As activists strategize, build resistance, and foster solidarity, they also call for better dialogue between researchers and movements and for research that can aid their causes. In this volume, contributors examine how research can produce knowledge for social transformation by using political activist ethnography, a unique social research strategy that uses political confrontation as a resource and focuses on moments and spaces of direct struggle to reveal how ruling regimes are organized so activists and social movements can fight them. Featuring research from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Bangladesh, Canada, Poland, South Africa, and the United States on matters as diverse as anti-poverty organizing, prisoners’ re-entry, anti-fracking campaigns, left-inspired think-tank development, non-governmental partnerships, involuntary psychiatric admission, and perils of immigration medical examination, contributors to this volume adopt a “bottom-up” approach to inquiry to produce knowledge for activists, not about them. A must-read for humanities and social sciences scholars keen on assisting activists and advancing social change.

An exploration of how scholarly research can aid activists in their fight for social change. As activists strategize, build resistance, and foster solidarity, they also call for better dialogue between researchers and movements and for research that can aid their causes. In this volume, contributors examine how research can produce knowledge for social transformation by using political activist ethnography, a unique social research strategy that uses political confrontation as a resource and focuses on moments and spaces of direct struggle to reveal how ruling regimes are organized so activists and social movements can fight them. Featuring research from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Bangladesh, Canada, Poland, South Africa, and the United States on matters as diverse as anti-poverty organizing, prisoners' re-entry, anti-fracking campaigns, left-inspired think-tank development, non-governmental partnerships, involuntary psychiatric admission, and perils of immigration medical examination, contributors to this volume adopt a "bottom-up" approach to inquiry to produce knowledge for activists, not about them. A must-read for humanities and social sciences scholars keen on assisting activists and advancing social change.

Writing in the wake of neoliberalism, where human rights and social justice have increasingly been subordinated to proliferating “consumer choices” and ideals of market justice, contributors to this collection argue that feminist ethnographers are in a key position to reassert the central feminist connections between theory, methods, and activism. Together, we suggest avenues for incorporating methodological innovations, collaborative analysis, and collective activism in our scholarly projects. What are the possibilities (and challenges) that exist for feminist ethnography 25 years after initial debates emerged in this field about reflexivity, objectivity, reductive individualism, and the social relevance of activist scholarship? How can feminist ethnography intensify efforts towards social justice in the current political and economic climate? This collection continues a crucial dialog about feminist activist ethnography in the 21st century—at the intersection of engaged feminist research and activism in the service of the organizations, people, communities, and feminist issues we study.

Insurgent Encounters illuminates the dynamics of contemporary transnational social movements, including those advocating for women and indigenous groups, environmental justice, and alternative—cooperative rather than exploitative—forms of globalization. The contributors are politically engaged scholars working within the social movements they analyze. Their essays are both models of and arguments for activist ethnography. They demonstrate that such a methodology has the potential to reveal empirical issues and generate theoretical insights beyond the reach of traditional social-movement research methods. Activist ethnographers not only produce new understandings of contemporary forms of collective action, but also seek to contribute to struggles for social change. The editors suggest networks and spaces of encounter as the most useful conceptual rubrics for understanding shape-shifting social movements using digital and online technologies to produce innovative forms of political organization across local, regional, national, and transnational scales. A major rethinking of the practice and purpose of ethnography, Insurgent Encounters challenges dominant understandings of social transformation, political possibility, knowledge production, and the relation between intellectual labor and sociopolitical activism. Contributors. Giuseppe Caruso, Maribel Casas-Cortés, Janet Conway, Stéphane Couture, Vinci Daro, Manisha Desai, Sylvia Escárcega, David Hess, Jeffrey S. Juris, Alex Khasnabish, Lorenzo Mosca, Michal Osterweil, Geoffrey Pleyers, Dana E. Powell, Paul Routledge, M. K. Sterpka, Tish Stringer

"This is a terrific book. Lyon-Callo's descriptions shatter stereotypes about homeless people and focus instead on the dysfunction of the system that allegedly serves them." - Susan Greenbaum, University of South Florida

Ethnography is uniquely equipped to look microscopically at the foundations of political institutions and their attendant sent of practices, just as it is ideally suited to explain why political actors behave the way they do and to identify the causes, processes and outcomes that are part and parcel of political life. This volume, based on a special issue of Qualitative Sociology offers an ethnographic study of politicians and political systems.

This volume sets out practical ways activists can map the social relations of struggle they are engaged in and produce knowledge for more effective forms of activism for changing the world.