Showing papers in "Ethnos in 2011"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore some ways in which Atlantic salmon, an icon of wilderness, is enrolled in regimes of domestication, and treat domestication as a set of practices whose character defines and enacts Atlantic salmon in different, though partly overlapping ways.
Abstract: Atlantic salmon aquaculture has become one of the most profitable industries in Norway, a country which is also known for its large population of wild salmon. We explore some ways in which Atlantic salmon, an icon of wilderness, is enrolled in regimes of domestication. Inspired by material semiotics, we treat domestication as a set of practices whose character defines and enacts Atlantic salmon in different, though partly overlapping ways. Approaching salmon through its various enactments, we also address the foundational division of nature from culture in Euro-American thought. We suggest that the domesticated Atlantic salmon is indeed emergent, complex, and historically contingent. A central claim is that salmon and nature are performed together, through various acts of differentiation that constitute what they both are. This article is based on an ethnographic fieldwork in West Norway.
137 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine migrant remittances through the lens of anthropological theories of gift relationships and explore remittance transactions as perceived and practised by people in Cape Verde, a country in which many households receive money from abroad.
Abstract: This article examines migrant remittances through the lens of anthropological theories of gift relationships. I explore remittance transactions as perceived and practised by people in Cape Verde, a country in which many households receive money from abroad. The article highlights three key dimensions. The first dimension is the transactors' (senders and receivers of remittances) relations and obligations to each other, the second is the degree to which remittances are seen as voluntary gifts or, alternatively, as elements in an obligatory reciprocal exchange, and the third is the relation between the transactors and money as an object of exchange. I argue that these dimensions together open up for a holistic understanding of the dynamic interplay between remittances and relationships. In contrast to mainstream remittance studies, with their conventional focus on economic rationality, this is an approach that illuminates what remittances mean, as social practice, to those involved.
62 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a shift in emphasis from positionality and representation to performativity and ontology offers a new approach to thinking about nature categories, rather than criticising dualisms, focusing on how nature categories are produced and reproduced.
Abstract: In introducing this special edition, we argue that a shift in emphasis from positionality and representation to performativity and ontology offers a new approach to thinking about nature categories. Rather than criticising dualisms, we focus on how nature categories are produced and reproduced. The article addresses contexts of settler societies and industrial modernity, where concepts of wilderness and nature are called into play. We show how the articles in this volume together give new perspectives on how nature concepts are used and how they are made into relations or promoted to underpin social movements. By thinking about the 'relational ontologies' of nature, we offer a way to integrate contemporary insights from anthropology, philosophy, queer studies and science studies.
53 citations
TL;DR: The authors discusses the bodily mass reproduction of divine touch in Ghanaian charismatic Pentecostalism and argues for an understanding of conversion as an ongoing bodily process that tunes the senses to specific sensory experiences.
Abstract: This article discusses the bodily mass reproduction of divine touch in Ghanaian charismatic Pentecostalism and argues for an understanding of conversion as an ongoing bodily process that ‘tunes’ the senses to specific sensory experiences. Presenting a case study of the International Central Gospel Church in Accra, it asks how the church's explicit appeal to the body relates to its strong suspicion of bodily mediation and its ideology of conversion as an inner transformation of the spirit and only secondarily of the body. It shows that the learning of the church doctrine that grounds born-again subjectivity in spontaneous and immediate experiences of being touched by the Holy Spirit goes together with repeated performance and gradual embodiment of sensory and bodily ‘formats’ that evoke such experiences, but also raise concerns about their authenticity.
47 citations
TL;DR: Sandra H. Dudley as discussed by the authors, ed. Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. 289 pp. USD $44.95.
Abstract: Sandra H. Dudley, ed. 2010. Museum Materialities: Objects, Engagements, Interpretations. New York and London: Routledge. 289 pp. USD $44.95. ISBN 978-0-415-49218-8 For decades museum anthropology h...
46 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that Pentecostal women learn to stay in control of their body under guidance of the Holy Spirit and a "violent" war against the spirit spouse unfolds.
Abstract: This article discusses the forceful transformation of the female body in Brazilian Pentecostalism in urban Mozambique and argues for an understanding of Pentecostal conversion as embodying spiritual warfare. Presenting the case of avenging spirits, such as the spirit spouse, it explores how spirits interfere in women's new socio-economic positions and intimate relationships. Pentecostal women learn to stay in control of their body under guidance of the Holy Spirit and a ‘violent’ war against the spirit spouse unfolds. The prevalence of ‘violence’ implies that we should critically question a perception of conversion as bringing healing and harmony.
44 citations
TL;DR: Lambek, et al. as mentioned in this paper present Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action, a collection of essays about the ordinal ethics of language and action from the perspective of human beings.
Abstract: Michael Lambek, ed. 2010. Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action. New York: Fordham University Press. 458 pp. USD $95.00. ISBN: 978-0823233168. This collection is the latest contributio...
35 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore routines and rhetorics of river management, and three different versions of naturalness they perform and entangle: indigeneity, wildness, and ecological functionality.
Abstract: Management of the fish community of the Goulburn River in south-east Australia has stalled, as river managers, anglers, scientists, policy-makers, and local residents debate which fish belong in the river. In Australia, such questions of belonging are frequently configured around geographical origin; on a distinction between indigenous species as natural, and introduced species as unnatural. However, in managing the Goulburn River, other versions of naturalness are invoked as the final arbiter of which fish should swim in these waters. In this paper, I explore routines and rhetorics of river management, and three different versions of naturalness they perform and entangle: indigeneity, wildness, and ecological functionality. In concluding, I suggest that negotiations over which fish constitute the natural state of the river resonate with contemporary concerns with human citizenship of the nation state.
32 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the growing popularity of volunteering in China and delineate several factors that play into the phenomenon, including students' desire to break out of strict routines, to engage in meaningful activities, to meet people, and to contribute to China's development.
Abstract: In this article, I explore the growing popularity of volunteering in China. I delineate several factors that play into the phenomenon, including students' desire to break out of strict routines, to engage in meaningful activities, to meet people, and to contribute to China's development. Linking these issues to the socio-political, economic, and ideological transformations in China, I show that we cannot meaningfully distinguish between altruistic and self-interested motivations to volunteer. For the students volunteering is a means to transform themselves into modern, entrepreneurial, and responsible selves, necessary to meet the challenges of urban life in China today. Yet, volunteering, encouraged and framed by the government, is also a ‘technology of power’, a means to nurture self-reliant and socially responsible individuals. I show that volunteerism is not simply the reflection of a new ‘governmentality’ but an encounter in which the very relationship between state and society is constantly negotiated.
31 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the experience of time and perception of history within the Word of Life charismatic ministry in Sweden, demonstrating the mutual implication of the physical and the temporal, the biographical and the historical, in members' lives.
Abstract: I focus on the experience of time and perception of history within the Word of Life charismatic ministry in Sweden, demonstrating the mutual implication of the physical and the temporal, the biographical and the historical, in members' lives. While conversion draws on a personal frame of reference in relation to the passage of time, spiritualised temporality can also be given a more ambitious frame, incorporating major events that might lead to Christ's return. Believers wrestle with at least two ways of dealing with history. One pertains to a mimetic relation to previous action: invoking history. The other involves the articulation of something discontinuous and new, an ‘event’ that moves towards the ultimate salvationist and transformative aims of the faith: making history. Both raise the question of how novelty can be invoked through deploying cultural resources that, seemingly paradoxically, recall actions taken in the past – a process I term ‘historiopraxy’.
29 citations
TL;DR: Although disgust often features in anthropological shop talk and teaching, it has not been explored as a heuristic in formal anthropological studies as mentioned in this paper, suggesting that studying disgust would contribute to understanding the tensions and revealing underdeveloped elements in some common analytical frameworks, including the mind-body relationship, the nature of the self.
Abstract: Although disgust often features in anthropological shop talk and teaching, it has not been explored as a heuristic in formal anthropological studies. I suggest that studying disgust would contribute to understanding the tensions and revealing underdeveloped elements in some common analytical frameworks, including the mind–body relationship, the nature of the self, anthropological approaches to the senses and to emotion, recent interest in intimacy, and the invocation of the imagination as part of social and cultural process, as well as the ways we think about fieldwork and write ethnographies.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore Pentecostal embodiment practices and concepts with regard to Holy Spirit baptism and demon possession, and show that the embodiment of spirits and/or the Holy Spirit is related to theological concepts of the self.
Abstract: The article explores Pentecostal embodiment practices and concepts with regard to Holy Spirit baptism and demon possession. The studied material is connected to a specific and highly controversial debate in Ethiopian Pentecostalism, which revolves around the possibility of demon possession in born-again and Spirit-filled Christians. This debate runs through much of Ethiopian Pentecostal history and ultimately is concerned with whether or how Christians can be seen to host conflicting spiritual forces, in light of the strong dualism between God and evil in Pentecostal cosmology. The article shows that the embodiment of spirits and/or the Holy Spirit is related to theological concepts of the self, because these concepts define what may or may not be discerned in certain bodily manifestations. Moreover, the article contends that this debate thrives on a certain ambiguity in spirit embodiment, which invites the discernment of spiritual experts and thereby becomes a resource of power.
TL;DR: In this paper, the author explores how the Catholic framing impacts the arrangements for accommodating the semiotic ideologies of "sincerity" and "saintliness" within Pentecostal religiosity, resulting in singular manifestations of the collective project and the regional Christian Person.
Abstract: Taking into account the composition of Pentecostalism – a mixture of, on one side, a Protestant tradition that allows the constitution of the ‘sincere person’, and, on the other side, the enchanted aspects of personhood – what happens when this message is disseminated in a context with a long Catholic tradition by ‘translators’ socialized in the Catholic culture; in other words, by people with a particular interpretation of the Protestant tradition? In this article, the author explores this question and shows how the Catholic framing impacts the arrangements for accommodating the semiotic ideologies of ‘sincerity’ and ‘saintliness’ within Pentecostal religiosity, resulting in singular manifestations of the collective project and of the regional Christian Person.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the production and circulation of state officials' portraits in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, as visual artists engaged in the cultivation of an art market after the dismantling of socialist-era state sponsorship, and argue that these portraits of the president and other high-ranking officials should be considered as an instance of commercialisation of art.
Abstract: This article traces the production and circulation of state officials' portraits in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, as visual artists engaged in the cultivation of an art market after the dismantling of socialist-era state sponsorship. I argue that these portraits of the president and other high-ranking officials should be considered as an instance of commercialisation of art. Portraiture invoked proximity of artists to their powerful sitters, government officials, and consequently made artists' work more attractive to a particular kind of domestic buyer. Furthermore, I argue that these practices of commodification enable an understanding of how socialist-era legacies of state sponsorship have converted into the logics of proximity to power. The Soviet-era personalistic connections to bureaucrats have transformed into the means for representation of artwork's market value in contemporary Kazakhstan. As such, Soviet legacies of clientelism have rendered state icons as significant authenticators of commercial value...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the language and implications of the Indonesian pornography law passed in 2008 and a 2006 draft that targeted pornography action as well as pornographic media and argue that pornography itself has become pornographic, and the nation has been encouraged to become voyeuristic peeping Toms monitoring cultural performance.
Abstract: This paper explores the language and implications of the Indonesian pornography law passed in 2008 and a 2006 draft that targeted ‘pornographic action' as well as pornographic media. While noting how pornographic action was seen as an attempt to impose Shari'a law especially insofar as it focused on women's bodies, this paper also examines how pornography, widely available through new technologies and economic liberalization, has come to be seen as an array of foreign and mapped sexual practices. This paper argues that as sexual practices become ethnicized, and as pornography comes to encompass a wide range of bodily practices from bathing to dancing to dressing, ethnicity itself has become pornographic, and the nation has been encouraged to become voyeuristic peeping Toms monitoring cultural performance.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the role of friendship in people's efforts to integrate their middle-class migratory projects with their position in Brazil and Lisbon, and argue that making friends with the Portuguese was an important step for such a project while it required Brazilians to conform to Portuguese manners that contradicted the way they perceived themselves.
Abstract: In the late twentieth century, international migration became one of the strategies a number of Brazilians deployed to create and maintain a middle-class lifestyle. Many went to Portugal to seize the new opportunities offered by an expanding Portuguese economy and a skilled job market. As qualified Brazilians arrived with the required skills to fill these jobs and as they achieved a lifestyle that could be equated to a middle-class position in economic terms, they discovered more subjective barriers to their acceptance within general middle-class Portuguese society. In this article, I examine the role of friendship in people's efforts to integrate their middle-class migratory projects with their position in Brazil and Lisbon. I argue that making friends with the Portuguese was an important step for such a project while it required Brazilians to conform to Portuguese manners that contradicted the way they perceived themselves.
TL;DR: This article explored the changing relationships between humans, animals and flora around South Africa's first World Heritage Site as enacted, multiple realities by using two strategies: first, describing the transformation of earlier sets of relationships into present-day conservation natures; and second part of the article shifts ordering strategy and tells of competing enactments in and around the park today.
Abstract: The article experiments with a performative approach to examine the changing relationships between humans, animals and flora around South Africa's first World Heritage Site as enacted, multiple realities. These relations are explored by using two strategies: first, describing the transformation of earlier sets of relationships into present-day conservation natures – from hunting, through preservation of big game, to the establishment of game reserves and later their transformation into contemporary conservation natures. The second part of the article shifts ordering strategy and tells of competing enactments in and around the park today. By using both these approaches, the article seeks to address the way in which some actors seem to be able to impose their version of nature to the exclusion of other realities.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on an aspect of voluntary blood donation that has received relatively little attention, namely the spaces (public, moral and political) that connnect individual donors with the recipients of blood.
Abstract: In this article, I focus on an aspect of voluntary blood donation that has received relatively little attention, namely the spaces – public, moral and political – that connnect individual donors with the recipients of blood. More specifically I focus on five distinct but related modalities of blood donation – internationalism, Buddhism, familism, nationalism and anti-commercialism. These rhetorics are highly significant, yet they are often missed in accounts of the link between donor and recipient and how individuals account for and justify their actions within wider, shared imaginings of family, community and nation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how political activists in West Bengal use mobile phones for their daily political work and demonstrate how the political use of mobile technology for extra ordinary events is grounded in the social and political processes of ordinary everyday life.
Abstract: As media reports of political movements from various locations have shown, mobile technology can be a powerful political instrument. This paper examines how political activists in West Bengal, India use mobile phones for their daily political work. I seek ways to recognize the disruptive and political potential of mobile technology without ignoring its social and cultural rootedness. I illustrate how riots and protests relate to the increase in translocal communication enabled by phones. I also demonstrate how the political use of mobile technology for extra ordinary events is grounded in the social and political processes of ordinary everyday life and draws from the local understanding of politics by emphasizing certain aspects of it. My article confirms the cultural continuity amidst the increase in translocal relationships but it also pinpoints how cultures harbour conflicts and alternative discourses which translocal communication helps to amplify.
TL;DR: In this paper, the dynamics of becoming and remaining a religious convert are displayed through a focus on the three specific interrelated issues of time, spirits and the subject, which is a common theme in Pentecostalism.
Abstract: The body is one of the most discussed topics in current studies of religion and society. Pentecostalism displays a remarkable sensorial and experiential form of religion and is therefore a most interesting domain to study the intersection of religion and embodiment. To avoid the pitfall of taking the feeling body for granted as a prime phenomenological reality, this thematic issue elaborates on the explicit strategies through which the religious body is formed in different societies. The dynamics of becoming and remaining a religious convert are displayed through a focus on the three specific interrelated issues of time, spirits and the subject.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the politics of ethnicity in Rwanda and point out that most authors discount the role of Twa, because the latter are Rwanda's least numerous ethnic group, and the tendency is to dismiss their importance.
Abstract: When discussing the politics of ethnicity in Rwanda, most authors discount the role of Twa. Because the latter are Rwanda's least numerous ethnic group, the tendency is to dismiss their importance. This dismissal may seem justified in instrumental terms, but it is not true in symbolic terms. Twa were the first of Rwanda's three ethnicities to suffer stigmatization, and this predated European colonialism by several centuries. If we think about ethnicity according to an instrumentalist model, placing primary causal weight on social rather than cultural factors, we misconstrue how Rwanda's pre-colonial opposition of disgust vs. esteem provided fertile grounds for later European biological determinism. Practices of avoidance in commensality, marriage, and other activities – called ‘kuneena batwa’ – lie at the heart of this opposition. This paper traces its processual development, demonstrating that it is incorrect to think of Rwandan ethnicity either in purely instrumentalist terms or in simple binary cultura...
TL;DR: The authors investigates the manner in which species acclimatisation takes place in new landscapes taking the example of mid-nineteenth-century Tasmania, Australia, where the Acclimatization Society was a major, high-status institution involving the governing classes, scientists, major landowners and officials.
Abstract: This paper investigates the manner in which species acclimatisation takes place in new landscapes Taking the example of mid-nineteenth-century Tasmania, Australia, where the Acclimatisation Society was a major, high-status institution involving the governing classes, scientists, major landowners and officials, the paper investigates how the successful acclimatisation of the brown trout (Salmo trutta) actually took place It argues that is was not merely a question of introducing the animal into a new environment Part of the agency of acclimatisation was enacted by trouts themselves, although this rarely figures in narratives of acclimatisation The paper shows how trout agency was deployed to evolve a new way of life in the new landscape that had a profound impact on their relationship with human anglers and angling culture in Tasmania
TL;DR: In this paper, a discussion of the observed shift in baptism practices from that of ‘sprinkling’ infants (in Protestant mainline churches) to full bodily immersion of adults (in new evangelical churches) in the Netherlands is presented.
Abstract: Why do recent converts in new evangelical churches desire to be re-baptized by immersion despite their previous infant baptism in mainline churches? This article addresses this question through a discussion of the observed shift in baptism practices from that of ‘sprinkling’ infants (in Protestant mainline churches) to full bodily immersion of adults (in new evangelical churches) in the Netherlands. Based on an ethnographic comparison of these two baptism practices, I demonstrate the performative effect of rituals as well as the importance of connections between material forms, embodiment and doctrines. The call for different baptism practices, I suggest, illustrates a broader shift in Dutch Protestantism from a didactic to an experiential form of Christianity in which the encounter with the sacred is increasingly located in the body. At the same time, it demonstrates how religious authority has moved from institutions to individual believers.
TL;DR: The authors analyzed projects from a French Mediterranean village that have borrowed discursive forms from French ethnology and history to convert local heritages into disciplined archives and booklets, predominantly for use in tourism.
Abstract: ‘Amateur’ anthropology and ethnography are utopian categories proposed by anthropologists seeking to critique a perceived culture of ‘professionalism’ within the discipline (Grimshaw & Hart, 1993). Yet they have arguably been practised extensively by local intellectuals oblivious to such debates. In rural Europe, this has often involved ‘pastoral’ conservation of ‘local history’, ‘traditions’ and ‘folk customs’, in the context of identity politics. Recent manifestations, however, have enabled the disciplining of cultural practices of indigenous populations by local entrepreneurs for use in heritage tourism. Building on Foucault's concept of a ‘disciplinary programme’, this paper analyses projects from a French Mediterranean village that have ‘borrowed’ discursive forms from French ethnology and historiography to convert local heritages into disciplined archives and booklets, predominantly for use in tourism. It then analyses their approximation to the discipline of anthropology; assesses their problematic...
TL;DR: The authors examined the varied reactions of people to the blood-stained wrapper of a spirit devotee during a bori possession ceremony in Niger, and explored how dirt and disgust are more complex than neat structuralist models of purity and pollution often used to explain them.
Abstract: Examining the varied reactions of people to the blood-stained wrapper of a spirit devotee during a bori possession ceremony in Niger, I explore how dirt and disgust are more complex than neat structuralist models of purity and pollution often used to explain them. Understanding menstrual blood in situational terms, and looking at the reactions as shaped more about complex dimensions of agency in the course of possession, secrecy, revealing things known but not spoken, and forms of attention allows us to grasp better the varied kinds of disgust some people expressed after the incident.
TL;DR: Ratatouille as discussed by the authors explores distinctions and similarities between "man and beast" and explores the idea that all living creatures share more in terms of aptitude and feeling than divides them.
Abstract: This paper analyzes the immensely popular animated film Ratatouille as a social and cultural document. It begins with a recapitulation of the movie's story line – a saga of an astute, ambitious and talented rat, who becomes transformed into an accomplished haute cuisine chef. The film illustrates recent anthropological writings on the central role of cooking in human evolution. It also shows how varieties of cooking and table manners provide key indications of the civilizing process. Ultimately, Ratatouille explores distinctions and similarities between “man and beast”. It communicates the idea that all living creatures share more in terms of aptitude and feeling than divides them.
TL;DR: The authors examines the local impact of these nation-wide debates on a dispute between the local residents of an isolated coastal town called Exmouth and a group of developers who have applied to build the world's largest salt mine on nearby lands.
Abstract: Throughout the Western Australian mining boom of the past two decades, wilderness has remained as one of the most strongly disputed topics in the environmental decision-making arena. This article examines the local impact of these nation-wide debates on a dispute between the local residents of an isolated coastal town called Exmouth and a group of developers who have applied to build the world's largest salt mine on nearby lands. My intention in this article is to shift the focus away from the oppositional nature of the beliefs, values and knowledge that are expressed through disputes over wilderness and instead to bring attention to the process by which the polarisation occurs. To do so, I use Bateson's concept of schismogenesis to highlight the ways in which nature knowledge is contested, altered and reinterpreted through the process of dispute, and how this, in turn, can impact upon the decision-making process.
TL;DR: The Ghosts of Kanungu: Fertility, Secrecy and Exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa as mentioned in this paper is a seminal work on fertility, secrecy and exchange in Africa.
Abstract: Richard Vokes. 2009. Ghosts of Kanungu: Fertility, Secrecy and Exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa. Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, NY: James Currey. Kampala: Fountain Press. 256 pp. USD ...