Why activist scholarship?

The past three decades have witnessed dramatic shifts in the global economy, leading to calls for increased competitiveness and deficit reduction in advanced capitalist nation-states. In Canada, the result has been the abandonment of the post-war Keynesian welfare state and the adoption of a neoliberal agenda of cutbacks in public spending, privatization, tightening eligibility for income security transfers, deregulation, and rolling back of human rights, labor and environmental protections. This agenda, which has reached global hegemony through the Bretton Woods institutions, has had a devastating impact on women, immigrants, people of colour, aboriginal and working class communities, sexual minorities and those living with challenges related to health and disability.

While the state is gradually retreating from the sphere of social welfare to a model of "small government", there has been a contrasting enhancement of the state's social control, surveillance and punishment functions. In particular after September 11, 2001, the Canadian government has mirrored global developments by stepping up its law and order, immigration control, and "homeland security" functions. Drawing essential public resources away from social welfare and into militarism, prisons, policing and surveillance, the rise of the "law-and-order" state poses a severe threat to social justice endeavours. Once again immigrant, racialized and aboriginal communities have borne the brunt of these devastating state interventions. In the context of this hydra-headed attack on civil liberties, social welfare and racial justice, it is evident that the academy must play a critical role as a social change agent by providing research and pedagogy that bolster efforts to promote social justice. This is the role of activist scholarship.