Von Aktivismus, Geographien und dem Dazwischen – Überlegungen anhand der Praxis von Kollektiv Orangotango

This article deals with the relationship between political activism and critical research. We introduce the methodological approaches of action research and militant investigation as well as discussions on activist or action-oriented geography, which have received little attention in the field of German-language geography so far. We supplement these debates with the pedagogising of the political as practiced in Latin American social movements, which was influenced by Paulo Freire’s educação popular. Like action research and militant investigation, Freire’s popular education calls for the dissolution of the division between education and social transformation and the inclusion of other forms of knowledge in collective “dialogical” educational processes. The practice of Kollektiv Orangotango arises in the intersection of subculture, research, and activism. On the basis of these experiences, we show how an applied critical geography, understood as popular education, blurs the separation between research and activism as well as between researchers, learners, and activists.