Student: Liviu Popa

Course: “Political Anthropology”

Taught by: Prof. Dr.Filip De Boeck &
Prof. Dr. Steven Van Wolputte

The ethics and politics of a publicly engaged anthropology

Abstract:
“Beyond the scientific desiderate of moral or cultural relativism, anthropology has the chance to redefine itself
ethically and politically in order to contribute to the role of academia in the broader society and to reduce
inequalities, power imbalances or single narratives by actively engaging with its participants and public. For
the current essay my aim is to portray the hegemonic models within anthropological practice, while analyzing
the possible projects proposed by publicly engaged scholars who meant to counter it.”

Introduction
When I first thought of which subject would best fit the current paper, I had in mind the development
of an interpretative model for the current social movements in Romania in order to understand topics of
resistance and the nature of state. Time has inevitably passed, and with it, due to the different readings
and discussions I came across, a number of questions regarding the message or scope of anthropology
have started to rise. Who would benefit of interpretative models provided by anthropologists? To what
end is knowledge production in anthropology developed? And moreover, what is the public of
anthropological activity and how does it shape both the practice and writings of anthropologists? While it
is hard and not entirely the purpose to provide extensive answers to these questions in the current essay,
discussions brought by the authors presented here will inevitable ease off the anxieties that come with
these questions. This is where the main message of the current paper comes into play: I argue that the
anxieties related to anthropological writing have a political component and that they require a deliberate
ethical and political positioning on behalf of the anthropologist. For example, while trying to understand
what resistance or violence is, it would be fitting to reflect on what/who enables this discourse and who
would benefit from it, having the responsibility to assume a position in regards to the topic. This is not to
say that anthropologists serve secret political agendas in their activity1. It relates to a commitment which
is necessary in the relation an anthropologist has with her/his participants, publics and other
anthropologists. More than this, I argue that in anthropology hegemonic models or traditions regarding
ways of being in the field or “appropriate” ways to engage with certain topics should not be left
unquestioned. Further on, I will engage with the topic of (political) empowerment around academic
debates concerning the project of a public anthropology, but also with political theory literature
concerned with the understanding of concepts like “hegemony” or “margins” to which anthropologists
themselves contributed.
While conducting fieldwork in a northern village from India, Gupta (1995) was confronted with the
recurrent discourse about state corruption in the lives of the people who lived there. What the article
shows us is how the imagining process of a state takes place at a local level and is dependent on a nexus
of bureaucracy practices and public discourse on corruption. Noteworthy for the current essay is the last
problem brought into discussion by Gupta in the last part of his paper. He says: “ All I wish to emphasize
is that one's theory of ‘the state’ does greatly matter in formulating strategies for political action. (...) so
my analysis of ‘the state’ leads to the conclusion that we can attempt to exploit the contradictory
processes that go into constituting it” and continues further “for example, I have shown how the discourse
of corruption helps construct ‘the state’; yet at the same time it can potentially empower citizens by
marking those activities that infringe on their rights” (Gupta 1995: 394). What this means is that
discourse both from an inside and outside perspective in relation to the state contributes to development
of what ‘states’ are. Furthermore, awareness regarding the image hence constructed would eventually
contribute to the empowerment towards action of those affected by this construct. Isn’t it the same when
it comes to the image of academia as well as for anthropology done by everyone everywhere? Rightly so,
and nowadays projects of an engaged anthropology strive for this aim: to promote an accountable, moral
image of anthropology, both in practice and in public discourse. Following the case made by Robert
Borofsky (2000) at the beginning of the current milennia, anthropology has been trying to redefine its
relation with the public, society in general and other anthropologies by remaining critical of the modern
academic hegemony in the discipline. In so doing, the critique would promote the emergence of a more
sensitive discipline capable of being both engaged and valuable in its knowledge production process.
Borofsky wrote “public anthropology seeks to address broad critical concerns in ways that others
beyond the discipline are able to understand what anthropologists can offer to the reframing and easing--

1
Although history provides us with examples of such cases
if not necessarily always resolving of present day dilemmas”, hoping to promote the image of a moral
anthropology both in discourse and in practice.
In what follows, I will engage with the concept of hegemony and try to portray the reasons for why
paradigmatic shifts in anthropology are politically motivated. Then, the focus will be moved on the
politics of voicing the marginalized and the achievements of a publicly engaged anthropology.

Hegemony and paradigmatic shifts

In order to understand the politics behind those theories and models which dominate academic practice
(from the whole spectrum of “hard sciences” to social sciences, philosophy and the humanities), it might
be useful to engage with the concept of hegemony as was proposed by Antonio Gramsci. Here, I will stay
close to the understanding with which D. Kurtz (1996) operates, not only because of the links with
anthropological writing that he presents. But because of the political interpretation of the term to which
Kurtz remains close to, despite the tendencies to associate hegemony with a culture or tradition of
domination by anthropologists. Gramsci, Kurtz argues, “had only one meaning for hegemony. It is
embedded in the complementary relationship between the noun ’leadership’ and the infinitive ’to lead’
(Kurtz 1996). Further in the text, Kurtz constantly reiterates the idea, supported by the exegetes that
hegemony refers to intellectual and moral leadership, considerably different than domination which “uses
coercion and force against those who resist its authority and power” (Kurtz 1996). Moreover, hegemonic
forces envisage processes, rather than states of things. In addition, when discussing Gramsci’s statement
referring to the fact that all men are intellectuals, but not all of them have this function in society, the
distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals arises. “To overly simplify a complex relationship,
traditional intellectuals are agents who tend to represent and direct the interests of those in power.
Organic intellectuals are agents who tend to represent and direct the interest of subaltern populations
who are being exploited and to provide them with a counter hegemony to resist their exploitation.”(Kurtz
1996:106). From here, the different hegemonic formations2 are to be found in a political game of gaining
support whether to keep the establishment intact or to revolutionize it.
When it comes to academia, I interpret the term hegemony as being synonymous to that of paradigm
in a kuhnian sense. So what are paradigms? Thomas Kuhn simply defined it as “what mainly prepares the
student for membership in the particular scientific community with which he will later practice” (Kuhn
1970). This is to say that images about good research, methodologies, ethics, attitudes towards the field

2
Understood, then again, as moral and intellectual leadership;
and all other aspects contained in the teaching of ethnography constitute a paradigm in anthropology3.
One problematic aspect of such a paradigm, that I will particularly focus on, is the cultural relativism that
one has to assume while doing fieldwork. Anyhow, in an overly simplified manner, when different crises
arise in the “puzzle solving” process4, competing attitudes arise in order to provide models of effective
moral and intellectual leadership. If the winners of this political game are proponents of the counter-
hegemony, we acknowledge a paradigm shift or scientific revolution which brings a new hegemony (or
paradigm) into place and thus, new ways of doing anthropology.

Three voices for opening up anthropological practice

The discourse about an engaged or public anthropology has to be situated in the context of the crises
and the history of the discipline at large. For this purpose, I picked three articles meant to provide a better
grasp of the epistemic and political critique of the paradigm which preceded them. Thus, the first article
to be discussed here refers to the moral inadequacy of the anthropologist as a detached spectator
(Scheper-Hughes 1995), continued by an analysis of the relation between “knowing-being-doing” and the
proposal for an epistemic politics (Osterweil 2013) and lastly a critique on the dominant locations and
power structures within anthropology (Restrepo& Escobar: 2005). What all these writings have in
common is the fact that they hope to achieve going beyond the closure of anthropological practice found
in (Western) academia. By opening up, anthropologists would eventually be able to develop a new kind
of objectivity which “develops gradually in the arguments and counterarguments of people” and is able
“to operate at both conceptual and practical levels at the same time to address the serious problems that
collectively face people around the world” (Borofsky 2000: 10).
The first voice deals with the apparent tension between a rational, observant or “objective”
anthropology and a morally engaged one, which will later be refuted for being a false dichotomy. The
shift from considering herself an objective anthropologist to an engaged anthropologist was experienced
by Scheper-Hughes while conducting fieldwork in Northeast Brazil5 , generated by the indignation of
local women with her role there. Whereas the objective anthropologist’s traditional role is to document,
observe and write, the participants which enable such an activity might perceive this (epistemic)

3
It would perhaps be interesting to realize an ethnographic study of the way the ethnographic process is being taught, so
that the anthropological paradigm would become clearer;
4
Referring to inferences made in the data analysis process and the other means of reasoning in order to provide an
understanding/explanation of the studied social realitty;
5
From the objective model of the anthropologist to the politically engaged one;
limitation as passive and indifferent, according to Scheper-Hughes (1995 : 410). Why should one let go
of the classical paradigm of the anthropologist in the field? She argues that the ethnographic cases
portrayed in her paper reflect two problematic aspects of doing uninvolved fieldwork: the arrogant
distance towards political engagement in “local”6 issues and the “justifying ethic of moral and cultural
relativism” (Scheper-Hughes 1995: 414). The first aspect refers to the anthropologist as fearless spectator
which “positions the anthropologist above and outside human events as a ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ (i.e.,
un- committed) seeing I/eye” (Scheper-Hughes 1995: 419), while the second is about principles of non-
involvement that would enable one to become an impassible observer who does not affect the social
reality being studied.
Scheper-Hughes replaces the classical hegemonic model with her own version of moral and
intellectual leadership: anthropologist as a negative worker “committed” to a precultural morality. The
negative worker is to be understood here as “a species of class traitor-a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer,
psychologist, a social worker, a manager, a social scientist, even- who colludes with the powerless to
identify their needs against the interests of the bourgeois institution: the university, the hospital, the
factory” (Scheper-Hughes 1995: 420), while the new ethics involves a precultural commitment7 made
towards “the other” as an equal human being- idea developed by Emmanuel Levinas. A point I would like
to make here is that if the role of the anthropologist, in the terms of a negative worker, means to attune
the knowledge production with action within academia’s interests8, then the “traitor” aspect would be lost.
This would imply that the new paradigm would not necessarily create tension between the interest of the
institution and the practice of the anthropological discipline, as long as there is acceptance in regards to
the practice. As a reply to the comments she received for her article, Scheper-Hughes finally writes “I
wonder whether we haven't already reached the end of modern, realist, objectivist anthropology and
whether a more frankly engaged, partisan, and morally accountable profession hasn't already taken its
place” (Scheper-Hughes 1995: 438).
The second voice presented here addresses the false dichotomy between academia and the real world,
between knowledge production and activism and the objective versus engaged anthropology. In so doing,
the author contributes to the replacement of the classical paradigm of cultural relativism and the
desiderate of non-involvement, in order to allow active engagement when it comes to anthropology.

6
Which could also be possibly read as native, subaltern or even primitive issues, given the historical roots of such a
stance;
7
Probably better read as “condition”;
8
As part of the new hegemony or paradigm;
 Osterweil constructs his argument based on the ethnographic research with activist networks in Italy
which he has done in 2001. What he does is to critically analyze assumptions both concerning activism
and academic activity, only to find common points that could reconcile the two seemingly distinct planes.
“First is a notion that academic and activist practice(s) are constitutively or essentially distinct; or more
precisely, that action, associated with activism and politics, is essentially different than thinking, analysis,
critique—which are in turn associated with scholarship” (Osterweil 2013: 603). Surprisingly was that in
the “Movimento dei Movimenti” protests, there was no pre-established set of expectation on behalf of the
participants to the political movement, allowing for their aims and aspirations to be constantly
renegotiated. More than this, many of his respondents saw the movement as a “call for a positive and
ongoing practice of investigation, experimentation, and imagination.” (Osterweil 2013: 606). This means
to say that the alter-globalization movement in Bologna was rather concerned with a process of
“becoming” rather than consuming the movement by expecting solutions. Based on the uncertain and
open-endedness character of the movement, processes of theorizing, reflection and analysis took place.
Apart from the argument against the idea of presupposed different practices of academia and activism,
which ethnographic account contradicts, there is another one concerned with the entities involved in
political action. Osterweil argues that if we consider universities separate from the social world, it means
to exclude the possibility of academia to bring social change. He asks “while remaining silent or
complicit with respect to crucial issues of labor politics, racism, and freedom within the academy, what
kind of politics and world are we helping to make?”(Osterweil 2013: 614).
If we look at discussions concerning climate change nowadays, scientists are more than often required
to take a political stance based on their findings to engage with the public discourse which is against them.
This could be in part due to the political context in which their statements are claimed, but also due to the
fact that they envisage an academia committed to Truth and honesty, capable of standing up for itself
when it is needed. So why would we refuse to take a political stance in anthropology given the factuality
of the inequalities or atrocities encountered while doing fieldwork? In the process of producing
knowledge, anthropology should perhaps remain open to the fact that some of its findings could be
instrumentalized for political reasons. Additionally, it wouldn’t make sense to dissociate between the
anthropologist as part of academia devoid of political engagement and the humanist who is allowed to
have political views wherever she/he wants, but not in academic context. This could only deepen the
crisis social sciences are found in and cause paranoia in regard to the motives behind why one writes or
deals with the topics one studies.
 The third voice that I will be referring to in order to cast a light on the political dimension in which
anthropology finds itself in is different than the other two. What the authors (Restrepo& Escobar 2005)
argue for is the need to replace the Western(ized) hegemony in anthropology with a more inclusive
discipline which would enable authorizing anthropological discourse from all over the world. While the
other voices presented in the paper had an outward look towards the relationship anthropology has with
the people it encounters and the world at large, Restrepo and Escobar look inward to the relation that
“anthropology” has with other anthropologies. According to them, a “dominant anthropology” still exists
despite the criticism that has been brought in the last two decades. This discussion comes after
anthropology has gained popularity world wide and it is an attempt to remain critical of the background
of a single anthropological practice, opening up the space for pluralism. “Dominant anthropologies”
Restrepo and Escobar write “include the diverse processes of professionalization and institutionalization
that accompanied the consolidation of disciplinary cannons and subjectivities, and through which
anthropologists recognize themselves and are recognized by others as such” (Restrepo& Escobar 2005:
102). This statement should not be suprising in the light of what was already presented in this paper. In
the previous statement we can find similarities with what has already been said about paradigms and
hegemony in anthropology.
Their main argument is centered around three critiques formulated in the past within dominant
anthropology. They refer to the relation of anthropology with the i)world at large; ii) epistemological and
textual practices and iii) the institutional relations and practices in academic context. And to complicate
things even more, these critiques would need to be contextualized depending on the history of
anthropology and the particular knowledge economy in which the dominant anthropologies developed.
The first historical root would refer to the “modern division of intellectual labor”: this implies that
dominant anthropologies would still maintain features from the modern imaginings of a “western man as
the foundation of all knowledge, separate from the natural order” and assume a given configuration of the
sciences, anthropology being responsible for dealing with the tensions caused by showing the limitations
of Western thought (Restrepo& Escobar 2005: 111). Citing Trouillot, they argue that the direction of
anthropology depends on how anthropologists engage with the “savage slot” which was assigned to them
in the modern times. This critique refers to efforts of decolonizing the discipline and to provide explicit
criticism against the “study of savages and primitives”. Another characteristic that the authors bring into
discussion is the belief in the capacity to obtain objective truth and knowledge that a dominant
anthropology would still assume.
 The second point made in the paper is that one has to remain critical about the genealogy of dominant
anthropologies’ practice. The reason lies in the fact that “colonialism and imperialism have provided the
overall context for the exercise of the discipline” (Restrepo& Escobar 2005: 111). The authors mention
that this past also made possible the de-colonizing process of expert knowledge, hence it is not a “fatal
trait”. A third critique refers to epistemic transformation of going beyond the modern paradigm with its
“configurations of knowledge and power”. It is about countering dominant anthropology by locating it in
the specific space it is found in, while making visible other worlds and knowledge.
The last two points made refer to the need to contextualize social and political transformations and
transformations done at institutional level. While the first would examine the “production of alterity”, the
second one would be concerned with examples which challenge the academic/ nonacademic divide,
decolonizing the expertise (Restrepo& Escobar 2005).
While I agree that we should pay attention to many of the aspects mentioned above, I cannot help but
say that the authors do not successfully show what dominant anthropology entails today. Even more,
considering the extensive efforts done by scholars with different academic background towards
decolonizing the discipline, it would be unfortunate to consider “dominant anthropology” as having the
same discourse like it had one century ago. For example, what public anthropologists aim for is precisely
denouncing these aspects which if left silent could only lead to a bad image of anthropology not only in
the West, but also in the South, the East or the North of the World. Lastly, in regards to the development
of a framework for world anthropologies, it seems to me that even if claims for objectivity and truth have
been criticized, the authors’ project would be capable of somehow policing all the un/non/academic
anthropological practices. Personally, I do not see why such project is necessary, nor how “the terms
‘anthropology’ or ‘anthropologies’ could be radically reconceptualized or abandoned altogether”
(Restrepo& Escobar 2005: 116).

The politics of voicing the marginalized

After discussing issues of hegemony, power relations and out-dated paradigms within anthropology, it
seems valuable to bring a discussion on why it matters to take a political stance by voicing the
marginalized. Even if the examples brought so far come from the South, this does not mean the
marginalized people do not exist in the West as well as in other parts of the world. In order to
counterbalance this impression, I will present at the end of this section a recent article of Haugerud
(2015) on “Public Anthropology in 2015: Charlie Hebdo, Black Lives Matter, Migrants, and More”.
 Let’s start by considering Anna Tsing’s consideration of what engaging with the marginalized means.
She writes “my interest is in the zones of unpredictability at the edges of discursive stability, where
contradictory discourses overlap, or where discrepant kinds of meaning-making converge; these are what
I call margins.” (Tsing 1994: 279). Becoming aware of this definition involves being critical of
endeavors which try to subsume the marginal into Eurocentric frameworks of interpretation.
Subsequently, engaging with marginality enables one to reformulate her/his theories and to become aware
of one’s own position as a researcher. While conducting fieldwork in Indonesia, Tsing eventually became
more aware of the different ways the people from the Meratus Mountains region engaged with politics,
state and identity. This new model had a strong impact on the ethnographer who, accustomed to U.S.
politics, did not initially understand the deliberate exaggerations her participants were manipulating in
discourse, interpreting it as a sign of praising the state. What she proposes is that instead of treating the
“out-of-the-way” places in relation with the cosmopolitan and processes of globalization, they should be
rather seen for what they are, providing descriptions of the dialogues held, without imposing standard
frameworks of interpretation and theories. Instead of reducing the observed ceremonials and practices to
western schools of thought “what would it mean to take seriously Uma Adang's claim that all this
ceremony and history formed the agenda of the empire of Majapahit, the model figure in Indonesia of the
once and ever-present state? Like other Meratus Dayak leaders, Uma Adang argues that local community
has always been a project of the state. “ says Tsing (1994: 285).
A similar account is to be found in L. Alcoff’s (1992) text who talked about the problem of
speaking for others. Who has ownership on the narratives portrayed in ethnographic text? This question is
problematic for multiple reasons, but she recommends that the source is questionable when the effects of
a discourse is unfavorable. Alcoff also prevents us with the fact that while speaking for others and
speaking about others might constitute ways of appropriating the other, speaking with others would
become the safer alternative. Alcoff (1992: 29) says “I would stress that the practice of speaking for
others is often born of a desire for mastery, to privilege oneself as the one who more correctly
understands the truth about another's situation or as one who can champion a just cause and thus
achieve glory and praise”, making it clearer why the temptation of interpreting the marginalized
according to Western canons exists. In regards to the effects of discourse, the question she recommends
one should ask is “will it enable the empowerment of oppressed peoples?” (Alcoff 1992).
Let’s take Alcoff’s question and relate it with projects of public anthropology. Would the discourse of
a public anthropology be able to empower the oppressed people? A few conditions would arise: i) if there
is mutual knowledge exchange between the researcher and community, involving the latter as full
participant in research; (Beck 2009); ii) if by engaging with alterity, the public anthropologist forges a
new objectivity which “begins with lived (...) public participation,and therefore with experience” (Purcell
2000: 31); iii) if hegemonic structures which restrict solutions to problems are being challenged in public
space (Borofsky 2007). These conditions although necessary, they might not be the sufficient. In their
selection I tried to stay close to the accountability aspect in regards to morality, epistemology and politics,
being aware that each of them could be further developed and that new dimensions could be brought in
the discussion.
Public anthropology has undoubtedly been able to deal with the “hot topics” circulated in the media, as
Haugerud (2015) shows, but even greater being the achievement to empower people. Among the cases of
ethnographers who accomplished the voicing of marginalized, the author mentions Aimee Meredith
Cox‘s study of young black women in a Detroit homeless shelter and the research of Laurence Ralph on
one of Chicago’s most marginalized neighborhoods (Haugerud 2015: 592). To these ethnographies a
great number of anthropological publications and critical accounts were developed only in 2015 on topics
like Black lives matter, Charlie Hebdo, Ebola outbreak, Migration to europe and other similar topics.
Furthermore, following a capitalist logic, the academia could only benefit from the image these scholars
bring to their universities and discipline. Not only would the visibility and relevance of anthropology
would increase, but with it, so will the trust in the knowledge production process of scholars in general.
Conclusion
The paper has showed how issues of anthropological epistemology can be politically motivated,
referring to inherent power structures within academia and traditions of practicing anthropology.
Discussions on hegemony were meant to show how the status quo is negotiated and by making the
comparison with paradigms I hoped to envisage the social character and politics of scientific revolutions.
Furthermore, by drawing on the criticism of classical anthropological hegemony by Osterweil, Scheper-
Hughes, Restrepo and Escobar, I came to discussions about publicly engaged anthropology. Recent
discussions, conferences and debates organized in the public sphere seem to be making anthropology
visible to a broader public. How much academia benefits from this is hard to tell, but it is in the duty of
these engaged anthropologists to do what they think is worth and to set out a tradition of “witnessing”, as
Scheper-Hughes called it.
Perhaps more could have been said about the historical context of academia nowadays in order to have
a bigger picture of universities’ strategies of staying politically relevant in today’s society. This could
very well be the subject of a future ethnographic research meant to engage even deeper with aspects I
have just touched upon in this paper.
Should we be optimistic in regards to the future of anthropology? I would argue that there is still a
long way to go before the primacy of political engagement is going to be accepted at large by scholars
everywhere. Because of recent social, political and humanitarian crises, political engagement might not
be so looked down upon anymore, enabling anthropology as well as other social sciences to bring a
veritable contribution in the greater interest of humanity. One can only hope and do her or his own duty
in stressing the causes one believes in.

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