Convoking the Radical Imagination

Abstract

This article reflects critically on “The Radial Imagination: A Research Project About Movements, Social Change, and the Future,” an engaged social movement research project conducted with self-identified “radical” activists in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In so doing, the authors explore a research strategy that seeks not merely to observe the radical imagination—the ability to envision and work toward better futures—but to convoke it: to mobilize the singular location of academic inquiry to create a research environment within which the radical imagination can be better understood. Through a critical examination of the project’s theoretical architecture and methodological framework the authors investigate the promises, possibilities, and difficulties implicated in critical social movement research carried out through a strategy of convocation, contrasting it with more conventional approaches to social movement research.