Short Abstract

The panel explores the ambivalence of polarization as divisive and paralyzing vs. mobilizing and productive in social movements and its conceptual, ethical and methodological implications for anthropological research.

Long Abstract

Polarisation has become one of the defining features of our political and affective realities. Yet, while it is often portrayed as a symptom of democratic crisis, for many social movements it is also a necessary condition for mobilisation and dissent. This panel invites papers that reflect on the ambivalent functions of political polarisation in social movements, facing current issues such as on-going wars, rising authoritarianism, corruption, border violence, police violence, austerity measures, and capitalist crises. Polarisation is entangled with social movements in complex ways, enabling mobilisation based on common identities (e.g., age, gender) while creating tensions within solidarity networks, dividing and paralysing social movements from within (e.g. see Näser-Lather 2019). On the one hand, polarisation is a useful tool for social movements to demonstrate the need for action. On the other hand, it can be the very reason why movements want to become active, in order to foster cooperation and to overcome 'empathy walls' (Hochschild 2016). Polarisation is evident in the identity politics of social movements as well as in micro-activism in everyday life contexts (Goldstein 2021). How can anthropologists and anthropological methods under increasingly difficult political conditions contribute to social movements in the field and to a multi-perspective and differentiated knowledge production? How is polarisation evident, useful or divisive in social movements and in our role as anthropologists, and/or activists? We invite ethnographic papers that engage with social movements across diverse geopolitical and epistemic contexts, especially those challenging dominant frameworks.

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