Limits of engagement in anthropology

It becomes almost a commonsense truth in social sciences and humanities that the scholar should not only get out of his/her “ivory tower” but also to participate in an activist way in the world of his “informant”. The text critically examines the achievements and research directives of activist anthropology. I’m trying to show that anthropological projects that base on the so called “participation” are far from the epistemological rupture, that is fundamental to the freedom of scientific thinking, the freedom that can lead sometimes to the generation of opposite knowledge to common sense, while participatory projects leads rather toward confirmation of the common sense. In the article I’m trying to show that the researcher who is negotiating the content of his knowledge, which is to be a representation of informant’s knowledge, with the informant, becomes a hostage of the unwritten agreement, which he imposed by himself, assuming that what is good from the moral stand defined by a researcher, is also good for informant, and is good at all.