“Que no, que no, que no nos representan”, or: rethinking the relationship between research and activism throughout our lived experience

Abstract

In this paper we take a stance as socially and politically committed anthropologists and we argue about the possible ways to bring together research and activism. We emphasize that critical anthropology has provided contributions based around two core ideas: the democratization of knowledge production mechanisms and the politicization of its contents aiming to strengthen social movements. We look over our experience in Granada’s 15-M movement in order to analyze certain cases of difficulties and disagreements between research and activism. We underline the advantages of committed involvement and we put forward a political and methodological proposal based on “stress” and “relief”.