HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Introduction: A Film Symposium on the 30th Anniversary of Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) by Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki)
No full textOrdering being, divining time: Nilotic sacrifice as iconic poiesis
No full textThe Karimojong prophet Apaokere was called by Divinity in a dream to sacrifice. In this vision, Divinity instructed him to kill a prized dark ox for the women of his household to avoid the onset of “nothingness.” This two-part essay (the first part published in Hau 13 [2]) proposes that the sacrifice of the “Dark One” was a unique iconic poem and that, in general, Nilotic sacrifices are founded on iconic principles whose ends are enrapturing poiesis, and not scapegoating. The account also proposes that the phenomenology of language and “rhyme-reasoning” may be able to resolve some of anthropology’s incommensurable “apparently irrational beliefs.
Two ways of being the Body of Christ: Toward an anthropology of church forms, with reference to Baptist and Roman Catholic polities in Italy
No full textIn this article, an anthropologist and a theologian explore an analytical framework for the comparative study of Christian churches, focusing in particular on ritual life among Roman Catholics and Baptist Protestants in Italy. Catholics and Baptists have different ways of articulating what it means to be “the Body of Christ”—that is, the ecclesia. If ecclesiology is a theme well explored by theologians, social scientists have hesitated to pronounce themselves on this topic. This contribution proposes a way to look at ecclesiology from an anthropological angle through the analysis of the liturgical orders of two different ecclesiastical bodies. By mapping foundational rituals and rites of passage, we aspire to isolate the different “ecclesiological axioms” that underpin liturgy and church form in these two polities. We hope that our reflection will stimulate discussion on a hitherto little-developed topic in the anthropology of Christianity, and strengthen interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and theologians
“What does the heart want?”: Being seen, “heart ethnography,” and knowledge through surrender in a Bashkir Sufi circle in Russia
No full textDrawing on fieldwork in a Bashkir Sufi circle in Russia, this article explores my interlocutors’ mode of experiencing the world and transcendence. By letting myself be seen in the field, I let them shape the terms of our encounter as a way of glimpsing their mode of knowing. I explore my fieldwork experience as a transformation of the self in parallel with my interlocutors’ narrations of encounters with saints. I reflect on field experiences in which the limits of my rational thinking are revealed and mirrored in my interlocutors’ spiritual experiences. Being seen by their sheikh, my interlocutors experience a mode of vision that reveals the heart as an organ of perception. Similarly, as I experience being seen in the field, I am pointed to my own heart and soul. This mode of knowing that I glimpse into sheds new light on encounters with “otherness” and transcendence in anthropology
On critical African postsocialisms
No full textRelative to Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America, scant attention has been paid to the fate of formerly socialist states in Africa. One reason is that postcolonialism has served as the default analytic frame for everything Africa-related. Another reason is the persistence of Three-Worlds ideology with postcolonialism associated with the Third World and postsocialism with the Second. A third reason stems from the claim that African states could not properly be socialist in the absence of capitalism or class struggle. Katherine Verdery’s scholarship on socialism and postsocialism in Eastern Europe, however, has served as inspiration for the emergence of critical scholarship on African postsocialisms. This growing field takes seriously commitments to and afterlives of socialist ideology and policy across the continent while also examining their successes, failures, contradictions, and effects in the present
