Zoom Link:
https://unilu.zoom.us/j/96980410248?pwd=WUVJcVZzVTgxRWpTOWtjSWp0QnMzUT09

Meeting ID: 969 8041 0248
Passcode: 500274

"Kinfolk ain't always Skinfolk": Ethnographic Reflections on the Politics of Blackness in the context of Black Lives Matter in St. Louis, Missouri

In this presentation, I will examine mobilizations of “Blackness” by activists working as part of a local network of organisations in St. Louis in the light of anthropological and social science debates about representation, strategic essentialisms, and anti-racist praxis.

Based on fifteen months of fieldwork in St. Louis, Missouri, and preliminary analyses thereof, this talk will center around instances of activist praxis in the context of a campaign to shut down a local prison and municipal elections. Specifically, I will explore the tensions around how “Blackness” is articulated as agential praxis in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement. In effect, I will present 1) arguments for an ethnographic inquiry with social movements as anti-racist praxis; and 2) ethnographic reflections and questions for the conjuncture of social science studies of and with social movements, especially with respect to debates around anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist “futuremaking”.