Encounters with Organic Intellectuals in Nicaragua and Indonesia

This article proposes a conceptual framework for anthropologists who wish to study everyday political practice. The authors develop this framework based on their encounters with their favourite interlocutors, whom they consider to be “organic intellectuals” in Gramsci’s sense, deeply rooted in their communities. The three components of the analytical framework–Eigensinn, empathy, and strategy–enable them to understand politics wherever people engage critically with oppressive power structures. The two authors experiment with a form of ethnographic writing that allows them to bring their field experiences into dialogue, one in Nicaragua and the other in Indonesia. They are drawn to the capacity of their interlocutors in using their reason to conduct analysis exposing the causes of injustice and to their efforts to bring about change. This everyday political practice is particularly courageous in contexts such as Indonesia and Nicaragua, where critics are isolated and persecuted, and where spaces for developing critical analysis through discussion are closed

Ethnography · Favourite · Injustice · Political anthropology · Politics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Political theory and Gramsci