-
3. Activism as Archaeological Praxis: Engaging Communities with Archaeologies that Matter
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 Activism as Archaeological Praxis Engaging Communities with Archaeologies That Matter david a. GadSby and Jodi a. barneS The question of how archaeologists can do work that matters lies at the core of our research projects. While embarking on our fieldwork, we wanted to create projects that meant something to us and the people who were directly and indirectly influenced by them. We also wanted to be sure that the communities involved in our projects had a stake in the way they were conducted, so we took care to involve them from the outset. The Hampden Community Archaeology Project and the AppalachianTrail Archaeological Heritage Projects are results of these efforts.In these projects we use praxis as a guiding concept for engaging communities in the past. When we began, we each thought we were doing something new, but our research led us to a set of traditions in archaeology that advocate for change. The following analysis describes the basic shape or trajectory of some of the activist archaeological literature we’ve encountered and then illustrates, through discussion of our ongoing research, how we’ve applied it to the design and practice of our fieldwork. Archaeologists have a history of engaging in politics. The roots of this engagement lie in the various spheres of feminism, political ecology, Marxism, critical theory, and anticolonialism, to name a few. Activist archaeologists directly shape the practice of archaeology through the inclusion of women and people of color in the practice of archaeology (e.g., Franklin 1997; gero et al. 1983; Nelson et al. 1994), by arguing for better wages for archaeological work (e.g., Paynter 1983; Shanks and Mcguire 1996), and by reshaping interpretive endeavors to be more accessible to the public.This also includes topics of study such as gender (e.g., Conkey and Spector 1984; gero and Conkey 1991), race and the diaspora (e.g., Blakey 1996; Singleton 1999), capitalism (e.g., Leone Activism as Archaeological Praxis • 49 1995; Mcguire and Paynter 1991), and colonialism (e.g., Trigger 1996). In addition, archaeologists have recognized the relationship between politics, the ways we view the past, and how social constructions of the past can naturalize present political conditions (e.g., Arnold 1996; Kohl and Fawcett 1995). More recently,archaeologists such as Pyburn and Wilk (1995) have noted the ethical necessity of engaging local communities in archaeological projects. Community (Derry and Malloy 2003; greer et al.2002; Shackel and Chambers 2004), indigenous (Dongoske et al. 2000; Swidler et al. 1997; Watkins 2001), and public (Jameson 1997; Little, ed. 2002; Merriman 2004) archaeologies have developed as ways to heed this call to action. The term “activism” carries several connotations, not all of which are positive . Paulo Freire (2005:87), for instance, casts activism as a stance out of balance with critical thought. However, we do not use the term in this way. Instead , we recognize the need not only for action in the world, but also for the critical and reflexive production of high-quality archaeological knowledge. Similarly, the archaeologies that we cite combine aspects of two major traditions of thought: one grounded in critical theory, which attempts to affect consciousness , and one concerned with community action. Most hover toward one end or the other, borrowing aspects from each. In our conception, activist archaeology can be seen to operate through a dialectic relationship between these two major traditions of thought. Since archaeology is a process, or a system of social relationships in the present within which the production of meanings take place (Tilley 1989),it is through praxis that salient ideas shape social, scientific, and political action. This action, in turn, alters the social, scientific, and political context of contemporary material life (Mcguire 2002:22). The dialectic bids us to study the whole in order to understand its parts and shows that we can have no valid understanding of any of the parts without reference to the whole (Mcguire 2002:99). Praxis refers to the uniquely human ability to knowingly and creatively make change in the world. It is a conscious undertaking that is simultaneously scholarly and activist. Just as the structure that we propose for activist archaeology involves a dialectic between critical theory and community action, praxis implies a dialectical relationship between gaining knowledge of the world, critiquing the world, and taking action in the world (Mcguire et al. 2005). Mcguire and his colleagues (2005:365) inform us that the kind of critically informed action implied by praxis is neither easy to achieve nor without risk...