Disrupting the Boundaries of the Academe: Co-creating Knowledge and Sex Work ‘Academic-activism’

Abstract

Ti t l e Dis r u p ti n g t h e b o u n d a ri e s of t h e Ac a d e m e : c o-c r e a ti n g k n o wl e d g e a n d s ex w o r k 'ac a d e mi c-a c tivis m'

El debate urbano en Latinoamérica: pandemia, opinión pública y redes digitales de información

“…El reto está en acercarlos al mundo académico y viceversa, a fin de construir sinergias discursivas que cimienten una agenda común. Una suerte de activismo académico que sea capaz de conducir cambios estructurales en nuestras sociedades y específicamente en nuestras realidades urbanas (Connelly y Sanders, 2020). Este estudio redescubre los sesgos de cada bando, a fin de identificar las brechas existentes y potenciar su capacidad transformadora desde el ejercicio político.…”

Institutional Ethics Challenges to Sex Work Researchers: Committees, Communities, and Collaboration

“…O’Neill (2010) further advocates for a ‘feminist cultural criminological analysis’ of sex work, by adopting PAR methodologies which can ‘foreground the diverse voices and experiences of sex workers, challenge the current focus on abolitionist criminal justice regimes and outcomes, and offer an alternative framework for a cultural materialist analysis of sex work’ (p. 210). These collaborative approaches to doing sex work research confront the divisions between academia and political change, developing a form of ‘academe activism’ that uses the research process with the sex work community to stand up for social justice and human rights of sex workers (Connelly and Sanders, 2020). Academic advocacy work has been given attention recently, partly for the politicisation of academic inquiry, but equally the responsibility on academics to include sex workers as co-researchers (Weitzer, 2010).…”

“…Moreover, the ‘significant tensions between collaborative, reflexive, community research and academic modes and structures’ (Wahab, 2003: 625) are illuminated specifically in sex work research. For example, Connelly and Sanders (2020) describe the institutional barriers to adopting PAR as the clunky university systems stifle innovation in research design and administration. However, there are pathways forward to overcome these barriers (see Bowen and O’Doherty, 2014), including developing joined research protocols, so that PAR can be embedded into research approach and delivery.…”

‘Maybe I’m a quiet activist’: Sex work scholars and negotiations of ‘minor’ academic-activism

“…Firstly, the study of sex work is a field where strong – yet sometimes contentious (Holt, 2020) – connections between sex worker-activism, practitioner-activism and academic-activism exist, and where significant social stigma, professional stigma and stark ideological conflict brings otherwise generic challenges of academic-activism into sharper relief (Hammond and Kingston, 2014; Hanks, 2020). Second, we are motivated by the recent call by Connelly and Sanders (2020: 204) for a research agenda focused on ‘disrupting the boundaries that exist between academe and activism’ in the context of sex work research. Their account of sex work knowledge co-creation as a form of academic-activist praxis highlights opportunities for recognized and formalized types of ‘research impact’ within the contemporary university, but also points to challenges related to university brand management, restrictive funding arrangements and funder expectations, and the development of respectful and reciprocal, rather than extractive, relationships with non-academic research partners.…”

“…Many academics, however, have been critical of the Impact Agenda, arguing among other things that social change cannot be adequately captured by audit frameworks (e.g. Connolly and Sanders, 2020; McCowan, 2018; Rhodes et al, 2018; Slater, 2012). Others, such as Pain et al (2011: 185), have cited the possibilities of mobilising the impact agenda to make long-devalued forms of scholarly engagement valuable, and to ‘push for a model of academic accountability’.…”