Research, Advocacy and the Political Economy of the Caring State

Abstract

Advocacy has for long occupied a predominant place in anthropological research concerned with power and social inequality. In this tradition, close attention has historically been paid to the relationships that researchers can/should build with participants who pursue their own social justice agendas amidst socioeconomic and institutional struggles that involve various institutions, organisations and groups. In an attempt to take a step further, this paper argues for the relevance of (re-)conceptualizing advocacy as a discursive space in which decisions about who gets to decide what counts as proper ways of “doing social activism” cannot be detached from wider political economic struggles over legitimization of broader social/moral categories concerned with competence and citizenship – and with the specific regulated markets that these contribute to constitute. Drawing on a 5-year project carried out in Hong Kong, we will focus on the emergence of “doing activism” as a discourse register that allowed youth of Nepali, Pakistani, and Indian backgrounds to engage in the semiotic production of social personae and related moral stances, in service of securing additional funding for their sponsoring social service agency and of advancing social justice goals. While paving the way for upward socio-institutional mobility in some individual cases, this form of discourse register, which was enhanced through the research project itself, may have also reinforced a State-based mode of neoliberal governance that has wider implications for the re-organisation of social life in Hong Kong and elsewhere.