HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Erotic apprehension in Syrian and German encounters
No full textThe presence of new arrivals from the global South has provoked shifts in Stimmungen (collective moods) and a political backlash against social incorporation in Germany. This long-term study explores erotic apprehensions between Syrian refugees and Germans that inaugurate and form part of processes of incorporation after 2015. It focuses on thick forms of incorporation, based not on shared values or rights to membership but on forms of mutual belonging in which erotic dynamics arise and projections are open to modification. A sense of mutual belonging and long-term incorporation is unlikely without opportunities for encounters in which Germans feel desired and newcomers feel affirmed in their singularity
Suspicion, empathy, and the archival imagination
No full textThis article celebrates Katherine Verdery’s impact on the discipline of cultural anthropology through an exploration of the intersection of suspicion, empathy, and the archival imagination in ethnographic research, drawing on Verdery’s experiences during her decades of fieldwork in Romania. Verdery’s encounters with state surveillance, exemplified by her analysis of her Securitate secret police file, challenge conventional notions of ethnography and simultaneously inflect the archival turn within cultural anthropology. I argue that in Verdery’s writing, suspicion is a form of empathy and a code that builds an algorithmic architecture through which force is exerted—both in the institutions which operationalize intelligence files and in the habitus of those who become informants
“Today, we teach the kids where we are from”: Event filmmaking and diasporic home-making among Indian Muslims in North America
No full textHow do people make themselves at home in situations of movement, dispersal, and marginalization? Migration scholars have destabilized the idea that a home is bound to a dwelling, and developed more processual ways of conceptualizing home. In this article I bring this research agenda into conversation with the anthropology of events, to conceptualize social events as a diasporic home-making practice. Methodologically, I demonstrate how event filmmaking, a genre of ethnographic filmmaking, can be used as a research method in event studies. To develop this conceptual and methodological contribution, I draw on my experiences while making a film about the Vohra families reunion, a community event for Indian Gujarati Muslims (Vohras) in the United States and Canada. I interpret the reunion’s potential as a home-making practice in the light of the social position of Muslims as a religious minority in the United States, in India, and in the Indian diaspora
Revisiting the Azande
No full textThis introduction to a special section, “Revisiting the Azande,” summarizes the historical context and theoretical insights of the classic ethnography Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande, by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. It describes developments in Zandeland over the century since the book was written and provides synopses of the articles in the collection. The Azande have lived through a turbulent century; witchcraft and oracular practices, and “Zande tradition,” have been steadfast but nevertheless hard to pin down and constantly changing tools for Zande people as they have managed the upheavals
Witchcraft, disputes, and trials among the Azande (2014–2016)
No full textMangu, what Evans-Pritchard translated into English as “witchcraft” and around which he built his landmark ethnography, has disappeared among the South Sudanese Azande. But other kinds of witchcraft and magic (ngua) arise continuously. Drawing on anthropological research in South Sudan’s local courts and on interviews with disputants, chiefs, and judges, this article dives into the opaque, elusive, and mercurial world of witchcraft and magic. Whereas mangu was used solely to do harm, today’s ngua can be categorized along a spectrum from benign self-protection to malevolent pillaging and attacking ngua. When witchcraft cases are brought to local customary courts, there is room for nuance, precision, and for attention to the less arcane friction which often preceded witchcraft. But when customary courts punish alleged perpetrators, clashes abound with statutory judges and United Nations officials who see witchcraft as a dangerous falsehood and the imprisoned alleged perpetrators as victims of human rights abuses
As through a glass darkly: Rethinking sincerity through the lens of ikhlāṣ
No full textStandard Euro-American ideas of sincerity revolve around an idea of the transparent alignment of one’s outer acts with the inner self, such that the audience can clearly deduce the latter from the former. The development and spread of such ideas has been widely linked to the emergence of modern subjectivity. This article expands upon these analyses, contrasting them with Islamic notions of sincerity (ikhlāṣ) which is predicated not on transparency, but on purity of intention. This apparently minor difference has significant implications: it allows for sincerity to be opaque or deceptive; it gestures towards radically different technologies of self-formation; and it questions the facile and widespread elision of modernity with a particular version of sincerity