Workshop rationale
What is the role of researchers in articulating critique in a time of heightened political, social, economic and environmental upheaval? What kind of critique is necessary, possible, and useful in our current times, when the very idea of critical thinking seems threatened by authoritarian, illiberal power and post-truth politics? As such, we ask: What are the moral implications of a social science that remains mostly concerned with critique? What are the limitations of such a framing outside the walls of academia? What alternatives do we have?
Linked to this conceptual preoccupation is a practical one. In a time when critical perspectives are often not welcomed by institutionalised power, ethnographers face ever more difficulties in gaining and maintaining access to legal and governance institutions. What does increasing institutional closing down mean for political and legal anthropology as a field of research, but also of practice?
Brought together, these ethical and methodological dynamics in many ways reflect the balancing act between pragmatism and utopianism we also witness in our interlocutors’ experiences. These experiences, which chart a delicate track between utopia and dejection can serve as a yardstick for our own reflexive practice, beyond the intellectual double impasse of cynicism and relativism. As such, we encourage participants to reflect on the positionality of political and legal anthropologists as researchers-in-the-world and, through this, on the future of research on legal and political processes.