At the Edge of the Sensible: Cultivating Doubt in Radically Engaged Anthropology and Spirituality

Ethos ◽  
2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aja Smith
Keyword(s):  
Engaged Anthropology

Engaging, Standing, and Stepping

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Michael Cepek
Keyword(s):  
Research Subjects ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Oil Politics ◽  
Engaged Anthropology ◽  
Petroleum Extraction

Anthropologists and activists portray the lives and lands of Ecuador’s Indigenous Cofán people as a case study of the damage caused by petroleum extraction. Yet during my fieldwork on the issue, I began to question the nature of the Cofán-oil encounter when the community in which I worked decided to allow oil companies onto their land. In this article, I examine my own involvements with Cofán oil politics in dialogue with Stuart Kirsch’s concept of ‘engaged anthropology’ and Kim TallBear’s call for researchers to ‘stand with’ their research subjects. I argue that anthropological activism is necessarily a complex and shifting affair, especially when our collaborators’ perspectives diverge from our own regarding the best possible paths to their wellbeing. I suggest that the most ethical option is for anthropologists to commit themselves to continuous, co-con-structed partnerships in which they are perpetually prepared to transform their most basic political and intellectual positions.

I said, they said: The ethnographic backstage and the politics of producing engaged anthropology

Ethnography ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146613812110168
Author(s):  
Roseann Liu
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Engaged Anthropology ◽  
Equal Power ◽  
Critical Aspects

Two commonly articulated goals of engaged anthropology include: 1) creating equal power relations with research participants; and 2) producing scholarship that critiques inequality. Though these seem commensurate, this article discusses how working toward both goals can lead to conflict when collaborators vehemently disagree with the critical aspects of your research findings. This article argues that writing about the ethnographic backstage — the background negotiations that rarely make it to the printed page — can help engaged anthropologists foster more egalitarian relations when it comes to ethnographic representation and can sharpen our sociocultural critiques. Because engaged anthropology, by definition, is shaped by negotiations with research participants, examining the ethnographic backstage helps us better understand an important axis in the production of anthropological knowledge.

scholarly journals Beyond multispecies ethnography: Engaging with violence and animal rights in anthropology

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Kopnina
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Multispecies Ethnography ◽  
Ecological Relationships ◽  
Medical Experimentation ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
Engaged Anthropology ◽  
Production Industry

Anthropologists have mediated between discriminated communities and outsiders, helping to influence public opinion through advocacy work. But can anthropological advocacy be applied to the case of violence against nonhumans? Ethical inquiries in anthropology also engage with the manifold ways through which human and nonhuman lives are entangled and emplaced within wider ecological relationships, converging in the so-called multispecies ethnography, but failing to account for exploitation. Reflecting on this omission, this article discusses the applicability of engaged anthropology to the range of issues from the use of nonhumans in medical experimentation and food production industry, to habitat destruction, and in broader contexts involving violence against nonhumans. Concluding that the existing forms of anthropological engagement are inadequate in dealing with the massive scale of nonhuman abuse, this article will suggest directions for a radical anthropology that engages with deep ecology, animal rights, animal welfare, and ecological justice.

An Engaged Anthropology

2008 ◽  
Vol 49 (8) ◽  
pp. 14-14
Author(s):  
Noel Chrisman
Keyword(s):  
Engaged Anthropology

Experiments in Engaged Anthropology

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Kirsch
Keyword(s):  
Engaged Anthropology
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