Open AccessDon’t they really represent us?
Author(s) -
L. Sebastiani,
Ariana Sánchez Cota
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
commoning ethnography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2537-9879
DOI - 10.26686/ce.v1i1.5206
Subject(s) - democratization , knowledge production , sociology , social justice , key (lock) , social activism , position (finance) , economic justice , political science , social science , epistemology , democracy , politics , law , knowledge management , ecology , philosophy , finance , computer science , economics , biology
In this article we position ourselves as socially and politically committed anthropologists, thinking about the possible ways research and activism come together in contemporary anthropology. We emphasize how critical social sciences have contributed to this debate mainly around two key ideas: the democratization of knowledge production and the politicization of that knowledge. We examine our experiences in the Spanish 15M movement and share four examples -two ‘failed’ and two ‘successful’ experiences- in which we discuss two key aspects of being activist academics. First, the difficulties and advantages of doing activism and research as a combined anthropological engagement; and, secondly, the usefulness of combining a long-term commitment to social justice as an effort to democratize mechanisms of knowledge production.