Anthropology and Activism: New Contexts, New Conversations

Description

This book offers a comprehensive and current look at the complex relationship between anthropology and activism. Activism has become a vibrant research topic within anthropology. Many scholars now embrace their own roles as engaged social actors, which has compelled reflexive attention to the anthropology/activism intersection and its implications. With contributions by emerging scholars as well as leading activist anthropologists, this volume illuminates the diverse ways in which the anthropology/activism relationship is being navigated. Chapters touch on key areas including environment and extraction, food sustainability and security, migration and human rights, health disparities and healthcare access, class and gender identities and empowerment, and the defense of democracy. Case studies (drawn mainly from North America) encourage readers to think through their own experiences and expectations and will serve as durable documentation of how movements develop and change. This timely survey of the activist anthropological landscape is valuable reading in an era of widely perceived ecological and political crisis, where disinterested data collection increasingly appears to be a luxury that neither the discipline nor the world can afford. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of Figures Foreword: Activism as Service Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction: Doing Good Anthropology PART I: Anthropology OF Activism 1. Environmental Justice in White Working Class Communities: A Chemosocial Perspective 2. GMO-Free Activism in Rural Southern Oregon: Motivations, Ideologies, and Values 3. Social Justice, Trauma-Informed Care, and “Liberation Acupuncture”: Exploring the Activism of the Peoples Organization of Community Acupuncture 4. Engaged Ethnography in a Resident-Activist Environmental Justice Community Comments on Anthropology OF Activism PART II: Anthropology AS Activism 5. All I Can Do: Why Activists (and Anthropologists) Act 6. In Our Own Backyard: Navigating Research and Activism in Southeast Florida 7. “I’d Never Thought about This Before”: Anthropology of Cross-Disability Activism as Activism 8. “You Must Tell Our Stories!”: Moving Toward Applied Anthropology and Beyond in the Groningen Gas Field Comments on Anthropology AS Activism PART III: Anthropology AND Activism 9. We Are Tired of Telling Our Stories: Finding Our “Situated Usefulness” Through Activism in Anthropology 10. Anthropology and Conflict Transformation: Promises and Dilemmas of Worldview Translation 11. Challenges of “Communiversity” Organizing in Trumplandia 12. Academic and Activist Collaboration in Turbulent Times: Responding to Immigrant Policing in Central Florida Comments on Anthropology AND Activism Afterword Index