Impulse to Act: A New Anthropology of Resistance and Social Justice

by Othon Alexandrakis (Editor), Jessica Greenberg (Contributor), Eirine Avramapoulou (Contributor)

What drives people to take to the streets in protest? What is their connection to other activists and how does that change over time? How do seemingly spontaneous activist movements emerge, endure, and evolve, especially when they lack a leader and concrete agenda? How does one analyze a changing political movement immersed in contingency? Impulse to Act addresses these questions incisively, examining a wide range of activist movements from the December 2008 protests in Greece to the recent chto delat in Russia. Contributors in the first section of this volume highlight the affective dimensions of political movements, charting the various ways in which participants coalesce around and belong to collectives of resistance. The potent agency of movements is highlighted in the second section, where scholars show how the emerging actions and critiques of protesters help disrupt authoritative political structures. Responding to the demands of the field today, the novel approaches to protest movements in Impulse to Act offer new ways to reengage with the traditional cornerstones of political anthropology.

Genres: Anthropology

286 pages, Hardcover

Published October 3, 2016

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book that is particularly astute in questioning the relationship of anthropology to recent social movements. Two essays worth noting: 1) Cymene Howe's "Negative Space: Unmovement and the Study of Activism When There is No Action," really gets at an important question about how to write about social movements that does not fetishize its most exciting moments. As anyone who has been involved in social justice struggles realizes that the mundane work far outstrips the exciting moments. Stuffing envelopes, crafting emails, talking to members, etc. comprise the daily grind of maintaining momentum and developing relations. This, however, is often the most overlooked element. So it is not only a question of analysis but also simply gaining access since it is those moments that tend to happen out of sight and out of mind; 2) Marianne Mackelbergh, "Whose Ethics? Negotiating Ethics and Responsibility in the Field," addresses the third rail for anyone involved with an institution and has to negotiate the dubious bureaucracy that claims it is about ethics but is really about essentially protecting the institution's liability. Mackelbergh makes a good point that many social movements adopt values distinctly at odds with those of institutions and the state. So what are those of us who are embedded in state institutions and the like to do in trying to advance an ethical relation to those very movements that distrust the very institutions that support our work? No easy answer is provided. But, in many ways, the simple act of raising these thorny questions is admirable.

There are a couple other good essays, but a lot are mired in academic jargon and obscure anthropological debates, which might be useful for those in the field. But for those of us who want practical advice and not a bunch of citations and some obtuse language, the essays can be off putting and strangely at odds in engaging in discourses that the very subjects they are studying might find alienating. A strange but telling absence of the collection is no interrogation of how academic discourse is to be reconciled with some of the populist strains of the social movements being study. Any researcher worth their salt asks the question of accessibility in terms of the journals, periodicals, etc they are publishing within and the language employed. A weird absence that is significant oversight for a collection that claims it is interrogating academics' relations to social movements. Nonetheless, it is a good book that addresses some of the major debates occurring now.

One other noteworthy effort: the collection questions what it means to study social movements during the age of austerity and "crisis." There is no easy answer here either. But at least the question is being raised. Perhaps a good companion to this is Paolo Gerbaudo's *The Mask and the Flag*.