Engaging, Standing, and Stepping
Evaluating Anthropological Activism on an Amazonian Petro-Frontier
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26686/ce.v3i1.6645Keywords:
Engagement, Activism, Collaboration, Oil, AmazoniaAbstract
Anthropologists and activists portray the lives and lands of Ecuador’s Indigenous Cofán people as a case study of the damage caused by petroleum extraction. Yet during my fieldwork on the issue, I began to question the nature of the Cofán-oil encounter when the community in which I worked decided to allow oil companies onto their land. In this article, I examine my own involvements with Cofán oil politics in dialogue with Stuart Kirsch’s concept of ‘engaged anthropology’ and Kim TallBear’s call for researchers to ‘stand with’ their research subjects. I argue that anthropological activism is necessarily a complex and shifting affair, especially when our collaborators’ perspectives diverge from our own regarding the best possible paths to their wellbeing. I suggest that the most ethical option is for anthropologists to commit themselves to continuous, co-con-structed partnerships in which they are perpetually prepared to transform their most basic political and intellectual positions.
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Copyright (c) 2020 Michael Cepek
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