Radical and Transforming Pedagogies in Human Geography (WS5)

5 février 2025

Pre Julie De Dardel, UNIGE

Isabelle Kloepper, UNIGE

Pre Amy Ritterbusch, University of California in Los Angeles

The workshop 'Radical and Transforming Pedagogies in Human Geography' delves into innovative educational strategies aimed at emancipation, as well as social and spatial justice. It explores collective approaches to research and teaching that actively involve communities, fostering collaboration and shared knowledge production. Participants will engage with methods that challenge traditional academic frameworks and promote transformative learning. The focus is on radical pedagogies that not only educate but also empower learners and communities to enact change.

To prepare for this workshop, we suggest you read the last chapter of Ruth Wilson's book "Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation". It is chapter 20 "Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence", p. 377-398.

For those wishing to engage further with Ruth Wilson Glimore's thoughts, please feel free to watch the conference about her book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVNO3NvM_BM

If you're able to dedicate a little more time to preparing for the workshop, we'd also recommend reading the article by our guest speaker Prof. Amy Ritterbusch, published in French. Amy Ritterbusch, published in 2019 in Antipode: "Empathy at Knifepoint: The Dangers of Research and Lite Pedagogies for Social Justice Movements".

Workshop Description

The Radical and Transformative Pedagogies and Praxis (RTPP) in Human Geography workshop will take place within the framework of the CUSO winter school. The RTPP collective learning space will propel students toward reflexive and critical engagement with the philosophies of social justice, key words, principles and praxis guiding the subfield of radical geography, and key pedagogical frameworks central to the transformation of the neoliberal university as we know it. This workshop connects theory and practice through a critical approach to core frameworks within radical geography, including abolition, decoloniality and participatory action research (PAR).

While it has long been established that participatory action research (PAR) is not a method but rather a way of living and interacting with the world (Cahill, Quijada, & Bradley 2010; Fals Borda 1991; Kindon, Pain & Kesby 2007; Kindon & Elwood 2009; Pain, Finn, Bouveng, & Ngobe 2013), a tension remains between the commitments of long-term PAR work and the short-term outcome-oriented framework guiding what currently counts toward advancing science in most neoliberal universities worldwide. Amy Ritterbusch has experienced this tension both in the classroom and in organizing spaces as an activist-scholar working alongside di]erent communities in Colombia and other parts of the global South.

This workshop unfolds at the breaking point of this tension and seeks to catalyze conscientização, or critical consciousness building, in the students who participate in this process of collective inquiry for social change. Freirean framings of conscientização are often evoked in PAR literature and within popular education circles to describe what we seek to generate in the classroom, propelling students toward active citizenship and critical problem1-solving. Cahill conceptualizes conscientização in terms of how new, contextualized subjectivities and ways of coming to terms with anger and other emotions emerge in a long-term, community-driven PAR process (Cahill 2007). Both Caitlin Cahill and Paulo Freire remind us to rethink the subjects of conscientização, not as students, professors, and historically marginalized and criminalized communities separately, but as a collective of individuals that fight for freedom consistently, over time, and work to reach mutually established social justice achievements.

This workshop represents the beginning of a collective journey through social justice theory and practice and engages with theories and praxis of ciencia popular2 practice through learning from lessons shared by revolutionaries and activist-scholars working on the frontlines of social justice struggles in di]erent parts of the world.

Workshop Structure

This workshop will consist of a lecture on radical geography and abolition geography, followed by intergroup dialogue, collective reading and listening, individual and group writing exercises and reflexive activities during the afternoon segment.

Suggested Readings from or Inspiring Radical Geography

Antipode Editorial Collective. (2019). Keywords in Radical Geography. Antipode Foundation.

Camp, J. & Heatherton, C. (2016). Poetry and the Political Imagination. In Camp, J. & Heatherton, C. (2016). Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter. London: Verso.

Chatterton P (2006) "Give up activism" and change the world in unknown ways: Or, learning to walk with others on uncommon ground. Antipode 38(2): 259-281.

Darwish, M (2006). In the Presence of Absence. Archipelago Books.

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. (Eds.). [2007] 2017. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Durham: Duke University

Press.

Freire P (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition. New York, NY: Continuum.

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gilmore R W (2022) Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation (eds B Bhandar and A Toscano). New York: Verso

Harney, S. & Moten, F. (2013).The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Brooklyn: Autonomedia. Chapter 2.

hooks, B (2004) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Joudah N, Wahbe R M, Radi T and Omar D (2021) Palestine as praxis: Scholarship for

freedom. Journal of Palestine Studies 50(4):101-105
Kaba M (2021) We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming

Justice (ed T K Nopper). Chicago: Haymarket Books

Kelley, R. 2002. Freedom Dreams. Boston: Beacon Press.

McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear Science and Other Stories. London: Duke University Press. XI. Curiosities (My Heart Makes My Head Swim). Footnotes (Books and Papers Scattered About the Floor). The Smallest Cell Remembers a Sound. Dear Science.

Pain R, Kesby M & Askins K (2012) The politics of social justice in neoliberal times: A reply to Slater. Area 44(1): 120–123.

Rappaport, J. (2020). Cowards Don't Make History: Orlando Fals Borda and the Origins of Participatory Action Research. Durham: Duke University Press.

Razack, S. (2024). It Didn't Begin in Hate: Why a Hate Crimes Framework Can't Take Us to Abolition. State Crime Journal 12(2): 267-278.

www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document

Spade D (2020) Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). London: Verso

Tuck, E. & Wayne Yang, K. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 1(1): 1-40.

Tuhiwai Smith L (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books.

Les Rasses

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