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Two commonly articulated goals of engaged anthropology include: 1) creating equal power relations with research participants; and 2) producing scholarship that critiques inequality. Though these seem commensurate, this article discusses how working toward both goals can lead to conflict when collaborators vehemently disagree with the critical aspects of your research findings. This article argues that writing about the ethnographic backstage — the background negotiations that rarely make it to the printed page — can help engaged anthropologists foster more egalitarian relations when it comes to ethnographic representation and can sharpen our sociocultural critiques. Because engaged anthropology, by definition, is shaped by negotiations with research participants, examining the ethnographic backstage helps us better understand an important axis in the production of anthropological knowledge.

Much of the scholarship on charter schools has examined the reform through the lens of neoliberalism, rightly critiquing it for its negative effects on democracy, public schools, and marginalized communities. While we have developed important understandings of how progressive values are often repurposed toward strengthening neoliberal projects in education, I argue for a serious exploration of the possibilities of using neoliberal tools as a way of advancing progressive aims. Using the case study of a charter school in Philadelphia’s Chinatown that was founded expressly as a claim to urban space, Asian American self-determination, and multiracial solidarity, I show how some of the progressive aims we hope to achieve can come from unexpected neoliberal techniques.

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