Environment, social classes and emancipatory power: contributions for a counter–hegemonic social intervention from academic spaces

Abstract

Academic spaces have a wide spectrum of intervention in the social fabric in connection with socio–environmental groups, schools and other social organizations, in a current time crossed by the urgency of a looming ecological crisis. I will argue here that the constitution of counter–hegemonic alliances between academia and various socio–political movements of the working class, in particular territorial social movements that bring together unemployed or marginalized workers from the formal economy, allow intervention through the co–production of knowledge critical to the system and the implementation of pre–figurative eco–social practices, in connection with the necessary socio–political action conducive to system change. This type of alliance supports a scientific and academic practice that seeks to strengthen emancipatory potentialities in autonomous socio–political organizations of the working class, an aspect that is increasingly necessary to reverse the crises to come.