Militant research in the social sciences

Charalampos Tsavdaroglou

Chapter 22 in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2026, pp 161-167 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Militant research is an affective, caring and solidary methodology that questions neoliberal academic regimes. Militant research is a call for critical involvement, commitment and contribution to collective research and transformative political praxis. Although similar methodologies like “participatory action research” and “scholar activism” examine the interaction between academia and activism, they mainly remain within the academic production. Militant research aims to produce knowledge within the militant milieu. This entry presents the historical background of militant research from the Italian Autonomist Marxist tradition of “operaismo” to the newer feminist, intersectional, queer, decolonial and indigenous epistemologies. The entry presents the main methodological challenges of militant research, namely: beyond and against the neoliberalization of science and knowledge; destabilizing the binaries, promoting empathy; co-research and subjectivation; and the newer differentiations of research across time and places. Finally, the entry is a call to reimagine a critical political engagement and thereby an invitation for research militancy.

Keywords: Counter-methodology; Self-reflection; Co-research; Research Militancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781803921297
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