{"id":126,"date":"2012-03-27T11:50:58","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/?page_id=126"},"modified":"2012-05-11T02:19:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T06:19:09","slug":"occupy-wall-street-anthropological-analysis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/occupy-wall-street-anthropological-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropological Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“What is it, to occupy Wall Street? It is not moving your money, walking righteously on the sidewalk, holding smug panel discussions in the ivory tower, or taking advantage of the sales at Best Buy. To \u2018occupy\u2019 means to decolonize territory stolen, whether land or flesh. It means to refuse division, to stand shoulder to shoulder with untouchables, to seize, to make a home where people are homeless, to explode the hegemony of \u2018middle class\u2019 citizenship, and to defend the bodies of the politically invisible, who are the people who make politics possible.”<\/em>
\nSophie Lewis \u201cAs Odious as the word Occupy\u201d
\nJournal for Occupied Studies, February 2012
\nhttp:\/\/occupiedstudies.org\/articles\/as-odious-as-the-word-occupy.html<\/a><\/p>\n

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What is it to Occupy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a large divide between what is being said by the news media and what is being said by academics about Occupy Wall Street.\u00a0 While the news media focuses on the motivations and impetus behind the movement, who is taking part, and the moral status of the Occupiers, academics are examining its meanings, effectiveness, and reasonings.\u00a0 Academic coverage of Occupy Wall Street ranges from investigations of the social, political, and economic backgrounds that led to the protest as well as to its continuation, to ruminations of Occupy\u2019s effectiveness and its ability to make positive change into the future.\u00a0 I think that George Shulman in his essay \u201cInterpreting Occupy\u201d does an excellent job describing this difference by saying that:<\/p>\n

“My impression is that journalists have typically framed OWS by reading it into inherited narratives of \u201csixties\u201d social movements, while also insisting that there must be leaders to whom to attribute its appearance. Many journalists have also claimed that OWS is illegible, or literally without sense, unless it addresses \u201cdemands\u201d to established authorities. They require OWS to be an integral agent with avowed intentionality, so that it can be a protagonist in a story\u2026 While proposing the story of a social movement as a protagonist, however, they also recognize that OWS lacks the feature of unified intention or agency. They resolve this contradiction, and rescue their story, by depicting OWS as a faulty (or a not-yet crystallized) social movement\u2026 Academics readily analyze such representational strategies and so have thematized (and resisted!) the media\u2019s insistence on locating demands and leaders.”<\/em>
\nGeorge Shulman \u201cInterpreting Occupy\u201d
\nPossible Futures, December 20, 2011
\nhttp:\/\/www.possible-futures.org\/2011\/12\/20\/interpreting-occupy\/<\/a><\/p>\n

More than just being a social movement, many academics have cited Occupy Wall Street as an example of a prefigurative society, an exercise in the citizens\u2019 of the United States moral and political imaginations.\u00a0 Occupy is an expression of discontent and a desire for something new, a realization that the current socio-political systems in the United States cannot and do not have the peoples\u2019 interests at mind, and a movement towards and exercise in what that alternative could look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Occupy movement is an expression of a generalized and global outrage over corporate irresponsibility and lack of government oversight. Its primary concern regards the corrupt relationship between elected and corporate officials, and the ways in which \u201cThe 99 Percent\u201d have been disenfranchised from the relations of power that shape their lives and life chances. If I were to guess at a common goal, it\u2019d be a complete overhaul of our political and economic systems from the bottom up. Trust for our politicians has indeed waned, but even more so for the system itself, which is clearly marred by the unholy influence of money and personal gain.\u201d<\/em>
\nHeather Gautney \u201cOccupy Wall Street: An idea whose time has come\u201d
\n http:\/\/globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com\/2011\/11\/17\/occupy-wall-street-an-idea-whose-time-has-come\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Occupy Wall Street and Anthropology<\/strong><\/p>\n

Occupy Wall Street, besides being a look into the future, also offers the academics that are studying it the possibility of change.\u00a0 Academics, especially anthropologists and other social scientists that rely heavily on field work and participant observation, have the chance to be transformed by their relationships to Occupy.\u00a0 Occupy offers the perfect vehicle for an activist anthropology, almost demanding a reformulation of the relationships that anthropologists form with the things they study.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Occupy is trying to redefine the parameters of what it means to participate in a social movement, it is also having a methodological impact on the parameters of ethnography, calling into question, yet again, the very substance of participant observation. The Occupy movement is then an opportunity\u2014perhaps an imperative\u2014to rethink the boundaries, ethics, and methods of social research.\u201d<\/em>
\nZolt\u00e1n Gl\u00fcck and Manissa McCleave Maharawal \u201cOccupy Ethnography: Reflections on Studying the Movement\u201d
\nPossible Futures, March 14, 2012
\nhttp:\/\/www.possible-futures.org\/2012\/03\/14\/occupy-ethnography-reflections-studying-movement\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBoth acts\u2014taking or refusing the paper\u2014carry political significance and ally the ethnographer on one side or another of a political divide. This places the participant observer within an unfolding set of events wherein his or her actions affect the outcome. Of course, any social movement or politically fraught situation may present an observer with similarly difficult choices. Our point is merely that Occupy, by virtue of its structure, creates a situation whereby the ethnographer becomes an inherent part of the movement.\u201d<\/em>
\nZolt\u00e1n Gl\u00fcck and Manissa McCleave Maharawal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“What is it, to occupy Wall Street? It is not moving your money, walking righteously on the sidewalk, holding smug panel discussions in the ivory tower, or taking advantage of the sales at Best Buy. To \u2018occupy\u2019 means to decolonize … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3398,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3919,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/126\/revisions\/3919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/contemporary-issues\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}