We Will Not Integrate! Multiple Belongings, Political Activism and Anthropology in Austria

In her recent work¹ Nancy Lindisfarne calls for a critical and political perspective in anthropology that challenges systems of domination such as patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, nationalism and class exploitation. As fieldwork ‘starts from below’ and focuses on the ‘lives of ordinary people’ (this volume), participant-observation is an appropriate tool for analysing and critiquing inequalities of the new world order. Noting that anthropology follows, rather than creates, public opinion, Lindisfarne emphatically demands the discipline’s more active political engagement. In the following, I describe different modes of political activism and compare their distinctive intellectual, participatory and religiously motivated types of political involvement,