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Journal ArticleDOI

Beyond the suffering subject: toward an anthropology of the good

Joel Robbins
- 01 Sep 2013 - 
- Vol. 19, Iss: 3, pp 447-462
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TLDR
In this article, the authors trace the change from the anthropologists' focus on the "other" to the "the other" and suggest that some strengths of earlier work were lost in the transition.
Abstract
In the 1980s, anthropology set aside a focus on societies defined as radically ‘other’ to the anthropologists' own. There was little consensus at the time, however, about who might replace the other as the primary object of anthropological attention. In important respects, I argue, its replacement has been the suffering subject. Tracing this change, I consider how it addressed key problems of the anthropology of the other, but I also suggest that some strengths of earlier work – particularly some of its unique critical capacities – were lost in the transition. The conclusion considers how recent trends in anthropology might coalesce in a further shift, this one toward an anthropology of the good capable of recovering some of the critical force of an earlier anthropology without taking on its weaknesses.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Opting out of the city: lifestyle migrations, alternative education, and the pursuit of happiness among Chinese middle‐class families

TL;DR: Zhang et al. as mentioned in this paper show how these families construct meaningful social worlds through class histories, family ideals, and presentist temporalities that deviate from Western class formation and neoliberal constructions of self defined by individualistic identity pursuits.
Journal ArticleDOI

“Again you will plant vineyards”

TL;DR: The authors describe religious Jewish winemakers in West Bank settlements whose phenomenal experience of meta-historical time in the temporal frame of ge'ula, redemption, displaces the precarity and uncertainty of the contemporary settlement projects, renders the moral and political stakes of the occupation less disturbing, and fosters hope for a prosperous future.
Book ChapterDOI

In Conversation with Sindre Bangstad About Migrants, Illegality and the Bordering of Europe. Conducted via E-Mail Correspondence in September 2016.

TL;DR: Andersson argues that contemporary attempts at "bordering Europe " on the part of European nation-states and the EU's border controls agencies are and remain counterproductive as mentioned in this paper, and brings his work's potential for elucidating what in 2015 became known as a European refugee crisis and its aftermath to the table.
Journal ArticleDOI

More Venezuelans in Trinidad in the 21st century

TL;DR: In this article, the authors raise questions about the complex status and identity of Venezuelan migrants in Trinidad who came seeking asylum in recent years and demonstrate that internationally accepted "refugee" and "asylum seeker" categorization is highly unstable in the present context due to the core economic issues underlying forced migration.
Book ChapterDOI

Filming Trauma, Gendered Violence, and Stigmatization

TL;DR: The origin stories of three ethnographic films made in Indonesia as discussed by the authors reveal key concerns for the visual psychological anthropology (VPA) of trauma, gendered violence, and stigma, and a reflexive ethos negotiates ethical questions of making films about "suffering subjects" from a position of privilege.
References
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BookDOI

Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity

Talal Asad
TL;DR: Asad as discussed by the authors explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of the secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East, and concludes that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational.
Journal ArticleDOI

On Ethnographic Authority

James Clifford
- 01 Apr 1983 - 
TL;DR: The frontispiece of Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific is a photograph with the caption "A Ceremonial Act of the Kula." A shell necklace is being offered to a Trobriand chief who stands at the door of his dwelling, behind the man presenting the necklace is a row of six bowing youths, one of them sounding a conch as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI

Prophecy and the near future: Thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated time

TL;DR: The authors trace the optionality and consonance of this shift toward the relative evacuation of the near future in religion and economics by examining different theoretical positions within each domain, and suggest that the near-future is being reinhabited by forms of punctuated time, such as the dated schedules of debt and other specific event-driven temporal frames.
Journal ArticleDOI

Continuity thinking and the problem of christian culture : Belief, time, and the anthropology of christianity

Joel Robbins
- 01 Feb 2007 - 
TL;DR: A close reading of the Comaroffs' Of Revelation and Revolution illustrates the ways in which anthropologists sideline Christianity and leads to a discussion of reasons the anthropology of Christianity has languished as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI

For An Anthropology Of Ethics And Freedom

TL;DR: The authors propose an approche possible for l'etude comparee et ethnographique de l'ethique et de la liberte, and quelques commentaires succincts on le jainisme servent a l'illustrer.