Showing papers in "Ethnos in 1998"
TL;DR: Based on three years of participant observation and apprenticeship in a black boxing gym on Chicago's South Side, the authors reconstructs the prizefighter's lived sense and experience of corporeal instrumentality, aesthetics, and ethics.
Abstract: Based on three years of participant observation and apprenticeship in a black boxing gym on Chicago's South Side, this article reconstructs the prizefighter's lived sense and experience of corporeal instrumentality, aesthetics, and ethics ‐ the ‘three bodies’ that together define the distinctive, ‘aisthesis’ of pugilistic practice as corporeal craft and ghetto trade. This serves to argue that professional boxing offers not so much an opportunity for economic betterment as the promise of social difference and even transcendence: the professional ethic of sacrifice enables boxers to tear themselvesfrom the everyday world and to create a moral and sensual universe ‘sui generis’ wherein a transcendent masculine self may be constructed.
57 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the history of visual anthropology as a field that straddles the academy and the world, and argued for sustaining the links between theory and practice, connecting the production and study of ethnographic documentary work on the one hand, and research on the social practice of media on the other, with particular attention to the spread of film and electronic media throughout the world.
Abstract: This essay explores the history of visual anthropology as a field that straddles the academy and the world. I argue for sustaining the links between theory and practice, connecting the production and study of ethnographic documentary work on the one hand, and research on the social practice of media on the other, with particular attention to the spread of film and electronic media throughout the world, especially in indigenous and subaltern communities, a process that is resituating the ‘looking relations’ that take place between and among cultures and across boundaries of inequality.
42 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the sense and symbolism of smell in Buli, a village in eastern Indonesia, to argue that smell is part of an ontology that catches Buli people in a malaise of their own.
Abstract: Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of calls for anthropology to devote more attention to non‐visual modes of perception. Frequently, the implicit suggestion of these calls has been that the acknowledgement of different ways of organising the senses could help us escape the supposed malaise of modern ‘ocular‐centrism ‘. This paper explores the sense and symbolism of smell in Buli, a village in eastern Indonesia, to argue that smell is part of an ontology that catches Buli people in a malaise of their own. ‘Bad’ smell attests to an ambiguous moral order that can be traced across myth, ritual and everyday life. Ambiguity is ever‐present because ‘bad’ or disgusting smells destabilise the very conceptual order they also help support. The analysis of smells as they relate to local notions of disgust is therefore suggested as an alternative way to conceptualise the contradictory nature of power.
39 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the identity of those denominated "indian" from an emic perspective and argues that race, ethnicity and class are insufficient in themselves to explain this level of social difference.
Abstract: Academic debates on the difference between ‘indians’ and ‘non‐indians’ in highland Latin America typically revolve around issues of race, ethnicity and class understood from an etic perspective. Although there may be a consensus as to where the boundary between one status and the other lies, how this boundary is understood varies dramatically between scholars, as well as between actors on each side of the boundary. This paper examines the identity of those denominated ‘indian’ from an emic perspective. It argues that ‘race’, ‘ethnicity'and ‘class’ are insufficient in themselves to explain this level of social difference. At the root of the difference between jaqi (indians) and q'ara (non‐indians) are understandings of personhood. An examination of procreation beliefs and understandings of personhood sheds light on how identity is understood. The dyads indian/non‐indian and jaqi/q'ara are not, of course, generated independently of each other and this paper also examines how the one articulates wit...
26 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine local people's memories of a Maltese urban community that was demolished in the 1970s, and argue that in such situations of physical displacement and/or social dislocation, this nostalgic process serves as a strategic resource that not only produces order and identity, but also creates legitimate moral claims against the state.
Abstract: This paper examines local people's memories of a Maltese urban community that was demolished in the 1970s. The memories create an idealised, nostalgic picture of community harmony and solidarity prior to the demolition, but also apportion blame for its subsequent destruction. The paper argues that in such situations of physical displacement and/or social dislocation, this nostalgic process serves as a strategic resource that not only produces order and identity, but also creates legitimate moral claims against the state. The paper thereby contributes to ongoing debates about the relationship between local identity and wider political and economic processes.
25 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the way gendered distinctions are generated by examining the interconnections between heterosexual and male homosexual gender discourses in two Mexican mestizo contexts, focusing on those cultural phenomena, such as motherhood, virginity, machismo, penetration, which serve to constitute same sex relations and cross-sex relations differently.
Abstract: Mexican mestizo gender imagery is deceptively simple, represented through categorical and essentialist classifications of male and female. However, the essen‐tialist notions which ground gender as unambiguous simultaneously work so as to disrupt the seemingly unequivocal categories of male and female. This article explores the way gendered distinctions are generated by examining the interconnections between heterosexual and male homosexual gender discourses in two Mexican mestizo contexts. Particular emphasis is placed on the significance of sexuality for eliciting meanings of gender, focusing on those cultural phenomena ‐ such as motherhood, virginity, machismo, penetration ‐ which serve to constitute same‐sex relations and cross‐sex relations differently.
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the exhibition of Australian Aboriginal acrylic paintings in a French museum and argued that the recent emphases on "appropriation" and the primitivizing gaze are not sufficient to understand what happens when such objects circulate.
Abstract: This paper is a study of one component of the recent and contemporary circulation of cultural objects, the exhibition of Australian Aboriginal acrylic paintings in a French museum. The author argues that the recent emphases on ‘appropriation ‘ and the primitivizing gaze ‘ are not sufficient to understand what happens when such objects circulate. To ask what does happen in circulation, at the sites of exhibition, is to ask how they are produced, inflected, and invoked in concrete institutional settings, which have distinctive histories, purposes, and structures of their own. The gazes’ (representations) which are discussed in this French example are analyzed within the specific conditions of their production to show how such exhibitions and circulations of culture are produced in relationship to the requirements internal to museums to distinguish themselves from others, to respond to claims placed upon them by their own institutional settings.
17 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the assumption of universal heterosexuality of social actors has obscured the many significant ways in which "heterosexual" and "homosexual" experience of culture and society differ from each other.
Abstract: This article contends that anthropology is still operating with theories and models that too often reflect the assumption of the universal heterosexuality of social actors. This assumption has obscured the many significant ways in which ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ experience of culture and society differ from each other. In order to highlight the nature of some of these differences and their implications for anthropological theorising, approaches from queer theory are brought to bear on the anthropological treatment of spatial relations. Not only do queer insights improve our understanding of spatial relations, they can also help to expand anthropology's focus on sexuality to include the sexual subtexts of a wide range of ostensibly non‐sexual social and cultural topics.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore Matsigenka notions of morality as evidenced in central mythological texts and argue that these notions are contextdependent and can only be reflected upon casuistically.
Abstract: This paper explores Matsigenka notions of morality as evidenced in central mythological texts. The focus is on myth since, it is argued, myths provide a means whereby fundamental conditions of everyday life as conceptualized by their conventional audience can be understood and interpreted. Although myth does not provide a uniformly accepted cultural blueprint of social reality, a certain intersubjective consonance is to be expected. It is argued that to the Matsigenka morality is primarily a means to maintain conditions of conviviality. Matsigenka moral considerations are thus context‐dependent and can only be reflected upon casuistically.
11 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the writings of the anthropologist and explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879−1962) in the light of current debates about textual representation, drawing upon recent discussions of ethnography, gender, and the power relations of early twentieth-century explorations.
Abstract: A lively debate has taken place in anthropology in recent years on field‐work and its representation in ethnographic accounts. At the same time, historians and cultural critics have dissected the ideology and rhetoric of early explorations. Here I examine the writings of the anthropologist and explorer Vilhjalmur Stefans‐son (1879–1962) in the light of current debates about textual representation, drawing upon recent discussions of ethnography, gender, and the power relations of early twentieth‐century explorations. Stefansson went on lengthy expeditions into the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic and wrote extensively on his encounters with indigenous groups, I argue that while Stefansson was a perceptive ethnographer and explorer, he was silent in both his publications and his diaries about important aspects pertaining to his fieldwork, in particular the ethnographic contributions of his Inuit companions and his intimate relations with a native woman named Pannigabluk. This silence, I suggest, contrad...
4 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, T. O. Beidelman reflects on the formative, enlightening and sometimes dramatic encounters and experiences that have shaped his engagement with anthropology, and have influenced his many and lasting contributions to the discipline.
Abstract: The history of anthropology is a growing field of study within the discipline itself. Our series ‘Key Informants on the History of Anthropology’ is offered as a contribution to the discussion of how anthropology, as it is understood and practised today, evolved and took shape. In this invited contribution, T. O. Beidelman reflects on the formative, enlightening and sometimes dramatic encounters and experiences that have shaped his engagement with anthropology, and have influenced his many and lasting contributions to the discipline.
TL;DR: The authors explored the way in which anthropological understanding is engendered through analogies with an ethnographers experiential knowledge via an account of the development of my friendship with my "key informant", employing what Riesman (1977) calls a "disciplined introspection" of what I as an ethnographer brought to the ethnographic encounter.
Abstract: In this paper I explore the way in which anthropological understanding is engendered through analogies with an ethnographers experiential knowledge. This theme is addressed via an account of the development of my friendship with my ‘key informant,’ employing what Riesman (1977) calls a ‘disciplined introspection’ of what I as an ethnographer brought to the ethnographic encounter.
TL;DR: In this article, Baker et al. studied rural-urban dynamics in Francophone Africa with the aim of identifying the root causes of rural poverty in Francophane Africa and Africa's economic decline.
Abstract: Jonathan Baker (ed.). 1997. Rural‐Urban Dynamics in Francophone Africa. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. 201 pp.
TL;DR: The authors presente son parcours personnel d'anthropologue a travers ses relations avec ses sujets de recherche, and exposant quels furent, pour sa vie, les apports de deux experiences de terrain (en Norvege parmi les pasteurs Sames, puis en Israel pour une cooperation scientifique), l'A. montre que toute experience de terrain implique, pour l'ethnologue, une dependance, un engagement dans la longue duree, des
Abstract: L'A. presente son parcours personnel d'anthropologue a travers ses relations avec ses sujets de recherche. L'approche postmoderniste contemporaine privilegie le rapport subjectif de l'ethnologue avec son experience de terrain mais plus rarement ce que les relations du terrain signifient dans la construction d'un sujet de recherche et de ses resultats. En exposant quels furent, pour sa vie, les apports de deux experiences de terrain (en Norvege parmi les pasteurs Sames, puis en Israel pour une cooperation scientifique), l'A. montre que toute experience de terrain implique, pour l'ethnologue, une dependance, un engagement dans la longue duree, des relations mutuelles avec ses informateurs, une acceptation de l'imprevu.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss how women with different personalities, political and cultural backgrounds accomplish cooperation and discuss the significance of study ing oppositional institutions, and a critique of theoretical understandings of culture which conflate sharing a culture with having the same culture.
Abstract: Too often, cooperative behavior amongst women has been treated as an ascribed, rather than an achieved, interactional attribute. This paper discusses how women with different personalities, political and cultural backgrounds accomplish cooperation. An analysis of discussions that took place amongst a group of women who were trying to organize themselves into a worker cooperative suggests that interactional guidelines for co‐ops derived from the experiences of the largely white, middle‐class leftist groups who are trying to develop a critique of mainstream institutional talk and hegemonic interactional norms are problematic when used with more heterogeneous groups. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of study ing oppositional institutions, and a critique of theoretical understandings of culture which conflate sharing a culture with having the same culture.