HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Introduction
No full textThis article introduces thirteen reflections on the scholarly contributions of anthropologist Katherine Verdery, Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor Emerita at the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Department of Anthropology. Although Verdery is perhaps best known for her work on socialist and postsocialist societies, we draw attention to some additional remarkable aspects of Verdery’s scholarship over the decades: her determination to hold ethnographic particularity together with a focus on regional and global processes; her ability to adapt to changes in her sites and topics of research and her fields of scholarship; her meticulous creativity; and, above all, her willingness—indeed, her delight—in sharing all of this virtuoso skill with her many students and colleagues
Portrayal of the vital world of a person living with Alzheimer’s, drawing on a close and intimate case
No full textBeing Shia in Bangladesh: The intersectionality of ethnicity, language, and transnational connectivity
No full textThis article attempts to delineate what it means to be Shia in relation to home-making in Sunni-majority Bangladeshi society. Unlike longer established Shias, those primarily settled in Old Dhaka and who are integrated into Dhakaiya culture and linguistic traditions, the post-Partition Urdu-speaking Shia migrants within the “Bihari” fold, a pejorative term used by Sunni-majority Bengalis, continue to seek to root home-making in Bangladeshi society. Both groups, however, have repeated a common practice in making home to bridge geographical and historical distance from a culturally significant center by reproducing it in the new location. Yet, despite the clear connections with Iran, it is the post-Partition migrants who find themselves negatively represented as collaborators with West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and this hinders the integration of this group into their new home. The article demonstrates that home is never produced in isolation of wider geopolitical, spatial, and historical factors
The affective economy of democracy: Women’s adverse incorporation in party politics in Dehradun, North India
No full textParty politics is an affective economy in which the generation and accumulation of positive sentiments achieve electoral success. In Dehradun, North India, party workers undertake activities to build and maintain affective relationships with voters, and to generate political momentum at election time. Both party symbol and labor are required for electoral success, yet the relationship between them is unequal. Examining party politics as a system of production (of affects) and relationships (between labor and sign) reveals the exploitation of party workers through the appropriation of their labor, and the denial of the means to achieve political ambitions independently. These processes are gendered. Women provide much of the political labor on which parties rely, yet are less likely to receive political opportunity in return. The problem of women’s political underrepresentation is hence not on account of their exclusion from party politics, but due to their adverse incorporation into an affective economy
Rethinking the anthropological enterprise in light of Muslim ontologies: Secular vestiges, spiritual epistemologies, vertical knowledge
No full textBecause of the difficulty anthropology continues to face in relinquishing its secular vestiges, field encounters with not-immediately-perceptible reality, the realm of God, the invisible, and the otherworldly have usually been removed or deemed insignificant in anthropological accounts. In dialogue with the ontological turn and other recent developments in anthropology, in this article we introduce the special section on Muslim ontologies by advocating for a more profound reconsideration of the role that the encounter with other modes of knowing in the field might have for the discipline. Proposing to include transcendence, the divine, and invisible realities in a reflection on anthropological knowledge, we foreground vertical knowledge as a mode of approaching knowledge that centers on the human ability to transform and experience the self in ways that also correspond to different modalities of perceiving reality
