Anthropologies of Activism and Advocacy

In June 2025, I attended the Interface Writing Retreat on Activism and Advocacy at the serene Cross Cultural Centre in Ascona, Switzerland. Activists, researchers, and scholars gathered there to explore the intersections of narrative, justice, and transformative action.
One moment stood out with particular poignancy: Katrin Hattenhauer’s presentation, Voices of Courage. https://www.voices-of-courage.com

​A German artist and human rights activist, Katrin played a vital role in the peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. For her activism in Eastern Germany, she was imprisoned—an experience that deepened, rather than diminished, her commitment to nonviolent resistance and truth-telling.

During her talk, Katrin shared with us a tiny, hand-written book: a miniature copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. This version had been carefully copied by another activist, so that if Katrin were caught, she could truthfully say the handwriting wasn’t hers—perhaps sparing her further punishment. The book, carried close to her heart, was a hidden manuscript of hope.  

However, it wasn’t only activists who copied books by hand. Often it was done by people who didn’t have the courage to resist the regime openly or join the protests publicly. Katrin wasn’t acting alone, she had discreet helpers. For example, on the street where Katrin lived back in 1988 in Leipzig, she explained that her neighbours knew her, and quite a number of them would quietly support her. Some warned her when the Stasi had raided her flat, others placed ladders in their backyards when she needed to escape over the rooftops and find a different courtyard. Though they never dared to join the protests themselves, she was always very grateful to them and their supportive actions.

This story deeply moved me—not only for its quiet heroism, but because Jonathan Livingston Seagull was also a source of inspiration in my own youth. When I returned home, I unearthed my well-worn copy. As I turned its pages, I was reminded of the longing I once felt to fly higher, to seek a truth beyond the surface, just like Jonathan. The book had been a call to inner freedom then. It still is.
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May the ideas in this small, courageous book help carry us forward—to discover future flyways for activism, advocacy, and love.

“As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and again of the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth, just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would have meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking his truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced his kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the more he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.” (Richard Bach, 1970, p. 61)

​Here are pictures of the precious book that Katrin carried in her pocket:

​The Interface Commission and the participants who presented their research for the Anthropologies of Activism and Advocacy writing workshop in Ascona: