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REBECCA ‘WILLOW’ ANNE HUTTON
Hi! I’m Willow (she/her), an anthropology PhD candidate at Deakin Uni in (so-called) Melbourne, Australia, exploring a phenomenon close to my heart: mutual aid. I’ve set up this website to share some of the background to the project, but I hope to keep it updated as my directions, insights, and thoughts progress.
My project is enmeshed in my everyday life, politics, social relations, and is in some sense autoethnographic. In it, I ask what mutual aid can tell us about the nature of crisis, labour, reciprocity, economic relations, and prefigurative political possibilities.
My fieldwork, which commenced in April 2023, aims to trace the perspectives and insights of folks ‘doing’ mutual aid on the ground, over a period of around 9 months. My approach is ethnographic, inductive, and open-ended. In a nutshell, it is an attempt to trace ‘seeds of hope’ across different forms and spaces of mutual aid, through reflexive ethnographic participant observation (“deep hanging out”).
Starting in Melbourne, my insights have led me (unexpectedly) to Newcastle Upon Tyne in the U.K.
I am now currently based in the West End, exploring the mutual aid ecosystem that emerged and flourished in the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m inviting any voices or perspectives as I can, so please reach out if you’re interested to talk!
Mutual aid: a factor of revolution? The economic anthropology of ‘everyday anarchism’ in the wake of COVID-19
rhutton@deakin.edu.au
REBECCA 'WILLOW' ANNE HUTTON 