Dilemmas of an Expert Witness

This chapter presents two affidavits submitted to the Inter-American Court. The first case was concerned with the negative consequences of Suriname’s refusal to recognize indigenous land rights, including the establishment of a nature reserve that become a de facto open-access zone on indigenous land. The second addressed problems associated with indigenous land tenure in Guyana under the Amerindian Act of 2006. Comparing the two cases allows the chapter to make several observations about the dynamics of short-term ethnographic research conducted for expert-witness reports. This includes the need to make affidavits legible to the three overlapping frames of the legal system, the communities seeking recognition of their rights, and anthropology. The chapter also considers the narrative choices in these affidavits, the political dilemmas of being an expert witness, and the compromises of short-term ethnography.

The Search for Alternative Outcomes

This chapter examines a conservation and development project in Papua New Guinea in the mid-1990s. These projects were intended as alternatives to more destructive forms of resource extraction, including logging and mining. In this case, the four sociolinguistic groups living in the area could not agree on a shared agenda, forestalling the project. This suggests the importance of understanding regional history before establishing conservation areas. Although I correctly diagnosed the challenges facing implementation of the project, my desire for an alternative to destructive forms of development tempered my assessment of the project. In subsequent work, I began to focus on corporations responsible for environmental degradation.

Conclusion

The conclusion takes up the questions raised by the cases discussed here, including the false dichotomy between basic science and engaged research, by showing how their findings are of value beyond their initial objectives and contexts. Engaged anthropology offers new sites for research and identifies novel topics. It also suggests caution when writing from a distance, when seeking solutions to problems, and when debates are polarized. It can generate valuable hypotheses for future research. Thus a key dimension of engaged research is its capacity to contribute to larger debates rather than being instrumental in scope. Finally, the conclusion considers whether engaged research produces ethnography that is good enough, whether it contributes to desirable political outcomes, and whether it is good for the discipline of anthropology.

How Analysis of Local Contexts Can Have Global Significance

This chapter considers claims about culture loss at hearings of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands, including the impact of nuclear weapons testing on the people of Rongelap Atoll. The concept of cultural property is used to identify the referents of discourse about culture loss, including local knowledge, subsistence production, and connections to place. For example, the absence of breadfruit and pandanus trees on the atolls where the people from Rongelap were relocated prevented them from teaching subsequent generations how to build their distinctive sailing canoes, contributing to the decline of long-distance voyaging and the loss of knowledge about navigation by the stars and wave patterns. These discussions have been taken up by international debates about noneconomic loss and damage resulting from climate change, a matter of considerable significance for the people living in the Marshall Islands, given their double exposure to both nuclear radiation and rising sea levels.

When the Intervention Fails, Does the Research Still Matter?

This chapter discusses a consultancy on property and pollution associated with a legal action representing indigenous landowners against the owners of a gold mine outside Honiara in the Solomon Islands. After the lawsuit against the mine failed and the country was overtaken by civil conflict, I was unable to return for fifteen years. During archival research conducted in 2014, I learned that my earlier work on land rights helps to explain the civil conflict between local landowners and labor migrants in the plantation sector. Consequently, the chapter shows how ethnographic data produced in the context of engaged research projects may find relevance in changed circumstances.

How Political Commitments Influence Research

This chapter is based on long-term research with people affected by the Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea, including involvement in a lawsuit seeking to halt its destructive environmental impact. It considers examples of ethnographic refusal, when anthropologists do not write about events that might harm their informants. It also examines relationships between engaged anthropologists and colleagues, lawyers and law, corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and communities. This chapter and the next address these questions in the context of long-term research projects, while the other examples in the book consider these issues in relation to short-term, problem-focused research, which have their own challenges and opportunities.

The Risks of Intervention

A striking feature of debates concerning the disposition of Native American human remains is their invocation of the conventional domains of science, property, and kinship. Strong political claims about repatriation tend to assert the primacy of one domain over the others. Yet in contemporary North American social contexts, these domains have heterarchical relations, in which no single perspective dominates, rather than hierarchical relations organized by a fixed ranking system. Resolving disputes in heterarchical systems requires negotiation across domains rather than privileging a single domain. This requires the participants in these debates to understand how and why competing claims are fashioned. Yet deconstructing the terms of reference in heated debates may result in political backlash even when the goal of the analysis is to identify common ground.

Introduction

The introduction examines the varieties of engaged research practices in anthropology. It defines engagement in terms of interventions into politics, especially in relation to concerns about social and environmental justice. It also describes the resulting innovations. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of reflexivity for analyzing engaged research practices. Many of the examples in the book address property disputes and their resolution through the law.

When Contributions are Elusive

This chapter examines the West Papuan independence movement. It describes long-term research with West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea and exiled political leaders. It discusses a shift in the late 1990s from paramilitary opposition to Indonesian violence to human rights activism. It also describes how negative representations of West Papuans, including claims about lost tribes, undermine their pursuit of sovereignty. The author discusses his participation in various forms of solidarity politics.