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Emma Crewe
(SOAS, London)
Gerhard Anders
(University of Edinburgh)
Ruba Salih
(University of Bologna)
Richard Axelby
(SOAS University of London)
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Stream:
Advocacy and Activism
Sessions:
Thursday 17 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Anthropologists and geographers engaging in public policy and practice.
Panel AA11 at conference RAI2020: Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future.
The key questions for this panel are why, how, and when coalitions of anthropologists and geographers can have value, influence and impact in policy-making and practice, whether through employment, teaching, research, partnership, advice, support, protest, subversion or critical engagement.
Long Abstract:
Sociology should have a sense of history and great historians are sociological (Bourdieu), while Ingold describes anthropology as philosophy with the people still in. But don't anthropology and geography need each other just as much? If anthropology is the study of social worlds where the everyday realities of its inhabitants are the starting point, then their navigation of space has to be part of our engaged inquiry. This panel is for both academics and policy/practitioners (and those who consider themselves both), from anthropology or geography, interested in cross-disciplinary collaboration, and from / in the UK and/or overseas.
As committee members of the RAI's new Committee on Policy and Practice, we welcome papers on any policy topic of global concern but are currently prioritising: (a) ethics and integrity - in what ways do these disciplines offer a nuanced approach to moral questions that is sensitive to context and inequalities? (b) climate crisis - what cultural, historical and geographical knowledge about people's relationship with the environment might help us understand and take action? (c) the state - how might geographers and anthropologists in coalition transform the study and reform of political institutions and processes? (d) mobilities - in what ways might taking seriously the narratives, memories, and imaginaries of refugees lead to different government policies and practices? How might anthropologists and geographers help each other to gain greater influence over policy and practice?
I explore the links between the institution of the Westminster Parliament and the building in which it is located. Drawing on my ethnographic study including walking interviews, I answer the research questions: How do various actors use buildings to drive or resist institutional change?
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation I will explore the links between the institution of the Westminster Parliament and the building in which it is located - the Palace of Westminster. Drawing on my ethnographic study including walking interviews, I answer the research questions: How do various actors use buildings to drive or resist institutional change? To what extent are the workings of the UK Parliament as an institution intertwined with the buildings and their current design? I draw on the key contributions to cultural geography such as Lefebvre (1974), Soja (1989), Massey (2005) and management scholars (Lawrence & Dover, 2015; Jones & Massa, 2013; Siebert et al., 2017) that recognized the role of spaces and places in the maintenance of institutions and acknowledged that organizational spaces have social and symbolic consequences. My analysis reveals a number of aspects of a mutually constitutive relationship between the institution and the building hosting the organization. First, the building provides a setting for quirky practices taking place within it, such as the pomp and circumstance of Parliamentary rituals requiring ceremonial clothes. Second, the symbolic demarcation of spaces regulates the behaviour of stakeholders in the building. Third, and most important, the attachment to the space is motivated by what I refer to as 'the Churchill effect,' i.e. the link that contemporary actors maintain with "the ghost of the place".
This paper helps us reimagine brokers among subaltern groups at the local level as 'networked stakeholders'. In so doing, it examines the new ways in which the State capitalizes on both a) the erstwhile clientele predilections and b) the emergent economic precarity of subaltern groups.
Paper long abstract:
The local State in urban spaces has emerged as a site for engendering new circuits of cultural assertion and political mobilization. Inspired from Latin American contexts (Balderacchi 2016 and Goldfrank 2017), the 'participatory turn' in urban governance, has re-invented South Asian governmentalities (Legg 2018) in such a way that hitherto marginalised stakeholders have succeeded to 're-politicise' everyday contestations 'through technical rules' (Chiodelli 2012). It is herein, that I explore in this paper, as to how the setting up of a Resident Welfare Association (RWA) in a marginalized (dalit) neighbourhood in Delhi, unsettles the hegemony of traditional community leaders viz., pradhans and creates new spaces of political engagement among the 'old' and 'new' community leaders. By tracing two events viz., protest against a land acquisition drive and sanitation workers' strike, in East Delhi, this paper shows as to how reforms in participatory local urban governance facilitated a new regime of brokerage. Such a regime not only cuts across territorial lines but also capitalizes on both a) the clientele predilections of subaltern identity and b) the emergent economic precarity of sanitation workers. It thus compels us to reimagine such brokers among subaltern groups at the local level as 'networked stakeholders' (Krishna 2011; Jeffrey and Young 2014) and not as passive clients. Thus, in conclusion, I argue that RWAs among urban subaltern groups have put forth a more nuanced and 'strategic' politics of State-craft as 'brokerage' (Bjorkman 2014) that does not merely operate as a knee-jerk, instrumentalist move to consolidate vote banks.
Policy making UK local government is carried out in part by locally elected representatives taking part in formal meetings. This paper seeks to explore how an ethnographic study of one English municipality, carried out by a reflective practitioner, might increase understanding of this process.
Paper long abstract:
With over twenty years service as a local councillor herself and experience of a variety of leadership positions and engagement with fellow elite practitioners at local, regional, national and international level, the author of this paper seeks to explore in detail what takes place when local councillors speak in formal meetings and exercise their roles as democratically elected representatives. Part of a wider PhD research project which is considering in detail the work of councillors in a northern English authority, this paper considers the value of an ethnographic methodology to a piece of work rooted in practice and performance. The wider PhD project is looking in detail at full council meetings in the municipal year 2019/2020 with verbatim transcripts created from observation of webcasts. In addition data is being gathered from observation in person and interviews with participants and other elite practitioners in this field which will be subjected to further analysis. The paper considers the value of such observation and analysis and the impact of webcasting and archiving of meetings. In addition there is consideration of the impact and value of reflective practice and the privileged access this allows to individuals and settings where policy is debated.
Decades of case-by-case industrial development approvals have extensively damaged culturally-significant Aboriginal sites in the Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia. Reforms that assess the cumulative impact effects of new developments around these sites would better prevent permanent heritage loss.
Paper long abstract:
We urgently need to examine the history and processes of industrial development on or near culturally-significant Aboriginal sites across (Western) Australia. A multidisciplinary response can more powerfully examine how State planning processes approve these developments and advocate reforms for assessing the cumulative development effects to prevent the permanent loss of significant cultural heritage sites. We explore the Burrup Peninsula (North WA). ‘The Burrup’ is one of the most globally significant areas for rock art with more than 2 million rock engravings and a stylistic sequence that extends back more than 30,000 years. The art reflects radical changes to the environment during and after the last Ice Age and it includes depictions of extinct animals. A historical timeline and archival analysis of past, pending, and wider development shows how six decades of piecemeal approvals are ultimately destroying the environment and the culturally-significant rock art and sites. Nearly 30 percent of the Burrup is now industrialised and the chemical plants are emitting levels of pollution comparable to all of New Zealand. This potentially compromises the Burrup becoming UNESCO World Heritage Site: ‘sites of outstanding importance… to the common heritage of humankind’. We expose the shocking failures of case-by-case planning approvals and the ensuing ‘Truffula Tree Syndrome’ (after The Lorax by Dr Seuss) whereby piecemeal destruction is passed off as ‘appropriate’ right up to the moment when everything is gone. We conclude with implications and recommendations for reconciling findings within current planning reforms and wider policy processes governing the Burrup and Australia.
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