In Chapter 1 and 2 of Outlawed, Goldstein explores the conflict between cultural critique and engaged activism in anthropology and shows how these are not always divorced from each other and can be both applied at the same time to the anthropological research. He proves his argument by narrating his experience in Uspha Uspha, a marginal urban community in Bolivia. Before dwelling into the security problems in Bolivian marginalized communities, he analyses the paradoxical meaning and use of security by the state on the one hand and the people who are as he says "outlawed".
The community of Uspha Uspha is just another one among many marginalized urban communities set by people who have migrated from rural areas and established illegal settlements near the urban centers. Goldstein focuses on how this affects the security of the people who live in these areas. The fact that their settlements are in a way illegal and that most of the people do not have the means to be able to go through "the labyrinthine and nightmarish bureaucracy in search of official help" (p.23), they resort to apply their own justice in their communities that is also known as justicia comunitaria.
Justicia comunitaria is recognised by the state in Bolivia since Evo Morales´s new constitution and allows these communities to apply their own principles in the administration of justice. However, this does not result in more security but all the opposite as these communities end up resorting to violence, usually in form of lynching, to punish criminals or injustice in general. What is ironical about this is that whereas state law does not guarantee security to the marginal communities they do apply the laws to obstruct them, imposing their "own conception of order" (p. 6) instead of applying it to the community needs. This, as Goldstein puts it, results in a situation which "leaves people both outside the law and problematically within it".
Goldstein explores how the security issue has changed in relation to the state over time. Whereas at first security was a priority for the state but it was also state focused, attending threats such as the menace of communism for example, now the state takes less responsibilities for security of the communities and assumes only a rather supportive role. Applying the critical anthropology of security, Goldstein considers the concept of security a social construction and an instrument used by the state to adapt to its needs and aims. In a neoliberal context when the interests of the state are mainly economical security adapts to its economical interest in a way that now it depends on global capital and prioritizes transnational companies’ interests over meeting the citizens´ security needs.
In Chapter 2, Goldstein starts analysing the conflicts arising from the anthropological research. The problem of a cultural critique approach is that it is in a sense selfish on behalf of the researcher who takes the information and does not give anything back to the researched community in exchange for their knowledge. He considers it unethical to limit yourself to an academic anthropology, as he says "without contributing to the struggles I was witnessing".
However, the cultural critique is necessary for the anthropologist to be able to support the communities as they need to know well the community in order to know their needs and desires. The conflict that originates from the engaged anthropologist approach is that a research resulting from such an involvement tends to be considered as biased and as violating the main principle of anthropology which is "objectivity". However, this does not have to be this way as long as the anthropologist is aware of the bias that they can have and try not to reflect it in the research. One example of this phenomenon is Smith´s engaged activism in Guatemala and his struggle not to "undermine the work of Mayan leaders in Guatemala" in his writing as he finally tells the story just how it is, attending to the principles of objectivity in anthropology, even though after working with the community he probably had developed certain feelings towards the community members. One of the main points that Goldstein states is that in a way research in a community is almost unavoidably engaged in the end and ethnography without involvement is not possible as it helps to get people in the community to collaborate in the research and also to get to know the community better. Detachment and ethnography are not possible together.
With this perspective, Goldstein engages in Projects to improve security in the community in Upsha Upsha. The Project,Proyecto Rutgers, was a collaborative research work that at the same time provided various services that were intended to benefit the community. Some of these services provided were martial arts and clubs that fostered socializing among the community members. Even though the Project was quite successful, the conflict started when an unavoidable hierarchical structure started to emerge and Goldstein decided to quit and engaged in a smaller project. The second project was an International Service Learning which joined research and service to the community again. The purpose was to provide the community members with teaching services in exchange for their collaboration in the research. This embodied very well the merge of cultural critique and engagement in the anthropological research by Goldstein in the community. His blog posts show a very detailed narration that illustrates his work in the Project and constitutes an interesting ethnographic source. The gratefulness of the community members illustrated by one of his blog posts implies that the Project achieved to give back something to the community in exchange for their knowledge. As Goldstein observes, a project does not have to be big to achieve change or make a positive contribution to a community, as he says: ´change can sometimes most effectively emerge from small, inexpensive targeted interventions that proceed directly from the needs and desires of the people being served.´
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