Conclusion. The Possibilities, Limits, and Relevance of Engaged Ethnography

2020 ◽  
pp. 367-390
Keyword(s):  
Engaged Ethnography

Biting the hand that feeds you? Teachers engage with an ethnography of neoliberalism in education

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Amy Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Convergence Theory ◽  
Public High School ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Teacher Interviews ◽  
Interest Convergence ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Engaged Ethnography

Scholars who document neoliberal trends in education argue that privatization and corporatization in schools is dehumanizing and discourages democratic participation. These scholars assert that neoliberal education policies heighten social inequity by emphasizing individualism, marketability and colorblindness without interrogating social structures of power. Can qualitative documentation of the effects of neoliberal policy in education “talk back” to these trends? Can ethnographically mapping the complex effects of neoliberal trends on teaching and learning serve to heighten teachers' sense of agency and resistance? This paper documents the ways that teachers construct their identities in reaction to reading the author's critical ethnography of their school. Data were gathered for this paper in teacher interviews following two years of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork at the College Preparatory Academy, a small public high school in Brooklyn, New York that created its own in-house nonprofit organization in order to solicit funds from private donors. Using Derrick Bell's interest convergence theory, I critique competitive models of philanthropy in education and explore whether collaborative and critically engaged ethnography can serve to expose the tension between public and private interests in education, and can encourage teachers to challenge and critique these borders.

Anthropologists Meet the 15M: The Rise of Engaged Ethnography

1969 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-344
Author(s):  
Beltran Roca ◽  
Iban Diaz-Parra ◽  
Vanessa Gómez-Bernal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Engaged Ethnography ◽  
Feminist Movements

In 2011 we were involved as activists in labour, 15M, and the housing and feminist movements. Part of our scientific production became intertwined with our militancy. In addition, drawing on our research and militant experiences in the cycle of struggle that started in 2011, we noticed that the process of questioning and delegitimisation was also affecting the ambit of the social sciences. Thus, we undertook a review of the scientific literature on the 15M in order to ascertain whether the epistemological perspectives and the methodological choices of these studies were related in some way to the crisis of representation that was affecting other social institutions. This is the objective of this article. First, it explains the strategy we followed in searching the literature on the 15M. Second, it introduces the findings of the literature review on this social movement, both in Spanish and in international academic journals. Third, it proposes a typology of engaged ethnographic research. Fourth, it provides a series of limitations and precautions that researchers should bear in mind when putting this research technique into practice. Fifth, it includes a final section synthesising the main conclusions of this article regarding the anthropological production of the 15M, the types of engaged ethnography, and the limitations of this technique.

Engaged Ethnography and the Story(ies) of the Anti-Sweatshop Movement

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Patric Clair
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
History Of ◽  
Purdue University ◽  
Engaged Ethnography

The purpose of the present study is to conceptualize engagement as both theoretical and methodological in relation to social movements. Theoretically, engagement is seen as central to activism and is addressed as a complex ontological and teleological phenomenon in relation to social movements. Methodologically, engagement is addressed in terms of (a) the role of the researcher, (b) the perspective espoused by the researcher, (c) how and why the researcher enters into and enacts with the cultural phenomenon, (d) how the researcher tends to the subjects and (e) how the researcher presents the story. This methodological approach is referred to as engaged ethnography. The main story (and history) of the contemporary antisweatshop movement as well as embedded stories of the movement, especially as they unfold at Purdue University (e.g., stories of the researcher’s background, and stories surrounding various strategies like, hunger strikes, bringing activists from the Dominican Republic to campus, and giving yellow roses to the president, or not) are provided and discussed according to the concept of engagement.

ICE Offices and Immigration Courts: Accompaniment in Zones of Illegality

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 214-223
Author(s):  
Kristin Elizabeth Yarris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Field Office ◽  
Ice Field ◽  
Activist Anthropology ◽  
Immigration And Customs Enforcement ◽  
Engaged Ethnography

In this article, I examine two sites of the contemporary illegality industry in the United States: the ICE Field Office and the Immigration Court. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic engagement, including accompaniment and observations in a regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office and an Executive Office of Immigration Reform (EOIR) Court, I trace how human interactions and social relations in each of these bureaucratic sites structure and reinforce conditions of precarity, insecurity, and marginality among undocumented and asylum seeking people in the United States. In both sites, the enforcement power of the state is visible through the configurations of bureaucratic processes and the structures of interactions between migrants and federal government officials. Examining these two sites from the vantage point of engaged ethnography, I illustrate how routine, bureaucratic encounters (re)produce illegality and exclusion by enacting violence against migrants through the powers of surveillance and administrative monitoring, and the threat of deportation and family separation. I also reflect on the political potential that emerges through activist anthropology and accompaniment with migrants in sites of state violence.

Transformations in Engaged Ethnography

2013 ◽  
pp. 199-228
Author(s):  
MARIBEL CASAS-CORTÉS ◽  
MICHAL OSTERWEIL ◽  
DANA E. POWELL
Keyword(s):  
Engaged Ethnography

What’s “Justice and Dignity” Got to Do with It?: Migrant Vulnerability, Corporate Complicity, and the State

2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-116
Author(s):  
Angela C. Stuesse
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Worker Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Employer Sanctions ◽  
Engaged Ethnography

In 2001, Tyson Foods, one of the world’s leading chicken processors, was indicted on charges that it recruited undocumented migrants to work in its plants across the rural United States. In the following years, Tyson engaged in an operation to purge the largest chicken plant in the country of hundreds of unionized immigrant workers, relying heavily on the Social Security Administration’s controversial “No-Match” program to shape its termination practices. In response, a local campaign called for “Justice and Dignity” in the form of an improved corporate policy that would simultaneously serve the interests of the company, its workers, and their communities. This article chronicles that localized struggle and its national aftermath, illuminating the far-reaching effects federal “employer sanctions” have had on transnational corporations and their policymakers, on workers of different backgrounds, and on strategies used to advocate for worker rights. Politically engaged ethnography reveals how differentially positioned actors navigate and experience the neoliberal immigration and employment laws of the United States while deepening our understanding of the workings of the poultry industry, the recruitment of immigrant workers, and the anthropology of organized labor.

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