Showing papers in "Ethnos in 2005"
TL;DR: The authors explore the kind of knowledge anthropologists can have of text and explore the consequences of reception of such texts, which is different from our focus on the dynamics of language and composition.
Abstract: Much anthropological critical reflection has centred on the act of text production. In particular, anthropologists have become concerned to understand the strategic status of their own texts and to seek to impose new constraints on their writing. In this paper, I want to explore further the kind of knowledge anthropologists can have of text. However, my focus is not on the dynamics of language and composition, but rather on the consequences of reception. This emphasis derives from my ethnography of UK webloggers (online journal keepers), a group of text producers for whom publication is automatic, the beginning rather than the endpoint of any claim to knowing. Their concern is with the practical mediatory role of weblogs, which includes exploring the kinds of persons these digital texts can become and the kinds of relations they can be shown to contain.
121 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a contrast between the moral underpinnings of generating and consuming wealth under capitalism and those emerging in postsocialist Ukraine shows that socioeconomic differences are emerging as proxies for moral indictments that strain the social fabric.
Abstract: One of the legacies of Soviet socialism is a moralizing lens through which to evaluate wealth and consumption practices. A contrast between the moral underpinnings of generating and consuming wealth under capitalism and those emerging in postsocialist Ukraine shows that socioeconomic differences are emerging as proxies for moral indictments that strain the social fabric. Soviet-era economic practices and exchange networks of favors are giving way to cash-based forms of exchange that are redefining moral commitments to social obligations. When legal codes are mobilized in diverse ways in response to divergent moralities the forging of moral consensus to shape emerging economic practices is rendered elusive.
86 citations
TL;DR: A detailed exegesis of what I term the ethno-theology of Timothy Karu, a Solomon Islands Anglican whose understanding of the nature of his matrilineage is informed by the Pauline account of the election of Israel is presented in this article.
Abstract: This article offers a detailed exegesis of what I term the ethno-theology of Timothy Karu, a Solomon Islands Anglican whose understanding of the nature of his matrilineage is informed by the Pauline account of the election of Israel. The analysis suggests a non-essentialising treatment of Christianity that nevertheless demonstrates how Solomon Islanders engage simultaneously with multiple interlocking macro and micro Christian logics in ways that aspire to systematicity. The starting point for this analysis is the identification of an unacknowledged tension between the approaches of John Barker and Joel Robbins, two influential anthropologists of Christianity whose work reflects a wider divide between anti-essentialism and cultural analysis in current anthropology. The article contributes to an overall rapprochement between these two orientations within the anthropology of Christianity.
69 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors claim that Amerindian perspectival cosmologies should attend ethnographically to their morally evaluative potential and to their use by individuals in their discourses and oth...
Abstract: –Nume … jana ? diibo esamaje? –Diibo … ‘Tanaabo’ .1 –Nume … how about the jaguar's Speech? How are his thoughts/emotions? –He … he does not say ‘My brother'. Like many other Amazonians, Muinane people often use perspectival imagery in discussions of relations between human beings and animals. It is a distinct possibility, within their ontology, that beings that humans perceive as animals, perceive themselves as human, and there are numerous complementary entailments to this. What is most striking about Muinane people's perspectival imagery, however, is that they use it saliently in their moral evaluations of subjectivity and action. I show that this makes perspectivism central to the everyday meaningful practices through which Muinane people achieve social life, and to their understandings of themselves. On that basis, I claim that accounts of Amerindian perspectival cosmologies should attend ethnographically to their morally evaluative potential and to their use by individuals in their discourses and oth...
63 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the focus of intellectual labor upon rationality decorporealizes intellectual self-awareness while lending 'objects' of rational attention a peculiarly material character, which they call the "phenomenology of expertise".
Abstract: In this essay, I write about the relationship between corporeality and expert knowledge while simultaneously, and only partly successfully, trying to avoid writing about ‘theintellectual's body.’ The first half of the essay enlists Marxian social theory to model how the division and specialization of intellectual labors generates a certain experiential relationship between expert and objects of expert knowledge that I have termed elsewhere the ‘phenomenology of expertise.’ I argue that the focus of intellectual labor upon rationality decorporealizes intellectual self-aware-ness while lending ‘objects’ of rational attention a peculiarly material character. The second half of the essay complicates the theoretical arguments of the first half with an ethnographic engagement of the corporeality of eastern German journalism in the 1990s. Here, I focus on the norm of professional corporeal ‘calm’ and on how gesture and reflex can be interpreted to exhibit a mode of critical expertise that is otherwise a...
55 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the ways in which egg donors from a private infertility clinic in Barcelona try to render their new experience meaningful by making use of cultural paradoxes and dichotomies that constitute an original and highly significant cultural grammar.
Abstract: In this paper we analyse the ways in which egg donors from a private infertility clinic in Barcelona try to render their new experience meaningful. Donors are striving to see their action as a contribution to the creation of a particular kinship bond – motherhood in another woman – by means of the abrogation of a bond that also looks very much like kinship, which links them to the individuals that will be born thanks to their eggs. The specific meaning that egg donation has for each donor varies according to her particular circumstances, but the language constructed in order to convey this meaning emerges from the creative expression of several cultural paradoxes and dichotomies that constitute, in themselves, an original and highly significant cultural grammar.
50 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the taskscape of fisherpeople who live on the Amazon floodplain and argue that skills should be differentiated and historicised and understood as composite and improvised abilities made up of various capacities.
Abstract: This article considers the taskscape of fisherpeople who live on the Amazon floodplain. It builds on discussions of skills which are limited by their focus on a small number of activities, weak contextualisation in relations of power and history and homogenisation of practice. I argue that skills should be differentiated and historicised and understood as composite and improvised abilities made up of various capacities. The wayin which skills are reinvented by each generation depends on the particular circumstances they confront. This improvisational ability has its genesis in the way Amerindians and poor colonists adapted to the colonial economy. The present of these floodplain dwellers can be compared to a wave that carries forward the history of past actions and embodies their potential.
48 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare findings from their own research on consumerism in Ho Chi Minh City to the research of others in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and consider why shoppers in Vietnam and Russia worry about the origins of the products they encounter in their newly marketized economies.
Abstract: In this article, I compare findings from my own research on consumerism in Ho Chi Minh City to the research of others in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and consider why shoppers in Vietnam and Russia worry about the origins of the products they encounter in their newly marketized economies. Consumer anxieties in both countries reveal a shared crisis of ‘locality’ – a common concern about the movement of goods between spaces designated as ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign;’ at the same time, however, they point to different constructions of these categories in the context of market reform. In conclusion, I argue that, through their consumption practices, shoppers in Vietnam and Russia are reframing socialist and neoliberal notions of self, society, and the market.
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss death and the desire to kill in relation to cultural constructions of sex and gender, especially in the context of funerary rites, which articulates the point of view of the prey, not of the predator, associates the soul, maleness and conquering predation.
Abstract: Despite their general acceptance of pacific coexistence and village life, the Huaorani are still living in a social world structured by the continuous efforts they need to deploy to contain homicidal rage and to mitigate the ravages of violent death. Death is generally interpreted as having been caused by some raptorial agency which may in turn drive men to kill blindly. This article shows that it is because men are particularly susceptible to the predatory call of supernature that society works at embedding them within matrifocal house-groups. I discuss death and the desire to kill in relation to cultural constructions of sex and gender, especially in the context of funerary rites. Huaorani perspectivism, which articulates the point of view of the prey, not of the predator, associates the soul, maleness and conquering predation, to which it opposes the body, femaleness and resisting victimhood.
38 citations
TL;DR: A closer examination of the ways archaeological knowledge is spoken about and represented locally provides significant insights into social divisions and power struggles within Peru as mentioned in this paper. But the relationship between power and authority is not discussed.
Abstract: A closer examination of the ways archaeological knowledge is spoken about and represented locally provides significant insights into social divisions and power struggles within Peru. In an account of the ambivalent relations between archaeologists and local experts in the prehispanic past, this article considers how the authority that enables the construction and maintenance of sociopolitical models (such as the ‘nation’) is itself constructed, not just from above, but also at the local level. The relationship between power and authority grants legitimacy to historical discourses justifying sociopolitical inequality and reinforces the centralized power structure of the Peruvian state. The article discusses the implications of these local perceptions for archaeology, both as a discipline practiced within the local setting, and as a category through which the Peruvian government expresses tropes of a unified modern identity.
35 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine childbirth in a public hospital in Salvador, Brazil, as a multidimensional, embodied process and as a rite of passage, tracing the development and mutation of loneliness, fear, and pain into motherlove.
Abstract: The article examines childbirth in a public hospital in Salvador, Brazil, as a multidimensional, embodied process and as a rite of passage. The birth narratives of young, poor, black mothers are seen through ethnography of the obstetric centre, run by white, middle-class obstetricians. The article follows the biosocial process of birth, tracing the development and mutation of loneliness, fear, and pain into motherlove. This subjective journey is generated within the social interactions constituting the physiological birth events. Primiparous women are shown to construct the birth as a rite of passage into legitimate motherhood, in the face of a hegemonic symbolic frame that stigmatizes youthful motherhood and delegitimizes reproduction amongst young, black, low-income women. Hospital childbirth's most powerful social effect is the constitution and consecration of a race/class divide.
TL;DR: This article argued for an expanded understanding of social sentiments that would recognize a structuring role for emotion beyond the family and the shaping, through emotional practices, of a fluid but crucial level of community.
Abstract: This article reconsiders the place of emotion in society. With the example of Java, I argue for an expanded understanding of social sentiments that would recognize a structuring role for emotion beyond the family and the shaping, through emotional practices, of a fluid but crucial level of ‘community’. Using Balinese ethnology as a foil, I contrast the uses of emotion in Java and Bali, drawing, toward the end, upon Bateson's concept of schismogenesis.
TL;DR: In this paper, a Quichua-speaking Runa village in Ecuador's Upper Amazon point to an element of ecological understandings that is rarely studied; these are primarily about capturing and sharing the experience of the process of knowing rather than trafficking in stabilized tokens of ecological knowledge.
Abstract: Stories about the forest recounted in a Quichua-speaking Runa village in Ecuador's Upper Amazon point to an element of ecological understandings that is rarely studied; these are primarily about capturing and sharing the experience of the process of knowing rather than trafficking in stabilized tokens of ecological knowledge. Runa understanding of nature is achieved through a poetic language rich in what philosopher Charles S. Peirce terms iconic and indexical signs. This way of talking about forest experience is advantageous because these forms of representation can capture qualities and events in the world in ways that what Peirce terms symbols cannot. Iconic and indexical signs mediate the world in distinctive ways. Accordingly, this article suggests some implications that iconically and indexically rich modes of communicating experience have for engaging with the nonhuman realm, acquiring knowledge of the world, and establishing a certain kind of interpersonal social intimacy.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look through the ethnographic lens of new reproductive and genetic technologies (NRGT) at the idiom of "make-up" in English understandings of personhood and relatedness.
Abstract: This paper looks through the ethnographic lens of ‘new reproductive and genetic technologies’ (NRGT) at the idiom of ‘make-up’ in English understandings of personhood and relatedness. In the kinship thinking of interest here, persons are both ‘made’ and ‘made-up’. There are both unpredictable and inevitable elements in the way in which people ‘turn-out’ and their character or personality is meant to be idiosyncratic, lumpy and unique. The paper draws on the way in which residents of a town in the north of England explore possibilities presented by NRGT in ways that make explicit their understandings of personal identity, interpersonal relatedness and communal belonging. The paper attempts to integrate the quotidian and personal narratives of residents with broader social and economic changes occurring in their town. Make (n) (Of natural or manufactured thing) kind of structure or composition; build of body; mental or moral disposition Make-up (n) disguise of actor, cosmetics (etc.); person's char...
TL;DR: The relationship between trust and risk in one of the centres of the global chemical industry, Ludwigshafen in Germany, has been examined in this paper, where the authors describe the parameters of public reflection about trust, and analyse how characterizations of BASF are changing, and consider how far recent writing on trust helps in understanding its salience in this particular industrial town.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between trust and risk in one of the centres of the global chemical industry, Ludwigshafen in Germany. A single industry town associated for 150 years with BASF, the dominant outlook among those living or working there has been one of trust, confidence and pride in the corporation which has ‘put the town on the map’. Yet beneath the surface, subtle shifts in public assumptions and expectations about BASF and the town's chemical industry are now occurring. We describe the parameters of public reflection about trust and risk, analyse how characterizations of BASF are changing, and consider how far recent writing on trust helps in understanding its salience in this particular industrial town.
TL;DR: In this paper, a dialogue between medical anthropological theories and the existing literature on postsocialist civil societies is set up, by integrating recent critiques of civil society discourses with an ethnographic investigation of the ambiguous personal transformations that social activism has generated for some women NGO leaders.
Abstract: This article suggests a new tack on ‘NGO-graphy’ by setting up a dialogue between medical anthropological theories and the existing literature on postsocialist civil societies. Using data from Ukraine, I integrate recent critiques of ‘civil society’ discourses with an ethnographic investigation of the ambiguous personal transformations that social activism has generated for some women NGO leaders. The article asserts that, by applying the insights of critical-interpretive medical anthropology to the study of postsocialism, we can better track the dynamics of political, social, and personal change through which institutions are created, meaning-making surrounding self and society is negotiated, and powerful discourses are wielded to assert and contest the social worth of persons and groups.
TL;DR: In this article, an ethnographic account of a kindergarten in a small town in the north of Israel during 2001, explores notions of vulnerability and danger, protection and exposure, as these found expression in daily life at the kindergarten.
Abstract: This paper addresses some of the complexities surrounding the endeavour to create a protected space for children. Based on an ethnographic account of a kindergarten in a small town in the north of Israel during 2001, it explores notions of vulnerability and danger, protection and exposure, as these found expression in daily life at the kindergarten. The paper describes, and links, two sets of ethnographic data: first, the routine ways in which the teacher constructed the children's bodies as ever vulnerable to harm of all sorts, unless well taken care of; and second, the way in which a suicide bomb attack was presented, and mediated, by the teacher to the children. The paper argues that a close look at these two different stances on death and danger reveals a ‘discourse of vulnerability’ at the kindergarten.
TL;DR: It is symptomatic of my dilemma in introducing this special issue of Ethnos that the title of this project went through a half-dozen different iterations before settling at ‘Revisiting the Anthropo...
Abstract: It is symptomatic of my dilemma in introducing this special issue of Ethnos that the title of this project went through a half-dozen different iterations before settling at ‘Revisiting the Anthropo...
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparison of privatization programs in two physics institutes in the Siberian science city of Akademgorodok is presented, which explores the ways in which scientists adapted to the low levels of state funding available to them in the 1990s.
Abstract: Through a comparison of privatization programs in two physics institutes, this article explores the ways in which scientists in the Siberian science city of Akademgorodok adapted to the low levels of state funding available to them in the 1990s. Scientists transformed structures that were available under socialism into hybrid state-private ventures. Rather than ‘freeing’ Russian science from its former dependence on the state, however, these changes have reconfigured, and in some cases even strengthened, the relationship between state power and the production of knowledge. Seeing ‘the state’ as it is constituted in Russian scientists' discourse challenges Western models of the autonomy of science.
TL;DR: The idea for this special issue in Ethnos grew out of a AAA conference panel in fall 2003 as discussed by the authors, which aimed to stimulate new thinking on "postsocialism", geographically and theoretically.
Abstract: The idea for this special issue in Ethnos grew out of a AAA conference panel in fall 2003.1 The aim of the panel was to stimulate new thinking on ‘postsocialism,’ geographically and theoretically, ...
TL;DR: The authors examines painting and music in modern Syria as cultural practices that give voice to modernist sensibilities, arguing that two important spatial and temporal tropes structure the aesthetics of authenticity in Syrian visual and musical arts: the old city and the countryside.
Abstract: This essay examines painting and music in modern Syria as cultural practices that give voice to modernist sensibilities. I argue that two important spatial and temporal tropes structure the aesthetics of authenticity in Syrian visual and musical arts: the old city and the countryside. Through recourse to these metonymic representations and evocations, Syrian artists articulate a vision of modernity in which discourses of emotion and sentiment are important bases of authentic Syrian cultural identity. In this manner they offer an alternative to European ideologies of modernity that have stressed rationality. At the same time they promote critical responses to the modern Syrian state.
TL;DR: The authors explored ideologies of the linguistic contact zone in western New Guinea, a region that was once a colonial backwater, but is now the Indonesian province of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), where a separatist movement is underway.
Abstract: This essay explores ideologies of the linguistic contact zone in western New Guinea, a region that was once a colonial backwater, but is now the Indonesian province of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya), where a separatist movement is underway. The analysis focuses on the efforts of colonial missionaries to draw firm boundaries between Malay, the Netherlands Indies' lingua franca which later became Indonesian, and the Papuan language known as Mefoorsch. The failure of these efforts reveals the shortcomings of analyses that present ‘heteroglossia’ as a feature of Indies society that Dutch colonials discovered, then mastered by creating standard versions of the archipelago's many languages. Divergent ideologies not unlike those that thwarted previous generations of Protestant reformers confront today's Papuan nationalist leaders, who share a single language of unity with their foes, yet dream of making Papua into a linguistically purified space.