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- Convenors:
-
Jasmin Immonen
(University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Henrike Neuhaus (NRI, University of Greenwich)
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- Stream:
- Advocacy and Activism
- Sessions:
- Monday 14 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel invites papers and visual material dealing with engaged/activist anthropology, its successes and ambiguities, asking is the passive form of creating a body of literature to support activism sufficient anymore as a way of extending anthropology's impact on other disciplines.
Long Abstract:
In a world described as increasingly polarised in terms of the distribution of wealth and public opinion, yet more connected than ever, there is a growing need to generate discussion on activism as another way of 'telling the world' and forming interdisciplinary collaborations. While neoliberal restructurings characterizing the latter half of the past century have been associated with ensuing multiple crises, alternative forms of social or collective action, grass-roots initiatives and the role of human rights as an ethical set of guidelines have produced tangible results, opening up new spaces for exercising rights. Activism can be goal oriented such as applying alternative pedagogy in peripheral schools (Grinberg & Dafunchio 2016), or forming an autonomous territory in order to protect communities against environmental degradation. But we argue that it is also useful to consider under the term 'activism' those passive yet creative forms that take place, such as exploring and occupying the street as a space of survival and reinventing means of livelihood. It is in the new forms of doing things, open ended questions, new language and concepts where the power of activism lays. What kinds of new actors have emerged in the realm of activism? How has activism reshaped meanings? What kinds of activisms have emerged with digital media? How can universities take an active role in engaging and doing activism without losing their anthropological/academic rigour? We invite both written and visual work that deal with such tensions.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 14 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I discuss a research project initiated by a group of Koya youths,an indigenous community in India. I suggest that this project is reflective of an activism that creates a space for epistemic decolonization, empowerment, and assertion for adivasi communities in India.
Paper long abstract:
In India, the indigenous communities, or adivasis, are constantly threatened by the loss of lands, legal rights, and the erosion of their cultural heritage. As a response to this endemic marginalization, adivasi activism in India have largely been characterised by mass protests helmed by nongovernmental organizations. In this paper, I move away from these forms of activism and explore an activism that has emerged from a grassroots initiative by the Koyas,an indigenous community in Telangana, India. In the Koya village of Kamaram, the youths embarked on a research project on Koya history, culture, and indigenous knowledge. Through employing anthropological techniques in their data collection , the efforts of these youths have culminated in the production of a 300 page book on Koya indigenous knowledge and a three day exhibition held in the village. Here, I suggest that it is not merely an effort to preserve Koya heritage, rather, this project aims to remind, reconstruct, and reimagine what it means to be indigenous in India. Hence, in so doing, it is an activism that creates the space for epistemic decolonisation, empowerment, and assertion for adivasi communities in India.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explore the tensions that emerge in the Roma politics in Finland. The tensions appear in three overlapping ontological social spaces: in governmental practices, in Roma religious activism and in traditional power system.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explore the tensions that emerge in the Roma politics in Finland. The tensions appear in three overlapping ontological social spaces: in governmental practices, in Roma religious activism and in traditional power system.
The European Roma politics regard Roma as the most vulnerable, marginalized and to some extent, most unengaging ethnic group. Based on two years involvement and fieldwork in Roma integration project, this paper reveals the counter-story by elaborating how Roma activists mingle in different social spaces to promote Roma issues. While intermingling and negotiating, Roma activists, at the same time, run into contradictions and tensions. Thus, the story is no longer about passive Roma but instead, how minority activism is responded to.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is a reflection on ethnographic exhibitions as a way to communicate research with the public and to question and think about anthropological methodology.It depends on the analysis of an exhibition project on shared sacred spaces in the island of Cyprus.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is a reflection on ethnographic exhibitions as a way to communicate research with the public and to question and think about anthropological methodology. It depends on the analysis of an exhibition project on shared sacred spaces in the island of Cyprus. The exhibition focuses on the memories of past coexistence and conflict at shared sacred sites before and after the division of Cyprus in 1974. It features a variety of narratives, personal accounts, and visual material related to the sacred spaces, where Orthodox Christians and Muslims visit and assert claims. The exhibition is designed to stimulate a bi-communal dialogue on shared spaces and 'alternative' readings of the past. The project has become a venue for political activism by representing unheard, excluded voices in support of peace and reconciliation, and by fostering dialogue between the two ethnic communities. It is complemented by an interactive website, which was launched to promote the project and to provide a platform for exchanging ideas, memories, and photographs (https://www.rememberingforward.org). Through the collaboration with two artist-curators, the exhibition also created an opportunity to reconceive methodology to bridge the conceptual gaps between disciplinary approaches and between art and science. This paper asks the potentials of exhibitions to help communities explore different configurations of power dynamics, conflict, and relationships. It elaborates on the issues of the authority of anthropologist to represent the experiences and memories of people, and the potential benefits of interdisciplinary collaborations to communicate our research and prompt people to see the past and present in another light.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation discusses a long term research project that builds close relationships with schools and the urban context in neighbourhoods marked by extreme poverty where “in the end it is always the same story” told differently.
Paper long abstract:
This ethnographic work embeds genealogical routes exploring urban life and its actual as well as historic configurations. The focus lies on the urban life in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (RMBA) by investigating the details of an area where neighbourhoods have grown by an exponential factor – especially during the last decades of the 20th century – often receiving names as villas, chabolas, favelas or slums. In our project we understand the urbanisation processes in those territories as part of a fight for land. At the heart of these processes and contestations are processes of colonization that assemble the power relations that fork through the present urban landscape. The long-term research provides rich data that has been compiled over more than ten years of building and maintaining close relationships at the school-neighbourhood junction. We propose an analysis of the ways by which the territory is understood and lived based on the stories of the inhabitants. “In the end it is always the same story” was uttered by a secondary school student when reflecting the continuities of the colonial past and the urban present at the junctions where life dissolves between the precarization of existential living conditions and the fight for a place to live.
Paper short abstract:
Is activism as we, middle-class academics and activists, conceptualise it, affordable for everyone? If not, does that mean people who cannot afford it can never be activists? What is our role in (re)defining activism and how do we do that?
Paper long abstract:
This paper, based on visual ethnographic research in Novi Sad, Serbia, approaches the question of affordability of activism as it is understood/ conceptualised by middle-class academics and activists. It does so through study of social engagement on what could be considered two different margins of research on activism.
On the first margin lies the quiet 'everyday activism' of individuals which happens outside of the framework of NGOs, foundations, protest movements, etc. Activism of people who contribute to their communities but for various reasons (of choice or imposed) do not belong to any organisations or movements. Such engagement can be conceptualised as 'acts of citizenship' (Isin 2008), which may or may not transform into 'actions'.
On the second margin lies the 'invisible activism' of ethnic minorities and migrants who engage for causes beyond those important for their own community. Such engagement is invisible because it happens outside any minority/migrant community structures (point of access/reference for researchers and media) and because at times it takes forms which comparing to the activism of those who can afford more grand forms of acting (/resisting) it seems insignificant.
The presentation will include parts of my ethnographic documentary 'Active (citizen)' about invisible activism of a Roma refugee from Kosovo collecting trash on the streets of Novi Sad, Serbia, as well as other research footage. Through the work with video material, I ask: what is our role in re-defining activism and how do we do that?
Paper short abstract:
Collective knowledge production within political action is one of the fundamental aims of activist research. In practice, many challenges can be faced due to the different social positions. Activist research can still be seen as fundamental to build up collective efforts to remake everyday life.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation draws from my ongoing doctoral research on occupations and evictions in social housing estates in Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Early on it was decided that the research project needed to have an engagement with the struggle of the residents for the right to housing, and I thus opted for a method that focuses on engagement, not detachment: a method of activist research (Hale 2006). The position that aligns the research process with the struggle for social justice has been decribed as one of an intellectual activist, a rearguard intellectual (Santos 2016), or as a researcher in solidarity (Motta 2011). This also involves acknowledging that knowledge is produced collectively and within the political action, the researcher being a node within a network of emancipatory praxis (Motta, 2011).
In practice, however, these ideals can face many challenges as the research process unfolds. In this doctoral research, alignment with political activism proved easy with the collective I worked with, Habita, that fights for the Right to Housing and to the City. Yet, with the families occupying, the power relations became much more accentuated. Here, my role became more characterized by what Sletto & Nygren (2015) call "knowledge encounters". In practice, advocacy, activism and social critique were mixed in the process in which the dominant narratives on the families occupying were deconstructed challenged. It this presentation, I will reflect upon these processes, arguing that the challenges notwithstanding, direct participation is still fundamental to build up collective efforts to remake the everyday life.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation reflects on A People's Atlas of Detroit. Developed from a community-based participatory project, the book (forthcoming 2020) speaks to the challenges of fighting for land and housing justice, food sovereignty, economic democracy, accountable governance, and the right to the city.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation reflects on the recently published A People's Atlas of Detroit (Wayne State University Press, 2020). Edited by Linda Campbell, Andrew Newman, Sara Safransky, and Tim Stallmann, A People's Atlas of Detroit features contributions by over fifty figures from movement-building efforts in Detroit, including activists, farmers, students, educators, scholars, not-for-profit and city government workers, and members of neighborhood block clubs. Developed from a community-based participatory project, the book speaks to the challenges of fighting for land and housing justice, food sovereignty, economic democracy, accountable governance, and the right to the city in a Black metropolis. By drawing upon the collective analyses of Detroiters engaged in the front lines of struggle, A People's Atlas of Detroit argues that it is only by confronting racial injustice and capitalism head-on that communities can overcome the depths of economic and ecological crises afflicting cities today. The presentation focuses on the methodological process behind the Atlas and explores the following questions: How can research build an infrastructure for organizing and vice-versa? How do the institutional frameworks that shape the production of knowledge (i.e. strictures of publishing and norms of academic labor) shape the way researchers collaborate with activists? Once published, how can research continue to expand solidarity and organizing? In discussing these questions and others, the presentation aims to instigate discussion on the relationship between organizing, collective study, and research and consider how we might join together in new ways in the current political conjuncture.