Full Description
Scholars in many fields increasingly find themselves caught between the academy, with its demands for rigor and objectivity, and direct engagement in social activism. Some advocate on behalf of the communities they study; others incorporate the knowledge and leadership of their informants directly into the process of knowledge production. What ethical, political, and practical tensions arise in the course of such work? In this wide-ranging and multidisciplinary volume, leading scholar-activists map the terrain on which political engagement and academic rigor meet. The contributors are: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Edmund T. Gordon, Davydd Greenwood, Joy James, Peter Nien-chu Kiang, George Lipsitz, Samuel Martinez, Jennifer Bickham Mendez, Dani Nabudere, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Jemima Pierre, Laura Pulido, Shannon Speed, Shirley Suet-ling Tang, and Joao Vargas.
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Resources
Foreword, by Craig Calhoun
Introduction
Charles R. Hale
PART I. MAPPING THE TERRAIN
1. Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
2. Research, Activism, and Knowledge Production
Dani Wadada Nabudere
3. Breaking the Chains and Steering the Ship: How Activism Can Help Change Teaching and Scholarship
George Lipsitz
PART II. TROUBLING THE TERMS
4. Activist Groundings or Groundings for Activism? The Study of Racialization as a Site of Political Engagement
Jemima Pierre
5. Globalizing Scholar Activism: Opportunities and Dilemmas through a Feminist Lens
Jennifer Bickham Mendez
6. Activist Scholarship: Limits and Possibilities in Times of Black Genocide
João H. Costa Vargas
7. Making Violence Visible: An Activist Anthropological Approach to Women's Rights Investigation
Samuel Martínez
PART III. PUTTING ACTIVIST SCHOLARSHIP TO WORK
8. Forged in Dialogue: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research
Shannon Speed
9. Community-Centered Research as Knowledge/Capacity Building in Immigrant and Refugee Communities
Shirley Suet-ling Tang
10. Theorizing and Practicing Democratic Community Economics: Engaged Scholarship, Economic Justice,
and the Academy
Jessica Gordon Nembhard
PART IV. MAKING OURSELVES AT HOME
11. Crouching Activists, Hidden Scholars: Reflections on Research and Development with Students and
Communities in Asian American Studies
Peter Nien-chu Kiang
12. Theoretical Research, Applied Research, and Action Research: The Deinstitutionalization of
Activist Research
Davydd J. Greenwood
13. FAQs: Frequently (Un)Asked Questions about Being a Scholar Activist
Laura Pulido
Afterword: Activist Scholars or Radical Subjects?
by Joy James and Edmund T. Gordon
Contributors
Index
