By: Antonio Gori
«Aucun “je” dans ce qu’elle voit comme une sorte d’autobiographie impersonnelle – mais “on” et “nous” – comme si, à son tour, elle faisait le récit des jours d’avant »
(Annie Ernaux, Les Annés, 2008: 252)
My research aims to trace the history of the housing struggle movements in the city of Lisbon over the last decade. In doing so, I focus on the activities of two groups of which I have had the pleasure and honour of being a member for several years now: the Habita association and the Stop Despejos collective.
The choice to study these two organisations stems not only from the fact that they are the two main protagonists of this type of instance in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, but also because they are the organisations I am participating in. This would have allowed me to paint a picture from a privileged position that, ethical issues aside, could give originality to my thesis and also possibly help the two organisations to improve their functioning, their actions and their self-perception.
In the early days my fieldwork saw me constantly pondering the following question: when do you stop being an academic and start being an activist, and vice versa? With time, I realised that the question was ill-posed and that there would be no difference between my academic and activist sides. Once I started with the first interviews for my research, I realised it was so. Knowing most of the interviewees allowed me to turn the interviews into very deep conversations. So, besides (obviously) being a way to collect data, they became one of the rare moments for activists (as much as for me) to focus on aspects that everyday practices very often inhibit. Indeed, despite the high political value of the actions and practices undertaken, activists’ time is very often absorbed by emergencies such as actions to prevent evictions, demolitions, or demonstrations. Yet, thanks to the valuable feedback from the interviewees, as my interviews went on, I realised that, with no doubt, everyone ends up ultimately enriched by these moments. Very often during my interviews I thought how useful it would be if the other comrades would also listen to what I was hearing. That is why I decided to carry out a second round of interviews in small groups, trying to bring together activists who didn’t really know each other.
As a matter of fact, with the interviews new questions also arose, new topics whose discussion became necessary. This is why I offered to organise what I called ‘co-production exercises.’ I proposed to the two collectives creating a common calendar of moments of reflection and knowledge sharing. Since one of the main objectives we had set ourselves was to eliminate as much as possible the discrepancies that existed — in terms of knowledge, experience, and therefore, power — within the group, we wanted as many of the militants of the organisations as possible to participate in these sessions.
To date, three co-production exercises have been organised. The first one had the theme of knowledge production and learning. While it was initially intended to be a workshop in which a toolkit or manual would be produced, in practice it took on the dimension of a round table discussion. Participants were invited to answer questions such as: What have we learnt so far? How did this learning take place? What do we need to learn and how do we share what we already know? The second session focused on memory, through the reading of academic articles that retraced the history of the Habita association. The aim was to ask the most experienced activists about their organisational history, the chronology of actions, the reasons and feelings that had brought the association to where we are today. The third session had as its theme the transnational dimension of housing struggles. The reflection we wanted to stimulate started from the analysis of the condition of cities affected by global and financial processes that cross, characterise, and transform them. How can we benefit from the flow of practical ideas that such cities bring? How can such territorial struggles, so deeply rooted in specific places, challenge the flows of transnational financial capital?
These are the exercises carried out so far. More will follow, given the relative success of participation and the good feedback I have received from activists. I myself am pleased with the opportunities of discussion and reflection that my research has managed to create. However, there are some considerations to be made, especially in respect to the limitations that these paths bring, and mistakes that I have evidently made.
First, it is necessary to emphasise that often activists’ time is very scarce. Getting as many of them as possible to participate in a research initiative, especially if it is not an action or a solidarity demonstration, is complicated. The schedule of the collectives is packed and it has been very difficult to fit the sessions into a shared calendar. This concerns the co-production exercises as much as all my research: the timings of academy are not those of social movements. However, due to my position, I should have been the first to know that; this dissonance in timing caused me frustrations that could have undermined pre-existing relationships, which fortunately did not happen.
When, after the last session, some activists wrote to me reflecting on what we had done and in fact proposing a series of interesting methods, topics, and possible future exercises that I (with my academic experience) did not think about before, I realised that something good had been done. But I also realised the main mistake I made, namely having ignored the first lesson I got from my experience as an activist years ago: activities, whatever they are, should not be carried out alone.
Antonio Gori is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at Instituto de Ciências Sociais of Universidade de Lisboa. His research is about the housing social movements in Lisbon.
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