Building Capacity for Alternative Knowledge: The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Authors

  • William K Carroll University of Victoria
  • David Huxtable University of Victoria

Keywords:

think tanks, alternative knowledge production, alternative knowledge mobilization, counter-hegemony, social democracy, Canada

Abstract

This article presents a case study of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) – the main left-oriented think tank of national scope in Canada. We first recount the development of the organization from 1980 to present, emphasizing the challenges it has faced in building capacity for alternative knowledge production and mobilization. We next locate the CCPA within its neighborhood of online communicative relations, which comprises a region of the broader political field in which neoliberalism has been hegemonic since the 1980s. Against this hegemony, the CCPA’s project has been to expose the problems of neoliberalism, on the basis of applied research, and to advance a project of social-democratization by engaging with the general public and cultivating counterpublics in civil society. The emancipatory project motivating the CCPA has set it on a trajectory distinct from that of conventional think tanks, whose practices and networks facilitate elite policy-planning in and around the state.

Author Biographies

William K Carroll, University of Victoria

Sociology Professor Founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Social Justice Studies (2008-2012)

David Huxtable, University of Victoria

doctoral student, Sociology Department

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Published

2014-04-15

How to Cite

Carroll, W. K., & Huxtable, D. (2014). Building Capacity for Alternative Knowledge: The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Canadian Review of Social Policy Revue Canadienne De Politique Sociale, (70). Retrieved from https://crsp.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/crsp/article/view/36915

Issue

No. 70 (2014)

Section

Articles

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