Anthropological activism: from the applied anthropology of the Peru-Cornell Project to the possibility of action research

Abstract

It should not be that strange to think anthropological work as a tool, and even an intervention, of social engineering. After all, the discipline arose within the great colonial enterprises of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the progressive development of a critical look within anthropology caused that perspective to awaken ethical dilemmas about what, in a more technical way, was called applied anthropology. Of course, the Peruvian case was no exception, especially regarding the most important experiment of applied anthropology in our country, the Peru-Cornell Project on the Vicos Hacienda, in Ancash. It is precisely from that case, that this article reflects on the possibilities of an activist anthropology that does not fall on the ethnocentric and colonial assumptions that, to a great extent, guided the anthropological efforts oriented to the direct practical impact on human groups. This article argues that this is possible within the framework of certain, not only ethical parameters, but also methodological ones that guarantee the former.