Ethics and Activism

Catalog description

What is empathy? Does it aid or complicate activism? Does it influence scholarly activities such as ethnography? Working among communities, whether as scholars, journalists, human rights workers, or health care practitioners requires grappling with positions or persons one may find sympathetic—or not. Either perspective is multidimensional and complicated because such work requires spending extended time with interlocutors. Fieldworkers must generate rapport, empathy, and intimacy with their subjects—but without losing objectivity. The ethics of such encounters hinge both on doing no harm and on doing good—through advocacy, opposition, or expressions that are not so straightforward. Doing no harm is a clear-cut ethical imperative. But do empathy, intimacy, and approval fall within the same categorical imperative? What happens when boundaries break down between researcher and subject, sympathy and ambivalence, rapport and incompatibility? This seminar explores exemplary cases from across the globe, paying particular attention to the production of knowledge—both as text and as “activism” that engages the ambiguities and conventions that structure our societies and lived experience.