From the body: an exchange on scholarship and advocacy

AbstractIn this article, the authors draw from their own experiences working among religious congregations that minister to unauthorized immigrants in the new destinations in the U.S. to reflect on the relationship between scholarship and advocacy. They argue that because of the scholar's embodied condition, his/her location in networks of relations characterized by power differentials, scholarship will always involve a measure of advocacy, invariably containing judgments not only about what counts as legitimate and authoritative methods, arguments, and data for the religious-studies scholarly ‘community,’ but also about the place of the scholar and her/his scholarly community in the larger society. However, as their own experiences show, not all forms of advocacy are equal – they vary in their level of publicness, as well as the intensity and type of the engagement – and these various modalities carry potential payoffs and pitfalls. Thus, rather than trying to draw fixed, sharp, and ultimately untenable ...