13 December 2021

Facilitating resonance: Brokerage in indigenous activism

Associate Professor Birgit Bräuchler contritubed to the journal Cultural Dynamics with the article 'Facilitating resonance: Brokerage in indigenous activism'. 

Putting forward a synergetic combination of three concepts – brokerage, indigeneity and resonance – this article investigates how brokers in Indonesia support indigenous communities in their struggle for citizen and human rights.

The author investigates the emergence of broker chains and multi-scalar activism that are needed to translate from the local – in this case the Aru Islands in Eastern Indonesia – to the global and vice versa. It engages with established and tracks the emergence of new brokers and analyses their strategies to produce resonance and mobilise for resistance on various scales, with media, arts and religion being main fields of engagement, and studies the challenges they face.

The article thus explores the concept of brokerage within new fields and uses brokerage as an analytical lens to explore processes of mobilisation, relationship-building and identity construction.

Citation
Bräuchler B. Facilitating resonance: Brokerage in indigenous activism. Cultural Dynamics. 2021;33(4):382-400. doi:10.1177/09213740211011192

Open access
The article is open access and available at Sage Journals: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09213740211011192