740 Current Anthropology Volume 54, Number 6, December 2013

CA✩ FORUM ON PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemmas

Reflections from the Maoist Fields of India

by George J. Kunnath

Anthropology has a long tradition of engagement, and every form of engagement poses dilemmas. This article
discusses anthropological engagement with marginalized communities living in the midst of armed violence and
examines the dilemmas posed by such engagement. Drawing on my long-term ethnographic research in the context
of the ongoing Maoist insurgency and counterinsurgency in India, here I discuss anthropological positionings, ethics,
and fieldwork practices in “fields under fire.” I reflect on the ethics of taking sides in a situation where my research
participants were involved in a struggle for dignity and justice. Engagement in this context posed further ethical
dilemmas since many of my research participants were members of an organization banned by the Indian state,
and their struggle often took violent forms. While exploring the significance of undertaking a morally and politically
engaged anthropology among vulnerable communities, I discuss the potential problems of identifying with and
writing from the vantage point of a particular community and political practice.

My research tells the stories of marginalized communities
living in the Maoist guerrilla zones of Bihar and Jharkhand
states in eastern India. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh in 2006 described the Maoist insurgency, which aims
to establish a communist state through armed revolution, as
the single largest internal security problem that the country
has ever faced. The Indian state views the Maoists as “ter-
rorists,” and it has declared a war against the Maoist insur-
gency. The Maoist Movement, which is usually traced to the
peasant revolt at Naxalbari village in West Bengal in 1967,
has now spread to over 200 of the 602 administrative districts
of the country.1 I did ethnographic fieldwork in the Maoist
heartlands of Bihar and Jharkhand for 16 (2002–2003) and
20 months (2008–2010), respectively. In this paper I reflect
on my continuing research among Dalit (former “Untouch-
able”) communities in Jehanabad district of Bihar, which until
recently was infamously called the “killing fields.” Since the
1980s, thousands of Dalits in this district joined the Maoist
armed struggle against the upper-caste landowners. They de-
manded better wages, land, and an end to caste discrimination
and sexual abuse of Dalit women by upper-caste men. The
landowners retaliated with their caste militias backed by a
George J. Kunnath is Lecturer in Modern Indian Studies at the
School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford (12
Bevington Road, Oxford OX2 6LH, United Kingdom [george.kunnath
@area.ox.ac.uk]). This paper was submitted 4 IX 09, accepted 31 XII
10, and electronically published 17 X 13.
repressive state regime. I lived among Dalits in a village I call
Dumari in Jehanabad, from where the Maoist Movement
spread to other parts of Bihar and the neighboring states.
Doing research in this context of armed violence, I faced
a number of questions that challenged conventional anthro-
pological positionings and fieldwork practices, and which
threw open new avenues for exploration. What, for instance,
does it mean to be an anthropologist in a situation where my
research participants were engaged in a struggle for dignity
and justice? Do I remain a “neutral observer,” or should I
take sides? If I choose sides, does it compromise anthropo-
logical objectivity? What does objectivity really mean in the
face of violence and oppression? How do I take an ethically
defensible stance in both fieldwork practices and in the sub-
sequent production of ethnography? What are the fieldwork
methods and practices that are effective and appropriate in
contexts of violence? In this article, while exploring these
questions, I engage with and build on the existing anthro-
pological literature on doing fieldwork in dangerous situations
and contribute to the debates on anthropological ethics, en-
gagement, and objectivity.
1. The history of the Maoist Movement in India has been characterized
by splits and unifications. In September 2004 the Communist Party of
India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre
of India came together to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
Many scholarly works have discussed the history and activities of the
Movement in various parts of the country (Banerjee 1980; Bhatia 2005;
Kunnath 2006, 2009, 2012; Louis 2002; Mukherjee and Yadav 1980; Ray
1988; Roy 1975; Shah 2006, 2013; Shah and Pettigrew 2012).

䉷 2013 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2013/5406-0004$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/673860
Kunnath Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemmas: Reflections from the Maoist Fields of India
This article thus explores positionality, ethics, the re-
searcher’s identity, and fieldwork practices in the production
of ethnography in the “fields under fire.” In some sense, it is
also an ethnography of the ethnographer, which I hope will
highlight the particular and the personal locations of writing.
I explore these themes in the context of my relationship with
the research participants and highlight the importance of in-
tersubjectivity in the production of anthropological knowl-
edge. Accordingly, the first part of this article explores the
ethics of taking sides—on privileging a Dalit perspective over
others; the second part dwells on the specificities of meth-
odological practices and dilemmas associated with doing field-
work in violent contexts. In the third section, I discuss the
specific nature of intersubjectivity, which I experienced in the
field, and its continuing influence on my anthropological writ-
ing. In the concluding part, I reflect on the enduring dilemmas
of engaged anthropology.
Beyond the Veil of Neutrality: An
Anthropology That Takes Sides
A personal experience of caste discrimination in a Bihar village
profoundly influenced my decision to study anthropology.
During my undergraduate studies I spent the summer va-
cations in Dalit villages in rural Bihar, working for a Jesuit-
inspired literacy program. During one such literacy campaign
in a village, I was invited for tea in a Brahmin household. I
noticed the cup in which I was to be served tea being brought
from the Dalit family I was staying with. My Brahmin host
considered me an Untouchable because I was staying with
the lower-caste people. He did not want his household utensils
“polluted” by my touch. I was shocked. My first experience
of caste discrimination left me deeply humiliated and infu-
riated. I shouted at my Brahmin host that I was not achchuth
(Untouchable) and hurried out of his house.
This incident, however, had a lasting impact on me. I re-
alized I could shout at the Brahmin landlord because I was
not an Untouchable, who was subjected to the caste norms
of the village. The Dalits with whom I lived in the village
seldom expressed their protest in such a manner, even in the
face of more blatant experiences of caste discrimination. The
upper-caste landlords in the village, Dalits told me, were mai-
baap (literally, it means mother-father; here it meant “source
of livelihood”). In their situation of total dependency on the
landlords, Dalits could not raise their voice against them, at
least not in public. I realized that I needed a greater under-
standing of their silence, the circumstances that rendered
them “speechless,” as well as the ways in which they expressed
themselves. I decided to study anthropology. I wanted to un-
derstand the “deep play” (Geertz 1973) of caste and class
relations in Bihar before I began working with Dalits in a
meaningful way.
Studying Dalit marginalization is one thing. But as an an-
thropologist and even more as a non-Dalit, who am I to speak
741
for Dalits? What is the legitimacy of anthropologists speaking
for others (Clifford 1986, 1988; Said 1978; Spivak 1988)? Spi-
vak (1988) cautions against the task of giving voice to the
voiceless. She raises this point in relation to the legitimacy of
the Western intellectuals who themselves are historical prod-
ucts of, and in many ways complicit with, Western interna-
tional economic and geopolitical interests, to speak for the
third world “Other.” The same argument might apply to hun-
dreds of middle-class intellectuals who, from positions of
power and privilege, pretend to speak for the oppressed in
their own countries. Spivak argues that speaking for the sub-
altern, rather than letting them speak for themselves, will only
in fact reinscribe their subordinate position in society.
I acknowledge the significance of Spivak’s position. For me,
however, there are other questions with which anthropological
research must engage. Are we to remain silent in the face of
the sufferings and persecutions of our research participants?
Or do we have a responsibility to them during and after the
fieldwork, in the production of ethnography and beyond?
Having lived with Dalits in the context of extreme poverty
and violence, I have struggled with these questions of re-
sponsibility and commitment. In fact, in recent years many
anthropologists have grappled with these questions as well as
the issues of the politics of representation (Bourgois 1990, 1995,
2001; Falla 1994; Farmer 2003; Hale 1994, 2008; Low and Merry
2010; Sanford and Angel-Ajani 2006; Scheper–Hughes 1992,
1995; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004; Spencer 2010).
The Guatemalan anthropologist Ricardo Falla’s work, Mas-
sacres in the Jungle (1994), which chronicles the destruction
and death that the Guatemalan military unleashed on tens of
thousands of Mayan peasants in the early 1980s, is a powerful
testimony against army brutalities. In an interview with Biatriz
Manz, Falla says: “We can’t just remain passive and study the
massacres as the product of a military culture. We can’t fall
into that. We are striving to give strength to the voice of the
people. We have to choose sides” (Manz 1995:266). Falla chose
to be with the thousands of Mayans who escaped the military
brutalities and formed the Communities of Population in
Resistance (CPR), hidden deep in the Ixcan rain forests.
I chose the side of Dalits. It is impossible to be a “neutral”
observer in a society polarized by caste and class struggle,
where Dalits are exploited and massacred by the landowning
upper castes. I shared the sentiments June Nash expressed
while doing fieldwork among the poor miners in Bolivia: “In
a revolutionary situation, no neutrals are allowed” (Nash
1976:150). In being with Dalits, I came into contact with the
Maoists who worked among Dalits. Here, just as anthropol-
ogist Sarah Shneiderman (Pettigrew, Shneiderman, and Har-
per 2004), who while doing fieldwork in Eastern Nepal found
herself working in “complicity” (see also Marcus 1997) with
the Maoists, I came to witness from close quarters the Maoist-
Dalit interactions in rural Bihar.
The privileging of a Dalit perspective over others is an
ethical choice. Living with Dalits, I had come to share their
anguish and aspirations, at least in some way. After that shar-
 742
ing and witnessing, I consider not speaking and not acting
against oppressive structural arrangements and power rela-
tions unethical. As an anthropologist, I am not advocating
the blurring of the boundaries of anthropology and activism,
nor am I demarcating them as separate identities. Being an
anthropologist among the poor in itself is a call for partici-
pation in their struggles. Anthropological engagement may
take various forms. Low and Merry (2010), in their insightful
article in Current Anthropology, describe various forms of en-
gaged anthropology as sharing and support, teaching and
public education, social critique, collaboration, advocacy, and
activism.
Witnessing through writing is a form of anthropological
engagement, which I want to emphasize here. Nancy Scheper-
Hughes, in her eloquent ethnography of the everyday violence
in a Brazilian shanty town, writes:
The act of witnessing is what lends our work its moral (at
times its almost theological) character. So-called participant
observation has a way of drawing the ethnographer into
spaces of human life where she or he might really prefer
not to go at all and once there doesn’t know how to go
about getting out except through writing, which draws oth-
ers there as well, making them party to the act of witnessing.
(Scheper-Hughes 1992:xii)
Ethnography produced out of an engagement with the
struggles of the oppressed peoples could and should be used
as a tool for critical reflection because it has the potential to
disturb as well as to inspire. David Mosse, in his insider’s
account of the practice of an internationally funded devel-
opment program, points out that “text” is not “separate from
action,” it is “performative,” and its very effectiveness lies in
“its capacity to disturb ruling representations; its potential to
affect reputations and materiality” (Mosse 2005:xii).
Such a call to disturb and to inspire action is what, perhaps,
is missing in the guidelines for anthropological ethics. Ethical
guidelines proposed by the Association of Social Anthropol-
ogists (ASA) of the UK and Commonwealth include pro-
tecting our research participants; obtaining their consent;
safeguarding their anonymity and interests; providing fair re-
turn for their assistance; avoiding undue intrusion into their
culture; minimizing the harmful effects of research; eliciting
their greater involvement in the research; respecting our re-
sponsibilities toward sponsors, own and host governments,
colleagues, and wider society; and abiding by the principle of
objectivity (ASA Ethical Guidelines 2011). Although these eth-
ical guidelines are significant, of course, they do not address
the “larger moral and human dimensions of the political and
economic structures” that affect most of the peoples we study
(Bourgois 1990:45). Often in the past, anthropologists have,
under the veil of objectivity and anthropological ethics, shied
away from engaging with the unequal power relations, struc-
tural violence, and socioeconomic mechanisms that have rav-
Current Anthropology Volume 54, Number 6, December 2013
aged the subjects of their inquiries.2 Instead, anthropology’s
theoretical orientations found safer expressions in an apolit-
ical liberal relativism. Starn (1992), writing from Peru, points
out that anthropologists in that country were so busy studying
rituals, kinship organizations, reciprocity, and Andean cos-
mology that they failed to pay enough attention to the suf-
ferings, state persecutions, and massacres of the Andean peo-
ple. An avoidance of the issues directly related to unequal
power relations and the sufferings that these engender, as Eric
Wolf warns, results in anthropology’s “descent into irrelevance
and triviality” (1972 [1969]:261).
Anthropological ethics, then, should constitute more than
a set of methodological guidelines. They should define the
very core of the discipline (Caplan 2003), its purpose, and
its commitment to our people, who are very often the victims
of unjust societal arrangements. In my experience of studying
power relations and violence in the “flaming fields” of Bihar,
anthropology’s code of ethics offered precious little relevant
guidance. During my fieldwork, it was often impossible to
obtain the informed consent of the landlords and state offi-
cials who in many places are part of an apparatus of power
that exploits Dalits. My primary responsibility as a researcher
was oriented toward Dalits living in a context of revolutionary
and counterrevolutionary violence. Therefore, it became a
moral imperative to take sides and sometimes to withhold
and even to conceal some information from the landowning
castes and state agencies. In a dangerous field, issues such as
these, as well as that of negotiating multiple identities as dis-
cussed in the next section, called for skillful maneuvering.
The purpose of my research and the specificity of the field-
work site called for engagement with an ethical paradigm that
above all gave priority to Dalit liberation. In this process of
rethinking the anthropological ethics, I am not rejecting ex-
isting paradigms, but I am joining the growing number of
anthropologists, who, as Pat Caplan notes, “seek to constitute
themselves as a moral community” (Caplan 2003:5), one that
takes sides.
Presentation of Self in the “Fields under Fire”
The idea of a “neutral observer” now cast aside, I start with
the anthropologist’s presentation of self in the field. The re-
searcher has multiple and overlapping identities, which Ren-
ato Rosaldo rightly terms “multiplex personal identities”
(1989:179). He describes fieldwork as a “busy intersection
through which multiple identities crisscross” (1989:194). The
anthropological categories such as “insider/outsider,” “native/
2. Clifford Geertz, when asked why he did not publicly denounce the
loss of life and human rights violations of the families and villagers he
studied in Indonesia, responded that he had not wanted to “distract
attention away from the theoretical points he was making by engaging
in a media fray or a politics of advocacy” (cited in Scheper-Hughes and
Bourgois 2004:6–7). He made this comment after more than 500,000
Indonesians were massacred, following an unsuccessful Marxist-inspired
coup in 1965 (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2004).
Kunnath Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemmas: Reflections from the Maoist Fields of India
non-native,” therefore, are inadequate to describe the re-
searcher’s presentation of self in the field.
In my case, these identities themselves often underwent
change during the fieldwork.3 Assuming new identities, while
bracketing some others, was also an integral part of my shift-
ing field personae. There were differing dimensions to my
identity in relation to the Maoists, Dalits, landowning castes,
government officials, and numerous others I encountered in
the field. To these different groups, I moved between identities
of “comrade,” “researcher,” “saathi bhai” (comrade-brother),
“government spy,” “Maoist spy,” and many others, imagined
or real. Among Dalits, too, I was perceived differently, de-
pending on their proximity and distance to the Maoists or
to me. In my fieldwork context, therefore, which was highly
polarized along the lines of caste, class, political ideologies,
violence and counterviolence, “insider” or “outsider” were
not a priori categories. In fact, one became an insider or
outsider depending on the quality of one’s relation with peo-
ple; the sharing of ideologies; and perhaps, most of all, on
whether or not one took sides.
The violence and volatility of this region forbids any per-
ceived outsiders from pitching the ethnographer’s tent in the
“flaming fields.” While coming to terms with my own fears
and anxieties of doing fieldwork in such a context, I realized
that my researcher’s identity would be inadequate in gaining
permission to enter the field or guaranteeing my safety there-
after. The permission required was not from any government
agency but from the Maoists who had established some sort
of a parallel government in the region. I established the “right”
contacts. The Maoists had no objection to my research, nor
did they put any conditions on my research goals and freedom
of movement in the field. In this regard, my experience was
different from other anthropologists working in violent con-
texts, who had to negotiate various censures and conditions
placed on them by the radical organizations that allowed them
to work in their areas of influence (Hale 1994; Nash 1976;
Sluka 1995).4 The Maoists in Bihar seemed open to my ac-
ademic research and critical assessments of their activities and
popular support. They requested, however, that I acknowledge
in my writing the repressive conditions under which they
worked, which prevent them from delivering their promises
to the poor.
Before I set out for the field, I had a number of meetings
with the people who were familiar with the field situation as
3. Scheper-Hughes (1992) speaks of the transformation of her identity
from a community development worker to a social anthropologist and
later her efforts at being both a companheira and anthropologist.
4. Jeffrey Sluka’s work on the Irish People’s Liberation Organization
(IPLO) in Northern Ireland gives a good account of the negotiations he
made with the IPLO leadership prior to starting his research. The mu-
tually agreed on conditions included the researcher’s freedom to do the
anthropological “thing” (interviews, observation, selection of the research
participants, writing) in exchange for allowing IPLO to review the man-
uscript, and if any disagreements occurred, to add statements expressing
their concerns with the researcher’s findings (1995:278–279).
743
a kind of preparation for negotiating the dangerous fields.
This was helpful to familiarize myself with the “localized
ethics” that governed behavior in the area (Kovats-Bernat
2002:214). Accordingly, I took a different name in the field,
a name that would help me integrate more easily in that
milieu. The assumption of a pseudonym is a rare, although
not unheard of, step for an anthropologist to take (e.g., see
Falla 1994; Van Der Geest 2003).5 Assuming a new name, one
which suited the cultural and religious context of rural Bihar,
while at the same time bracketing some of my other identities,
was a precaution taken to give me certain anonymity and
prevent drawing undue attention to myself. For the same rea-
son, it was a practice among the Maoist cadres to take on
different names in the different areas in which they worked.
Thus in changing my name, I was drawing on the experience
of 3 decades of survival strategies developed by many of my
research participants in the context of insurgency and counter-
insurgency.
Low and Merry (2010), in discussing various types of en-
gaged anthropology, speak of sharing, support, personal in-
teractions, and “relationships, which include friendship and
even forms of kinship” (S207) as possible forms of engage-
ment. Rajubhai, a former commander of the Maoist guerrillas
and my host in Dumari, became my brother and guide in
the field and his dwelling, my home. I called his wife Bhabhi
(sister-in-law). I worked with his family members on the land
they had taken for sharecropping. I accompanied them on
different errands to the town. These were not just exercises
in building “rapport”—that magic word for the relationships
that anthropologists try to cultivate in the field to gain an
inside view of the researched (see Geertz 1973; Marcus 1997).
For me, engaging with my adopted family in their everyday
lived realities was a deep experience of sharing. In “our” two-
room house amid other Dalit dwellings lived eight members,
including the anthropologist. I ate what the family ate, which
was rice and dal twice a day. I slept in the same room as other
family members. It was an intimate sharing of space, a kind
of immersion, on the one hand, that at the same time called
for a distancing on my part, from my own cherished needs
for privacy and personal comforts and any assumed notions
of superiority, cultural or otherwise. Detaching ourselves from
our own society, as Lévi-Strauss stressed, is an essential con-
dition for experiencing our anthropological calling and grow-
ing in familiarity with our host society (1973).
5. Falla assumed a new name to conceal his identity while working
among the Mayas who escaped the brutal terror unleashed by the Gua-
temalan army. He did not want people to know his upper-class upbringing
in order to be more easily accepted and immerse himself “in the arduous
living conditions in the jungle” (Falla 1994:xiv). Van Der Geest, who
worked in Ghana, assumed a pseudonym (although he reverted back to
his old name years later) for the same reason many anthropologists give
pseudonyms to their research participants—to protect their identities.
According to him “Ghana’s academic community is a like a village” where
everyone knew each other and through his name “it would be simple to
trace the identity of the town” where he did fieldwork “and consequently
of the informants” (Van Der Geest 2003:15).
 744
As an engaged observer, I sometimes assisted Dalit activists
in organizing meetings and protest marches to highlight the
exploitation and atrocities against Dalits. I attended village
meetings and conducted adult education classes for Dalit la-
borers. I accompanied around 250 landless laborers from my
fieldwork area to Hyderabad, a 3-day journey that involved
traveling nearly 1,750 km in the unreserved compartment of
a train to take part in a conference that highlighted the neg-
ative impact of global free trade regulations on poor peasants.6
On another occasion, along with my research participants, I
traveled to Calcutta, 24 hours by train, to join demonstrators
from all over India to protest against the war on Iraq. These
travels were an enriching experience allowing me to conduct
research in a “moving field.” Methodologically, in some sense,
my travels with the villagers resembled the work carried out
by Ann Gold (Gold 1988). Her research, however, was among
the traveling pilgrims of Rajasthan, while my “traveling field”
was that of the political activists. During these travels, I was
both an anthropologist and an activist, as these were occasions
in which I could observe the political consciousness of my
research participants as well as express my own political com-
mitment.
This engaged research gradually turned me into an “an-
thropologist insider” in a revolutionary struggle. I could at-
tend the village meetings and people’s courts organized by
the Maoist rebels.7 I could also observe from close quarters
the interactions between rebels and villagers as well as inter-
view the Maoist leaders and cadres. For many I became a
saathi-bhai (comrade brother). But this also led to some peo-
ple conferring other labels on me. I faced the most common
accusation, which many anthropologists have been subjected
to while doing fieldwork, of “being a spy” (Sluka 1995:283).8
Due to my contact with the Maoists, some people labeled me
a Maoist informer. Some others thought that I was an un-
6. Traveling in unreserved compartments (locally known as “general
bogey”) can be an extremely uncomfortable experience. There were more
than 270 people packed into a compartment that had only 72 seats. Often
we found ourselves “piling on each other” and even cramping into the
two toilets of the compartment.
7. Maoist people’s courts represented an alternative dispute settlement
system to the state judicial institutions. Ordinarily in these courts, op-
pressive landlords and “class enemies” were tried by landless laborers,
who also decided on the punishment.
8. It is not that anthropologists have always remained innocent chron-
iclers and note takers. Franz Boas, one of anthropology’s forefathers, in
his time deplored some anthropologists who worked as spies (2005
[1919]). In the recent history of the discipline, anthropologists have
hobnobbed with such US state agencies as the CIA and the US Army in
counterinsurgency programs such as Project Camelot in Latin America
and Project Agile in Thailand and other South East Asian countries. The
controversies arising from these were discussed at length in various AAA
meetings in the 1960 and 1970s (Berreman 1991; Fluehr-Lobban 1991;
Wakin 1992). The debate has resurfaced again since 2004 as the CIA tried
to recruit anthropology students under its Pat Roberts Intelligence Schol-
ars Program (PRISP) and Intelligence Community Scholars Program
(ICSP; Moos, Fardon, and Gusterson 2005; Price 2005; Sebag-Montefiore
2006).
Current Anthropology Volume 54, Number 6, December 2013
dercover agent for the government or upper-caste militia.
During the course of my fieldwork, some of these suspicions
gave way to understanding and trust. I made conscious efforts
to alleviate the fears of the people by handling sensitive issues
with care and honesty. However, my efforts at impression
management were not always successful.
Suspicions assume epidemic proportions in conflict zones.
There were times when I was appalled by the level of suspicion
I encountered in my fieldwork area. Suspicion was directed
not just toward outsiders or people belonging to caste com-
munities different from one’s own. Some even suspected their
neighbors and relatives as working either as informers for the
police, the Maoists, or the upper-caste militias. In the midst
of armed conflicts, everyone—the police, the upper-caste mi-
litias, the Maoists, and ordinary villagers—tends to get caught
in a spiral of suspicion. Gradually during the fieldwork, I
realized that I was also trapped in the same world of suspicion.
I felt suspicion for upper-caste landowners, people who held
a different ideology from my own, and others whose back-
grounds I could not immediately verify. In this war zone,
mutual suspicion, as well as the silences and voices that ac-
companied it, acted as strategies for survival. Now, I could
no longer blame those people who labeled me a “spy.” This
is yet another reality that the anthropologist working in vi-
olent contexts must learn to live with.
The Burden of Knowing and Responsibility for Knowledge
In violent and dangerous fields, knowing can become a bur-
den. There was always the danger of the potential misuse of
my data by hostile actors who could endanger people who
trusted and cared for me and who shared their lives with me.
My data in the wrong hands could even have put my own
life at risk. Anthropologists working in conflict zones have
long been aware of the possible misuse of their field data and
of the information shared in their published works (Berreman
1968; Bourgois 1990; Fluehr-Lobban 1991; Kovats-Bernat
2002; Maquet 1964; Nash 1976; Wakin 1992). Gerald Berre-
man warned anthropologists of the potential danger of leaving
the use of our data to others, especially to “politicians and
journalists, to entrepreneurs, scoundrels, and madmen, as well
as to statesmen and benefactors” (1968:392).
Therefore, it was my responsibility to develop techniques
for the collection and camouflaging of data that guaranteed
anonymity to my research participants and fieldwork sites.9
I made every effort to use pseudonyms for individuals and
locations. In certain instances, I have concealed the identity
of the community to which a particular informant belonged.
However, I was burdened by this knowledge, as Kovats-Bernat
(2002), Pettigrew, Shneiderman, and Harper (2004), and
Szklut and Reed (1991), have pointed out, and in spite of all
9. There have also been arguments among anthropologists against
masking the identities of their research subjects and thus obliterating
their identities in ethnographies (Pettigrew, Shneiderman, and Harper
2004; Van Der Geest 2003).
Kunnath Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemmas: Reflections from the Maoist Fields of India
possible efforts, safeguarding the anonymity of my research
participants was not always assured. There could still be some
indicators such as population figures or community histories
that might give away locations (Szklut and Reed 1991). Joseph
Jorgensen makes a worrying comment along these lines: “Even
though we do not publish an informant’s name, height,
weight, or serial number, the interested reader can identify
the revolutionary in the Santiago squatter settlement, the re-
former among the Northern Ute, the Lebanese trader in Cen-
tral Ghana, or the patron on the upper Rio Ucayuli” (Jor-
gensen 1971:331). Yet, despite these risks, some of this
information is so significant that leaving it out forfeits the
specificity and quality of the ethnographic description.
I had to be extremely sensitive during my interviews with
the Maoist cadres and leaders. There was a layer of secrecy
that had to be respected and protected. I followed the “lo-
calized ethics” and sought the advice of the local population,
both the Maoists and others, regarding conversations and
silences—what is to be said and what is taboo (Kovats-Bernat
2002:214). Accordingly, sometimes I had to refrain from ask-
ing the common research questions that all anthropologists
tend to ask their research participants, such as name, family,
and village backgrounds; status in the organization; and var-
ious other ordinary details. However, occasionally, informa-
tion such as the caste and class background of the activists
was essential to my research. Often, I tried to gather such
data in informal conversational settings or from villagers. I
got used to, and respected, the secrecy that surrounded the
organization and learned to gather information and cam-
ouflage it without endangering their lives.
Yet there are also certain types of information we gather
in violent fields that present deep moral dilemmas. Here is
an incident that occurred at the tail end of my fieldwork that
deeply shook me and profoundly challenged my moral sen-
sibilities. I had been informed about a forthcoming Maoist
people’s court in which a landlord was to be tried for allegedly
raping a Dalit woman and for various other offenses against
Dalit laborers. With my anthropological curiosity, I was look-
ing forward to participating in it. A few days before it was
to take place, the accused landlord himself came to meet me.
He appeared worried and requested that I personally be pre-
sent during the court proceedings. He perhaps thought that
my presence as a researcher from outside might lead to some
kind of leniency in the trial.
The Maoist people’s court, however, was postponed by 2
weeks. I learned from a confidential source that the proceed-
ings of the court would now be held in private and that the
Maoist Party would be likely to give a more severe punishment
to the accused (than the usual beatings and economic/social
sanctions). My source did not elaborate what the severe pun-
ishment could mean. But he said that twice before this land-
lord had been tried in the people’s court and punished, yet
the landlord continued to indulge in “feudal ways.” I was
shocked. I knew that the severe punishment could mean the
death sentence in the Maoist people’s court. I was in a deep
745
moral dilemma. The idea of anthropological ethics I advo-
cated earlier in this paper called for a commitment to mar-
ginalized communities. Such an ethics included advocating
justice to the victims. The idea of justice in my fieldwork
context entailed that the landlord who was found guilty of
raping a Dalit woman and abusing Dalit laborers be ade-
quately punished. Yet nothing had prepared me for the se-
verity of the punishment he might receive in the Maoist peo-
ple’s court. I remembered my last meeting with him. The
images of his worried face kept flashing before my eyes. I felt
utterly helpless. My distress was heightened by the fact that
I was to leave the field area in the next 2 days. After several
months I learned that the accused landlord did not face the
people’s court. He had somehow learned about the possible
outcome of the court and secretly left the village. The incident,
however, left me deeply disturbed. Anthropology in violent
contexts generates helplessness and enduring ethical dilem-
mas.
Reversal of Roles: Anthropologist as Protected
The moment I entered the dangerous fields, I realized that
there was no room for entertaining any illusions of sensa-
tionalism or heroism. I was living in constant fear and often
indulged in less than heroic ways of saving my own skin. My
research participants were more heroic than I. They risked
their lives to shelter and feed me during my fieldwork years.
In one of my interviews with the local secretary of the Maoist
Party, he reiterated the famous imagery from Mao that the
people are the water and the revolutionaries are the fish living
there. The people protect them. This was true not only for
the revolutionaries but also for the anthropologist. For the
past 30 years or more, the people here have lived through
insurgency and counterinsurgency. I relied on their collective
wisdom and experience for my protection. They taught me
different strategies for survival. They kept me safe in the field.
The ASA’s Ethical Guidelines for good research practice
state that “anthropologists should endeavour to protect the
physical, social and psychological well-being of those with
whom they conduct their study and to respect their rights,
interests, sensitivities and privacy, other than in the most
exceptional of circumstances” (ASA Ethical Guidelines 2011:
3). Kovats-Bernat (2002) points out the underpinnings of
colonial legacy in such guidelines, which assume that the an-
thropologist has the backing of institutions, law-enforcement
agencies, and financial resources, and therefore also has the
power to protect his or her research subjects. The underlying
tone is one of authority. During my fieldwork, I had no such
power to protect, as the incident described above demon-
strated. I was the protected, and my research participants were
the protectors. All I could do was devise techniques for cam-
ouflaging data and safeguarding the anonymity of the research
participants. I saw a dramatic shift in power here, or maybe
a reversal of roles, in which I came to rely on the people for
protection.
 746
Complicity and Intersubjectivity
In all the ideas that I have discussed so far—ethics, identity,
positionality, insider/outsider, engaged anthropology—the
underlying emphasis was on the relationship between the re-
searcher and the research participants. In what anthropolog-
ical parlance shall I then sum up my relationship with my
research subjects?10 The traditional anthropological figure,
with a “laboriously earned and precariously maintained . . .
indifference” that Geertz (2001 [1968]:39) so eloquently ex-
pressed as a “vocational ethic” and that anthropology had all
but buried in the 1980s, did not suit my passionate attachment
to the Dalit cause. Neither did the “collaborative figure” that
emerged thereafter, who shunned the earlier “authoritative
stance of giving voice to the other” (Clifford 1988:51) and
produced the “multi-authored” ethnography “in dialogue”
with the researched, represent my work, although its dialogical
dimension echoed my experience of field relations. That
brings me to the notion of “complicity,” which Marcus (1997)
uses to illustrate relations between the researcher and the
researched in a multisited and interconnected contemporary
field reality.11 The connectedness of the field with external
forces beyond the local brings together the researcher and
informants in “their mutual curiosity and anxiety about their
relationship to a ‘third’ [other]” (Marcus 1997:100). This spe-
cial bond in relation to the external “third” brings them “in
complicity” with each other. This bond, according to Marcus,
produces a more egalitarian and effective fieldwork relation-
ship.
This figure of the anthropologist “in complicity” with his
or her research participants, however, still does not represent
the sense of mutual solidarity and belonging I experienced
with my research participants. My experience was not just
one of being there but being there with. In being in the field
with Dalits, I entered into a special bond with them through
our shared experiences of want, fear, uncertainty, and also of
joy, strength, and yearnings for a better tomorrow. This active
aspect of the relationship seems to be missing in Marcus’s
conceptualization of “complicity.” Even in this removed lo-
cation of writing, the sense of belonging and shared aspiration
reinforces an experience of being here with my research par-
ticipants, which David Mosse so well described as the con-
tinuing relationships of “field and desk” mutually influencing
each other (2006:937). This strong bond of intersubjectivity
is the defining feature of my fieldwork in the Maoist heart-
lands.
10. In answering this question, I have modeled my argument through
a reflection on George Marcus’s article on the idea of complicity in
anthropological fieldwork (1997).
11. Marcus cites the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of com-
plicity as “state of being complex or involved,” “partnership in an evil
action” (1997:87). Going beyond Geertz’s cockfight anecdote of estab-
lishing rapport with his Balinese informants, “where complicity makes
the outsider the desired anthropological Insider” (1973:416), Marcus in-
troduces the idea of complicity as an “alternative conception of fieldwork
relations” in which rapport is no longer the desired effect (1997:87).
Current Anthropology Volume 54, Number 6, December 2013
Conclusion
Engaged anthropology in a violent context throws up its own
specific ethical dilemmas, some of which I discussed in re-
lation to the difficulties in protecting the identity of our re-
search participants and our helplessness in the face of vio-
lence. In this concluding section, I return to three interlinked
dilemmas that have arisen in the context of my fieldwork
among Dalits and the Maoists, which are also the enduring
dilemma of engaged anthropology in general.
The first dilemma relates to doing fieldwork in the context
of the Maoist Movement, which is engaged in an armed strug-
gle to overthrow the Indian state. The Indian government
terms the Maoists as the biggest ever internal security threat.
To what extent, then, can the anthropologist be seen as en-
gaging with a banned organization? My primary concern as
an anthropologist among Dalit communities is to narrate their
stories of oppression and resistance. From the mid-1970s the
Maoist Movement took up Dalit grievances and organized
struggles against caste and class oppression. Dalit commu-
nities formed the primary support base of the Movement and
the rank and file of the Maoist guerrilla army in Bihar. In
exploring the power relations and structural inequalities that
reinforce Dalit subordination, I critically engage with the
dominant castes, Maoists, as well as the state agencies. The
Maoist organization itself becomes the object of my criticism,
when due to its own political agendas and compulsions it
fails to address the grievances and development aspirations
of the majority of Dalit people. My commitment is to mar-
ginalized communities in whose lives I have shared and who
are engaged in a struggle for emancipation.
The second dilemma then concerns the question whether
intersubjectivity and commitment to the poor will compro-
mise anthropological objectivity. On the contrary, I argue that
it is the strong bond of intersubjectivity that enhances the
objectivity of anthropological knowledge. The notion of ob-
jectivity has often been associated with a negation of this
intersubjective character in anthropological research. Charles
Hale points out that “objectivity has come to mean that the
speaker has no history, identity, or social position that has
shaped his or her perspective.” He further argues that such
a position “disguises a blatant political-ideological stance in
methodological garb and then, in perverse reversal, dismisses
these methodological postulates (intersubjectivity and posi-
tionality) as political interventions that compromise good sci-
ence” (2008:11). Donna Haraway, who championed the cause
of positioned knowledge, asserts that academic knowledge is
always produced by positioned actors with an embodied vi-
sion that takes into account its specificity, locale, partiality,
and finitude (1991 [1988]:189–190). The objectivity then
turns out to be about particular and specific embodiment and
not about a false vision promising transcendence of all limits
and responsibility as well as the splitting of subject and object.
The third dilemma, which is closely connected to the one
above, relates to the possible danger of privileging Dalit per-
Kunnath Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemmas: Reflections from the Maoist Fields of India
spective over others, as this might result in a relinquishing of
academic rigor. A work with its avowed empathy for Dalit
causes might run the risk of ethnographic mimesis—a mere
reproduction of what people said and did without subjecting
these data to a rigorous analytical and interpretative process.
I address this concern in two ways. First, my approach is
committed to exploring the complexity and specificity of the
local voices and networks of power relations. Second, the
perspective advocated here critically engages with wider schol-
arship relevant to the topic being studied. In this instance,
the story, although told from a Dalit perspective, engages with
multiple voices and experiences of Dalits, who themselves are
a multilayered category, as well as non-Dalits. Further, the
story of Dalit participation in the Maoist Movement is both
distinctive and at the same time familiar in relation to peasant
revolutions elsewhere. Therefore, it is essential that I develop
the ethnography linking what I describe to the findings of other
researchers and literature on peasants, poverty, subordination,
and struggle. Privileging a Dalit perspective is, therefore, neither
a reproduction of Dalit voices nor a relinquishment of the
process of critical reexamination and reinterpretation. Most
significantly, the story narrated from the vantage point of Dalits,
then, as Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson propose, “forges links
between different knowledges that are possible from different
locations” and traces “possible alliances and common pur-
poses between them” (Gupta and Ferguson 1997:39). The
objectivity and reliability of such knowledge then rest precisely
in its methodological rigor, in deeply embedded intersubjec-
tivity and positionality.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to David Mosse, Harry West, Marieke Clarke,
Alena Kulinich, and my colleague Kate Sullivan for their in-
sightful comments. I remember with gratitude all my friends
in the field; some of them have lost their lives in the ongoing
Maoist insurgency and counterinsurgency, and others who
survive against all odds. They continue to inspire me.
Comments
Lori Allen
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of
Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, United King-
dom (laa29@cam.ac.uk). 11 V 13
George Kunnath frames certain issues as dilemmas, such as
whether it is right to privilege “a Dalit perspective over
others.” But this could be a dilemma only if one assumes the
possibility of writing without privileging some perspective.
Any writing about the human condition involves continuous
choice of focus. Kunnath rightly asks us to consider the po-
litical implications of those choices.
747
When I undertook fieldwork in the occupied Palestinian
territories during the second Palestinian intifada—the upris-
ing against Israeli occupation that started in September
2000— the “sides” of the conflict seemed clear. Well-armed,
helmeted Israeli soldiers were shooting from behind jeeps at
unarmed Palestinian youths throwing stones. The sides were
clear because the Israeli occupation and its brutal measures
were clear: in the shooting deaths of 105 children in the first
year of the intifada;12 in the Israeli army’s lax rules of en-
gagement;13 in the home demolitions14 and imprisonment
without trial of Palestinian political prisoners;15 in the Israeli
confiscation of Palestinian land and water16 to build illegal
settlements.17 I never considered the conflict to be one of
“Palestinians versus Israelis,” because no national name is true
to the complexities of people’s practices and beliefs. But my
research was located in the West Bank, a place housing a
people who are mostly politically and physically sealed off
from Israeli society, so there was no question about what
“side” my research would focus on: that of Palestinians vic-
timized by occupation.
But the central dilemma that Kunnath grapples with, “the
ethics of taking sides,” is not really about sides. It is about
choosing which structures of power and domination to focus
on. Nowhere is the boundary between “sides” consistently clear,
definite, or fixed by ethnic or national labels. Part of our task
as anthropologists is to explain the processes by which antag-
onistic sides are enclosed and to identify the porous spaces of
solidarity or collaboration that do or can exist. How we go
about defining and analyzing the boundaries between “sides”
can itself be a political intervention, even if it is only an in-
tervention in the political imagination, in what people under-
stand to be possibilities for change and thinkable futures.
Throughout my next decade of research on Palestine, the
question of “sides” became complicated in new ways. Sides
were muddied as the intifada wound down and Palestinian
factions fought each other. As the quasi-government in the
West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, was revealed to be a
seriously problematic institution, targets for anthropological
critique increased. The Palestinian Authority was an insti-
tution that allowed some of its members to engage in des-
picable practices, including the torture and abuse of Pales-
tinian political prisoners. It is an ethical responsibility to
remain honest about the array of individuals and structures
that oppress.
Anthropologists can choose many ways to talk about these
12. Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (2001), “A
Generation Denied: Israeli Violations of Palestinian Children’s Rights
in 2000,” http://www.dci-pal.org/english/publ/display.cfm?DocIdp192&
CategoryIdp8.
13. http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rpt/3060.htm.
14. http://www.btselem.org/punitive_demolitions/legal_basis.
15. http://www.btselem.org/topic/administrative_detention.
16. http://www.alhaq.org/publications/Water-For-One-People
-Only.pdf.
17. http://www.fmep.org/settlement_info/.
 748
structures without falling into the false dichotomy of claiming
to speak “for others” or remaining “silent in the face of the
sufferings.” One of these ways is to be honest about two
things: the extent to which, in our writings, we are always
ultimately speaking for ourselves, and the extent to which our
own subjectivities, our selves that do the writing, are always
shaped by, and deeply part of, the selves of other people,
including our research participants.
The problem Kunnath poses about the “ethics of taking
sides” also begs the question of what it means “to take a side”
and how active is that verb, “to take.” It is easier to say that
our relatively cushy lives, talking to students and writing for
our colleagues, is an engagement than to really take on a side.
It is perhaps comforting to believe that witnessing the suf-
ferings of others is a service. But if making a real political
difference or improving real people’s lives is one’s goal, then
“witnessing” and disturbing “ruling representations” is not
really enough. If one’s primary aim is to further the cause of
a particular marginalized group, then it behooves the an-
thropologist to understand well the array of influential people,
discourses, and local and global institutions that are in place
keeping those people disempowered. Besides calling attention
to the ruling representations that help sustain the structures
that dominate, we must also keep sight of the economic mo-
tivations, the powerful individuals, the ways elite classes con-
solidate their rule, the ways that resistance and political or-
ganization are stifled—that is, the material sources of power
alongside the symbolic forms. It is only with such a holistic
analysis that we can then strategize and plan how to focus
the extensive range of our anthropological work—our writing,
teaching, research, media engagements, volunteer work, NGO
collaborations—to achieve real political goals.
Gopal Guru
Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi, India 110067 (gopalguru2001@gmail.com). 30 VI 13
Anthropology, like any other discipline in social sciences, is
an investigative discipline. But it, unlike other disciplines, has
a special epistemological power to unsettle the universalistic
claims to truth. To put it differently, anthropology throws up
some minute details that have escaped the grip of the theory
that makes claims about it being universally adequate. At the
same time it is also a humble discipline. It makes the re-
searcher humble in the sense that the researcher starts treating
his or her social experience as inferior to the experience of
the deprived social groups under study. The social reality that
is under investigation offers the researcher background con-
ditions within which a researcher develops ethical stamina to
avoid treating people as objects of study. To put it yet dif-
ferently, it poses an ethical challenge to the researcher whether
he or she approachs the field of inquiry with the intention
Current Anthropology Volume 54, Number 6, December 2013
to either sell the sacrifice or tell the truth to those who are
the subject of study.
The bad side of anthropological activism is that a few en-
gaged in such activism have the habit of selling the sacrifice
rather than telling the truth or telling half the truth. For
example, quite a few of them make an advertisement of per-
sonal difficulties that they have to face while conducting field-
work in a field that is socially and geographically difficult to
access. Similarly, consuming the experience of being in the
field no doubt may be morally objectionable, as somebody
else is used as an object for one’s own self-preservation. Ethics
of maintaining the dignity of the researched is not simply
limited to the field but also imposes limits on the researcher
while he or she is out of the field. Telling the truth particularly
to the socially dominant in the field poses a far greater chal-
lenge and even dilemmas to the researcher. Kunnath informs
us about these difficulties. The ethical challenge before the
researcher, therefore, is to go for the hard activism rather than
soft activism. Hard activism involves taking sides with the
victims against the tormentor who is locally powerful. Thus
anthropological inquiry involves two mutually intersecting
routes that one has to follow for making his or her position-
ality in the field ethically sound. Which of these two routes
has George Kunnath taken?
Based on the close reading of the testimonies that the au-
thor has provided, it is possible to state that Kunnath has
chosen to tell the truth. This commitment to telling the truth
is evident from his readiness to go against the grain and
question the notion of neutrality, objectivity, and being apo-
litical while approaching the field. He shows stamina to take
an ethically defensible stand. The field that he chose has been
really under fire from the side of the Maoists, on the one
hand, and the upper-caste landlords, on the other. Jehanabad
in Bihar has been the area of high-profile Maoist activism.
As the researcher very rightly suggests, taking sides with the
Dalits could be objectionable for the Maoists, who would not
like others to replace them in terms of leading the Dalit strug-
gle. Similarly, landlords may not like an outsider to mobilize
Dalits in their struggle against the landowning classes. Work-
ing in such a field under fire, to use the very perceptive term
of the researcher, is really worthy of appreciation.
However, there are certain moral dilemmas that the re-
searcher has noted in the essay but does not seem to have
offered a convincing answer. First, by his own admission, he
chooses to adopt a name that is not his authentic one. But
he does not tell us the sociological location of this name. In
India, family names do carry a heavy load of hierarchical
meaning. To be fair to the researcher, he perhaps uses this
pragmatism primarily in the service of the production of su-
perior knowledge that may eventually help those in the pre-
sent case, the Dalits. There is some kind of pragmatism that
privileges production of knowledge over activism. Second, the
dilemma that the researcher seems to be facing is about the
degree of involvement in social activism that might favor the
cause of the underprivileged. One gets the feeling that the
Kunnath Anthropology’s Ethical Dilemmas: Reflections from the Maoist Fields of India
researcher seems to be involved in the moral economy of the
Dalit household. The researcher seems to have decided the
boundaries of involvement that he would not cross for the
sake of producing knowledge. Finally, we do not know
whether the researcher shouted at the landlord because the
latter was bracketing the former with the Untouchables or
was objecting to the landlord’s act of humiliating Untouch-
ables. My guess is that the second option would be the case.
Charles R. Hale
Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and Ben-
son Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin, SRH
1.310, 2300 Red River Street D0800, Austin, Texas 78712, U.S.A.
(crhale@austin.utexas.edu). 20 VII 13
I found this piece to be thoughtful, measured, and cogent. I
especially appreciate the tone of humility, often absent in
social science writing. I would like to think that this humility
is a correlate of the type of “engaged” anthropological research
that Kunnath advocates, though I expect that assertion might
be hard to sustain. I applaud Kunnath’s gentle critique of the
AAA ethics statement, in particular the pointed observation
of the colonialist overtones of the “protect your informants”
clause. His critique might even have been formulated as a
broader postulate: the statement loses stand-alone validity the
more “engaged” the research in question becomes.
As for the three dilemmas that frame the article’s conclu-
sion, I have a brief comment on each. The first—to what
extent can the anthropologist be seen as engaging with a
banned organization?—does not, in my view, qualify as a
dilemma. As Kunnath’s narrative makes clear, his commit-
ment was to work with the Dalits and, in this process, to
accompany them in their struggles for social justice. If these
struggles led them to support the insurgency, then it stands
to reason that he would follow them and attempt to under-
stand why. The fact that the Indian government banned the
insurgent organization poses serious practical challenges but
should not call the research itself into question. Perhaps the
dilemma could be reframed, at least hypothetically, to focus
on the complexities that would follow from the researcher’s
choice to join the insurgency. (See, e.g., Gustavo Esteva’s in-
cisive analysis of the 2006 uprising in Oaxaca, in which he
clearly was an actor [2007]). Does such engagement mark the
outer limits of anthropological research? Also, an excruciating
dilemma would emerge if this insurgency maintained signif-
icant Dalit support while turning brutally against those who
refuse to join (for a parallel case in Peru, see Theidon 2013).
The second and third dilemmas are variations on the same
question: do Kunnath’s commitments to intersubjectivity, to
a preferential alignment with the poor, and to privileging Dalit
perspectives, threaten to undermine the objectivity and rigor
of his research? Kunnath poses these challenges fairly and
answers them well. Privileging Dalit perspectives does not
749
require him to report on them romantically or uncritically;
critical reflexivity is a better guarantee of objectivity than
professed neutrality that turns a blind eye to the researcher’s
own subject position. After all that has been written on this
topic, I have yet to see a convincing rebuttal of Donna Har-
away’s foundational call to reframe objectivity as a positioned,
intersubjective endeavor, which far from compromising an-
alytical rigor, actually enhances it (Haraway 1991 [1988]).
My guess is that this article, if read and discussed in India,
could be quite controversial, due to the political proximity
of the topic, but in US anthropological circles it will generate
fewer sparks than the first salvos for “engagement” (Hymes
1969); in fact, the magnitude of controversy generated by the
periodic calls since the 1960s (e.g., Asad 1973; Mugabane and
Faris 1985; Scheper-Hughes 1995; Sudbury and Okazawa-Rey
2008) has been on a steady decline. Perhaps this means that
some version of the argument finally has made it into the
mainstream, even if (or because?) peasant insurgencies are no
longer common subjects of engagement.
This assertion informs one substantive critique. I think this
article offers a better summary of intellectual battles already
fought than of those that lie ahead. Here are three examples
of the latter that come immediately to mind. First, the long-
standing call for positioned research is coming back to bite
us in the human terrain program controversy (Gusterson
2013). I agree with the critics, who point to its many noxious
effects, and, ironically enough, this may be a case when the
AAA ethics code is useful. But it is hard to refute the char-
acterization of human terrain research as “engaged.” What,
then, is the relationship between the political and the meth-
odological in the core definition of engaged research?
Second, at least in US academia, there is still a deep gulf
between dilemmas of engaged fieldwork and the institution-
ally validated (and funded!) training of new generations of
engaged anthropologists. Kunnath’s arguments for engaged re-
search are less threatening because they are individual and be-
cause this work clearly yielded fascinating ethnography. But
does Kunnath’s call for an anthropology of liberation (echoing
Gordon 1991) have a correlate proposal for institutional change
in relation to, for example, graduate training programs?
Third, after reflecting on Kunnath’s excellent article, I won-
der if the day is near when practitioners of “engaged” anthro-
pology can stop being on the defensive and focus the energy
saved on advancing arguments for the benefits of this approach.
Did Kunnath’s research approach yield analytical insight and
theoretical innovation that otherwise would have been impos-
sible to achieve? Might he have advanced an epistemological
argument—that is, that engaged research entails a distinct
means of producing knowledge about the topic at hand?
Without taking on these questions, I fear that extremely val-
uable contributions like his could be rendered marginal (if
uncontested) in relation to the uphill battle for institutional
change that lies ahead.
 750
Reply
I would like to thank Lori Allen, Gopal Guru, and Charles
R. Hale for their insightful comments. My impression is that
there is no disagreement among us on the question of en-
gaging in anthropological activism in favor of marginalized
populations. What the commentators seem to call for is a
critical reflection on the complexities and nuances of an eth-
ically positioned anthropology, especially in relation to taking
sides, activism, as well as the challenges that lie ahead for
engaged anthropology.
The concept of engagement itself requires a critical inter-
rogation. Anthropology has always been an engaged disci-
pline. Even those who profess to practice an “anthropology
of neutrality or disengagement,” as David Price points out,
are “engaged in supporting the status quo” (2010:S217). And
the status quo always favors the dominant and the powerful.
Further, today we are also confronted with the anthropological
engagement with the US Army’s Human Terrain System
(HTS) Project. In my view, the central focus of any form of
anthropological engagement should be guided by an eman-
cipatory project. Here I draw on Alain Badiou’s ethics. For
Badiou, ethics is not about protecting the suffering or safe-
guarding human rights, which according to him, will only
lead to maintaining the status quo. Ethics, then should be
about laying the foundations of a new egalitarian social order;
it is about putting into action a liberative vision (Badiou
2001). I shall come back to Badiou shortly.
Similarly, the notion of anthropological activism calls for
scrutiny. Our debate here is not about what activism is. The
general understanding today, at least in academia, is that ac-
tivism refers to those endeavors that promote social justice.
The concern, both Allen and Guru have raised, is about the
level of activism. I surely share with Allen that a mere “wit-
nessing of suffering” or “disturbing ruling presentations” are
not enough and, with Guru, that the production of knowledge
and activism should be at the service of emancipation. The
guiding principle for any engagement should be our total
commitment to the emancipatory politics.
I am aware, however, that the extent of academic activism
today is hugely determined by funding priorities, institutional
pressures, and even state control. In relation to the state re-
strictions in the United States, Price points out the lasting
impact of McCarthyism as its “ability to limit and shape
anthropological research and critiques” (2004:344). A similar
situation exists in India in relation to any emancipatory in-
volvement in the context of the Maoist Movement.
Allen mentions the blurred boundaries that present diffi-
culties in “taking sides.” Here again, I find Badiou’s reflections
on ethics helpful. For Badiou, ethics of emancipatory vision
is blurred by (among other things) the disaster of identifying
total power with any truth. Every rigorous application of a
truth leads to “absolutization of its power,” leading to the
Current Anthropology Volume 54, Number 6, December 2013
destruction of the everyday knowledges, human initiatives,
and capabilities that make possible the realization of an eman-
cipatory vision (Badiou 2001:85). This is so often true of
several ideologies/movements that come into being with such
liberative promises only to turn into oppressive regimes. A
deep sense of discernment should then characterize our every
act of anthropological engagement, always aiming to unveil
the structures of oppression and unequal power relations.
Allen has rightly pointed out that chronicling this process
itself as a “political intervention,” a form of academic activ-
ism, and, for Guru, it is about “telling the truth” and not
about “selling anthropologists’ sacrifices.”
Finally, regarding the challenges that lie ahead for engaged
anthropology in relation to the HTS or any other area, I
reiterate the centrality of the emancipatory project. I believe
when Hale poses the question of the relationship between the
political and the methodological, he is alluding to this. Else-
where, he offers an excellent framework for engaged research
with an emancipatory vision. Such a research, he affirms, seeks
to explore “the root causes of inequality, oppression and vio-
lence”; is conducted in collaboration “with people who them-
selves are subjects to these conditions”; and together with them
it aims to develop effective “strategies for transforming these
conditions.”18 The “engaged anthropology” of the HTS does
not seem to offer such a liberative program, and rightly so the
“Executive Board of the AAA expresses its disapproval” of it.
However, the board does not offer one, either. Without an
emancipatory vision, the Executive Board’s call for a “robustly
democratic processes of fact-finding, debate, dialogue, and de-
liberation” might only provide justification for the “humani-
tarian” interventions of the United States and its allies.19
I wholly agree with Hale that anthropological institutions
are still a distance away from developing graduate training
programs that give, if not priority, at least serious consider-
ation to emancipatory politics. The lack of such commitment
is clearly an indication that the battles fought over engagement
and privileging a marginalized perspective are yet to be won.
Perhaps we require a more vigorous witnessing through writ-
ing and teaching. The road ahead continues to be bumpy but
challenging as ever—with new problems and new marginal-
izations—and, more than ever before, an emancipatory vision
should form the central focus of anthropological ethics, en-
gagement, and training.
—George J. Kunnath
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