Engaged anthropology: diversity and dilemmas

2010

An Introduction to Supplement 2 by Setha M. Low and Sally Engle Merry As a discipline, anthropology has increased its public visibility in recent years with its growing focus on engagement. Although the call for engagement has elicited responses in all subfields and around the world, this special issue focuses on engaged anthropology and the dilemmas it raises in U.S. cultural and practicing anthropology. Within this field, the authors distinguish a number of forms of engagement: (1) sharing and support, (2) teaching and public education, (3) social critique, (4) collaboration, (5) advocacy, and (6) activism. They show that engagement takes place during fieldwork; through applied practice; in institutions such as Cultural Survival, the Institute for Community Research, and the Hispanic Health Council; and as individual activists work in the context of war, terrorism, environmental injustice, human rights, and violence. A close examination of the history of engaged anthropology in the United States also reveals an enduring set of dilemmas, many of which persist in contemporary anthropological practice. These dilemmas were raised by the anthropologists who attended the Wenner-Gren workshop titled "The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working toward a More Engaged Anthropology," January 22-25, 2008. Their papers, many of which are included in this collection, highlight both the expansion and growth of engaged anthropology and the problems its practitioners face. To introduce this collection of articles, we discuss forms of engaged anthropology, its history, and its ongoing dilemmas.

ABSTRACT In 2010, a rapidly growing body of public scholars continued to conduct engaged research that involved various forms of collaboration, advocacy, and activism. Practicing anthropologists are among the most powerful champions of engaged scholarship and are increasingly focused on tracing the concrete dimensions of public engagement. Practicing anthropologists in 2010 made a concerted effort to critically assess precisely what constitutes collaboration, engagement, activism, advocacy, and a host of similarly politicized but ambiguous terms. This self-reflection has probed the philosophical, political, and methodological dimensions of engagement and painted a rich and complex picture of practicing anthropology. In this article, I review those 2010 studies that are focused on critically defining an engaged anthropology and expanding it to rigorously four-field public scholarship with conscious and reflective politics. [practicing anthropology, public anthropology, 2010 trends, engaged]

Tsantsa, 2022

This special issue aims to shed light on and recognize the full potential of engaged anthropology and its place in academia and beyond. It argues for an inclusive approach to be both theoretically enriching and methodologically grounded in diverse practices and forms. The introduction addresses common confusions and obstacles distracting engaged anthropology from its core premises and potentials. As the Interface Commission of the Swiss Anthropological Association (SEG), we seek to deepen the conversation about how engagement bolsters the discipline to stay relevant and robust, and embark on new paths of theoretical reflection. By "repositioning" engaged anthropology at the heart of contemporary anthropology, we seek to overcome unproductive dichotomies on engagements and practices by embracing critical reflexivity in the process of knowledge production and social action.

Anthropology Matters, 2017

This special issue of Anthropology Matters brings together selected papers from the 5th Postgraduate Conference of the Royal Anthropological Institute with the theme 'Anthropology and the Politics of Engagement', which took place at The University of Manchester's Department of Social Anthropology on 4 and 5 June 2015. In this Introduction, we provide a summary of how the notion of engagement has developed within anthropology. In doing so, we problematise the relationship between anthropology, engagement, and politics. In addition, we explore the potential for anthropological knowledge to enrich understandings of both engagement and the politics surrounding the distribution of this knowledge. Finally, we provide an overview of the five articles that appear in this issue.

Tsantsa: Journal of the Swiss Anthropological Association, 2022

This special issue aims to shed light on and recognize the full potential of engaged anthropology and its place in academia and beyond. It argues for an inclusive approach to be both theoretically enriching and methodologically grounded in diverse practices and forms. The introduction addresses common confusions and obstacles distracting engaged anthropology from its core premises and potentials. As the Interface Commission of the Swiss Anthropological Association (SEG), we seek to deepen the conversation about how engagement bolsters the discipline to stay relevant and robust, and embark on new paths of theoretical reflection. By "repositioning" engaged anthropology at the heart of contemporary anthropology, we seek to overcome unproductive dichotomies on engagements and practices by embracing critical reflexivity in the process of knowledge production and social action.

Social Anthropology, 2003

only in terms of the issues surrounding repatriation but of exhibiting the work of Native American artists and producing exhibits involving collaboration with indigenous groups. In addition, the Department of Anthropology has the good fortune to have two Native American faculty (Beverly Singer and Joe Watkins), and a Hispana (Sylvia Rodriguez) who is a native New Mexican and who conducts research in the state. Along with other faculty who are conducting research (archaeological, biological and cultural) with native communities (in California, Canada, Brazil and Paraguay), these three faculty are helping us build good relations with indigenous populations, including those in New Mexico.

New Proposals Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, 2009

called Engaged Anthropology, and out of that came a session at the Society for Applied Anthropology meetings that year called Politically Engaged Anthropology: Projects Under Construction. Anna L. Anderson-Lazo, the editor of this issue, was one of the presenters. It is an inspiring experience to be part of this continuing conversation, and to hear how these scholars-many of whom I have known during their graduate and even undergraduate student days-continue to live their praxis. In that 1995 seminar, we began with one of the dictionary definitions of engaged, which is "to be mired in muck." As many of the authors have said here, resonating with a larger conversation, this work is not easy, not comfortable, and it is never finished. It can be joyful, maddening, heartbreaking, and the only way we feel we can live our lives-finding ways to collectively refuse neoliberal capitalist structuring of our communities, livelihoods, thoughts and relationships. That refusal is a full-time job, it seems, as we see the very forums we use to talk back to white supremacy, to heteronormativity, to neurotypicality and other normativities, and the interests of neoliberal capital, inhabited by those same dominant discourses. Collectivities have been both well-problematized and encouraged by the authors here, and I will comment on what I have learned from these and other ongoing activist/teacher/collaborators. Lena Sawyer writes about finding role models who live the critique and stand up to power relations in the university as well as talking about power

This course addresses emerging interest in public and politically engaged anthropology as well as in anthropological theorizing that explicitly addresses the questions of anthropological relevance and self-constitution in the contemporary moment. It asks how anthropologists articulate the relevance of our work in theoretical and political terms by staging an encounter between three disparate strands of scholarship: anthropology of the contemporary, engaged/public anthropology, and anthropology of everyday violence and ordinary affects. Our aim is threefold: to a) historically and theoretically contextualize these strands of scholarship, b) extend them in new directions and c) offer you platforms for rethinking your own research in light of engagement with course topics. Designed to bring together pre-fieldwork and post-fieldwork graduate students, this seminar functions as a laboratory for expanding existing conversations and exploring further articulations of engaged anthropology of the contemporary. Participants will reflect on how their political commitments, ethnographic and other sensibilities, and theoretical perspectives inform each other, and will invigorate their research design, writing, and analytical frameworks in light of these reflections and engagement with course texts. The course is open to students from across the disciplines.

2005

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. p.1-10

Anthropology is often driven by a desire to improve society by "reducing suffering and improving the human condition" (Sluka and Robben 2007, 5). While this desire is near universal, this humanist impulse has taken on different forms as the discipline developed. The form of social activism in anthropology that we often see today can only be understood in relation to the forms of scholarship (and engagement) that preceded it. Ethnographic engagement has ranged from the desire to improve society through scientific understanding, to the desire to develop knowledge that can be put to use by policy makers, to an understanding of the ethnographer as an actor in their own right who can intervene directly in the field. Each of these ways of understanding the relationship between anthropology and social activism relies on a specific theory of knowledge. As such, as the dominant theory of knowledge in anthropology shifts, so too do the possible roles for the ethnographer as scientist, as witness, or as activist.