African Social Movement Learning: The Case of the Ada Songor Salt Movement

How social movements learn in struggle, produce knowledge, and provoke public paradigm shifts have become an important focus of critical adult education in our contemporary turbulent times. And yet, African social movements, and their learning are largely absent from this literature. This work, therefore, provides a rare and much needed African contribution to this field. African Social Movement Learning: The Case of the Ada Songor Salt Movement speaks to this gap in the literature, laying out an entry-point to an African-centered account of learning in struggle on the continent. However, this entry-point quickly turns to an in-depth sharing of one particular case of African social movement learning. Based on 9 years of research with the Ada Songor salt movement in Ghana, the book provides a detailed account of learning through defending communal access to West Africa’s largest salt yielding lagoon in the face of local, national and global efforts to expropriate this resource. The book shares the knowledge production of the movement, as well as the ways in which the movement has restoried its struggle to meet new challenges. Songs, tapestries, demonstrations, manifestoes, popular education approaches, and book production all feature in these efforts.

Table of Contents:
Foreword  Anne Harley List of Illustrations Chapter 1: Introduction  Social Movement and Social Movement Learning Studies  Social Movement Learning in Ghana – A Gathering of Voices  A History of Movements Defending Communal Access  Moving with the Ada Movement  Structure of the Book Chapter 2: African Social Movements and Learning  Social Movement Studies and Subaltern Movements  Social Movement Learning and Critical Adult Education  1st Wave: African Liberation Movements  From the 2nd Wave of Democratization to the 3rd Wave of Contemporary Ctruggles  2nd Wave: African Democracy Movements  3rd Wave: Protest Movements in Contemporary Times  Moving from Africa to Ada Chapter 3: Ada Movement Knowledge Production, Questioning National Development  National Development and Neoliberalism as Topographies of Power  The Adas, a Salt People from the Start  Ada Songor Focus of British Colonial Divide and Rule Tactics in Area  Ghana Emerges from the Gold Coast Colony, but the Post Independence State Still Promotes the National over the Local  Adas Dispossessed, Fight back through Legal, Political and Physical Means  A New Dispossession on the Horizon Means New Tactics Are Needed  Resisting the National Development and Neoliberal Narrative Chapter 4: Stories and Restorying as Social Movement Learning  Literacy of Struggle  Challenging How the Root Causes of Struggle are Framed  The Thumbless Hand, the Chameleon, and the Dog  Challenging Male Dominance through Rooted Restorying  The Struggle of the Songor Salt People Book Project  Restorying Struggle as Learning Chapter 5: The Pedagogy of Creative Dissent: Using Creativity to Broaden and Deepen Social Movement Learning  Introduction  Creative Dissent and Pedagogy  Creativity, Learning and Democratizing Knowledge  Overlapping Registers of “Spreading” Learning and Creativity Chapter 6: Conclusion  African Subaltern Movements Thinking and Acting on Their Future  African Subaltern Social Movements Producing Potential  Creativity and Non-Violent Activism  Where the Movement Is Headed Now, or the Latest Area of Learning  Learning in, through and to Struggle Appendix A References Index