Showing papers in "Critique of Anthropology in 2015"
TL;DR: In this article, the diversity of local practices and discourses that respond to and critique micro-credit is explored, and the authors propose an exploratory approach to examine these discourses and practices.
Abstract: Microcredit has come under severe academic criticism in recent years, but the diversity of local practices and discourses that respond to and critique microcredit is still under-examined. By explor...
42 citations
TL;DR: The edited proceedings of the 2013 debate on the motion "There is no such thing as the good" at the University of Manchester were discussed in this article. But they did not cover the issues raised by the motion.
Abstract: This comprises the edited proceedings of the 2013 debate on the motion ‘There is no such thing as the good’ held at the University of Manchester. Edited by Soumhya Venkatesan.
41 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the role of violence and law in the context of multiple sovereignties is analyzed and the authors provide new insights into the role and effect of violence on the development of multiple legal orders as a mode of outsourcing sovereignty.
Abstract: At different historical junctures and under different conditions, the Jamaican state has allowed armed “insurgents” to rule over specific spaces within its territorial control, condoning or actively facilitating the development of multiple legal orders as a mode of “outsourcing” sovereignty. Analyzing two contrasting cases, this article provides new insights into the role of violence and law in the context of multiple sovereignties. In the eighteenth century, after several unsuccessful military missions against Maroons, the colonial state signed a treaty granting them a significant portion of the Jamaican interior and partial political autonomy. In return, the Maroons provided military assistance to the British, capturing and returning the enslaved who escaped the plantations, and, decades after Emancipation, helping the British suppress the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion. In contemporary Jamaica, many inner-city neighborhoods are controlled by criminal leaders known as “dons”. While various elements in the Ja...
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the impact of ormas as non-state violent actors in the politics and economy of Indonesian regional society and the central element is the question whether...
Abstract: This article analyses the impact of ormas – mass organizations – as non-state violent actors in the politics and economy of Indonesian regional society. The central element is the question whether ...
38 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic study of two public protests in Mumbai presents an account of crowd action in contemporary Mumbai as mass political street theater, organized around two tit-for-tat rasta-rokos (road blocks) that despite having nearly identical form and an indistinguishable cast of characters, unfolded in strikingly divergent ways.
Abstract: An ethnographic study of two public protests in Mumbai presents an account of crowd action in contemporary Mumbai as mass political street theater. The narrative is organized around two tit-for-tat rasta-rokos (road blocks) that despite having a nearly identical form and an indistinguishable cast of characters, unfolded in strikingly divergent ways. The article demonstrates the theatrical register within which mass politics operates, with Mumbai crowds revealed neither as spontaneous hordes nor as aggregations of strategic actors, but rather as a participant-audience of discerning voters assembled as a politically mediated ‘ostentatious display.’
24 citations
TL;DR: The pre-war image of innate family farmers as embodiments of national identi cation has been reconceptualized in academic studies over the past three decades as mentioned in this paper, tracing the way peasant economy/culture has been re-conceptualized.
Abstract: Traced here is the way peasant economy/culture has been reconceptualized in academic studies over the past three decades. The pre-war image of innate family farmers as embodiments of national ident...
21 citations
TL;DR: The authors examine the underlying shifts in modes of anthropological investigation that have produced this outcome, paying special attention to the emergence of multi-sited ethnography and the reaction against earlier framings of villages as bounded and coherent social wholes.
Abstract: In an increasingly urban world, the places where anthropologists work and the subjects they study have undergone significant tranformations. Anthropologists today find themselves working in cities and in sites of advanced technological production, studying urban elites and scientific experts, and pushing the bounds of ethnographic practice “beyond the human.” As a result, the village, once the site par excellence of the ethnographic encounter, has largely disappeared from view in anthropological writing. In this introduction, we examine the underlying shifts in modes of anthropological investigation that have produced this outcome, paying special attention to the emergence of multi-sited ethnography and the reaction against earlier framings of villages as bounded and coherent social wholes. Along with the other contributors to this Special Issue we raise the question of what has become of the village as a site of ethnographic analysis, and argue that we have much to gain from a re-engagement with village ...
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the liberatory potential of slow ethnography over two decades in the Maya lowlands of Guatemala and Belize, oriented from a "hut with a view".
Abstract: Informed by the snail's pace of the Zapatista “caracol” process and the Slow Food movement, this contribution explores the liberatory potential of “slow ethnography” over two decades in the Maya lowlands of Guatemala and Belize, oriented from a “hut with a view”. Against the unbearable lightness of multi-sited imaginaries, I describe the intellectual and personal discoveries gained from following Laura Nader's framework for “studying up, down and sideways”. This article makes a case for how the slowness of research possessed by place might serve as a critical “as a point of reference” (in Zapatista terms) on an ever-quickening planet. The analysis also suggests how slower, more ethical and reciprocal processes of research might help heal anthropology's longstanding disciplinary entanglements and conflicts with native peoples.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a special issue focused on illegal practices and the forms of value produced as people engage in them is presented, with a methodological orientation that attends to criminalized networks and the values they structure from the inside.
Abstract: This special issue focuses on illegal practices and the forms of value produced as people engage in them. Embracing a methodological orientation that attends to criminalized networks and the values they structure from the inside, the contributions included here highlight micro processes of exchange and evaluation. By linking the study of local worlds to the apprehension of wider structural and cultural dynamics and processes, the collection develops a critical perspective on formal law’s legitimizing and delegitimizing effects with respect to the ethical and economic values illegal activities produce.
17 citations
TL;DR: Based on fieldwork with laid-off Daewoo autoworkers in South Korea in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis (1997-2001), a tumultuous transitional period from the developm....
Abstract: Unemployment hurts. Based on fieldwork with laid-off Daewoo autoworkers in South Korea in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis (1997–2001), a tumultuous transitional period from the developm...
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how a place oscillates between resonance and irrelevance, disenchantment and rechantment, deterritorialization and reterritorialisation, one affected, the other affecting.
Abstract: On 21 February 2012, a female Russian punk collective ‘Pussy Riot’ performed a ‘Punk Prayer Against Putin’ on the soleas of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The ensuing controversy over the performance, as well as criminal charges brought against three members of the group, made explicit the contentious nature of the place of Pussy Riot’s ‘punk prayer’. The author examines place in its dual identity as an event and as an actor, one affected, the other affecting. As an actor, a place becomes capable of enacting change, and as an event, it takes on the qualities of its occupants. While the rebuilt Christ the Saviour Cathedral was once a women’s convent, a monument to Russian victory over Napoleon, a never-completed Palace of Soviets and a giant outdoor swimming pool, the author examines how this place oscillates between resonance and irrelevance, disenchantment and re-enchantment, deterritorialization and reterritorialization.
TL;DR: In this paper, a fresh look at the rational perceptions of the policy world is taken, showing that people do not necessarily judge policy in the same way as does the state; they are less concerned with efficient implementation, cost-effectiveness or instrumentality and more with the moral implications of policy.
Abstract: Ordinary people do not necessarily judge policy in the same way as does the state. They are less concerned with efficient implementation, cost-effectiveness or instrumentality and more with the moral implications of policy. This article takes a fresh look at the rational perceptions of the policy world. In the Chinese polity, there is a popular idiom: ‘policies come from above and countermeasures come from below’. Ordinary people use this idiom to criticize local bureaucrats for failing to implement policies and instead pursuing their own interests. Such criticisms assume that policy formulation is a strategic or rational activity. Although this view certainly contains an element of truth, it depicts policy formulation and implementation as a purely instrumental act. Similarly, the anthropology of policy has tended to focus much of its attention on the use of neoliberal policies as a tool of governmentality. The aim of this article is to show that policies are part of everyday moral narratives. Drawing on...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight the contribution of the Nepalese Maoist Movement in the dynamics of claiming symbolic space by formerly bonded labourers (freed Kamaiya) during the Nepal Maoist revolution.
Abstract: This article highlights the contribution of the Nepalese Maoist Movement in the dynamics of claiming symbolic space by formerly bonded labourers (freed Kamaiya) during the Nepalese Maoist revolution. In Nepal, the appropriation of symbolic space by marginalized groups throughout the revolutionary period remains in the shadows of the grand event of the Maoist revolution. Focusing on an urban municipality in Kailali district, in the far-western lowlands of Nepal, the article examines how the changing balances of power brought about by the revolutionary Maoist Movement allowed a group of formerly bonded labourers to squat and claim the land of a public airport. The article then addresses the question of whether and how the act of urban capture has benefitted the formerly bonded labourers, and what sorts of community politics emerged in the squatter camps where they settled. It is argued that the changes brought about by the revolutionary context improved the conditions that the formerly debt-bonded labourers...
TL;DR: The authors questions the dichotomy of traditional fieldwork versus contemporary topics/contemporary topics/multi-sited imaginary and interrogates the role of village ethnography in traditional field work.
Abstract: This article questions the dichotomy of ‘classical anthropological topics/traditional fieldwork’ versus ‘contemporary topics/multi-sited imaginary’ and interrogates the role of village ethnography ...
TL;DR: The aim of as discussed by the authors is to situate the Sardinian village within the flux of contemporary social transformations that stand poised to redefine it, and examine the highland village of...
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to situate the Sardinian village within the flux of contemporary social transformations that stand poised to redefine it. Specifically, it examines the highland village of ...
TL;DR: In many ways the Palestinian civilian is the ultimate or significant "other" for the Israeli soldier serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as mentioned in this paper, and she is the one who will be stopped, che...
Abstract: In many ways the Palestinian civilian is the ultimate or significant ‘other' for the Israeli soldier serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). (S)he is the one who will be stopped, che...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider how ethnographic representations of "the village" have created links between otherwise disparate "regional ethnography traditions" over time, and how the village has served as a mu...
Abstract: This article considers how ethnographic representations of “the village” have created links between otherwise disparate “regional ethnography traditions” over time. “The village” has served as a mu...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the historical unfolding of an industry that involves indigenous Maya men who make clothing to sell in regional markets, and find that practices of concealment hold particular value for Maya men whose relationships to various forms of political and economic authority have been marked largely by violence and exploitation.
Abstract: In this article, I contribute to conversations in anthropology regarding the dynamics of secrecy that so often attend to informal and illegal practices. Tracing the historical unfolding of an industry that involves indigenous Maya men who make clothing to sell in regional markets, I am interested in the contemporary value of concealment for clothing producers whose work was once regulated by the state, but is now regulated by an array of market and non-market actors. I find that practices of concealment hold particular value for Maya men whose relationships to various forms of political and economic authority have been marked largely by violence and exploitation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that begging and beggary represent and must be analyzed through a twofold prism: as an economic exchange taking place at the margins but amply within the structures of the market economy and as a social relationship and cultural exchange that, due exactly to its in-between liminal nature, touches upon and generate central values; an exchange in which crucial norms are negotiated and established.
Abstract: In this article, I argue that begging and beggary represents and must be analyzed through a twofold prism: as an economic exchange taking place at the margins but amply within the structures of the market economy and as a social relationship and cultural exchange that, due exactly to its in-between liminal nature, touches upon and generate central values; an exchange in which crucial norms are negotiated and established. Begging activities are just one example of how the market oriented economy intertwines with underground networks and “informal economies”, and how these interconnections produce implicit and explicit norms.
TL;DR: Sorge, Padwe, and Shneiderman as discussed by the authors argue that the role of the village has never been fully displaced from the discipline of anthropology, and they recast it as a component of the concept of multi-sited ethnography.
Abstract: We have heard altogether too much in recent years about the demise of village studies in anthropology. But what if we were to take seriously the Italian proverb, Tutto il mondo è paese (all the world’s a village)? ‘‘Ah, yes,’’ some skeptics would respond, ‘‘but paese also means ‘country,’ so this is not necessarily about villages at all!’’ At this point, I imagine the shade of E. E. Evans-Pritchard suddenly emerging to bark, ‘‘If you cannot determine whether it’s a village or a country, this is clearly all about segmentary systems and especially about moral communities.’’ The village focus of anthropology has never died, but the village itself was also never the conceptual as well as geographic isolate that so many anthropologists, too burdened to read back into the older literature, now imagine it to have been. The authors of the present set of articles, led by coeditors Antonio Sorge, Jonathan Padwe, and Sara Shneiderman, have done the discipline an enormous favor by arguing that the role of the village has never been fully displaced from the discipline. At times, their appeal for the preservation of village research seems to suggest a more imminent threat of extinction than the genre may be facing, although one of them in particular, Ester Gallo, staunchly and explicitly rejects such fears. To further their goal of reinstating the significance of village research for an anthropology of expanded methodological and analytical horizons, they recast it as a component of the concept, first eloquently coined by Marcus (1995) and subsequently abused through clumsy and often misdirected attempts at emulation, of ‘‘multi-sited ethnography.’’ In these closing remarks to the collection, I want to suggest that the village was always an element in the sort of concentricity that a segmentary model implies, and are most usefully understood in those terms. Villages are not so much isolates, a view that multi-sited research could hypothetically accommodate, as they are microcosms – at times distorted and self-constituted images of an imagined encompassment, to be sure, but microcosms nonetheless.
TL;DR: Pai Tau Village as discussed by the authors is located at the edge of a large mega-mall in Hong Kong, a center of commerce, consumerism, fashion, and business, and is recognized by local heritage organizations as an ancestral village.
Abstract: The village as trope represents “tradition” in contrast to “modernity,” periphery in contrast to core, and the past in contrast to the present. This paper explores Pai Tau Village, a settlement in the Shatin District of Hong Kong. While it is recognized by local heritage organizations as an ancestral village, Pai Tau is neither distant nor separate from emblems of Hong Kong as a major cosmopolitan city, but rather is located at the edge of a large mega-mall – a center of commerce, consumerism, fashion, and business. This article suggests that the relationship between modernity and tradition is not necessarily oppositional, but symbiotic. Via an exploration of this duality, it also addresses globalization and transnationalism via consumer exchanges among Japan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, and addresses contemporary contradictions in anthropological fieldwork and theory.
TL;DR: The IUAES World Congress 2015 was held at Manchester University as discussed by the authors, where three debates were held in the plenary hall and each speaker presented a text of their presentation, followed by a summary of the lively discussion.
Abstract: The IUAES World Congress 2015 was held at Manchester University. Within the congress, three debates were held in the plenary hall. The first of these debated the motion: ‘Humans have no nature, what they have is history’. Tim Ingold (Aberdeen University) proposed the motion, seconded by Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University). Ruth Mace (University College London) opposed the motion, seconded by Juichi Yamagiwa (Kyoto University). The chair of the debate was Marilyn Strathern (Cambridge University). In the following, each of the speakers presents a text of their presentation, followed by a summary of the lively discussion in which members of the audience were invited to put questions to the speakers.
TL;DR: The authors explores how poor, young men in a Manila relocation site enter into a brotherhood as a means to claim recognition from dominant society, arguing that by joining the brotherhood, they can be recognized by the authorities.
Abstract: This article explores how poor, young men in a Manila relocation site enter into a brotherhood as a means to claim recognition from dominant society. It argues that by joining the brotherhood, whic...
TL;DR: In the once booming, but now slumping, northern Malagasy sapphire mining town of Ambondromifehy, people make do in the face of uncertainty as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the once booming, but now slumping, northern Malagasy sapphire mining town of Ambondromifehy, people make do in the face of uncertainty. As a place of internal migrants organized around the mining and trade of a commodity destined for complex and fickle foreign markets, this town features a wide range of distinctive arrangements and compromises. Of special concern here are the arrangements through which people strive to live responsibly – in accordance with traditional Malagasy norms of sociality – while still managing to make a living through work that can lead them astray. I argue that such distinctive arrangements owe a great deal to the particular articulations of place and mobility one finds problematized in a context like this one. The first articulation is well encapsulated in the experience of what Malagasy people term being very or “lost”, a condition of mobile people who either don’t know or have no hope of returning to the places from which they have come. The second articulation is apparent...