Panel A1

4th Biennial Conference of the Czech
Association for Social Anthropology (CASA)

AMBIGUITY

A1 Arguing the Case of Ambiguity in Anthropological Research on Outlaw and Socially Excluded Groups in Public Debate

Anthropologists working on socially excluded populations and outlaw groups, such as for instance the outlaw motorcycle clubs, face challenges when attempting to convey research results that contradict the one-dimensional spectacular narratives present in popular discourses; i.e. political and mediated discourses where such groups tend to be criminalized based on group membership, turned into internal and transnational security threats, or alternatively represented as ‘pure victims’ and thus denied any agency or responsibility. In cases when research results contradict popular wisdom, researchers may be accused of having been ‘duped’ or ‘mislead’ by the informants – something that already Howard Becker captured in his notion of ‘hierarchies of credibility’. The fact that the actual social terrain is far more ambiguous than the popular notions would suggest, presents a particular challenge for anthropologists working with subjects labelled by the mainstream as ‘deviant’, ‘criminal’, or ‘culturally inferior’. Research results may even become politically contentious, as questions about these various Others within one’s own society become the most affective for the population at large (as we have seen recently in refugee debates across Europe, where the love for the ‘pure victim’ very quickly turned into the hate of ‘the criminal/culturally inferior Other’ and where any balanced public debate became almost an impossibility). Anthropologists working in such contexts find themselves at the core of a heated debate, and may turn into public intellectuals even against their will. The panel invites papers dealing with anthropological research on aforementioned ambiguous subjects and its implications for public (Robert Borofsky) and engaged anthropology (Thomas H. Eriksen).