Despite being the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country that invests the least in science, and despite having advanced training in human capital, but with little absorption in the country’s productive system, Chile has made some progress that position as a model of success in the development of science, technology and innovation in Latin America.
As a result of a historic demand from the Chilean scientific community, the country has a ministry that coordinates public policies in the sector: the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation (Mincyt), while the National Policy on Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation was built in collaboration with representatives of national science and civil society.
Recently, faced with structural problems such as the extractive base of the Chilean production model or gender inequalities, the government of Gabriel Boric promised to double the national budget for science and technology, offering answers to reduce these asymmetries and recognizing the need to integrate the environment and climate.
In addition to Chile’s advances and challenges in science, technology and innovation, the recent Constitutional Process also allowed for the discussion of widespread ideas about the concept of knowledge, challenging naturalized perceptions of academic knowledge. One aspect of these discussions has been the role of activism and its articulation with scientific and academic knowledge.
Indeed, activism and academic knowledge are issues that are in constant dialogue with each other. Debates about this relationship have been at the center of discussions within feminist epistemology and decolonial theory for decades. In this context, we must address how the construction of knowledge is negotiated through the eyes of those who navigate spaces beyond the walls of the university and move between feminist activism and the academic production of knowledge.
In general, activism is presented as a way of transgressing academic knowledge linked to the common or ecological good. However, in this sense, knowledge production also provides tools for engaging activists and vice versa.
Activism studies in academic spaces have focused on the ways in which the production of academic knowledge explicitly linked to an activist agenda can shape political decision-making or, ultimately, be a catalyst for social transformation inside and outside the university.
However, it has also been pointed out that activist agendas tend to become unfocused, depoliticized and intellectualized when they enter academic institutions. In discussions within the framework of two projects on knowledge and feminism (Finland and Chile), we argue that when it comes to knowledge there is no clear division between feminist activism and academic work.
Critical reflections focus on everyday practices of academic work that challenge the limits of what counts as self-knowledge or, in the words of Portuguese feminist sociologist Maria Do Mar Pereira, “achieve epistemic status”. This refers to the way in which our daily activities in academia push the boundaries of what is considered academically relevant and credible.
Previous analyzes of academia and activism have shown the ways in which contemporary conditions of academic work create difficulties in articulating autonomous and critical academic knowledge. Within this space, activist practices are sometimes thought to “contaminate” and delegitimize the work of feminist scholars.
However, activism for feminist scholars can also be part of their knowledge construction, in a way that allows them to meet the demands of contemporary academia, such as developing new and exciting avenues of research. They can also use the privilege of an academic platform to make important contributions to public discussions, benefiting activist agendas as well as their own careers and academic recognition.
However, being a feminist who challenges sexist structures and discrimination not only in society at large but also in academic spaces can come at a high emotional cost, emotional labor that has been documented in the literature, for example by Sarah Ahmed.
Criticizing universities’ own structures and practices of inequality can result in the silencing and marginalization of feminist researchers because they are perceived as “troublemakers” and “the cause of uncomfortable feelings.”
Therefore, when feminist scholars consider what kind of knowledge they produce about society, but also about the university, they have to assess the risks involved in “stirring the pot too much.”
This is a phrase used by one of our study participants and captures the experience many feminist scholars face on a daily basis. But it also illustrates a central point we want to draw attention to, which is how the work of naming and challenging the structures and practices that shape our everyday lives is key to feminist intellectual and political efforts. For feminist scholars, activism and academic scholarship cannot be easily separated.
There is a historical discussion in feminist epistemology about what counts as knowledge in academic spaces, where one of the main concerns has been the social and political implications of knowledge production and the role of those who know in this process. However, activism is a space for the construction of knowledge that is in constant dialogue with academic knowledge for those who move between the two spaces.
This does not mean that knowledge emerges more from one space than from another. On the contrary, they overlap and support each other. From the research questions we ask, the tensions we reveal in our empirical or conceptual research, and the implications of knowledge that becomes relevant to our societies in general.
The recent Chilean constitutional process allowed us to address this discussion in a broad way. We hope that these ideas can soon be extended to other Latin American countries and reach other latitudes.
