More recent social science literature has considered social movements as ‘learning sites’ (Welton 1993), capable of building knowledge through discursive processes which consist of the ‘talks and conversations – the speech acts – and written communications of movement members that occur in the context of, or in relation to, movement activities’ (Benford and Snow 2000, 623). Addressing the importance of movements as producers of knowledge, Eyerman and Jamison (1991, 68–9) singled out three dimensions of their cognitive praxis: a cosmological dimension addressing the ‘common worldview assumptions that give a social movement its utopian mission’; a technological dimension which addresses ‘the specific technological issues that particular movements develop around’; an organizational dimension as ‘a particular organizational paradigm, which means they have both ideals and modes of organizing the production and . . . dissemination of knowledge’.
Research on knowledge-practices within social movements singled out a broad range, moving:
from things we are more classically trained to define as knowledge, such as practices that engage and run parallel to the knowledge of scientists or policy experts, to micro-political and cultural interventions that have more to do with ‘know-how’ or the ‘cognitive praxis that informs all social activity’ and which vie with the most basic social institutions that teach us how to be in the world. (Casas-Cortés et al. 2008, 21)
In fact, social movements are: ‘1) engaging in co-producing, challenging, and transforming expert scientific discourses; 2) creating critical subjects whose embodied discourse produces new notions of democracy; and 3) generating reflexive conjunctural theories and analyses that go against more dogmatic and orthodox approaches to social change, and as such contribute to ethical ways of knowing’ (Casas-Cortés et al. 2008, 22). Practices of knowledge are both formal and informal, as the activist knowledge is formed through different types of knowledge-practices including concepts, theories and imaginaries as well as methodological devices and research tools. Moreover, they ‘entail practices less obviously associated with knowledge, including the generation of subjectivities/identities, discourses, common-sense, and projects of autonomy and livelihood’ (Casas-Cortés et al. 2008, 28).
Social movements are first of all important actors in what Rosanvallon (2006) defined as counter-democracy, in that they criticize hegemonic thinking, especially its impact on subalterns. In fact, progressive social movements play a counter-hegemonic function (Freire 1996) as
the character and relational mode of oppressed people tends to be marked by the identification with the oppressor and an often unintentional desire to emulate him/her in terms of identity, position in the social structure and ways of relating to the ‘other’. If that often unconscious tendency is not identified and actively deconstructed, the odds are that the oppressive relationship will be reproduced, this time with new protagonists. (Motta and Esteves 2014, 2)
This critique of existing knowledge aims in particular at the unlearning of the dominant discourses, and the learning, instead, of oppositional and liberatory ones (Foley 1999, 4).
Learning is then oriented towards emancipation, going beyond the critique of hegemonic thinking and experimenting instead with alternatives. Being self-reflexive actors, progressive social movements acquire and produce knowledge in different stages of their activities. Learning is related to participation in the general activities of progressive movements, including meetings, protest, organizing, educational activities, as well as in self-reflection on their actions (Mayo and English 2012, 202–3).
Critical and creative approaches to knowledge aim at social transformation. Scholars have stressed the capacity of progressive social movements to offer alternative analysis and develop responses to situations of exploitation and exclusion starting from the direct experience of those situations. Thus, ‘If scientific knowledge aspires to develop generalizable theoretical and methodological models (some of which is indeed often relied upon by movement actors), “peoples’ knowledge” is based on grounded experience that can differently enhance particular processes of social emancipation’ (Casas-Cortés et al. 2008, 48).
Social movement knowledge is in fact said to be situated rather than universal, committed rather than detached, focused on changes at the roots of the system rather than on the symptoms (Mayo 1999). It tries to provide useful skills; to develop a critical understanding of power and of agency (Foley 2004); and to connect the local and the global (Crowther et al. 2005). The knowledge produced is ‘embedded in and embodied through lived, place-based experiences, [which] means that they offer different kinds of answers than more abstract knowledge: knowledges that are situated and embodied, rather than supposedly neutral and distanced (Casas-Cortés et al. 2008, 42–3). Movements generate knowledge which moves from practice to theory (Gordon 2007). Their knowledge is therefore considered as basically oriented to articulating theory and praxis, taking concrete realities as the point of departure: ‘The goal is that of creating an appropriate and operative theoretical horizon, very close to the surface of the “lived”, where the simplicity and concreteness of elements from which it has emerged achieve meaning and potential’ (Malo de Molina 2004, 13).
The importance of social movement knowledge is also related to its emergence in action. In particular, movement theorizing is
grounded in the process of producing ‘social movements’ against opposition. It is always to some extent knowledge-in-struggle, and its survival and development is always contested and in process of formation. Its frequently partial, unsystematic and provisional character does not make it any the less worth our attention, though it may go some way towards explaining why academic social movements theory is too often content with taking the ‘cream off the top’, and disregarding – or failing to notice – everything that has to happen before institutionalized social movement theorizing appears in forms that can be easily appropriated. (Barker and Cox 2002, 11)
Thus, theorization based on alternative knowledge and practices represents an aspect of citizens’ engagement in creating collective institutions such as social movement organizations, which are expected to empower them in the pursuit of their aim of resistance and change (Barker and Cox 2002, 21).
In sum, progressive social movements have engaged and engage in democratic innovation. They experiment with new ideas in their internal life, prefiguring alternative forms of democratic politics, and they spread these ideas within institutions. They not only transform democratic states through struggles for policy change, but also express a fundamental critique of conventional politics, thus addressing meta-political issues and experimenting with participatory and deliberative ideas. Historically, progressive social movements have been the carriers of participatory and deliberative democratic qualities, calling for necessary adaptation through innovation in democratic institutions, playing a most relevant role in countering social injustice and struggling for democracy. In these struggles, they have produced innovative ideas and alternative knowledge. This has been, and is, all the more important in times of crisis, which old institutions appear unable to address. Rather than gradual change, these critical junctures require new ideas, even new paradigms, with which social movements may already have experimented. As mentioned, progressive social movements experiment with democratic innovations in their internal practices. In fact, their activities are oriented towards