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Activism, community organising, low theory, minor theory, power, register, social theory, UK
Abstract:
Anthropological accounts of power remain characterized by an enduring tension. Social
scientific theories of power allow anthropologists to situate subjects and mediate
between contending perspectives. However, in doing so, such theories inevitably also
end up displacing the grounded perspective of interlocutors themselves. This tension
sustains a contentious debate, which positions attention to power and attention to
grounded perspectives in opposition. In this article I draw on ethnography conducted
with the UK’s largest community organising body, Citizens UK, to trace an alternative
approach to this tension. For Citizens UK organisers this tension becomes a way of
driving change by enrolling diverse actors in collective projects and by displacing heg-
emonic understandings from within. Good theories, for Citizens UK organisers, are
characterised by the practical ability to mediate between contending positions and, in
doing so, transform them. To make sense of this mode of theorisation I take up queer
theorist Jack Halberstam’s notion of ‘low theory’, geographer Cindi Katz’s notion of
‘minor theory’, and I draw on the linguistic anthropology notion of ‘register’. This
allows me to unpack how organisers use theory to act, but also to trouble established
anthropological understandings of what theory is and what it ought to do.
