A Divided Community: The Ethics and Politics of Activist Research

Abstract

In this article, I draw upon over two years of fieldwork in a Garifuna community in Tela Bay, Honduras, to explore the ethical and political contradictions bound up with activist-oriented ethnographic research. The rise of tourism as a means of national development and a driver of local economic desires has fractured communal politics in Triunfo de la Cruz, particularly around questions pertaining to land tenure and territorial belonging. I analyze the challenges of doing politically engaged anthropology in such a context. My open collaboration with land rights activists and ongoing support for the struggle to defend Garifuna collective property rights initiated me into a moral community with the “defensores de la tierra” (defenders of the land). For these communal actors, I was first and foremost an ally, and my academic pursuits were secondary—or at best complimentary—to the exigencies of the political project I was working to support. Significantly, my alignment with land rights activists placed me in ...