Convivial Research & Insurgent Learning

The Convivial Research and Insurgent Learning (CRIL) taller is a web infrastructure made possible through the collaboration of the Universidad de la Tierra's Center for Appropriated Technologies and the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy. The CRIL is an insurgent learning space and convivial research tool designed to facilitate locally rooted participatory, action-oriented investigation rooted reflection and action spaces that regenerate community. As a system of information, CRIL emphasizes the critical intersection between grassroots horizontal investigative practices, analytical frameworks, facilitation strategies, and direct action casework for the purpose of generating open, reflexive system(s) of information. Thus, as a collective research tool it encourages tequios de investigación, or strategic, collectively determined research projects to address community struggles, reclaim commons, regenerate culture, facilitate intra/inter-cultural encounters, and promote direct democracy. As an open on-going space of encounter it intends to amplify a variety of community-based knowledges, especially those in opposition to militarization, criminalization, securitization, privatization, and neoliberal globalization.

Each interconnected page presents a number of appropriated technologies, or cultural tools, that highlight convivial research and insurgent learning. We have gathered wide a variety of practical and theoretical resources that engage a wide array of collective practices, highlighting the necessary intersection of learning, research, analysis, facilitation, and direct action. Our effort linking convivial research and insurgent learning spaces, projects, strategies and practices is animated by a commitment to “go beyond solidarity,” seek alternatives to hierarchical and elitist knowledge practices, and promote the intersection of insurgent learning, community safety, community wellness, food sovereignty, environmental justice, and democratic promise. We approach this site much in the same way Michel Foucault theorizes an archive, which is to say, not only as a repository of the monumental texts of elites, but also as a set of statements interconnected as projects, institutions, practices and discourses that can either disrupt or maintain dominant practices, hegemonic knowledges, and discursive formations.

Suggestions for Navigating the Page

The menu on the left hand side organizes the intersection of both insurgent learning and convivial research, underscoring that convivial research and insurgent learning together promote the emergence of collectively determined objects of study, research agendas, systems of information, and direct action casework. Thus, the left hand menu provides tools, links, and texts that promote popular education spaces, strategies for analysis, participatory research approaches, facilitation strategies, and direct action resources. On the left hand side are the critical elements of convivial research and insurgent learning processes: research, analytical framework, facilitation, direct action, and systems of information. In addition, the individual pages organized on the left hand side provide access to specific tools, web pages, and talleres, or workshops, in the areas of popular education, capacity building, participatory research, facilitation, and direct action casework tools. The top menu introduces the ideas that stress the importance of a coyuntura, or conjunctural analysis, by highlighting its critical elements: projects, resources, agents (as well as their networks and alliances) as part of situated, competing strategies.