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Disciplinary pressures within academia often produce specialised and one-sided accounts of complex social processes. Convincing accounts of popular education regularly acknowledge the importance of social movements but without theorising them adequately–and vice versa. This one-sidedness is compounded by a widespread tendency to generalise from often highly specific institutional and political contexts, as though all movements learned in the same way across space and time and popular education’s role in fostering this learning is simple. Unchecked, this leads to the reification of ‘critical’ theory and the reduction and flattening of emancipatory practices to methods or even predefined goals. This paper constructs a dialogue between the work of Choudry, Freire and other authors in both fields, aimed at both celebrating and problematising their contribution to learning from our struggles. By developing a conversation between them, we want to explore how their insights might be usefully integrated for contemporary social movements.

In recent years, many Mexican students have participated in two large-scale national mobilizations : #YoSoy132 in 2012 and the movement in support of the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college in 2014. What happened to these students who committed themselves body and soul, for several months, to build another Mexico? To answer this question this dissertation proposes to study the activists' commitment during latency periods through the prism of the processes of subjectivation they experience. When sociologists are interested in what happens after a mobilization, they mostly study the reasons for demobilization, disengagement or entry into institutional politics. This thesis highlights the ins and outs of a third possibility and analyzes how, far from the spotlight, from institutional politics, and from organizations, students engage, act, think, and contribute to gradually changing the Mexico in which they live. By focusing on the subjectivity of the actors, Margot Achard not only shows that the activists' commitment continues after a large mobilization, but also seeks to understand how they live this commitment. Based on their experiences and encounters, students will shape and implement their own long-term activism during the latency period., Ces dernières années, les étudiants mexicains ont participé en masse à deux mobilisations nationales de grande ampleur : #YoSoy132 en 2012 et le mouvement de soutien à l’école normale rurale d’Ayotzinapa en 2014. Que sont devenus ces étudiants qui se sont engagés corps et âme, durant plusieurs mois, pour un autre Mexique ? Pour répondre à cette question cette thèse propose d’étudier l’engagement des activistes durant les périodes de latence par le prisme des processus de subjectivation qu’ils vivent. Quand les sociologues s’intéressent à ce qu’il se passe après une mobilisation, ils étudient majoritairement les ressorts de la démobilisation, du désengagement ou de l’entrée dans la politique institutionnelle. Cette thèse met en évidence les tenants et les aboutissants d’une troisième possibilité et analyse comment loin des projecteurs, de la politique institutionnelle, et des organisations, les étudiants s’engagent, agissent, (se) pensent, et contribuent à changer petit à petit le Mexique dans lequel ils vivent. En prenant le parti de se focaliser sur la subjectivité des acteurs, Margot Achard ne montre pas seulement que l’engagement des activistes se poursuit après une grande mobilisation, mais cherche également à comprendre comment ils vivent cet engagement. En partant de leurs expériences, de leur vécu et de leurs rencontres, les étudiants vont durant les périodes de latence façonner et mettre en œuvre leur propre activisme de long terme., (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2022

This article discusses the contributions of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and later Marxists to understanding political participation. It argues that Marxism is fundamentally historical, so that rather than assuming a fixed and general institutional situation across states and periods the Marxist contribution can best be expressed as empirical questions about popular participation in specific contexts. The expectation is one of popular attempts to assert participation in decision-making, with institutional forms shaped by the outcome of such struggles between social movements from below and the agency of the powerful. This argument is illustrated with examples from the struggle for democracy in Europe since the 19th century, the changing nature of political participation in postcolonial India, “the world’s largest democracy”, and popular politics in the age of austerity.

This article argues that there is no single relationship between Japanese Buddhism and Ireland, but rather a series of changing relationships mediated by different world-system contexts between one island and another (peripheral and post-colonial) one: as ethnographic information, as cultural influence and as religious practice. The process has a long history, stretching back to the Irish reception of Jesuit and traveller’s accounts, and then made concrete by early intermediaries like Lafcadio Hearn / Koizumi Yakumo and Charles Pfoundes. WB Yeats helped to give Japanese Buddhism a significant place in Irish culture, notably in poetry. From the 1960s and 1970s Japanese Buddhists started to settle in Ireland and Japanese Buddhism began to be practiced; both are now an established part of the Irish religious landscape. The article sketches this history together with the present situation of Japanese Buddhism in Ireland.