At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research

Abstract

In this article, I consider anthropology's engagement with human rights today. Through the lens of my experience in a case brought before the International Labor Organization by a community in Chiapas, Mexico, I consider the ethical, practical, and epistemological questions that arise in research defined by rights activism. I argue that the critical engagement brought about by activist research is both necessary and productive. Such research can contribute to transforming the discipline by addressing the politics of knowledge production and working to decolonize our research process. Rather than seeking to avoid or resolve the tensions inherent in anthropological research on human rights, activist research draws them to the fore, making them a productive part of the process. Finally, activist research allows us to merge cultural critique with political action to produce knowledge that is empirically grounded, theoretically valuable, and ethically viable.

Activist Scholarship: The Complicated Entanglements of Activism and Research Work

“…Hale (2001), for instance, describes activist research as a practice that: a) helps one to better understand the causes of inequality, oppression, violence, et cetera; b) is carried out, at each phase, in direct cooperation with an organized collective of people who themselves are subject to these conditions; and c) is used to-gether with the people in question to transform these conditions. Speed (2006) defines activist research as the "overt commitment to an engagement with our research subjects that is directed toward a shared political goal" (p. 71), a position that she distinguishes from critically engaged research, understood as critical analysis without necessarily engaging politically alongside subjects. In a special double issue of Studies in Social Justice addressing the challenges of scholar-activism, Smeltzer and Cantillon (2015) write that some contributing authors contend that, "academia and activism don't mix" (p. 11).…”

Constructing Mutuality: The Zapatistas' Transformation of Transnational Activist Power Dynamics

“…In this context, such scholars contend, Southern resource dependence (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978), in combination with political and cultural status inequalities, enables Northern activists to impose their agendas, language, and organizational forms on the Southern NGOs and grassroots social movements they support (Alvarez 1999;Thayer 2001;Leyva Solano 2001;Wood 2004;Speed 2006). Building on Piven and Cloward's (1977) point that middle-class "organizers" discourage disruptive activity, which is poor peoples' crucial strategy, these scholars contend that Northern supporters can demand efficiency, accountability to donors, and quantitative results, pushing Southern movements to become hierarchical, bureaucratic, and detached from their own constituencies (Cooke and Kothari 2001;Pearce 1997;Hulme and Edwards 1997).…”

Human Rights

“…At the same time, particularly over the past three decades when the end of the Cold War has given the human rights agenda a new lease of life, anthropologists' personal commitments to that agenda have varied greatly. Some anthropologists have given less emphasis than others to the provisional nature of human rights, fully embracing the cause by serving as expert witnesses or advocates on behalf of the people they have studied (Sanford 2003;Speed 2006;Tate 2007). Other anthropologists, while not necessarily any less committed to social justice, have maintained a measure of scepticism about the extent to which human rights provide the most cogent framework for analysis as well as activism (Englund 2013;Jean-Klein & Riles 2005).…”