An official website of the United States government
In this presentation I will discuss various forms of “accompaniment” my Latinx immigrant friends, research participants, and fellow activists and advocates have engaged in during the pandemic. I will discuss accompaniment as an anthropological praxis of solidarity, focusing on how, together, we have attempted to advocate for immigrant-protective polices in the past 1.5 years, how we have navigated barriers to forms of social support and healthcare, and how our relationships have shifted in the process.
more »
« less
Accompaniment and Anthropology with Im/migrant Communities
This roundtable brings together engaged anthropologists working with im/migrant communities to explore the transformational potential of accompaniment as anthropological practice. Informed by decolonial and feminist critiques of anthropology, accompaniment troubles the boundaries of scholar-activist and academic-community member to address the broader social purpose of our anthropological work. We understand accompaniment as an ethical commitment to solidarity, to using our positions of relative privilege to help ameliorate suffering. The roundtable will serve as a collective conversation about the multivalent meanings of accompaniment with im/migrant communities and as a forum to imagine possibilities for caring, relational, and decolonial forms of ethnographic engagement.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1827397
- PAR ID:
- 10345099
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Policymakers have established that the ability to contest decisions made by or with algorithms is core to responsible artificial intelligence (AI). However, there has been a disconnect between research on contestability of algorithms, and what the situated practice of contestation looks like in contexts across the world, especially amongst communities on the margins. We address this gap through a qualitative study of follow-up and contestation in accessing public services for land ownership in rural India and affordable housing in the urban United States. We find there are significant barriers to exercising rights and contesting decisions, which intermediaries like NGO workers or lawyers work with communities to address. We draw on the notion of accompaniment in global health to highlight the open-ended work required to support people in navigating violent social systems. We discuss the implications of our findings for key aspects of contestability, including building capacity for contestation, human review, and the role of explanations. We also discuss how sociotechnical systems of algorithmic decision-making can embody accompaniment by taking on a higher burden of preventing denials and enabling contestation.more » « less
-
This article outlines the revitalization of the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR) to adapt to the changing dynamics of archival data reuse in anthropology. It begins by examining the prevailing discourse on anthropological data, archives and their reuse, then explores interdisciplinary data curation trends. Recent initiatives include collaborations with Wikipedia and Wikidata and innovative design strategies to improve access to anthropological archives. The article also discusses the ethical and logistical challenges faced during this transformation. The overarching vision presented is to position CoPAR as a central hub that connects archivists, anthropologists and Indigenous communities, ensuring streamlined and ethical access to anthropological records in the digital realm.more » « less
-
Synopsis What are the implications of misunderstanding sex as a binary, and why is it essential for scientists to incorporate a more expansive view of biological sex in our teaching and research? This roundtable will include many of our symposium speakers, including biologists and intersex advocates, to discuss these topics and visibilize the link between ongoing reification of dyadic sex within scientific communities and the social, political, and medical oppression faced by queer, transgender, and especially intersex communities. As with the symposium as a whole, this conversation is designed to bring together empirical research and implementation of equity, inclusion, and justice principles, which are often siloed into separate rooms and conversations at academic conferences. Given the local and national attacks on the rights of intersex individuals and access to medical care and bodily autonomy, this interdisciplinary discussion is both timely and urgent.more » « less
-
This intervention considers how the writings of María Lugones, a philosopher of feminist decolonial theory, might shape a callejera [streetwalker] feminist decolonial methodology and what such a methodology might look like in practice. I describe how a callejera methodology foments deeper relationality by highlighting as methodological tools three of Lugones’ concepts: resisting ↔ oppressing, the collective and tantear en la oscuridad. To ground the theory and illustrate possibilities of deeper relationality offered by a callejera methodology, I reflect on on-going research with Colombian collectives actively negotiating experiences of indigeneity and womanhood in relation to histories of colonial and more recent armed violence, as well as ongoing state disinvestment. I make three contributions. First, I suggest that integrating an intersectional analytic of ‘both/and’ with the complex fluidity between Lugones’ concept of resisting ↔ oppressing permits scholars to better understand the negotiation of multiple, intermeshed identities and oppressions, social inequality and power relations in relation to colonial histories and presents. Second, I encourage geographers to embrace a decolonial lens attentive to the relationality between and among collectives, from which many acts of resistance begin. Finally, I consider how a callejera methodology considers coalitional work as central to the research process. Such work embraces difficulty, discomfort and messy relationality often negotiated as if walking blindly through the dark (tantear). I conclude by arguing that geographers’ relationally-based research can strengthen feminist decolonial thought in our attention to spatial and temporal scalar differences of place and our commitment to understanding contextually differentiated navigations of identity.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
