•  
  •  
 

Southern Anthropologist

Abstract

Anthropological praxis has the potential to help build and sustain social justice movements by speaking truth to power, exposing structural violence, and questioning communities’ safety and well-being. Anthropologists who engage in praxis interrogate the root causes of oppression by critiquing the discipline’s pedagogies. The current structure of academic institutions encourages scholars to overlook the popular and political education necessary to ameliorate social suffering and advance human rights. This paper explores prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition, a liberatory praxis framework that socio-cultural anthropologists may adopt as active participants in the abolitionist struggle. This case study draws on community-based participatory action research with Southerners on New Ground (SONG), a political education working group called Atlanta Political Education Series (APE Shit). Inspired by Paulo Freire’s principle, “education is freedom,” this working group released a zine workbook titled Abolition 101, an accessible resource in political education for community members who are interested in learning about PIC abolition. Autoethnographic data analysis reveals the value of incorporating a liberatory framework in academic anthropology. I argue that mainstreaming such an approach in formal anthropological pedagogy challenges students and mobilizes communities to be critically informed creators of their reality and active agents of social change.

Relational Format

journal article

Download

Included in

Anthropology Commons

Share

COinS