Paper short abstract:

Five researchers came together to interrogate struggles around the cultivation of land in Brussels. Our varied backgrounds challenge us to reflect on our approach, to acknowledge our alliances & to find ways to conduct our work with a wider audience, beyond the usual academic context.

Paper long abstract:

For the first time in 15 years, a regional fund on urban matters was open to a group application. Through the on-going experience of group research, as the anthropologist on this team I would like to explore this role through the particular relationship to fieldwork to ask: how does anthropology relate? In what ways is an anthropologists equipped to engage in this quest while, tracing these different possible relations with in the research team and to the field. Since the inception of our research, our collective and diverse disciplinary practices galvanised around the desire to work in close resonance with actors that secure spaces for agriculture in the city. This interest was soon translated into a real preoccupation for how the modalities of a research team could express a form of engagement. Solicited to commit to a garden plot, write letters of support and assist at mobilisations we also turned to actors on the field to attempt to harness a collective written form and force that could resonate with those involved in the struggles. In the effort to multiply modes of action, we wonder: how to breach disciplinary differences and dissolve the segmentation between those conducting research and those engaging in the struggles? How best to relate their struggles and our research? What concerns do we share?

Livia Cahn with Benedikte Zitouni (U-SL), Chloe Deligne, Noémie Pons-Rotbardt, Nicolas Prignot & Alexis Zimmer (ULB).