{"id":10283,"date":"2026-03-19T11:46:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/?p=10283"},"modified":"2026-03-19T11:46:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:46:59","slug":"professor-darien-pollock-publishes-book-street-knowledge-the-hidden-ways-social-change-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/2026\/03\/19\/professor-darien-pollock-publishes-book-street-knowledge-the-hidden-ways-social-change-happens\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Darien Pollock publishes book: Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Darien Pollock&#8217;s book <em>Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens<\/em> is now available for pre-order through Princeton University Press. <a href=\"https:\/\/press.princeton.edu\/books\/hardcover\/9780691271507\/street-knowledge?srsltid=AfmBOootP59ETPLxYfZkNO4YjCT1Rw5ahWsaNRFnJJp8fQKv4IPnVywU\">More information, and the link to order, can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Title: <em>Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<p><span>Does social change happen \u201ctop down\u201d or \u201cbottom up\u201d\u2014brought about by those who hold power or by those who struggle against the powerful? In\u00a0<\/span><i>Street Knowledge<\/i><span>, Darien Pollock argues that the most powerful change comes from the bottom up. \u201cStreet culture\u201d supplies the creative activity that inspires not only political change but any kind of positive social change. Pollock argues that part of what prevents progressive social change is that people in power only legitimize and respond to ideas and arguments that are legible to them; marginal actors\u2014those with street knowledge\u2014are forced to develop ways of making ideas that are illegible to the broader public meaningful and useful. At its best, street knowledge can be used to address civic injustice, cultural hegemony, and economic exploitation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Reading Plato, Marx, DuBois, Derrida, and others, Pollock discovered that academic philosophy has had a street orientation all along. The core qualities he associated with the \u201cstreet disposition\u201d\u2014the psychological and spiritual capacity to resist an unjust social arrangement\u2014were already represented in Plato\u2019s\u00a0<\/span><i>Republic<\/i><span>. Drawing on the late Congressman John Lewis\u2019s idea of \u201cgood trouble\u201d as well as Socrates, Pollock argues that that \u201cthe street\u201d should be understood as a universal feature of the human condition\u2014with the potential to emerge anywhere at any time. Street knowledge, Pollock contends, lays the foundation for a radically new way of doing philosophy and achieving social justice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(Blurb from Princeton University Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Darien Pollock&#8217;s book Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens is now available for pre-order through Princeton University Press. More information, and the link to order, can be found here. Title: Street Knowledge: The Hidden Ways Social Change Happens Abstract: Does social change happen \u201ctop down\u201d or \u201cbottom up\u201d\u2014brought about by those who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23543,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,10,28,26,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23543"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10284,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10283\/revisions\/10284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/philo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}