Advocacy/Activism in the Acadmey
ANT 3930 | IDH 3931
Spring, 2008

Course Description:

            Where do academics, educators, students, and other members of the scholarly elite fit into the complex landscape of social change? Do members of these groups have an ethical obligation to uncover perceived wrongs in the modern world? What is the nature of objectivity; and does it grant distance to parties interested in understanding how social wrongs are created and perpetuated? What is the difference between advocacy and activism? This course – where students and educators meet as socially-aware equals – is designed to look at these questions and critically examine the scholar’s role as advocate/activist.

            The course is divided roughly into three sections of equal duration. The first third of the course centers on various theoretical foundations suggesting what transformative acts scholars are uniquely equipped to engage in. The second portion of the course will highlight the role of academics as educators in raising the public’s awareness of social wrongs. The final section is split between texts that demonstrate actions taken by scholars to address perceived wrongs; as well as time for each student to engage in their own forms of advocacy/activism. The final project centers on each student engaging with local (Alachua county) advocacy/activist groups. Finally, a global perspective drawing on applied anthropology will be developed throughout the course as readings from around the world are examined. General topics explored include environmental mismanagement by colonial powers, queer rights, immigration, negative affects of policy on the poor, individualistic affects of war, and others.

Required Texts:

Recommended Texts:

Terms
Class participation is a must and students missing large amounts of class without an appropriate excuse (doctors appointment, family activity such as marriages or funerals, participation in other sanctioned school activity, etc.) will endanger their semester grade. Each class will be split between lectures by the instructor and class discussion of the readings. The grading procedure is as follows:

1. Class Participation, Attendance, and Assignments – 40% of final grade
2. Annotated Bibliography – 15% of final grade
3. Final Project – 45% of final grade

Disability Accommodations:

            Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.

Course Schedule: [subject to change]
Students will have 2-3 readings per week, in the weeks when there are more than three readings the instructor will decided which readings are not required during class the week prior.

Section One: Theoretical Foundations for Academic Advocacy/Activism

Week 01 – Truth [no class Thursday – instructor at SHA conference]

Readings:

Castle, Gregory, ed.
2007    The Blackwell Guide to Literary Theory. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, MA.
Download selected readings here.

Sanford, V., and A. Angel-Ajani
2006    Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press
Forward and Introduction
Chapter 01 – Excavations of the Heart: Reflections on Truth, Memory, and Structures of Understanding

Recommended:

Haraway, Donna
1988    Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3):575-599.

Roy, Arundhati
2004    Public Power in the Age of Empire. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

First Assignment:
Title: Critique Three Doors Down "Citizen Soilder" Video
This video runs like the Webster's definition of propaganda, and each of you are going to deconstruct its confusing and illogical treatment of the US' military history. The readings this week, particularly the scanned sections from The Bloackwell Guide to Literary Theory, will provide us the tools of deconstruction, critical social theory, and other openly transformative academic techniques as a way to highlight disjuncture, political rhetoric, and the evolution of facist states through popular culture. Students will draw on the week's readings and submit a short critique of this video focusing on what it may or may not symoblize for America (pay particular attention to the Literary Theory readings) the following Tuesday . Paper length should be 2-5 pages, come prepared to discuss your ideas.

Week 02 – The power of education

Readings:

hooks, bell
1994    Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Engaged Pedagogy

nash, june. ed.
2007    social movements: an anthropological reader. Blackwell Publishing: Malden, MA
Introduction: Social Movements and Global Processes

Sluka, Jeffrey A.
1999    Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Introduction: State Terror and Anthropology

Week 03 – Developing a theory of practice, part I

Readings:

Nagengast, Carole and Carlos G. Velez-Ivanez
2004    Human Rights: The Scholar as Activist. Oklahoma City, OK: Society for Applied Anthropology.
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Chapter 2 – Human Rights and Wrongs: A Place for Anthropologists?

Sanford, V., and A. Angel-Ajani
2006    Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press
Chapter 04 – Expert Witness: Notes toward Revisiting the Politics of Listening

Second Assignment:
Students should be developing a firm idea of what thier semester projects are going to focus on and entail. To this end, this week you will be asked to become familiar with the procedures of applying for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for your projects. Since each and every one of you will be asked to engage individuals face-to-face in some way, it is required you submit an IRB. Your finished IRB will be required the following week so that it can be turned in for a late-February approval. In other words you will have until Janury 31st (in-class) to complete the IRB documentation.
In order to assist with this process, please look at the following items:
UF IRB Required Reading
Plattner, Stuart
2003      Human Subjects Protection and Cultural Anthropology. Anthropological Quaerterly. 76(2):1-9.
UF IRB 2 Website - look around and familiarize yourself with this site as each of you will be at least completing an IRB-2, if not submitting one.
Sample Protocol - one of my own IRB's that received approval
Sample Informed Conset - one of my own IRB's that received approval

Week 04 – Developing a theory of practice, part II

Readings:

Sanford, V., and A. Angel-Ajani
2006    Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Chapter 9 – Indigenous Women and Gendered Resistance in the Wake of Acteal: A Feminist Activist Research Perspective
Chapter 11 – Perils and Promises of Engaged Anthropology: Historical Transitions and Ethnographic Dilemmas

Rattray, Nick
2007    Evaluating Universal Design: Low- and High-Tech Methods for Mapping Accessible Space. Practicing Anthropology. 29(4):24-28.

Week 05 – Immigrant Issues, part I

Readings:

Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.
2006    Color of Violence: the Incite! Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press.
Chapter 14 – “National Security” and the Violation of Women: Militarized Border Rape at the US-Mexico Border

Nagengast, Carole and Carlos G. Velez-Ivanez
2004    Human Rights: The Scholar as Activist. Oklahoma City, OK: Society for Applied Anthropology.
Chapter 8 – Human Rights Issues in the Commodification of the Mexican Population of the Southwest United States.

Section Two: Educating Each Other – Opening Doorways of Knowledge

Week 06 – Immigrant Issues, part II

Readings:

Smith, Paul J., editor (for thursday)
1997    Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America’s Immigration Tradition. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Chapter 6 – Immigrant Smuggling through Central America and the Caribbean
Chapter 8 – Safe House or Hell House? Experiences of Newly Arrived Undocumented Chinese

Meeropol, Rachel, editor (recommended)
2005    America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the “War on Terror”. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
Chapter 7 – Looking for Hope: Life as an Immigration Detainee
Chapter 9 – The Post 9/11 Terrorism Investigation and Immigration Detention

Week 07 – Effects of Environmental Mismanagement / Abuses of the Impoverished

Readings:

Tuesday:
Smith, Paul J., editor (for thursday)
1997    Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America’s Immigration Tradition. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Chapter 6 – Immigrant Smuggling through Central America and the Caribbean
Chapter 8 – Safe House or Hell House? Experiences of Newly Arrived Undocumented Chinese

Thursday:
Johnston, Barabara, editor
2007    Half-Lives and Half-Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.
Chapter 2 – “more like us than mice”: Radiation Experiments with Indigenous Peoples
Chapter 13 – Nuclear Legacies: Arrogance, Secrecy, Ignorance, Lies, Silence, Suffering, Action

Week 08 – Abuses of the Impoverished

Readings:

Tuesday:
Johnston, Barabara, editor
2007    Half-Lives and Half-Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.
Chapter 2 – “more like us than mice”: Radiation Experiments with Indigenous Peoples
Chapter 13 – Nuclear Legacies: Arrogance, Secrecy, Ignorance, Lies, Silence, Suffering, Action

Inda, J. X., and R. Rosaldo
2002    The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.
Chapter 12 – The Global Traffic in Human Organs

Week 09 – Violent Social Contexts
Class canceled on Thursday

Readings:

Nagengast, Carole and Carlos G. Velez-Ivanez
2004    Human Rights: The Scholar as Activist. Oklahoma City, OK: Society for Applied Anthropology.
Chapter 4 – Refugee Voices: The Missing Piece in Refugee Policies and Practices

Sanford, V., and A. Angel-Ajani
2006    Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Chapter 2 – Scholarship, advocacy, and the politics of engagement in Burma
Chapter 5 – Moral Chronologies: Generation and Popular Memory in a Palestinian Refugee Camp

Week 10 – Queer Rights

Readings:

Locke, Kenneth A.
2004    The Bible on Homosexuality: Exploring Its Meaning and Authority. Journal of Homosexuality. 48(2):125-156.

Corber, Rober and Stephen Valocchi
2003    Queer Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Chappter 2: Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism

Final Assignment:
Turn in preliminary annotated bibliography.
Sample Bibliography

Section Three: Taking Action – Scholars as Participants

Week 11 – Immigrants Issues

Readings:
Students will be asked to pick one of the following books to read. This week’s discussion moves us into action! I will expect to see everyon attend class with at least one of these wonderful books in their little paws! Striffler's book is shorter, Dow's hits closer to home.

Striffler, Steve
2005    Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Dow, Mark
2004    American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.

Week 12 – Violent Social Contexts & General  Activism

Readings:
I know its a-lot to cover this week, but these are all great, and its the last week you have to read for the class anyway!

Sluka, Jeffrey A.
2000  "For God and Ulster" The Culture of Terror and Loyalist Death Squads in Northern Ireland. In Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. edited by Jeffrey Sluka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Sanford, V., and A. Angel-Ajani
2006    Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Chapter 7 – Portrait of a Paramilitary: Putting a Human Face on the Colombian Conflict
Chapter 8 -- Fratricidal War or Ethnocidal Strategy?: Women's Experience with Political Violence in Chiapas

Nagengast, Carole and Carlos G. Velez-Ivanez
2004    Human Rights: The Scholar as Activist. Oklahoma City, OK: Society for Applied Anthropology.
Chapter 10 – Anthropological Activism, Indigenous Peoples, and Globalization
Chapter 11 – Conclusion: First Steps

Weeks 13, 14 & 15

Student Project Reports - we'll decide the presentation order in Week 12.

Final projects (written version) due no later than April 25th 2008.