Participants (alphabetical):

• Charis Boke, PhD Candidate, Anthropology, Cornell University
• Samuel Byrd, PhD, Anthropology, City University of New York-Graduate Center
• Robert Hollander, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• Melissa Rosario, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology, Bowdoin College
• Ashley Elizabeth Smith, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and American Indian Studies, Cornell University
• Gabriela Torres, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wheaton College

Overview

Anthropologists have developed tools for understanding the social practices, processes, and structures that (re)produce social inequality and difference. These methodological and analytical tools might help us to address the social inequalities we witness and to participate in the building of healthier communities. As anthropologists who work at home, the boundaries between witnessing and activism are blurred. Our panel is organized around two key questions: What are the limits of describing and analyzing these structures, or, what do we do when analysis isn’t enough? In what ways does working in communities to which we belong help us to develop rigorous and meaningful research projects that bind our intellectual engagements to our community commitments (see Hale 2001)? Together we draw on activist anthropology, linguistic anthropology, feminist and queer theory, and Native American and Indigenous studies to examine these questions in the context of doing anthropology “at home.”

Boke’s reflections are rooted in her work with community organizers and healers in Vermont. Her work demonstrates how the discourses and practices of social and environmental activism continue to be framed by, and perpetuate, structures of social inequality, even as activists see themselves as fighting against that inequality. She speaks to the limits of advocacy and grapples with the possibility of fomenting critical engagement in activist communities.

Byrd’s work with Latino immigrant communities in his home-space of the US south demonstrates the importance of alternative political actors, such as musicians, to create solidarity, political awareness, and a sense of belonging among Latino activists. He considers how conducting a critical anthropology of movements for social justice can help us to reimagine the role of anthropologists in activism.

Hollander’s dual experiences as anthropologist and activist in his neighborhoods in NYC lead him to examine the possibilities for mobilizing anthropology’s work in understanding difference and oppression. He uses this to consider the ability of the ethnographic observer/activist to act as translator between elite developers and local community members in order to facilitate locals’ ability to speak back to power in political situations grounded in social inequality.

Rosario’s contributions are drawn from her work with antiprivatization activists in Puerto Rico. She explores the possibilities of using anthropological tools to build a local education project aimed at healing the wounds of colonialism and the feelings of displacement experienced in diaspora and examines some of the tensions associated with projects that challenge the limits of traditional forms of academic scholarship and knowledge production.

Smith’s considerations stem from her work with and in Wabanaki communities in Maine. She interrogates the situated politics of settler colonial knowledge production and its erasure of indigenous continuity and explores the possibility of using anthropological inquiry to support indigenous survivance practices.

Torres draws from two “home” sites: from working in Latino communities in Toronto and at home in Guatemala. Torres’ contribution touches on the potential pitfalls of politically engaged anthropology but primarily focuses on the ways that engaged anthropology at home produces research that matters to communities and research that matters deeply to the ethnographer herself.