Collective action and learning

Convened by: Rick Flowers, Tony Brown, James Goodman

Civil societies produce cosmopolitanism through collective action: to do this civil society actors must learn from experience and strategise for the future. Social reflexivity of this sort entails a collective process of society acting on itself, a self-conscious learning process of collective reflection, creating knowledges for social change. This Program focuses on the sites of production for these knowledges, where collective reflection translates into societal potential. These sites include:

• Social movements, especially where contestation forces new approaches and visions into view;
• Popular education, where educators gear curricula to addressing current issues and problems with a view to offering innovative and transformative solutions; and
• Legal innovation, especially in international contexts where public interest advocates can play a central role in instigating legal innovations.

In these aspects, and others, the process of learning through action is fused with a process of collective reflection, exercising what may be seen as civil society's collective imagination. Whether, and under what conditions, reflective action affirms divisions or alternatively transforms them, and thereby social equity and cultural multiplicity, is a central concern of this program.

CCS-initiated projects in this program: 'After the neo-con men', a CCS conference and book project on the theme of new currents in Australian social and political movements