Showing papers in "Critique of Anthropology in 2013"
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of slum upgrading on the lives of the slum dwellers, especially on their position in society and their relation with the state, are analyzed.
Abstract: This article analyses the effects of slum upgrading on the lives of slum dwellers, especially on their position in society and their relation with the state. It zooms in on the implementation of Pr...
51 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that an ethnographic focus on development professionals may serve to divert attention to the significance of both the politics and the material effects of development intervention and the relations of power within which they are embedded.
Abstract: This paper engages with an emerging genre in anthropology’s engagement with international development – writing about ‘Aidland’ which focus attention on the lives, motivations and personalities of ‘development professionals’. It suggests that there are two possible problems with the growing popularity of work on Aidland: first, that it rests on a reified and dated view of the worlds of aid and development; second, that an ethnographic focus on development professionals may serve to divert attention to the significance of both the politics and the material effects of development intervention and the relations of power within which they are embedded.
47 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the promise and disappointments of direct democracy that followed Evo Morales' election as president of Bolivia and contrast ideas of normative democracy with radical democracy, and suggest that the model of direct democratic that Morales and his aides have promoted is in fact nothing more than a stark utopian claim designed to ensure the legitimacy of the MAS party.
Abstract: “All of us are presidents” examines the promise and disappointments of direct democracy that followed Evo Morales’ election as president of Bolivia. Working with the literature on politics, the state, and social movements in Latin America, the author contrasts ideas of normative democracy with radical democracy. The article pursues two ideas. First, in the wake of Morales’ election his core political base in the Chapare region perceived and engaged in politics as if they exercised direct, structural authority over the president’s policies. Second, while Morales initially embraced direct democracy he quickly distanced himself from this practice. As the coca growers observe, Morales abandon their political practices they have ceased to refer to themselves as presidents. Therefore, the author suggest that the model of direct democracy that Morales and his aides have promoted is in fact nothing more than a stark utopian claim designed to ensure the legitimacy of the MAS party.
43 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that citizenship is more than the legal status of a member of a national political community with certain rights and responsibilities, and argue that it is an important and helpful way of framing anthropological enquiry into politics.
Abstract: The articles in this special issue start from the premise that citizenship is more than the legal status of member of a national political community with certain rights and responsibilities (Marshall, 1983). We contend that citizenship is an important and helpful way of framing anthropological enquiry into politics. The authors ask how citizenship is experienced in any given context, and thereby explore how particular political communities and political agency are constituted.
43 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the embeddedness paradigm has been influential according to two very different perspectives: economic anthropology and culturalist approaches, both being too unilateral and too general.
Abstract: Institutionalisms, old and new, are multifaceted and heterogeneous but they share a desire to unshackle the economy to some extent, and open it out to an inclusive society. This gives room for a dialogue with anthropology. Two concepts are discussed here: (1) the embeddedness paradigm has been influential according two very different perspectives:economic anthropology (focusing on unequal relations) and culturalist approaches (focusing on common social values and norms), both being too unilateral and too general. (2) The informal institutions (or informal norms) issue has been promisingly raised by new-institutional economists, but the questions they posed are more interesting and stimulating than their too often formal and stereotyped answers. It is in fact between sociology of institutions on one side, anthropology of public action on the other, that the dialogue is the most fruitful, based on both sides on a strong empirical commitment, a combination of the norm-based approach and the power based appro...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present findings from research on political subjectivity and citizenship with two public-sector trade unions in Buenos Aires and outline some of the relations between trade unionism and c...
Abstract: The paper presents findings from research on political subjectivity and citizenship with two public‐sector trade unions in Buenos Aires. I outline some of the relations between trade unionism and c...
33 citations
TL;DR: In recent years, liberal concepts of citizenship have been appropriated in the Indian subcontinent by various sections of the urban bourgeoisie, in particular, left-leaning intellectuals and activi... as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In recent years, liberal concepts of citizenship have been appropriated in the Indian subcontinent by various sections of the urban bourgeoisie, in particular, left-leaning intellectuals and activi...
32 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present multivocal exchanges between evictees and frontline demolition personnel regarding urban housing demolition in China, concluding that evictes and evictors alike stick to the official rules but contest vigorously the interpretation, each in accordance with their tacit understanding of the norm of practising demolition and particular tactics of bending the rules of compensation.
Abstract: This paper presents multivocal exchanges between evictees and frontline demolition personnel regarding urban housing demolition in China. I discovered that evictees and evictors alike stick to the official rules but contest vigorously the interpretation, each in accordance with their tacit understanding of the norm of practising demolition and particular tactics of bending the rules of compensation. This paper provides a detailed, rarely available ethnographic record of the encounters between evictees and evictors, and contributes to the study of how agents strategise and interact within a habitus of micro-power relationships. It is concluded that the agency of various players is simultaneously reproducing the social structure but paradoxically working to sabotage the very structure within which they practice.
25 citations
TL;DR: Shah as mentioned in this paper argues that the concept of citizenship that civil liberties activists rely on is alien to the adivasis of central and eastern India, and that this perspective is both limiting and may actually be inimical to adivasi interests because it reduces the space for the Maoist political project.
Abstract: If Alpa Shah had her way (Shah, 2013), civil liberties and democratic rights platforms in India, currently speaking in the name of citizenship or ‘the people’ (e.g. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Concerned Citizens Committee (CCC); People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Independent People’s Tribunal for Environmental and Human Rights (IPT)) would abandon their pretensions and instead give themselves names such as ‘‘Committee for the Recognition of Maoist Love and Marriage’’ (CRMLR) or ‘‘Union for the Promotion of the Sacral Parha Polity’’ (UPSPP), and be in a much better position to advance the cause of the adivasis, in conjunction, of course, with suitably re-educated Maoists. In her article (CofA 33:1:2013), Shah covers three broad themes: The first pertains to the civil liberties movement in India; the second concerns villager support for Maoists, and the third bears on the way Maoists create political consciousness and citizenship in their own areas. The first two are not original, though poor citation gives this impression, while her comments on the third border on the incoherent. With respect to the civil liberties movement, Shah argues, first, that public understanding of adivasi involvement with Maoists is too dependent on the writings of ‘‘left leaning’’ civil liberties activists and scholars. Second, these liberal activists reduce villagers to helpless victims ‘‘sandwiched’’ between the Maoists and the State; third, their writings portray adivasi support for the Maoists as born out of state deficit; fourth, she asserts that the concept of citizenship that civil liberties activists rely on is alien to the adivasis of central and eastern India, and that this perspective is both limiting and may actually be inimical to adivasi interests because it reduces the space for the Maoist political project.
23 citations
TL;DR: The concept of virtual water, which represents the volume of water needed to produce a particular quantity of agricultural commodity, has become popular among international water experts as mentioned in this paper, and it has become a popular topic among water experts.
Abstract: The concept of “virtual water,” which represents the volume of water needed to produce a particular quantity of agricultural commodity, has become popular among international water experts. Advocat...
23 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an educational movement based on conducting an ethnographic evaluation of a community to identify the generative themes (or "dangerous words") is described, and the movement is described.
Abstract: Paulo Freire was a revolutionary educator. He founded an educational movement based on conducting an ethnographic evaluation of a community to identify the generative themes (or “dangerous words”) ...
TL;DR: The anthropological study of South African citizenship enables an understanding of restitutive and redistributive reforms in the post-transitional context of South Africa as discussed by the authors, with discourses stressing enterprise, responsibility and the need to earn rights.
Abstract: The anthropological study of citizenship enables an understanding of restitutive and redistributive reforms in the post-transitional context of South Africa. In its earlier, state-derived form, citizenship’s situated and contingent character, its use of pre-existing modes of identification as templates, and its ethnic differentiation which expresses ‘class’ distinctions while also masking them, reveal that no single democratic vision can easily encompass all of those who would belong in a new society. In its later market-oriented form, citizenship becomes more individuated, with discourses stressing enterprise, responsibility and the need to earn rights. The term ‘neoliberal governmentality’ has been used to describe the switch from state- to market-driven arrangements, but is inadequate to do so since it overlooks the extent to which state and market intermesh and are tightly interwoven, with apparently purely market-oriented initiatives reliant on extensive state intervention both for design and impleme...
TL;DR: This paper found that most people did not reduce being a citizen to having a relationship with the state or government, but instead viewed it as being about "living in society" and "being a citizen".
Abstract: Citizenship has been in the last thirty years a significant concern of anthropologists, not least because it has been in the same period a concern of people around the world. At least, the term “citizenship” has been used widely, if not always in quite the same way as anthropologists have used it, especially those anthropologists who have paid less attention to their informants’ understandings of it. During fieldwork in west Mexico in 2007–2010, I found that my informants did not reduce being a citizen to having a relationship with the state or government. Many of them said that being a citizen was ultimately about “living in society”. Their use of the term “citizen” reminds us that many different things have been called “citizenship” over the centuries, and that some things now called “citizenship”, such as claiming rights on states, have not always been referred to as such. However, I prefer to focus on the concepts that my informants sometimes labeled “citizenship” rather than on their choice of the wo...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that focusing on the idea of equality of treatment as the main parameter to assess the exercise of citizenship in Western Democracies may not be sufficient to elucidate the demands for respecting rights or the demonstrations of indignation prompted by the perception of insult when legitimate expectations of recognition and considerate-ness are not observed.
Abstract: Taking up a tension between two conceptions of equality in Brazil, the article argues that focusing on the idea of equality of treatment as the main parameter to assess the exercise of citizenship in Western Democracies may not be sufficient to elucidate the demands for respecting rights or the demonstrations of indignation prompted by the perception of insult when legitimate expectations of recognition and considerate-ness are not observed. It is further argued that demands of citizenship rights must me understood in the interplay between notions of equality, dignity and fairness, which are local categories, dependent on local civic sensibilities.
TL;DR: The authors provided an ethnohistorical account of the making of the film Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!, exploring how colonial-era "police ethnographies" and contemporary communal politics shape the collaborative endeavor.
Abstract: What happens when a commitment to collaborative ethnographic filmmaking runs up against a community’s ambivalence toward its own history? This work provides an ethnohistorical account of the making of the film Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!, exploring how colonial-era “police ethnographies” and contemporary communal politics shape the collaborative endeavor. The film was made in collaboration with Budhan Theatre, an activist theater troupe from the Chhara community in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The Chhara are one of more than 198 communities labeled as “Criminal Tribes” by the British, a colonial legacy that still informs their interactions with the police. Inspired by the work of Jean Rouch, the film makes use of experimental ethnographic and cinematic techniques. These participation frameworks allowed the members of Budhan Theatre and their families to shape the structure and content of the film itself, a process sometimes at odds with the film’s ethnographic intent.
TL;DR: The 2011 GDAT debate on the motion "Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography" as mentioned in this paper was one of the most famous debates in the history of the GDAT.
Abstract: Does the concept of non-dualism have ethnographic purchase or is it mainly of philosophical interest? This article comprises the edited presentation and discussions of the 2011 GDAT debate on the motion ‘Non-dualism is Philosophy not Ethnography’. The debaters proposing the motion were Michael Scott and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov. They were opposed by Christopher Pinney and Joanna Cook. Marilyn Strathern acted as jester – playfully and rigorously engaging with all four speakers. The presentations and the discussions that followed were wide ranging, lively and stimulating.
TL;DR: In this paper, frontier peasants in deforestation are seen through the eyes of those who produce them in remote places of the Amazon, where during their lives, they live in a frontier region.
Abstract: Regional trends of global significance involving frontier peasants in deforestation are seen through the eyes of those who produce them in remote places of the Amazon, where during their lives thou...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) and the cultural activity of the movement, in particular mistica, and suggest that shifting notions of individualism are having an impact on MST artistic expression.
Abstract: How do grassroots social movements respond to shifting perceptions within their bases on key issues? This article centres its analysis on the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST – Landless Rural Workers’ Movement) and instances of the movement’s cultural activity, in particular, mistica. It is recognised that the MST’s cultural activity reflects a deep engagement with cultural politics, and further, that the movement’s culture sector contributes directly to the delineation and formation of the ‘landless’ identity. However, from an ethnographic perspective and privileging the experiences of the members of the movement, this article goes beyond cultural politics to suggest that shifting notions of individualism, in the context of the movement’s cultural activity, are having an impact on MST artistic expression and members’ daily lives. The article argues that from within the bases of the movement, there has been a shift from what can be termed a receptive individualism, where members internali...
TL;DR: In the late 1990s, the Colombian National Police became the central channel for U.S. material and symbolic support to that country, thanks in large part to the work of a cohort of Republican members of Congress known as the 'drug warriors' as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the late 1990s, the Colombian National Police became the central channel for U.S. material and symbolic support to that country, thanks in large part to the work of a cohort of Republican members of Congress known as the 'drug warriors.' In the Congressional sphere, debates over the impact of illicit drug use often began with the abused bodies of American youth, but debates over the appropriate response frequently focused on the bodies of Colombian police and military as the site of suggested state intervention. Drawing on Judith Butler's analysis of what deaths are grievable in the public sphere, I examine how the Colombian National Police came to be positioned as the central object of policymaker solidarity. Travel played a central role in the construction of distinct sensory, affective and moral geographies: Congressional delegations focused on militarized technology, weaponry and enacted scenarios of counternarcotics operations. These excursions were channeled into larger political fields valorizing militarized expertise and delineating the boundaries of appropriate policy debates. This analysis illuminates the ways in which Congressional debate and practice played a central role in U.S. foreign policy during this period, through an examination of how Congressional expertise was constructed and deployed, which foreign policy actors were selected as the object of U.S. official solidarity, and how the boundaries of policy debate was constructed through a focus on military knowledge. Language: en
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the commonly deployed imaginary of the Amazon as a pharmacopia -a cornucopia of ethnomedicinal cures unheard of in the West -and argues that while the "lungs of the world" narrative is conceptually anti-extractivist, as within it the Amazon's value is attributed to its containment and intactness, which needs to be salvaged.
Abstract: This article analyzes the commonly deployed imaginary of the Amazon as a pharmacopia – a cornucopia of ethnomedicinal cures unheard of in the West. Using several fictional narratives (two novels and a film) as a starting point, I explore how the Western imaginary of the Amazon as a pharmacopia is a discursive variation on the environmental imaginary of the Amazon as the “lungs of world” – a vulnerable entity of high import and in need of protection. Both the “lungs of the world” and the “pharmacopia” imaginaries construct the Amazon as a global commons. But I argue that while the “lungs of the world” narrative is conceptually anti-extractivist, as within it the Amazon’s value is attributed to its containment and intactness, which needs to be salvaged, the “pharmacopia” narrative legitimates certain contemporary forms of extraction in the Amazon, such as bioprospecting. Finally, I analyze the dislocations of indigenous ethnobotanical knowledge practices within these representational geographies, and connec...
TL;DR: In Asylums, Erving Goffman once famously said that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no law as mentioned in this paper, and Michel Foucault gave a more...
Abstract: In Asylums, Erving Goffman once famously said that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no law. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault gave a more...
TL;DR: Borders are as much social and historical constructs as they are physical entities and run through geographies of the mind as well as over physical landscapes as discussed by the authors, and it is in the borderlands that the nar...
Abstract: Borders are as much social and historical constructs as they are physical entities and run through geographies of the mind as well as over physical landscapes. It is in the borderlands that the nar...
TL;DR: Sundar as discussed by the authors pointed out the limitations of the analyses of the relationship between the indigenous peoples (Adivasis), the State and the Maoist guerrillas arrived at through this kind of civil liberties engagement with the Indian state.
Abstract: I can understand Nandini Sundar’s annoyance with my article as she rightly identifies it as a critique of analyses derived from the kind of work that she has been involved in as a civil liberties activist. My intention is not at all to dismiss this activist work for it is extremely important in bringing to check the brutality of the Indian state. Rather, my hope is to understand the limitations of the analyses of the relationship between the indigenous peoples (Adivasis), the State and the Maoist guerrillas arrived at through this kind of civil liberties engagement with the Indian state. These are limitations that I see because of my own ethnographic research. It is clear that there are differences between Sundar’s perspective and mine. I think that these differences primarily derive from the fact that we begin from two very different starting positions. While Sundar’s perspective as an anthropologist is guided by a commitment to an ideal vision of the Indian state, my perspective is based on the viewpoints, experiences and social relations of the Adivasis I have lived with as an anthropologist in the remote hills and forests of Eastern India. Both perspectives are important and necessary. But they are not the same. They affect the very different ways in which we have conducted our, respective, spells of extended field research at various points, and the ways in which we have combined detailed ethnographic research with the study of historical processes. In contrasting these two positions, I am aware that both Sundar and I are continually thinking about the other position, at times even trying to do both. But ultimately these differences produce different kinds of analyses. Critique of Anthropology 33(4) 476–479 ! The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0308275X13506662 coa.sagepub.com