Towards a Method For Activist-Scholar Research Collaborations: Taking Inspiration From The Tradition Of The Workers' Inquiry

This paper will argue for a method for collaborative research projects involving academics and workers that takes inspiration from the tradition of workers’ inquiries. It draws on my own experience of conducting an inquiry in a UK call centre. In Marx’s (1938: p379) attempt at an inquiry he stated that workers ‘alone can describe with full knowledge the misfortunes from which they suffer,’ and crucially that ‘only they, and not saviors sent by Providence, can energetically apply the healing remedies for the social ills to which they are prey.’ The innovations of the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the USA, in examples like The American Worker, highlight how collaborations between workers and intellectuals can be used to develop an understanding of society. The Italian Operaismo in the 1960s developed the methodological component of inquiries as a form of ‘co-research.’ The aim was to simultaneously develop a form of knowledge production and new organisations. The debates in their journals discussed the difficulties in this approach, seeking to move from inquiries ‘from above’ to those that involved workers self-organisation – an inquiry ‘from below.’ Romano Alquati argued that in many ways this was not new: ‘political militants have always done conricerca [co-research]. We would go in front of the factory and speak with workers: there cannot be organization otherwise’ (quoted in Roggero, 2010: p3). This paper will argue that inspiration can be taken from previous attempts to develop workers’ inquiries. They represent particular moments when academics sought to engage with the changing conditions in the world alongside groups of workers. Although the location of the factory gates has changed in many ways, the current context of austerity necessitates the engagement of researchers with workers’ struggle, both inside of universities and in different workplaces in society.