Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing on a Participatory Action Research project in Northeast Brazil, where the anthropologist played the role of a local broker and translator between two generations of residents, this paper exposes and explores the disciplinary boundaries between applied, engaged, and public anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

After the 2000s, collective action slowed down and professionalized in Brazil. Senior community members, at the margins of Fortaleza, in Northeast Brazil, believed that one reason for this decline lies in the lack of engagement of local youth. To understand how local youth relate to the neighborhood, I formed a local research team and following Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a research approach, conducted focus groups with young people from the neighborhood. The results revealed that younger community members were unaware of the history (of activism) in their neighborhood and the few that did, were engaged in local collective action. Senior community activists turned the research findings into a cordel (a popular literary genre in the form of a poem published in a booklet, traditional to Northeast Brazil), currently used in classrooms and local organizations to teach young people about the history of their neighborhood and inspire them to engage locally. In this process, the anthropologist played the role of broker and cultural translator between two generations of residents.

The project raises a couple of epistemological questions, at the core of which stand ethical concerns. What are the disciplinary boundaries between applied, engaged, and public research and why do they matter? What are the different moralities at play that the anthropologist must abide by when conducting public/engaged/applied research and how are they different for non- public/engaged/applied research? What are the moral implications of being “invisible” in public/engaged/applied research leading to knowledge and content with local implications?