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"Scholars in many fields increasingly find themselves caught between the academy, with its demands for rigor and objectivity, and direct engagement in social activism. Some advocate on behalf of the communities they study; others incorporate the knowledge and leadership of their informants directly into the process of knowledge production. What ethical, political, and practical tensions arise in the course of such work? In this wide-ranging and multidisciplinary volume, leading scholar-activists map the terrain on which political engagement and academic rigor meet."--Book cover

ABSTRACTThis article begins with the contention that the three‐decade era of neoliberal multiculturalism is coming to an end. During that time, Indigenous peoples in Latin America gained a wide array of rights grounded in cultural difference by occupying spaces opened through the multicultural turn and using counterhegemonic strategies to push beyond their intended limits. Struggles in the judicial arena, and the accompanying work of the anthropological expert witness, played a crucial role in these strategies. I argue that the emerging era of racial retrenchment requires recalibration, starting with critical reflection on the counterhegemonic, and probing of alternative strategies, one of which I summarize with the phrase using and refusing the law. I draw on my participation in two moments of activist research in the legal arena—the 2003 landmark case Awas Tingni v. the State of Nicaragua, and a recent study of the relationship between Mapuche Indigenous people and the forest industry in southern Chile—as grounding. I conclude that while these two strategies and their associated sensibilities do stand in tension, they will need one another, as we seek effective means to contest the fierce onslaught of violence, marginalization, and roll‐back of rights for Indigenous peoples, and more broadly. [judicial pluralism, autonomy, Indigenous rights]

This essay reviews the following works:Faith and Joy: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Priest. By Fernando Cardenal, S. J. Translated and edited by Kathy McBride and Mark Lester. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015. Pp. xxvi + 288. $28.00 paper. ISBN: 9781626981423.Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia: Development and Culture in the Modern State. By Daniel Chávez. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015. Pp. x + 376. $65.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780826520470.Sandino's Nation: Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez Writing Nicaragua, 1940–2012. By Stephen Henighan. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. Pp. v + 776. $33.00 paper. ISBN: 9780773543157.The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writing from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849–1899. Edited, translated, and annotated by Karl Offen and Terry Rugeley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. Pp. viii + 448. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780803248960.

Scholars in many fields increasingly find themselves caught between the academy, with its demands for rigor and objectivity, and direct engagement in social activism. Some advocate on behalf of the communities they study; others incorporate the knowledge and leadership of their informants directly into the process of knowledge production. What ethical, political, and practical tensions arise in the course of such work? In this wide-ranging and multidisciplinary volume, leading scholar-activists map the terrain on which political engagement and academic rigor meet.