 Subjects -> ANTHROPOLOGY (Total: 398 journals)
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- In defence of ideological struggle against neocolonial
self-justifications: Revisiting Asad's Anthropology and the Colonial
Encounter amid the decolonial turn-
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Authors: Stephen Campbell
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Over the past decade-plus, there has been a surge in anthropological writing on decolonisation. Yet, whereas mid-twentieth century anticolonial revolutionaries fought to uproot imperialism's extractive political economy, certain contemporary decolonial tendencies give primacy, instead, to asserting cultural/epistemological difference. This shift has motivated pertinent critiques, such as that of Nigerian philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, of atavistic conceptions of decolonisation. Táíwò's dismissal, however, of the neocolonialism thesis and his conceptual uncoupling of imperialism's material and symbolic dimensions results in a one-dimensional polemic. What gets lost is the much-needed role of decolonisation as an ideological struggle in mobilising populations against an entrenched neocolonial political economy. With this debate as framing, I propose revisiting Talal Asad's 1973 volume, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, published at the height of anthropology's disciplinary anti-imperialism. The book's contributors detail how, amid intensifying anticolonial agitation, interwar anthropologists anxious about cultural change among colonised populations advocated a shift to indirect colonial rule through native elites, rather than an abolition of imperialism per se. While spurning colonialism's earlier assimilationist agenda, anthropological calls to institutionalise cultural differences among colonised populations resonated with an imperialist project of incorporating while subverting anticolonial demands. Amid present-day anthropological discussions around decolonisation, these insights remain relevant. This is because contemporary neocolonial relations operate in a manner akin to indirect colonial rule.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2023-03-17T06:14:22Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996231160522
- Outline of a theory of breakage
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Authors: Bruno Vindrola-Padrós
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Much of the debate in archaeological theory throughout the last decades has revolved around challenging problematic humanist principles that have shaped our discipline, particularly the idea that humans are masters over nature. Postprocessualists sought, among other things, to emancipate the human condition from this essentialist claim in part by exposing the historical and cultural situatedness of this humanist principle – an epistemological endeavour. In comparison, posthumanists have animated the material world (albeit in different ways) to decentre human beings in relation to long-forsaken nonhumans – an ontological agenda. While posthumanists accuse postprocessualists of practicing anthropocentrism and the latter accuse the former of occupying an ahumanist and anti-epistemological position, there are powerful commonalities in their critique of late humanist doctrines. The aim of this paper is to introduce a theory that exposes the illusory humanist claim of human control over nature and to recognise other forces with momentum besides human will, while at the same time giving prominence to questions about human knowledge and practice. Therefore, a connection is formed between postprocessualism and posthumanism and, as an ironic result, a theory of breakage is formulated. When we consider human participation with breakage, defined as those continuous and uncontrollable phenomena involving the unbinding of object form, we come to terms with a different form of anthropological understanding termed ‘the social knowledge of breakage’. This constitutes an embodied form of knowledge, which is acquired and expressed practically from a young age about how objects break and how one must respond to these situations. This knowledge is exposed in both mundane and ceremonial practices, in linguistic and non-linguistic forms, shaping social practices in uncertain ways, and can be analysed according to three different strands. In this way, we become aware of the creative ways in which broken materials inadvertently affect our practices.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2023-01-07T02:15:37Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221139900
- Tacit and embedded as forms: A tropological approach to neoliberalism
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Authors: David Sutton
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
What might we learn by considering the social and literary forms that makeup neoliberalism, and their relationship to the figurations of anthropological thought and writing' Inspired by tropological work in literary criticism and anthropology, this article considers how two terms introduced into the analytic literature by Karl and Michael Polanyi—embeddedness and tacit knowledge respectively—can give us new insights into important aspects of neoliberal practice. In considering the interrelation of these tropes, we can begin to parse out the relationship among several key aspects of the practice of neoliberalism: marketization, audit culture, and quantification; and how these are intertwined in their opposition to embeddedness and tacit knowledge. This article considers what different forms afford for analytic thinking about our present moment, as well as for formulating various protests and oppositions to neoliberalism.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-12-07T05:35:36Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221133870
- Imagination theory: Anthropological perspectives
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Authors: Ingo Rohrer, Michelle Thompson
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
The term imagination and its derivatives often serve as points of departures, yet a concise understanding of imagination in anthropology is lacking. In this paper, we argue for a contextualized anthropological approach to imagination; a complex notion which has been used to describe the human capacity to mentally (re)create that what is not materially present; the creative process of imagining; and the individual and social products of such a process. We address terminological particularities, conceptual differences, and related concepts in addition to discussing the importance of methods and the poetic imagination. In doing so, we consolidate and elaborate on previous analytical and conceptual works to provide a more explicit middle-range theory of imagination from an anthropological perspective. While we propose understanding imagination as a guiding action in situations of uncertainty or ignorance and emphasize focusing on everyday processes and practices, our discussions provide a framework to discuss and compare empirically grounded findings regarding imagination.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-11-14T06:17:55Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221129117
- Over the ruins of subjects: A critique of subjectivism in anthropological
discourse-
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Authors: Ricardo Santos Alexandre
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
The present article develops a theoretical and philosophical critique of the subjectivist paradigm that grounds a good part of present-day anthropological discourse. The main thesis is that by placing the individual and its subjective experiences at the beginning and end of the anthropological discourse, one never thoroughly acknowledges and accepts our non-subjective and finite modes of being, thereby replicating a distorted and shallow picture of what we are as humans. The article explores, first, how that subjectivist paradigm came about, as well as some of its problems; secondly, it considers ethics and morality as the domain where one can better grasp the limits of subjectivist orientations; and concludes by turning to Heidegger's perspective on the ontological finitude of Dasein in order to emphasize the need for contemporary anthropology to build its reflections from within human finitude, that is, the frailties and the practical, analytic and moral limits of human existence.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-10-18T06:36:56Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221128079
- The smell of bare death: Encountering life at the graveyard of Lampedusa
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Authors: Alessandro Corso
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
What smell does border death leave to the inhabitants of borderlands' Is the encounter with the dead bodies of the migrants who perished in the Mediterranean Sea telling in how we articulate discussions around (necro)politics at the external borders of Europe' Based on one-year of fieldwork on the island of Lampedusa (Southern Italy), Door to Europe, and frontier for irregular border crossing, I argue that border death has consequences for both the migrants and the inhabitants of borderlands. The paper will trace such consequences through the testimony of Vincenzo, the old cemetery gatekeeper of Lampedusa, the witness and bearer of knowledge around the nameless bodies buried in Lampedusa's cemetery since 1996. This approach will help considering the extent to which the encounter with migrants’ dead bodies – bare life in death – allows ethnographers to speak of the inherently violent system that scholars referred to as necropolitics or thanatopolitics, and the otherwise irreducible force of life, which manifests itself beyond any possible attempt to reduce it or silence it.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-10-07T05:44:50Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221128104
- Calibrating home, hospitality and reciprocity in migration
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Authors: Nicholas DeMaria Harney, Paolo Boccagni
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Hospitality, as an analytic and a lived experience, is central to the day-to-day workings of home, and to managing the tensions and contradictions inherent in place attachment and appropriation on any scale – from the domestic to the national one. This emerges as a contentious and yet under-researched social question whenever newcomers such as immigrants and refugees lay some claim for guesthood. Following this premise, and based also on our fieldwork, this article outlines a conceptual argument for a joint understanding of home and hospitality in time and space. This leads us to conceptualize ‘calibrated hospitality’ to appreciate the ongoing dialectic between the spatial, temporal, and relational dimensions of the host–guest encounter in immigrant- and refugee-receiving societies. Looking at immigrant and refugee inclusion in terms of hospitality being claimed, negotiated, and possibly denied, relative to the theories and practices of ‘home’, opens an extensive conceptual terrain for social research that is more connected to foundational lived cultural idioms, and contextually more sensitive, than approaches based only on policy frames such as integration, or on formal entitlements such as access or residence rights.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-08-22T07:09:38Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221118140
- The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers
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Authors: Olli Pyyhtinen, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based commodity frontiers’, reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift to new domains but also to critically interrogate them, identify their limitations and explore what dumpster diving can teach us about the gift. In particular, the analysis foregrounds the heterogeneity of gift practices. Arguing against universal notions of the gift, the article proposes that waste assumes four main forms of gifts and relations among dumpster divers: givenness (parasitic relation); solidarity-based giving (relation of reciprocity); free giving (asymmetrical relation); and non-giving, as a withdrawal from returning the discards to nature conceived as an Other (the relation of non-relation).
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-08-22T07:09:19Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221117318
- On the surprising queerness of norms: Anthropology with Canguilhem,
Foucault, and Butler-
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Authors: Thomas Hendriks
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
“Norms” seem like a handy concept in the anthropological toolkit for describing, analyzing, and understanding ethnographic data. But contemporary anthropology rarely investigates the concept of the norm itself. This article critically examines norms as analytical constructs and argues for a more precise vocabulary that differentiates between related terms, such as “normality,” “normativity,” or “normalization,” that circulate loosely in anthropological discourse. To do so, it draws from Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler to show the affordances and pitfalls of their analytics for anthropologists. It particularly reveals the value of Canguilhemian understandings of normativity to keep us alive to the surprising queerness of norms in action.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-08-12T06:12:50Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221117755
- The irony of development: Critique, complicity, cynicism
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Authors: Benedikt Korf
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Has development critique run out of steam' While a certain impasse can be noted between post-development theorists and development ethnographers, this article suggests to re-start the steam engine of development critique by attending to the “irony of development”, i.e. ironic predicaments that explain the sustenance of the development industry despite its persistent failures to live up to its aspirations. How one reads this “irony of successful failure” amounts to a question of how to practise critique, what position the critic takes and what ironic stances the critic intones. While post-development operates an external critique, development ethnographers practise an internal one. I propose to transform the latter into an immanent critique, which identifies “moral excess” as the constitutive function of the ironic predicaments inside the global development apparatus.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-08-02T07:06:42Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221115225
- Future perfect: From the pandemic to the Paris climate agreement
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Authors: Stuart Kirsch
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Fifteen years ago, Jane Guyer (2007) argued that the near future had largely disappeared from collective imaginaries, replaced by longer-term horizons associated with evangelical Christianity and free market capitalism. While not seeking to repudiate Guyer, this article argues that recent developments have radically altered relationships to the future. It points to a previously unrecognized connection between two of the most significant challenges facing humanity today: the experience of living through a global pandemic and international efforts to limit the harmful consequences of climate change. Responses to both phenomena invoke the grammatical structure of the future perfect tense. During the pandemic, people began to imagine themselves living at a future moment in time when they have already resumed participating in those activities they have been prevented from undertaking, an example of the future perfect. The Paris Climate Agreement, which encourages states and other parties to take action in the present so that in the future they will already have saved the planet, also relies on the future perfect. In reaction to the pandemic and climate change, the near future has reemerged as a focal point of temporal attention. This article examines how the future appears in the present and the contribution of the future perfect tense to the creation of alternative futures.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-06-27T06:40:18Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221107961
- The bewitchment of our intelligence: Scepticism about other minds in
anthropology-
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Authors: Marco Motta
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
This article aims at characterizing how the problem of scepticism about other minds appears in anthropology. To do so, I offer a close reading of Nils Bubandt's book, The Empty Seashell (2014), a study of witchcraft and doubt on the North Maluku Island of Halmahera. Through its deep engagement with issues revolving around scepticism, I take the book to be an example of the tendency to consider the problem of sceptical doubt about others as a problem of access to the inner thoughts and feelings of other people. By looking closely at its attempts to respond to this problem, I endeavour to shed light on the ways in which, in working the problem of scepticism out, we may be doing exactly the reverse: giving into the sceptical impulse. How does a certain way of asking questions about scepticism nourish the drive to it' I am interested in the drift towards scepticism that precisely takes the form of a claim against it. In showing that such a drift is prompted by a certain use of language, I hope to elucidate some ways in which scepticism is lived and is thus not merely an intellectual conundrum, but an ordinary human condition.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-02-17T01:25:45Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221080578
- Ritual as metaphor
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Authors: Francesco Della Costa
First page: 3
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
The effectiveness of ritual is a major anthropological question. In this paper, I challenge some of the explanations anthropologists have provided to such a question and I attempt to formulate an original theorization of ritual as metaphor. The proposed hypothesis is grounded in two inspiring concepts: Ernesto De Martino's idea of “dehistorification” as the main technique of the ritual and Bruce Kapferer's “virtuality” as its proper dynamic dimension. Drawing on these theoretical foundations and a direct ethnographic experience and conceiving of ritual as a practice rather than as a symbol, I propose to regard it as a particular practice of metaphorization that is not representative of reality but effective on it.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-12-09T06:47:07Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221130834
- Semiotic vista
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Authors: Carter E. Timon
First page: 56
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Throughout life, one may witness grand views, scenes accompanied by intense affect and a sense of awe or wonder. The awe-inspiring things in these experiences vary considerably from suns in sunsets to glowing visages in holy visions to juices in simple tangerines. For different people, different views along the broad spectrum of these affectively intensive grand-view experiences can produce meaning in life, the influential facet of wellbeing identified by positive psychologists but poorly differentiated from meaning-making in other senses. This paper lays out a theory of semiotic vista to organize such disparate signification events and their use of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs. Using the examples of accounts of mountain hiking experiences, mindfulness meditation experiences, and supernatural encounters, I describe semiotic vista as a transitional mode of semiotic viewing in which agents re-interpret multiple signifiers of ordinary phenomena (objects) as valorized components of novel contexts, typically in association with intense affective experience. The vista mode is heavily facilitated by the (re)generation of at least two primary types of first-order indexical interpretants which occur in these contexts and of their attendant second-order indexicality which (semi)permanently re-contextualizes the objects originally referenced in the same view. I also briefly touch on how this process relates to storytelling and audience reactions. This analysis has implications for wellbeing, positive affect generation, and ideological enregisterment.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-11-21T05:21:25Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221130555
- Climate change in the courtroom: An anthropology of neighborly relations
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Authors: Noah Walker-Crawford
First page: 76
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
This article follows a groundbreaking climate justice lawsuit between a Peruvian farmer and major energy company in a German court, a strategic political intervention addressing the inequities of global warming. The claim posits that the two are neighbors, meaning the company should take responsibility for contributing to climate change impacts in the Andes. Using this legal conception as a starting point to engage with academic discussions about sociality and moral responsibility, I establish neighborliness as an analytical framework for examining the moral stakes of social relations. Addressing the methodological and theoretical challenges of studying a phenomenon that draws connections across the planet, this approach allows for an ethnographically grounded understanding of global warming. Climate change expands the scope of social relations and raises the question of how we should live together on our planet. A focus on neighborliness foregrounds the normative claims through which people make sense of globalizing phenomena.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-11-11T04:05:25Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221138338
- Calcified identities: Persisting essentialism in academic collections of
human remains-
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Authors: Jonatan Kurzwelly, Malin S Wilckens
First page: 100
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Ahead of Print.
Essentialist assumptions about human beings persist in scientific practice, despite their erroneous logic. This article examines essentialism related to research on, and handling of, academic collections of human remains. Historically human remains, and skulls in particular, have served to produce various forms of scientific racialization and racism, confining people to fixed notions of identities and legitimizing violent systems of exploitation and oppression. Contemporary handling of these human remains aims to account for the problematic and violent past, examining the provenance of particular human remains, often leading to their restitution. Despite the different political and ideological motivations of contemporary practice, it too often relies on essentialist categorization and inaccurate or erroneous assumptions. This text exposes the problematic logic of social essentialism and challenges its prevalence in scientific practice.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2022-12-02T06:14:22Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996221133872
- Eleven Namibian rains: A phenomenological analysis of experience in time
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Authors: Michael Schnegg
Pages: 33 - 55
Abstract: Anthropological Theory, Volume 23, Issue 1, Page 33-55, March 2023.
The Damara pastoralists (ǂnūkhoen) in Namibia distinguish a diverse range of rains. Some rains kill livestock, others care for insects and still others wash away the footprints of the deceased, allowing the person to exist in the spirit realm. While anthropologists have documented cultural classifications like the Namibian rains for decades, we still lack a convincing theory to explain how they come to exist. To address this, I develop a phenomenological perspective and theorise how experience contributes to what rain becomes. I argue with Husserl that the present in which we experience the rain is not a discrete moment, but a unity across a succession of ‘nows’. In the process, perceptions, images, memories and expectations about past and future events blend. In other words, a web of meaningful relationships connects the rain we experience ‘now’ with multiple past and future entities, including people, plants, spirits and animals. I refer to this as network formation. Combining the analyses of the people's pastoral being-in-the-world and their historical–political context, including post-colonialism, allows an explanation as to why some of those combinations are singled out and become distinct ontological entities. I refer to this as node selection. Combining the two processes – network formation and node selection – allows for an explanation as to why precipitation becomes discernible and meaningful as eleven different Namibian rains.
Citation: Anthropological Theory
PubDate: 2021-08-09T01:22:37Z
DOI: 10.1177/14634996211035365
Issue No: Vol. 23, No. 1 (2021)
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