters 2022) from and with social movements to build respectful, solidarity-based relationships across vastly disparate divides of race, class, gender, geography and power in South Africa. Walters (2022, p. 16) highlights that ‘… learning democracy occurs in action where new knowledge is co-created by braiding together experiential, cognitive and contextual knowledge’; and that ‘the means and ends of organising are equally important, as democracy is learnt through its practice’.

Yet scholar activists face significant dilemmas within their own work that need to be considered if they are to be included with care in TD research networks. Scholar activists are accountable in multiple directions simultaneously – to the social movements they commit to being in solidarity with, to the universities that employ them, to their individual academic projects (with requirements in terms of publishing or graduating), and to their funders. These multiple worlds have distinct principles and values, and distinct modes of evaluation and measuring impact. As scholar-activists, we frequently wrestle with our identity and role throughout this process. What we have learnt is that researchers wishing to practice co-engaged TD research with social movements, need to value equally the organising and relational practices of TD networks as they do the knowledge outputs of these networks. This means recognising that what appears as non-academic activities of scholar-activists are in fact critical foundations to shaping responsive, flexible, and participatory research practices. Scholar-activists who are engaged on the ground may not be able to produce publications at the rate of other researchers in the TD network, but their insights and knowledge mediation is critical to how academic and technical publications are presented and can inform strategies for environmental justice by marginalised groups and social movements. In short, if they are part of a TD network that values their work and makes space for sharing, scholar activists can assist in moving traditional research into meaningful impact for marginalised people. The holding of learning spaces and processes to mediate across differences and knowledge frames does not just happen automatically though. It is an additional aspect of scholar activist work, that is important to value and make visible.

Conclusion and recommendations

In this paper, we argue that TD researchers for sustainability in the Global South should proactively engage with social movements that are building ground-up responses to resist environmental injustices. Indeed, we propose that TD research networks need to include environmental activists and social movement representatives if they are to meet the objectives of research that is relevant, just and progressive. In the context of ongoing and deepening violations of environmental, social and epistemic justice, ethical research must engage with and contribute to the social movements calling for change. We also recognise that building ethical and reciprocal relationships between academics and community-based activists and social movements carries a lot of risk, tension, and contradiction, for both academics and activists, and therefore requires TD researchers to learn and practice certain capacities, such as critical reflexivity and solidarity.

Specific lessons and unresolved tensions that have emerged from the Coastal Justice Network within the One Ocean Hub are shared, as a case study of scholar activist TD research in practice. For TD researchers interested in including social movements in their networks, we suggest, drawn from our own experiences, the following points for consideration in Box 2 below:

Box. 2 Recommendations for TD scholars

Recognise, value and support the knowledge and contributions of community-based social movements in advancing just transformations for sustainability; Include, and value, scholar-activists with existing relationships with social movements as core members of TD research teams. This entails recognising the different and distinct research contributions of scholar-activists and adapting expectations of activities and deliverables accordingly; Encourage and allow time and resources for co-engaged learning spaces for the development of reflexivity, process knowledge (Lawrence et al. 2022), transformative space making (Marshall et al. 2018), learning democracy (Walters 2022) and learning solidarity (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012); Early on in the network, and throughout its’ active life-span, make time and space for diverse actors within the TD research network to discuss and understand the opportunities and challenges of working solidarities between academic researchers and community-based activists; Ensure that time and energy is committed to ongoing learning spaces that openly explore oppositional stances, tensions and politics within the network as and when they arise, which they will. Through an ethos of care, work to position these spaces of tension as spaces of generative learning, to identify structural and systemic blockages to shared goals; Allow the space and support within TD networks for researchers to take a public stand in solidarity with those on the frontlines of environmental injustices. Reciprocally, foster respectful understanding of those who are currently constrained to do so – while working to unpack and address those constraints.

We cannot emphasise enough the importance of dedicating time and space to critically thinking through the messy but hopeful politics of solidarity building. This enables all TD stakeholders to recognise how different relationships, roles and positions within a network are both a constraint, such as when conflicting politics can cause risk for different actors, and an opportunity to develop diverse insider/outsider strategies for change.

This paper is intended as a humble invitation to the TD sustainability research community, to actively engage with and contribute to social movements of marginalised people working to resist environmental injustice. We invite you into a conversation about how to be in solidarity with social movements, through sharing our own experiences within a scholar-activist network learning to be in solidarity with coastal social movements in South Africa.

Acknowledgements

This individual writing emerges from utterly collective experiences; it is a reflection of the authors’ emerging understanding of what we are doing together, but this understanding has been generated through thousands of hours of zoom meetings, whatsapp chats, voice note exchanges, co-facilitation of workshops, time spent on beaches and in harbours with fishers, and so on. Thanks to fellow scholar-activist hyphen walkers in the CJN - Buhle Francis, Dylan McGarry, Anna James, Philile Mbatha, Jackie Sunde, Merle Sowman, Aphiwe Moshani, Irna Senekal and others. Thanks to the GCRF One Ocean Hub for the funding, scholarly support and genuine commitment to transformative research, that makes this work possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible through funding from United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) One Ocean Hub [Grant Ref: NE/S008950/1].