Showing papers in "Ethnos in 2009"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the processes through which imaginative effects come about in an anthropology that takes the imagination seriously and how far could an exploration of the processes of imaginative effects serve to distinguish the im...
Abstract: What would an anthropology that takes the imagination seriously look like? And how far could an exploration of the processes through which imaginative effects come about serve to distinguish the im...
180 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the way young men from Bissau, the capital of the small, impoverished West African country of Guinea-Bissau position the decline and destruction that characterize their city in relation to the peace, prosperity and progress they see elsewhere.
Abstract: This article exploresimagined migration and migrantimaginaries. It takes its point of departure in fieldwork among would-be migrants in Bissau and traces the realization of their hopes into Europe. More specifically, it sheds light on the way young men from Bissau, the capital of the small, impoverished West African country of Guinea-Bissau, position the decline and destruction that characterize their city in relation to the peace, prosperity and progress they see elsewhere. In doing so, it illuminates a world that, seen from Bissau, is characterized by very uneven levels of control over socio-political matters. A world that is divided into different zones of mastery over social, political and economic processes. Finally, the article dwells on the consequences of this imagined global order and its effect on the acts and strategies of young migrants.
130 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an alternative solution to the problem of conceiving the distinction between a nonconsciously enacted morality and the conscious awareness of ethical dilemmas and moral questioning is proposed.
Abstract: Despite its now common currency the anthropological concept of morality remains underdeveloped. One anthropologist who has made several important attempts to work out a more precise theoretical concept of morality is Joel Robbins. In his most recent contribution to this endeavor Robbins addresses the tension in anthropology between what he calls the morality of reproduction and the morality of freedom. In this article, I suggest an alternative solution to the problem of conceiving the distinction between a nonconsciously enacted morality and the conscious awareness of ethical dilemmas and moral questioning. I will support this distinction with ethnographic and life-historical material from my research on the moral lives of some Muscovites.
127 citations
57 citations
TL;DR: For almost three decades, open cut coal mines have been expanding deeper into the densely settled agricultural landscape of the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia, and the mines have become increasingly profitable for Australian and multinational companies, and Newcastle is now the world's largest black coal exporting port as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: For almost three decades, open cut coal mines have been expanding deeper into the densely settled agricultural landscape of the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. The mines have become increasingly profitable for Australian and multinational companies, and Newcastle, the capital of the Hunter region, is now the world's largest black coal exporting port. Despite the significant new wealth that mining has brought, those residing in proximity to mines and coal-fired power stations in the Hunter Valley have long struggled against the deleterious effects on health, rural livelihoods and environment. In recent years, opposition has widened to a more activist environmentalism that links the coal economy to climate change, global warming and other cumulative health and environmental effects. The organisational scale of the opposition has correspondingly widened to interconnect local residents, Green political parties and transnational organisations such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. Using the Anvil Hill...
54 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the moral imagination observable in this phenomenon can be understood with reference to its emergence around specific methods of technical production, which are also understood as central to the technical production of good software, are reinforced (as a ethical orientation) by their contribution to making 'good' software.
Abstract: This paper is about the interaction between the human imagination and technology among a self-described ‘community’: that of developers of Free or Open Source Software. I argue that the moral imagination observable in this phenomenon can be understood with reference to its emergence around specific methods of technical production. Principles of openness, truth, freedom and progress, which are also understood as central to the technical production of good software, are reinforced (as a ethical orientation) by their contribution to making ‘good’ software. A reciprocal dynamic ensues in which better software is seen as dependent on particular social practices and ideologies while these practices and ideologies are given salience by their success in fostering valuable production. Processes key to the generation of this social form are examined before a number of key features of the practice of programming, such as its often combative and individualistic character, and an absence of women in developer communit...
48 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a meaningful anthropological account must incorporate and move beyond both types of narratives, acknowledging that deeply felt sentiment and strategic plans to improve one's life overlap in all kinds of social exchange, romantic or otherwise.
Abstract: Public debates about international matchmaking highlight the victimization of impoverished women by western men or the self-interested instrumentalism of women who marry for visas. Meanwhile, agencies and many of their clients portray this as a linking of well-intentioned lonely hearts who just want normal family lives. A meaningful anthropological account must incorporate and move beyond both types of narratives, acknowledging that deeply felt sentiment and ‘strategic’ plans to improve one's life overlap in all kinds of social exchange, romantic or otherwise. How the relationship between self-interest and affect is understood depends upon historically specific and gendered experiences of political economy. Participants’ framings of their own and their prospective spouses’ ‘sincerity’ and ‘seriousness’ are diagnostic of structural pressures each group has experienced, which they seek to address through international marriage.
40 citations
TL;DR: It is shown how a tradition of intimate hierarchy and class dynamics in medical institutions informs the experimental ethos of clinical practice as patients internalize a psychotherapeutic notion of health and management regimes of female reproduction and sexuality that are becoming normalized among upper social strata.
Abstract: Brazilian plastic surgeons have successfully promoted a psychotherapeutic rationale for cosmetic surgery. This article critically engages with this 'philosophy' of health, analyzing how it is deployed in busy teaching hospitals. I show how a tradition of intimate hierarchy and class dynamics in medical institutions informs the experimental ethos of clinical practice as patients internalize a psychotherapeutic notion of health and management regimes of female reproduction and sexuality that are becoming normalized among upper social strata. In the process, cosmetic and healing rationales become blurred as patients pursue an expansive, qualitatively defined state of well-being that I call 'esthetic health'.
38 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the imaginative effects generated by Mongolian scapulimancy practices and the impact that the introduction of electric light had on rural Mongolians are examined as metonymic fields.
Abstract: This paper examines two apparently contrasting cases: the imaginative effects generated by Mongolian scapulimancy practices, and the impact that the introduction of electric light had on rural Mongolians. Scapula and other divinatory items are analysed as ‘metonymic fields’ – bounded technical practices from which wider meanings are read. The Soviet-era electrification programme was designed to create the sorts of imaginative perceptions that the modernist state advocated. However, it is argued that Mongolia cannot be described in terms of a successful modernist ‘colonisation’ of the social imaginary, since this metaphor implies a bounded space being filled with particular ideologies. Rather than displace each other, narrative genres and metonymic fields have coexisted and interacted in new ways.
37 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a phenomenologically informed examination of the cultural and personal influences implicated in the constitution of experiences that may shift from subjective to objective, and to intermediate varieties of experience is presented.
Abstract: This paper engages in a phenomenologically informed examination of the cultural and personal influences implicated in the constitution of experiences that may shift from subjective to objective, and to intermediate varieties Drawing from extensive ethnographic research on the island of Yap, Federated States of Micronesia, the paper explores how a cultural phenomenological understanding of intermediary varieties of experience is resonant with aspects of Yapese ethno-epistemology in which material objects are understood as variously invested with subjective entailments, and vice versa Two examples are used to illustrate the active inter-subjective constitution of such intermediate varieties of experience: the ambiguity of pain as an object of experience and the significance of food in everyday social life
36 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Bahre reviewed money and violence in financial self-help groups in a South Afri-can township in South-Afri- can township. And the authors concluded that:
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TL;DR: This paper analyzed how the Ghanaian government constructed the discourse of cultural sovereignty and deployed it against women's rights by appropriating the voice of "the people" and superimposing notions of "foreignness" onto both the Domestic Violence Bill and Ghanaian women's right activists.
Abstract: This article provides a new lens for analyzing power formations in human rights practices by examining Ghanaian struggles over a Domestic Violence Bill. While the hegemonic character of human rights advocacy is well-established, we know less about exercises of power in discourses and practices that oppose rights. I analyze how the Ghanaian government constructed the discourse of cultural sovereignty and deployed it against women's rights. The government legitimated this discourse by appropriating the voice of ‘the people’ and superimposing notions of ‘foreignness’ onto both the Bill and Ghanaian women's rights activists. Drawing on the historiography of colonialism and ethnography of political performance, I argue that this case illustrates how the discourse of cultural sovereignty is mobilized in a struggle over shifting configurations of gender, political activism, and state sovereignty.
TL;DR: In Abidjan, both economic and sexual exchanges are structured around the bluff, a mimetic performance of modern urban identity that is both a form of deception and a means of social transformation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In Abidjan, both economic and sexual exchanges are structured around the bluff, a mimetic performance of modern urban identity that is both a form of deception and a means of social transformation. Men and women attempt to seduce each other through the bluff and exploit the relationship for material gain. While marriage is held up as an ideal, it is increasingly elusive as kinship has come to mimic the peer networks of the informal economy. Like drag, the bluff collapses oppositions between appearance and reality, highlighting the performative aspects of ‘modernity’. I suggest that widespread urban sexual antagonism may be constructed around gendered performative consumption, such that the impossible demands of maintaining a deceptive appearance of success produces sexual exploitation and anxiety on both sides of the gender divide.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the new Pentecostal churches proliferating in the southwest Pacific nation, Vanuatu, must be understood in relation to the colonial history, the history of the churches, and the way the nation achieved its independence.
Abstract: This paper argues that the new Pentecostal churches proliferating in the southwest Pacific nation, Vanuatu, must be understood in relation to the colonial history, the history of the churches, and the way the nation achieved its independence. The dominating frames of understanding Pentecostal churches in anthropology today, what I call the sociological perspective and the economic perspective, are insufficient in this context. Through an analysis of specific church groups breaking away from the mainline churches, and their Pentecostal-oriented rhetoric, I argue that the focus on change and on the break with the past becomes meaningful in relation to a general political development. The independent, new churches thus become powerful social movements working for social change. This change is specifically connected to the failures of the state; their failure to secure and protect, for instance, land rights against foreign investment.
TL;DR: It is rare that we have the opportunity to engage in debates of the open kind that Ethnoshas provided here, and for that I thank the editors of this journal as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: It is rare that we have the opportunity to engage in debates of the open kind that Ethnoshas provided here, and for that I thank the editors of this journal. I would also like to thank Joel Robbins...
TL;DR: The authors examine Christian approaches to conceptions of time as expressed in approaches to reading the Bible, focusing on the work of Saint Augustine, whose arguments about the connections between reading and time have been, as I try to show, very influential.
Abstract: In this article I examine Christian approaches to conceptions of time as expressed in approaches to reading the Bible. The first main focus in this effort is upon the work of Saint Augustine, whose arguments about the connections between reading and time have been, as I try to show, very influential. The second main focus is more ethnographic in nature, and comes from my work in Zimbabwe on a small group of apostolic Christians whose views differ significantly from Augustine. These two cases are framed by some more general remarks on Christian temporalities, as well as a call for the newly-emerging interest in the anthropology of Christianity to take note of more general work on literacy and the ethnography of reading.
TL;DR: In this article, Zigon's approach to studying morality anthropologists is described. But this approach is based on an earlier piece of Zigon, in which he first laid out his approach to study morality anthropology.
Abstract: Shortly after completing the article that Zigon critically engages in this issue of Ethnos, I read an earlier piece of Zigon's in which he first laid out his approach to studying morality anthropol...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a conceptual framework for the ontology of sexuality, as well as its social, moral, and political controversies, economic strategies, existential anxieties and ontological uncertainties.
Abstract: Sexuality, as a conceptual framework, has become a site for several social, moral, and political controversies, economic strategies, existential anxieties and ontological uncertainties. The transfo...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine a group of Thai women's perceptions of western Caucasian men as ideal marriage partners and its impact on their sexual practices and relationship decisions and argue that women who do not fit local ideals of light skin color, economic success and urban origins face obstacles among potential Thai suitors.
Abstract: This article examines a group of Thai women's perceptions of western Caucasian men as ideal marriage partners and its impact on their sexual practices and relationship decisions. Based on conversations with women living in a ‘slum’ community in Bangkok, I argue that women who do not fit local ideals of light skin color, economic success and urban origins face obstacles among potential Thai suitors. Some of these women strategically prefer western suitors to local men. Through their relationship choices, these women upset local hierarchies of desire as they attempt to subvert skin color-bias and pose challenges to Thai marital traditions. At the same time, their relationship pursuits conform to gender expectations of the male breadwinner and female caretaker and may unintentionally reproduce skin color and status hierarchies. Although Thai women's sexual relationships with western men are not a new phenomena, they underscore the transnational nature of sexual desire and contemporary social change.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the dynamics of interaction between "masks", the avatars that people create in chat rooms, and the "faces" that they assume in life off-line.
Abstract: This article explores the dynamics of interaction between ‘masks’, the avatars that people create in chat rooms, and the ‘faces’ that they assume in life off-line. It is argued that the chat room is an Internet technology that gives rise to a particular relational imagination concerning the self and enables the manipulation of individual-social imaginative interactions that are specific to it. These novel forms of sociality are not ‘risk-free’ as some of the literature proposes. Furthermore, they may impinge dramatically on everyday lives off-line. The interesting question is what happens to the imagination when the technology creates relations (conversations) and these are consequential, exposing otherwise hidden aspects of personality.
TL;DR: The authors explored the role of silence in contemporary rural Mongolia's mourning practices and argued that mourning practices might not always be intended to make death meaningful: faced with the rage provoked by some particularly unbearable losses, there might be nothing else to do than to say nothing, do nothing, and give up on meaning.
Abstract: This paper explores the role of silence in contemporary rural Mongolia's mourning practices. It shows how silence may come as a response to the expression of extreme grief, when the mourner's behaviour goes beyond the frame of conventional mourning practices. Analysing the collective responses to a man's expression of extreme grief, this paper argues that mourning practices might not always be intended to make death meaningful: faced with the rage provoked by some particularly unbearable losses, there might be nothing else to do than to say nothing, do nothing, and give up on meaning.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the refusal of the Muslim Council of Britain to attend Holocaust Memorial Day highlights a key dimension of memory as political myth: namely, the sense that time is cyclical.
Abstract: This paper argues that the refusal of the Muslim Council of Britain to attend Holocaust Memorial Day highlights a key dimension of memory as political myth: namely, the sense that time is cyclical. Prior external and internal enemies (in their current manifestations) are apocalyptically destined to threaten the integrity of the nation once more. Hence, ideologies based on political myths draw on both the future hopes and the future fears of people. The paper highlights the similarities between Jewish and Pakistani fears, rooted in the Holocaust and Partition, of a repeated ‘cycle of death and suffering’. These loom large especially for those suffering racism. The more bound people are by their narrow group's particular symbols and history, the more apocalyptic their vision of this future is likely to be.
TL;DR: This paper explored the role of numbers in accounts of the self, drawing primarily on a case study of one woman from rural Taiwan, and suggested that a natural historical framework can help illuminate numbers and number systems as Chinese technologies of the imagination.
Abstract: In the Chinese cultural tradition, numbers may be seen as meaningful, creative, even poetic things, and they figure prominently in accounts of the self. Rather than 'reducing people to numbers', quantification is used - by at least some people some of the time - as a mode of differentiating themselves from others, a means of narrating unique life experiences. This paper explores the role of numbers in accounts of the self, drawing primarily on a case study of one woman from rural Taiwan. It is suggested that a natural historical framework can help illuminate numbers and number systems as Chinese technologies of the imagination.
TL;DR: The authors explored the relation between value and vision, or the ways in which seeing, seeing in a particular way, and failing to see, might all have economic consequences, and suggested that one can fruitfully borrow insights from the anthropology of the senses and of learning to inform anthropological theories of value.
Abstract: This article explores the relation between value and vision, or the ways in which seeing, seeing in a particular way, and failing to see, might all have economic consequences. I address these issues in the context of a discourse I heard from artisans producing zisha pottery, in the Jiangsu Province of China. This discourse concerned the consequences of the inability of purchasers of zisha pottery to 'see' the craft, and the need for clients to be taught to distinguish between apparently very similar pots, with the aim of promoting 'traditional' methods. The observation of interactions between artisans and their clients led me to suggest that one can fruitfully borrow insights from the anthropology of the senses and of learning to inform anthropological theories of value.
TL;DR: Crook, Tony as discussed by the authors, anthropological knowledge, secrecy and Bolivip, Papua New Guinea: Exchanging Skin. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Abstract: Crook, Tony. Anthropological Knowledge, Secrecy and Bolivip, Papua New Guinea: Exchanging Skin. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Tony Crook has written an interesting and challenging b...
TL;DR: The authors examines the resonances of the voluminous ethnography, "Stone Men of Malekula" (SMM) in contemporary Vanuatu, examining the ways in which culture is written, read and materialized, exposes the paradoxes of knowledge and politics.
Abstract: This article examines the resonances of the voluminous ethnography, ‘Stone Men of Malekula’ (SMM) in contemporary Vanuatu. Anthropological research is politically charged in Vanuatu, in part because of how the weighty materiality of archival forms exercise significant local authority. However, alongside respect for this ‘evidential’ material is a healthy scepticism of anthropological authority. SMM, written by the maverick anthropologist John Layard in 1942 (based on fieldwork in 1914–15), has returned to Vanuatu in many guises over the years. It is used as formal evidence in land disputes and as a bone of contention within competing claims. Tracing the ways in which culture is written, read and materialized, exposes the paradoxes of knowledge and politics not only within anthropological critique but in Vanuatu villages.
TL;DR: Vilaca et al. as discussed by the authors described the modes and effects of Christianity among Indigenous peoples of the Americas. But they did not consider the relationship between the Native Christians and non-Christians.
Abstract: Aparecida Vilaca & Robin M. Wright (eds.). 2009. Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. 252 pp. As evidenced by ...
TL;DR: The post-mortem process of re-figuring the victim as a "lesbian" is imaginable only within a discursive field saturated with human rights paradigms including those of sexual rights as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This article considers a precedent-setting murder case in Nicaragua that rendered a conviction based upon the victim's ‘sexual option’ and status as a ‘lesbian.’ A significant achievement for advocates in Nicaragua, the case was also a victory for sexual and human rights proponents globally. This article queries how the sexualization of culture can be viewed through the spectacle of Aura Rosa's life, death and symbolic resurrection. Analyzing the discourses and practices of Nicaraguan activists, international rights campaigns, the state, and local media, I argue that the post-mortem process of re-figuring the victim as a ‘lesbian’ is imaginable only within a discursive field saturated with human rights paradigms including those of sexual rights. Central to these practices are notions of vulnerable bodies, ascriptions to particular models of modernity and an emerging ‘epistemology of the hate crime.’