Peruvian anthropology through an anarchist lens

Colombian anthropologist Eduardo Restrepo has just published a thought-provoking article titled “Social Theory, Fugitive Methodologies, and Materialities in the Academic Establishment: Notes from an Anarchist Prism” in the latest issue of Tabula Rasa. In this text, from the very first lines, Restrepo points to a trend in the social sciences that consists of asking questions and producing answers that largely repeat what we already know. It is as if there were an “economy of knowledge” that favors the production of certain types of knowledge that align more closely with specific orders, hierarchies, and trends.

For Restrepo, anarchism can help us escape this kind of “poverty of theoretical imagination” by inviting us to reimagine other ways of doing social research. One aspect I find particularly compelling is his critique of the “interpretive monopoly” acquired by the state, which can lead us, even when criticizing it, to do so through its own categories and frames of reference. In response, Restrepo advocates an anarchist perspective capable of breaking with this “state-olatry.” Without denying the empirical importance of the state, he calls for social sciences that remain open to exploring emerging forms of social organization that exceed and erode the state.

Restrepo highlights two anarchist principles that extend this critique into the methodological realm: autonomy and self-management. Autonomy refers to a practice through which people, in voluntary association with others, acquire the capacity to make decisions about their own conditions of existence. Self-management, in turn, is one of the ways in which autonomy materializes, through the direct and collective management of the means and conditions necessary for reproducing life, thereby challenging the separation between those who decide and those who obey. “Fugitive methodologies” translate these anarchist principles into powerful methodological horizons.

For Restrepo, methodological designs are not neutral devices; rather, they condition which problems can be formulated and which procedures are recognized as legitimate ways of addressing them. The “fugitive methodologies” he proposes are research practices that escape methodological standards. They are flexible, critical, and situated forms of inquiry. They emerge at the margins of the logics of funding, validation, and utility that permeate academia and the institutional structures that organize knowledge. Fugitive methodologies, for example, challenge linear and closed research designs—those that begin, dutifully, with the formulation of a question, continue with the application of certain methodological protocols, and end with the discovery of results. “Fugitive” research should retain the possibility of being transformed by what it encounters, leaving room for problems, practices, and forms of knowledge that do not necessarily follow the order or logic of the textbooks.

The Reassembling Anthropology Project is not inspired by anarchism, but it does resonate with some of its concerns and preoccupations. The conversations conducted thus far as part of the project invite us to consider that a significant part of anthropological training and research in Peru already takes place—at least partially—outside university structures and beyond the influence of the state. In a context marked by economic constraints and profound inequalities, many young anthropologists develop their research by drawing inspiration from their non-academic professional experiences, relying on self-managed resources, or drawing on personal networks and other forms of cooperation. In practice and in their own ways, these marginal forms of doing anthropology challenge—sometimes without intending to—the more conventional modes of producing knowledge.

The conversation with Yhon León-Chinchilla is particularly illustrative. Yhon explains that his anthropological training at the National University of Central Peru—far from the academic spaces of the capital—was marked by a lack of research resources and the poor quality of teaching. Under these conditions, “study circles” emerged as self-managed learning spaces among students, through which they sought to compensate for the university education they received. The interview with Pável Aguilar likewise draws attention to the emergence of critical initiatives and alternative research networks arising far from Peru’s academic center. Read through Restrepo’s anarchist lens, these spaces can be understood as concrete practices of relative autonomy and self-management—although not necessarily anarchist ones—that are already developing out of necessity.

The conversations with Ginno Martínez and Nicolle Silva take this reflection in another direction. Their professional experiences in rural areas generated knowledge, concerns, and questions that later shaped their undergraduate thesis research. Amid the urgencies and commitments of their professional lives, both turned their work experiences into a form of ethnographic fieldwork that simultaneously allowed them to navigate the constraints of time and resources resulting from the lack of institutional and financial support from their universities. Although these experiences unfolded within corporate structures that should not be overlooked, viewed through the lens of “fugitive methodologies,” they raise another question: to what extent does anthropological research need to follow the conventional sequence that begins with a research question, continues with a methodological design, proceeds to fieldwork, and concludes with writing? Ginno’s and Nicolle’s trajectories suggest practices that are less linear and considerably more flexible and blurred. In certain contexts, fieldwork may precede the design of the project itself, and knowledge may begin to be produced—and to take shape to a greater extent than we might imagine—long before it is formally recognized as “research.”

Precarity should not be romanticized, but neither should it be analyzed exclusively through the lens of lack. Material constraints can exclude, exhaust, and reproduce profound academic inequalities. Yet reducing “peripheral” academic worlds to what they lack risks rendering invisible the practices through which those who inhabit them sustain their intellectual work under such conditions. The experiences gathered through this project therefore suggest that Peruvian researchers are already assuming a certain degree of control over their own ways of conducting social research. In the face of constraints and adversity, they develop practices of relative autonomy and self-management through which they mobilize their own resources, build networks of collaboration and solidarity, and create the conditions necessary to sustain their research. In this sense, autonomy and self-management do not necessarily appear as principles formulated in advance, but rather as practices that emerge from the very necessity of doing research. This does not mean, of course, that these practices are necessarily anarchist, or that those who engage in them identify themselves with that tradition. The anarchist prism offers us an analytical language for recognizing practices of autonomy and self-management that already exist without having been conceived as such.

Perhaps Restrepo’s “fugitive methodologies” are already unfolding out there—not necessarily formulated as theoretical programs, but experimented with in everyday practice by those who must invent other ways of doing research amid scarcity and commitment.

Luis Meléndez