Paper short abstract:

This proposal is based on a research experience I had while working as an activist for the Movement in Defense of Life and Territory in Mexico. I will address questions faced while living in both worlds, academia and activism, such as the transposition of languages and the production of knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Between 2016 and 2017, I conducted my PhD research on indigenous resistance movements in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. During this period, I also worked as a volunteer in a team that promoted the events of the Movement in Defense of Life and Territory - MODEVITE, a network formed by indigenous tsotsiles, tseltales and ch'oles who live in 11 municipalities in the state. This movement aims to denounce situations of violence and expropriation promoted by the government and companies in the implementation of national and transnational "mega projects" (ecotourism, road construction, dams, mining, etc.). My work as an anthropologist and as a communications activist led me to reflect about the limits of language transposition. The ethnographic writing I learned at the academy requires a management of concepts and theories aiming to describe and understand "other" worlds. Access to this type of writing, however, is limited to anthropologists themselves. On the other hand, my work as an activist required communicating with a broader audience, which was achieved by using different language and temporalities than those used in academia. In both cases, the content I produced revolved around the experiences of the indigenous Chiapanecos. In the specific case of Modevite, their experiences in response to capitalism were systematized by them in their complaints and demands, and designed as forms of knowledge in their speeches. The present proposal questions the ways of producing knowledge in both worlds and reflects the possibilities of approximating those languages.

Paper short abstract:

This paper, based on a year's field work within a squatting collective in Czechia, addresses the friction between activism and anthropology, and questions surrounding the legitimacy and struggles found within both that activism and ethnographies of it.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, based on a year's field work within a squatting collective in Czechia, addresses the friction between activism and anthropology, as well as questions surrounding the legitimacy of both that activism and its ethnography.

As a veteran of several leftist movements in the US and Sweden, my activist past opened doors and helped build rapport within my anthropological research. However, the 'activist' in me struggled with various aspects of the community's functionality - power dynamics, inclusivity, etc. Eventually, I took several oppositional stances on internal issues. This 'internal activism' was met with resistance from several influential members of the community who subsequently used a critique of my anthropology to delegitimize both my activism and my position as an anthropologist. This situation started a chain of events which culminated in the 'activist in me' wanting to leave the movement, while the anthropologist in me still wanted - even needed - to stay and finish the research.

I use this personal experience to reflect on the complexities of combining activism and anthropology - an interaction which often tears 'the researcher' and 'activists' within us in two different directions. This paper further speaks to the debate regarding the legitimacy of activist anthropology as I show that activist anthropologists face a 'dual dilemma': simultaneously torn apart, both internally (by often competing principles and goals), and externally as both 'orthodox' anthropologists (questioning the value and legitimacy of their ethnographic work), and activists (critiquing the merits and validity of their engagement) often delegitimize their involvement.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I reflect on my experiences of working with women activists who defend their territories against extractivist projects in Bolivia. Reflecting on my positionings, identities and emotions, I demonstrate how my own activist experiences helped me building bridges in the research process.

Paper long abstract:

There has been written extensively about combining activism and scholarship in social movement research in which the researcher politically aligns herself to a struggle for social change while working towards more horizontal and collective forms of knowledge production. A lot less is known about how activist and academic spaces and identities interconnect and merge into one another. In this paper I reflect on my research in Bolivia where I studied the activist trajectories of women from the TIPNIS territory and Tariquía nature reserve who defend their territories in the face of extractivist projects. My own activist experiences and the skills and knowledge that I have acquired through my involvement with movements for climate justice in Europe shaped my positionality in the field and helped me building bridges between me and the research participants. I benefitted from my knowledge about activist trauma and burnout and the facilitation of safer spaces in my main methods: acompañar (accompaniment as solidarity) and life history interviews. In my encounters with the women activists I drew upon these experiences and related emotional responses, in conscious and unconscious forms, affecting our relations and the research process in various ways. Likewise, these experiences, emotions and overlapping activist and academic identities shape my positionings within academia 'back home'. I argue that moving beyond the activist-academic binary and acknowledging the 'emotional dimensions' (Askins 2012) of doing research and activism is key in bringing about radical social change, in 'the field' and 'back home', in 'activist spaces' and 'academic spaces'.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on combining scholarly work on land conflicts around oil palm plantations in Indonesia with activism against the use of palm oil as a biofuel in the EU.

Paper long abstract:

Oil palm plantations in Indonesia go hand in hand with growing social inequalities and conflict caused by rural communities' loss of access to corporations. My ethnographic fieldwork in the early 2010s further confirmed this and also analyzed how private standards such as RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) were unable to address these issues. Although my work reported on these injustices I felt frustrated about not being able to do more about it than just that, bearing witness. Although bearing witness may be a very important step in a political process of change, I did not know how to make this knowledge more useful politically. This changed in 2018 when the Dutch branch of Friends of the Earth challenged me to write an 'academic letter' signed by Dutch academics to the Dutch government, reporting on these issues and urging them to promote a stop to the use of palm oil as biofuels in the EU. However, this also entailed a bringing together of divided commitments and different roles and related normativities of being a good activist and being a good scholar. In this paper I will reflect on these different roles, on the conflicting norms that guide these roles, on what it meant for ownership over the letter writing process, and on whether this letter was in the end really academic or actually much more an activist endeavor.

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Paper short abstract:

Encountering university students with sociological and anthropological background with the approach of activism, regarding how to create a sustainable (learning) environment, showed to be an effective way to learn about how to do research and facilitate social change at the same time.

Paper long abstract:

"This is an experiment!" was how we introduced the summer course at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen (UC), called "Researching social change". 31 students, mainly with an anthropological, sociological or social science background, would work with how UC meet the challenges of climate change and others of UNs 17 sustainable development goals (SDG).

The aim of the course was to learn to identify barriers towards social change at a structural, social, cultural and/or psychological level, and suggest solutions. The students explored this through diverse topics related to UN's SDG that could be investigated directly at UC. The students decided to focus on UC's gender politics, (cantina)food, waste, education and human rights.

We asked what role research has in processes, where social change is going on? And what kind of knowledge can be produced, when we engage in social change, while studying it. This kind of 'academic activism' was also practiced during the lectures, turning the learning environment into a lab for finding sustainable solutions for studying at UC.

Due to a conflict about gender and being non-binary, we learned about the importance of emotions as motivation for social change. We also experienced the need for trust, when striving for social change.

Universities have an obligation to contribute to securing a sustainable future, not only by identifying problems, but also by experimenting with finding solutions. Using the challenges encountered among students and lecturers proved to be an effective strategy to learn about barriers for facilitating social change.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we explore how teaching can be an act of activism in the neoliberal univeristy. We argue that 'engaged teaching' not only involves teaching about issues related to social justice, but also implies engaged, horizontal teaching methods.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore how teaching can be an act of activism in the neoliberal university. In so doing, we draw on our experiences with the course 'Resistance, Power and Movements'. This course was developed in response to a wish (and a need!) that was voiced repeatedly by students and university lecturers alike to not only explore how theory and practice of social movements could feed into each other, but to actually bring that into practice in university education and teaching. This course seeks to create a space to explore and reflect on agency and power with a focus on combining theory and practice. In so doing, lecturers and professional trainers bring theory and practice of resistance, protest and movements together in a mix lectures and interactive workshops. On top of this, students are guided to design and realize a small protest/act of resistance.

Based on our experiences of giving and evaluating the course, we argue that 'engaged teaching' not only involves teaching about issues related to social justice, but also implies engaged, horizontal teaching methods.