Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy and Activism

by Asale Angel-Ajani, Victoria Sanford (Editor), Phillippe Bourgois (Foreword)

Anthropology has long been associated with an ethos of “engagement.” The field’s core methods and practices involve long-term interpersonal contact between researchers and their study participants, giving major research topics in the field a distinctively human face. Can research findings be authentic and objective? Are anthropologists able to use their data to aid the participants of their study, and is that aid always welcome?

In Engaged Observer, Victoria Sanford and Asale Angel-Ajani bring together an international array of scholars who have been embedded in some of the most conflict-ridden and dangerous zones in the world to reflect on the role and responsibility of anthropological inquiry.  They explore issues of truth and objectivity, the role of the academic, the politics of memory, and the impact of race, gender, and social position on the research process. Through ethnographic case studies, they offer models for conducting engaged research and illustrate the contradictions and challenges of doing so.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Asale Angel-Ajani is the author of Strange Trade: The Story of Two Women Who Risked Everything in the International Drug Trade. She has held residencies at Millay, Djerassi, and Playa, and is an alum of VONA and Tin House. She is a professor at the City College of New York. A Country You Can Leave is her first novel.

Reviews

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with the heart breaking realities people face across the globe. However, it does not only contain the stories of victims, but also has an account of the other side(those who inflict violence). Insightful, passionate, and inspiring. This book really shows how ethnographies can bring forth the denied and unrecorded history which can change resistance, political agency, and perhaps public policy.

[Mills College Library]

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