ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the knowledge obtained by studying activism. Traditionally, social movement studies objectively analyse the mobilisation process and provide an invariant model of it. However, the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear protesters question the ethical standpoint of researchers who evaluate the movement from the outside, but who do nothing to change the situation. These researchers treat social movement as the object of knowledge, clearly separating it from the researcher as the subject of knowledge production. In contrast, this chapter shows that post-Fukushima activism itself generates knowledge to actualise an alternative, and the researchers are part of it. This knowledge also appears to be different from normative theories that determine how we should live or how politics should be done. It does not suggest one right answer, as each protester carries out their own experiments of how one might live better. The chapter argues that post-Fukushima activism creates ‘affective’ knowledge that evokes emotions in others and encourages them to take action.
