HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Reflections on the healing power of collaborative filmmaking: The case of Unwritten Letters
No full textFilming as being, images as evidence
No full textWhen is film taken as evidence of the past and of truths in the world and when does the content become less significant than the practice of making images itself? The meaning of moving images change as the material and cultural logics and technologies of image production and circulation evolve. In legal and journalistic public discourse, recorded images are meant to be empirical evidence that can hold people accountable for their actions. Video camcorders and then mobile phone cameras democratized recording equipment which in many cases revealed abuses of power. But mobile technologies for recording and circulating film—as well as shifting genres for interpreting them—have also reshaped how audiences understand the veracity of what they see and hear. In shifting attention from content to context, cellphone filming becomes about circulation itself. Rather than a means for gathering evidence (epistemic) it is a sign of presence (ontologic). This has implications for legal cases of sex-gender and racial violence when visual evidence, rather than leading to successful prosecutions, creates defensive outrage amongst the powerful
Embodied border control on the move: Self-management of Chinese returnees under the zero-COVID regime
No full textFor more than two years, China was one of the most difficult countries to enter. Within China’s borders, people’s everyday mobility in many cities was severely restricted due to its zero-COVID strategy and periodic lockdowns; outside the borders, Chinese nationals also experienced confinement and restrictions if they wished to make a journey home. “Circuit breaker” flight cancellations, multiple COVID tests, and mandatory quarantine brought tremendous uncertainties and difficulties to their return. This article describes the experiences of Chinese nationals living overseas who attempted to return to China under the country’s rigid cross-border COVID control. With no restrictions while living abroad, Chinese returnees were compelled to undertake self-imposed isolation, and to prepare for quarantines and potential lockdowns after their return. Such experiences exemplify how people coped with transitions from living in an environment of “no more COVID” outside China, to a “zero-COVID” regime
Ordering being, divining time: Nilotic sacrifice as iconic poiesis: Part 1–Ikoni
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 second part to appear in the following issue of Hau) theorizes that the sacrifice of the “Dark One” was a unique iconic poem and that, in general, prime Nilotic sacrifices are founded on iconic principles whose ends are enrapturing poiesis, and not scapegoating. The account also proposes that phenomenology of language and “rhyme-reasoning” may be able to resolve some of anthropology’s “apparently irrational beliefs.
Sovereignty triangles: Emotions and transactions in Central African relations with Russia
No full textIncreasingly over the past five years, the Russian government has been expanding its spheres of influence in Africa, chiefly via the operations of Wagner Group mercenaries. The Central African Republic has been a Wagner testing ground, a place where they have wide range to operate at will and have taken control of mining areas while targeting armed group members and civilians. What drew Central African government elites to this new relationship? Russia offered exactly what they wanted most: the feeling of autonomy created by having greater firepower and ruthless fighters, which let them feel less dependent on their traditional donor relationships. One can loosely analogize these diplomatic relationships to the urban Central African dating scene, where people play with multiple suitors in search of material benefit and commitment. Such analogizing underlines that relationships, emotions, and transactions are key to sovereignty
Ethnology of Indigenous prophetic movements in the South American Lowlands: An overview
No full textThis article introduces the translation of Manuela Carneiro da Cunha’s atricle “Logic of myth and action: The Canela Messianic Movement of 1963” in Hau 13 (2). Analyzing the relationship of the structural inversion between prophetic events that irrupted among the Canela people in the past and a myth of theirs that thematizes colonialist asymmetry, Carneiro da Cunha aimed to validate Lévi-Strauss, who suggested that the meaning of ritual actions could be identified in their dialectical relationship with a mythical structure. Carneiro da Cunha’s text has become paradigmatic among anthropological studies of Indigenous prophetic movements in the South American Lowlands, which are discussed in this article. I demonstrate that some of the theoretical problems addressed by her fifty years ago remain relevant, having reverberated in later and contemporary readings, albeit with some reformulations
From lockdowns (fengcheng) to silence (jingmo): Zero-COVID politics in China
No full textCOVID-19 lockdowns instituted a new kind of normal for many in China in the past three years. From Wuhan to Shanghai, urban lockdowns (封城 fengcheng) have become synonymous with the state’s draconian COVID control measures enforced upon the whole of society, which caused many forms of loss and suffering. However, after the early days of COVID control in Shanghai in April 2022, the term “lockdown” vanished from official discourse, replaced surreptitiously by a neologism—jingmo (静默), meaning “to silence.” What did it mean, then, for millions to live in a state of “silence” when the official policy denied the existence of a lockdown? Was jingmo merely another word for lockdown, or did it imply something different? This article reflects on the changes that took place from enforcing lockdowns in Wuhan to administering “silence” in Shanghai, and examines how China’s zero-COVID control brings different biopolitics to life
The entrepreneurial self of market socialism: Life insurance agents in rural central Vietnam
No full textCasting the self as the primary unit of profit-making and value creation, the entrepreneurial self evolves from neoliberal ideas of self-enterprise and self-development to find ramifications in varying contexts. This article characterizes the entrepreneurial self of market socialism through the case of life insurance agents in Vietnam, where despite deepening marketization, socialist genealogies remain salient alongside cultural frameworks of care and belonging. In their entrepreneurial pursuits, the sales agents must present themselves as both caring and real believers in life insurance as a modern form of care while framing their goals in patriotic and relational terms. This morally activated market actor has emerged in the new economy, where the mandate to be self-entrepreneurial and self-responsible sits alongside the mandate to be a collectively spirited person. Remoralized through collective frameworks, the entrepreneurial self of market socialism betrays the illusory power of the self as it navigates contradictory moral demands
Multimodal feminist testimony: On ambiguity, embodiment, and evidence in Guinea
No full textPolitical subjectivities that are produced outside the realm of formal politics and activism often go unnoticed in scholarly analyses. This essay explores forms of embodied feminist testimony in the Republic of Guinea that emerge from a community of dancers who do not participate directly in political deliberations. Through attention to non-elite logics and practices in Guinea, the essay proposes that robust feminist advocacy and theory must consider the legitimacy of diverse semiotic ideologies that undergird the production of evidence
