Of Contract and Camaraderie: Thoughts on What Relationships in the Field Could Be

Friendship is never a given in the present; it belongs to the experience of waiting, of promise, or of commitment. Its discourse is that of prayer and at issue there is that which responsibility opens to the future.

(Derrida 1988, 636)

The graduate student members of the Ethnography-as-Activism working group generally agree on the merits of combining ethnographic and political work. The challenge for us has always been how to begin putting such a hybrid project into practice. Inevitably, as illustrated by several of the essays presented here, the question of how to begin becomes a question about relationships. What kinds of relationships are best suited to the working out of an activist anthropological praxis? The members of Ethnography-as-Activism have wrestled with this question more frequently than any other.

As one model we have Stuart Kirsch's (2006) work in Papua New Guinea. But our steps toward combining activism and anthropology are already much more intentional than his gradual turn toward politically engaged work. Only after several years of ethnographic research focused on questions of ritual and meaning did the Yonggom people call on him for help in addressing their concerns about pollution from the Ok Tedi mine (Kirsch 2002, 2010). We have also looked to the work of Luke Eric Lassiter (2005a) and Charles Hale (2006), both of whom recommend more deliberate steps toward blending anthropology and activism. Hale in particular recommends we begin by finding "an organized group of people in struggle" with whom to collaborate (2006, 97). Such a proposal is attractive because if the people are organized and the struggle is under way, it would seem that all an activist anthropologist has to do is pitch in. A contractual relationship, which involves prior agreement on expectations and responsibilities, would seem to resolve much of the uncertainty about how to begin.

But to restrict the possibilities of collaboration to working with already established institutions would severely limit the scope of activist anthropological praxis. In contrast, my own beginnings in activist anthropology suggest that the uncertainty contracts seek to avoid may be a vital resource for getting started on collaborative work. Relationships that embrace such uncertainty may allow the transformative processes of ethnography and activism to unfold more organically. Specifically, friendship, which both requires and perpetuates intersubjective uncertainty, may provide a more promising starting point for the cultivation of a hybrid practice of ethnography and activism than contractual relationships can.

Encountering Friendship

My first foray into fieldwork came in the form of a social work internship at an NGO in Kerala, India, which I undertook in the summer after my first year of the University of Michigan's joint doctoral program in social work and anthropology. The internship would meet expectations in both departments: that I receive practical training as a social worker, and that I begin exploring my field site. It was also an opportunity to begin hashing out how I would combine the dual role of social worker and anthropologist in a single activist-research praxis. In contrast to both proponents and critics of collaborative methods who have resisted any blurring of the line between social work and anthropology (Gross and Plattner 2002; Fluehr-Lobban 2008, 176), my aim in joining Michigan's joint program was to bring these two together.

My alliance with the NGO was essentially contractual: it was an explicit mutual agreement laid out beforehand entailing (or, at any rate, assuming) relatively stable expectations. We drew up paperwork together defining my role and responsibilities. The NGO was working with fishing communities—offering livelihood training for fish workers, organizing microcredit groups for women, and preparing research papers on coastal policy. I knew nothing about these topics. I would mainly be useful for my ability with English prose; I would help to prepare and edit research papers and small articles for their journal. In return I would have the opportunity to sit in their office as participant observer. I had consent forms signed by every staff member. If I wanted approval for publishing something controversial, I could talk to...