Our methodology is motivated by radical ethnography 57a, militant ethnography 58a and aspiring to position ourselves as "accomplices" rather than "allies" in the struggle to end an occupation and a genocide 59a. We strive to be accomplices, not mere allies in the movement for the liberation of Palestine, because “The risks of an ally who provides support or solidarity (usually on a temporary basis) in a fight are much different than that of an accomplice. When we fight back or forward, together, becoming complicit in a struggle towards liberation, we are accomplices.” Our work is rooted in the needs of the Palestinian people and all Indigenous peoples and their right to self-determination and liberation. Throughout our archival work, we honor and move at the speed of the most vulnerable in order to challenge colonial logics and genocide. “Accomplices listen with respect for the range of cultural practices and dynamics that exists within various Indigenous communities. Accomplices aren’t motivated by personal guilt or shame, they may have their own agenda but they are explicit." We work collectively to ground our documentation in ways that bind us together in humanizing ways. "Accomplices are realized through mutual consent and build trust. They don’t just have our backs, they are at our side, or in their own spaces confronting and unsettling colonialism. As accomplices we are compelled to become accountable and responsible to each other, that is the nature of trust." 59b As we struggle in hostile university spaces, we seek to confront the deeply foundational colonialism at the heart of the University of California 60 and its current manifestations, from the continued occupation of stolen Indigenous Lands to the violent dismantlement of Gaza Solidarity Encampments at UCSD, UCLA, UCI, UCSC and UCSB. Our approach of periodically creating new versions of this document allows us to consult with and connect to communities struggling for a free Palestine, at UCSD, across the UCs, within the global solidarity struggle and with those on the frontlines in Palestine, while retaining the responsibility for the work of producing and modifying this document locally.
We employ radical ethnography in foregrounding the narratives of life experiences and circumstances of the members of the Encampment. We center personal narratives as invaluable, challenging the objective/subjective bias that tends to elevate official state- sponsored narratives over the narratives of participants in the Encampment. We quote extensively and reproduce images as a way of centering self-determination. The political and historical context of the Encampment grounds our work to document stories of the Encampment. As Encampment members, participants and supporters ourselves, we reject the duality of researcher/researched and listen, observe and learn from participants to disrupt these socially constructed roles. We resist the temptation to impose regular, universal patterns on an Encampment composed of diverse, multifaceted members, in a manner that typifies traditional ethnographic methods, and instead aim to follow “breaks, incongruencies and ruptures.” Last, we expand the audience of our chronicle beyond the academic scholarly community, because a genocide's harms extend broadly, and what the Encampment story offers us is a way to re-humanize Palestinians and to stop a genocide. 57b
As activists engaged in scholarly work, militant ethnography offers us a framing to engage as researchers as we work to end a genocide and learn from our activism to improve our practice. Under this framing, we are both politically active and collaborative in both our activism and research. 58b Our chronicle allows us to draw upon our own experiences as valuable: "“This tendency to position oneself at a distance and treat social life as an object to decode, rather than entering into the flow and rhythm of ongoing social interaction, hinders our ability to understand social practice." Last, this chronicle allows us, members of the Encampment and activists for a free Palestine, to learn from our Encampment to improve our activism: "In this register, ethnography becomes a tool for collective reflection about activist practice and emerging utopian imaginaries." 58c We envision a free Palestine and liberation and self-determination for all Indigenous peoples.
Our data include timelines and descriptions of events from social media, photographs and video, published descriptions of the events in letters, commentaries and news stories, documents, and our own and participant observations, recollections and oral histories all integrating what happened and its context. Additionally, we aspire to describe how the Encampment impacted bodies and minds, in the sense of Dian Million's Felt Theory 61. We seek to document the secondary, aftershock trauma of a genocide, the baton blows and and the endless authoritarian hammer that follows those in the global solidarity movement for a free Palestine who color outside the lines, as well as the revolutionary joy that are inscribed in bodies and minds, as the trauma and occasional joy are to a much greater extent etched in the bodies and minds of those on the frontlines. In this first version, we only scratch the surface of this important aspect of UCSD's Encampment, which we plan to explore further in subsequent versions.
Our analysis of data and artifacts seeks to develop a fluid and politically grounded narrative that upends the colonial logics of a police state that tries to but always fails to destroy the movement for a free Palestine.
Return to Contexts ||| Advance to Stories
- 57a
Rosalina Diaz (2024) Decolonizing Ethnography: A Reimagined Framework for Teaching Radical Ethnography, Teaching Tools, Fieldsights, February 15. https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/decolonizing-ethnography-a-reimagin…
- 58a
Jeffrey S. Juris (2007) Practicing Militant Ethnography with the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona, in Stevphen Shukaitis and David Graeber, with Erika Biddle, eds., Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, AK Press, 164-176. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53fde28ee4b0f7be79e00d95/t/53fe9…
- 59a
Klee Benally et al (2014) Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex, Indigenous Action Media. https://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-…
- 59b
Klee Benally et al (2014) Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex, Indigenous Action Media. https://www.indigenousaction.org/accomplices-not-allies-abolishing-the-…
- 60
Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone (2020) Land Grab Universities: Expropriated Indigenous Land is the Foundation of the Land-Grant University System, High Country News, March 30. https://www.hcn.org/issues/52-4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-…
- 57b
Rosalina Diaz (2024) Decolonizing Ethnography: A Reimagined Framework for Teaching Radical Ethnography, Teaching Tools, Fieldsights, February 15. https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/decolonizing-ethnography-a-reimagin…- for-conducting-radical-ethnography
- 58b
Jeffrey S. Juris (2007) Practicing Militant Ethnography with the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona, in Stevphen Shukaitis and David Graeber, with Erika Biddle, eds., Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, AK Press, 164-176. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53fde28ee4b0f7be79e00d95/t/53fe9…
- 58c
Jeffrey S. Juris (2007) Practicing Militant Ethnography with the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona, in Stevphen Shukaitis and David Graeber, with Erika Biddle, eds., Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization, AK Press, 164-176. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53fde28ee4b0f7be79e00d95/t/53fe9…
- 61
Dian Million (2009) Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History, Wicazo Sa Review, 24(2), Project MUSE, 53-76. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/wic.0.0043