Sovereign Subjects: Ethnographic Refusal and the Politics of Returning Research to Anti-mining Activists

• In Event: Politics of Knowledge Production in Resource Conflicts

Abstract

Activists, corporations, and states are active producers of knowledge in the contests over mineral extraction, but so are ethnographic researchers. In 2013, I returned to my field site in Ecuador to present dissertation findings to a group of anti-mining activists. In this paper, I examine the experience of one peasant woman who refused to participate in research return, claiming that I would force her to speak in public and extract unwarranted information during the meeting. Although scholars have analyzed ‘speaking’ as constitutive of feminist practice, nevertheless I argue that ethnographic refusals are also powerful expressions of feminist practice because, as this case shows, they aim to equalize the power-laden relationships between researcher and the subjects of research that can mark anthropological research. I consider ethnographic refusal as neither “speech” nor “silence” but as an alternative way of practicing agency through the exercise of research sovereignty, whereby research participants seek control over the circulation of ethnographic knowledge. I conclude that activist research methods that include research return as a practice are technologies that make visible new ethnographic insights even as such practices themselves maybe rejected by research participants. Overall, this paper highlights the precarious nature of ethnographic knowledge production.

Author

• Teresa A Velasquez, California State University/San Bernardino