Thread: Notes for scholars writing about social movements and politics that are not theirs

#TeamRhetoric

1/ Citation politics matter: amplify local voices, voices from people who have real stakes in the situation. These voices may not make sense to you because of differences in cultural contexts and histories, but do your homework anyway.

2/ It may be tempting to default to familiar scholarship written by white people, but don’t succumb to that easy comfort. Remember that folks outside of the Euroamerican context never gets to enjoy the privilege of citing their own voices.

3/ Grapple with the messiness and complexities of the local contexts and experiences without immediately imposing your own framework and value judgment.

4/ E.g. the left-right political divide in the US does not apply neatly to Hong Kong. Using a culturally incongruent framework to pass value judgment on a local movement is both lazy and unethical.

5/ If you won’t analyze politics and people in your country in binary terms, don’t do that either to other people and places.

6/ If all you are referencing are people who look and think like you, you are doing it wrong.