ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the epistemological and ethical implications of undertaking research in the field of social movement studies. Developing strands of investigation begin in Chapters 1 and 2, it examines the relationship between research and activism. How and where is knowledge produced? By whom and who does knowledge belong to? These are questions that have concerned social movement studies since its inception and this chapter adds to those discussions by connecting them with current decolonisation projects. A second and profoundly related dimension of the chapter’s examination of knowledge production is to consider what actually counts as valid knowledge. Privileging rational and reasoned intellect comes at the expense of tacit, intuitive and bodily knowledges. For those who cycle, the experiential dimension is crucial and so the chapter emphasises the need to embrace an expanded definition of ways of knowing, in an ecology of knowledges, rather than to privilege certain types of comprehension to the denigration of others.
