Does social change occur “top-down” or “bottom-up” – that is, does it occur by those in power or by those who struggle against the powerful? In his book Knowing the Street, Darren Pollock argues that the most powerful change comes from the bottom up.“Street culture” provides the creative activity that inspires not just political change, but any kind of positive social change. Pollock argues that part of what hinders progressive social change is that those in power do not legitimize or respond to ideas and arguments they understand; Marginalized actors - those with street knowledge - are forced to invent ways to make ideas that are incomprehensible to the general public meaningful and useful.At its best, popular knowledge can be used to address civil injustice, cultural domination, and economic exploitation.
After reading Plato, Marx, Du Bois, Derrida, and others, Pollock discovered that academic philosophy was practically oriented from the beginning. The essential qualities he associated with “practicalism”—that is, the psychological and spiritual capacity to resist an unjust social order—were already present in Plato's Republic.Drawing on the late Congressman John Lewis's idea of "constructive trouble," as well as on the thought of Socrates, Bullock argues that "the street" should be understood as a universal feature of the human condition, capable of appearing anywhere and at any time. Pollock asserts that knowledge gleaned from the street lays the foundation for a radical new approach to practicing philosophy and achieving social justice.
