The Question of Audience

Alisse Waterston's IUAES keynote encouraged those present to take the analytic and methodological tools of anthropology on the road, so to speak, to use them to build and grow the solidarities that are necessary in the current moment, and to speak with the audiences for whom these solidarities make a difference. This is, absolutely, an urgent task. Who is our research for? For whom, and with whom, do we speak, write, make films, and so on? Alisse was asking us to consider these questions anew in order to influence public conversations on the issues that matter most to us. I would also encourage us to interrogate these questions in relation to our own scholarship. Who are the audiences we have in mind as we write? What are the assumptions we make about what knowledge is shared, and what must be explained? What do these assumptions reflect about our placement within particular political discourses and communities?