Paper Short Abstract:

Where and when does participation truly begin and what are the limits of ‘participatory research’ in the funding and academic structures we find ourselves in? What modalities would state-funded, politicizing anthropological research need in order to be genuinely participatory and decolonial?

Paper Abstract:

The ATLAS project conducts prospective research envisioning how Brussels’ multi-scalar government can use housing and social infrastructure to reshape precarious citizenship for its growing undocumented population. Drawing on Lemanski’s “infrastructural citizenship” (2017), the research examines how the state and citizens negotiate their relationship through infrastructure, focusing on the “infrastructuring work” of individuals with precarious residency. This work enables citizenship to be enacted (Isin & Nielsen, 2008), challenging racialized categorizations of legality. ATLAS’ politicizing research aims to transform governmental practices from within and redefine the political subjectivities of those deemed non-citizens. Thereto, we explore the embodied encounters between different kinds of infrastructures, and people with precarious citizenship navigating them, using ethnography, interviews, participatory co-creation labs (with ‘sans-papiers’, civil society, policy makers), and critical mapping. However, here we ask what the modalities of participatory research should become if our goal is to prefigure other forms of belonging and enacting ‘citizenship’. Rather than limiting 'participation’ or ‘collaboration’ to methodology or output, we aim to recursively rethink our own deeply held assumptions (Pedersen 2020) as four white, Western, female anthropologists and urbanists— including the distinctions we continue to make between ‘participant’ and ‘researcher’. This raises questions about our own role and participation in the issues addressed, but also what the limits of ‘participatory research’ are in the funding and academic structures we find ourselves in? Can ‘participation in research’ ever be truly decolonial? In short, what kind of modalities would state-funded, politicizing anthropological research need in order to be genuinely reflexive, decolonial, and transformative?

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper reflects on the ethical challenges anthropologists face when engaging with relational visions during ecological crises. In a meta-reflection, it questions the stakes we might have as we recount our interlocutors’ endeavours and what political and ethical positions might we claim.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores the ethical and analytical challenges anthropologists face when engaging with relational visions during ecological crises. Drawing on 19 months of fieldwork with UK-based biodesigners—innovators developing biologically benign materials to reshape global systems of production, consumption, and waste—I explore how their systemic visions resonate with relational theories celebrated in anthropology. Yet, much like earlier globalization discourses (Tsing 2000), these visions also possess rhetorical charisma that risks obscuring hierarchies, frictions, and exclusions.

Through a meta-reflection, I interrogate my own impulse to align with and even replicate these relational claims in my ethnographic writing, particularly as my interlocutors often propose universalist solutions to crises originating in the global North and deploy top-down approaches in their designs.

Aligning with these visions forces me to confront a tension between my political and ethical commitments and anthropology’s traditional drive to critique power and valorise local diversity. Drawing on the concept of analytic non-neutrality, I argue for the acceptance of an “invested anthropology” that does not shy away from its political and ethical entanglements.

Ultimately, my advocacy is not for an activist anthropology (Graeber 2014), nor for morally grounded anthropology (Scheper-Hughes 1995), but perhaps for a more pragmatically minded and less pure anthropology when dealing with production in the Anthropocene. I argue for an invested anthropology in which taking personally the stakes of involvement might require tempering some of our discipline’s reflexive critique in favour of supporting action—any action—that could contribute to mitigating a global ecological disaster.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper proposes re-socialising "studying up," a mode of ethnography that tends to assume social and ethical distance from research interlocutors in powerful institutions. I reflect on a personal experience of institutional scrutiny over a manuscript written about a humanitarian organisation.

Paper Abstract:

The practice of “studying up,” that is, conducting ethnography among powerful groups and institutions rather than among marginalised communities, has become established in anthropology. Remarking that influential institutions have the power to resist anthropological knowledge production, key works in this tradition have argued for a rethinking of questions of ethics and representation in relations with interlocutors when studying up. Based on an analysis of a process of institutional scrutiny over an ethnographic manuscript that I wrote about a humanitarian organisation (during which I was accused of not following research ethics protocols) I argue for a “re-socialising” of studying up. I contend that remaining open to the possibility of forging shared understandings and alliances with interlocutors who represent powerful institutions may help highlight the inconsistencies, dissonances, and contradictions within while also helping facilitate access and counteract institutional resistance to research. A fuller ethical consideration of what may be at stake for both researcher and interlocutor – be it the urgency of critique or mundane concerns over career and life prospects –may help foster potential alliances or mutual understandings in difficult times.

Paper Short Abstract:

Edinburgh University holds the skulls of 1780 people with incomplete provenance. I explore how activist-oriented ethnographic research shared this difficult and sensitive knowledge with descendants, balancing ethical risks and challenges in in spaces with limited authority.

Paper Abstract:

Edinburgh University's Anatomical Museum's "Skull Room" contains the ancestral remains of nearly 1800 people, who often have missing, fragmented or incomplete provenance. As no online catalogue exists, descendants are often unaware their ancestors are interned here. This paper reflects on the potential of activist-orientated ethnographic research to meaningfully engage with this colonial collection by affiliating these people to contemporary descendant communities. I show how anthropological research brings visibility to these contested spaces by sharing knowledge about these ancestors to First Nations descendants. I reflect on the process of seeking an ethically sensitive approach to share difficult knowledge and collaborate with descendants to fill in the gaps in the colonial archive.

As such, the paper reflects on what anthropologists may learn from initiating ‘activist-orientated' research within higher education institutions, particularly when proactive anti-colonial approaches in the museum have not been established. Researchers were tasked with balancing various political and ethical risks to reckon with these colonial legacies, and challenged the limited decision-making power of the collection. How can academics conduct anti-colonial projects in spaces where they have limited authority? How may anthropologists do collaborative work with communities, when ancestors’ identities are missing? Considering the sensitive nature of this work, what does an ethical, careful and collaborative methodology look like for such a contested collection? The projects challenged anthropologists to examine their accountabilities to this work and to descendants, whilst also asking them to consider what they stand to gain from these research encounters.