A walk in the park: political emotions and ethnographic vacillation in activist research

Critically engaged activist research blends a theoretical approach towards power and resistance with a practical methodology for ethnographies of social movements. However, when undertaking this sort of research it can be easy to lose sight of critical analysis because of the political emotions that researchers share with activist participants. I was reminded of the need for critical reflection by a particularly jarring ethnographic moment: during a quiet, early morning walk through Brisbane's Musgrave Park I became a witness in a murder investigation. This moment, and the aftermath of it, led me to critically analyse my own political emotions and those of my research participants. This paper examines the role of activist researchers through the lens of my moment in the park. I argue that, while it is important to share political emotions with research participants, activist researchers must remain reflexive and critical of those emotions

A Texel fishing lineage: the social dynamic and economic logic of family firms

In the 1970s and early 1980s, several maritime anthropologists and sociologists pointed out that for a number of economic, social and psychological reasons, the performance of commercial fishing firms based on kin-based capital and labour was highly adaptive. For this reason, most crews in the North Atlantic area seemed to be organized around a core of agnatic relatives with women playing important shore-based roles. As of the early 1990s, the attention of anthropologists and sociologists shifted away from ‘classical’ themes such as the social organization of fishing to issues of policy and management, particularly property rights regimes and rights-based fishing. Consequently, the topic of kin and family in the fisheries disappeared into the background. Nonetheless, it would appear that family firms are still predominant in the fisheries. In this paper, I will analyze their logic and dynamic in conditions of ecological, economic and political uncertainty, using ethnographic material from research in Dutch fishing communities on the island of Texel. Considerable attention will be devoted to the issue of what rights-based management regimes have meant for the social organization of and kin involvement in fishing firms

Household Demography and Early Childhood Mortality in a Rice-Farming Village in Northern Laos

<div><p>This paper extends Alexandr Chayanov’s model of changing household demography (specifically the ratio of food consumers to food producers) and its influence on agricultural behavior so that it includes possible adverse effects of a rising ratio on nutritional status and early childhood mortality within the household. We apply the model to 35 years’ worth of longitudinal demographic and economic data collected in the irrigated-rice growing village of Na Savang in northern Laos. When appropriate controls are included for other household variables, unobserved inter-household heterogeneity, and changes in local conditions and national policy over the study period, the analysis suggests that a unit increase in the household’s consumer/producer ratio induces something like a nine-fold increase in the risk of death among household members aged less than five years. Monte Carlo simulation studies suggest that this may be an over-estimate but also that the effect is probably real and likely to be an important factor in household demography. At the very least, the results suggest that Chayanov’s model still has theoretical relevance and deserves to be revived.</p></div