HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Coping with stress as a collective?: Residents learning to engage in community affairs during the Shanghai lockdown
No full textDuring Shanghai’s two-month lockdown in 2022, residential community members coped with stress collectively. For many, this experience of intensive community engagement was a learning process with regard to the deliberation of community affairs and collective problem-solving. This article explores how an embryonic sense of collectivity manifested in the expression of shared and solitary sentiments in community engagement and how this collective sense easily fractured during concrete community deliberation and collective decision-making. Despite problems common to collective action, these residents’ barriers to community engagement were largely shaped by extant government policy and grassroots institutional structure, sparking conflicts, cynicism, and mistrust, as evidenced by their narratives
Imperialist ideology or depoliticization? Why Russian citizens support the invasion of Ukraine
No full textWhat explains the wide support for the invasion of Ukraine in Russia in the first months after it started? Many alleged that this support reflects an imperialist ideology permeating Russian society and culture. Based on a large set of in-depth interviews with supporters of the invasion among the regular Russian citizens, we argue that it is not a commitment to an imperialist ideology that is the most typical factor in support for the invasion but rather precisely the opposite—the deep depoliticization of Russian citizens, on which the support for Putin’s regime has always been based. We explicate how the dynamics of depoliticization manifest themselves in the alienation of Russian citizens from articulating their own political positions, in the reproduction of the gap between the world of politics and of everyday life, and in the social construction of Ukrainians as a threat
Northwest African perspectives on the concept of the state
No full textThe state of most current political anthropology tends to be the modern nation-state, and relatively few works address questions posed by other state formations. Focusing on the Moroccan makhzan and the non-state institutional environment in which it operated, this paper argues for a more sustained engagement with alternative traditions of political thought and practice. It does this by drawing on historical ethnography from Morocco and southwestern Algeria, and through a sustained reciprocal comparison with parts of the classic European literature on the concept of the state
The utility of ethnography for understanding (the Russo-Ukrainian) war
No full textThe Russo-Ukrainian war raises the question about the utility of ethnography in understanding interstate war. As anthropology and sociology have historically punched below their weight when it comes to understanding interstate war and warfare, much of the academic study of war has been occupied by political science. In this article I discuss why this is unfortunate, yet not inevitable. I also discuss three strengths of ethnography in studying war. First, ethnography helps us to restore ambiguity into polarized understandings of war. Second, ethnography can assist us in understanding strategy because of its focus on people and the societies we constitute. Third, ethnography helps with the ethical responsibility of giving war a human face. I conclude by arguing that war is too important to be left to generals and political scientists, but that this is inevitable if ethnographers continue to distance themselves from the study of war
Ti binni ruyubi, beyond binaries and median points: Methodological reflections on brownness in the field and intersectional reflexivity
No full textUsing theoretical debates about how to deploy reflexivity in ethnographic research to contextualize anthropological knowledge, this article begins with an awkward encounter between an anthropologist from the Global South and a research participant to reflect on some of the intersectional complexities of identity and relationality when an ethnographer of color does fieldwork within a community of color: in this case, a brown-skinned Mexican researching same-sex attracted Chinese men in Australia. Following Indigenous anthropologists’ calls for more locally grounded frameworks and methodologies, we propose the Diidxazá term binni ruyubi (“person who searches”) to extend concepts of reflexivity beyond the Western/native, insider/outsider, and other binaries and median points, to give a more complex account of intersectional reflexivity, one that attends to the interaction between identity and background characteristics including skin tone, Indigeneity, sociocultural background, language, sexuality, economic status, and colonial histories in Westernized universities
Ethnography as creative improvisation: Exploring methods in (post) pandemic times
No full textThis article discusses the possibilities and limitations of digital creative methods developed by the author in response to lockdown and social distancing regulations. Building on prepandemic research, the analysis focuses on remote fieldwork in 2020 and 2021 with a small number of migrant women who live in Northern Ireland. It zooms in on three interlocutors and shows how long-distance painting, online walking interviews, and photo diaries have not only offered the opportunity for virtual “hanging out” and the development of long-term field relations, but have also been crucial to the visualization and discussion of emerging research themes. The main argument is that the three exploratory methods, used in this case to investigate the embodied experiences and aspirations of migrants during the ongoing pandemic, are potentially relevant to a wide range of pandemic and postpandemic research projects
From parasitic feudalism to responsible hierarchy: The emergence of a “political” vocabulary among the Sora of Tribal India
No full textThe Sora language reveals a sharp division between the vocabulary of command and rule, with no terms of indigenous origin for such positions or procedures, and an indigenous vocabulary of intimate negotiation among horizontal equals to regulate daily life. Historically, vertical relations with distant rajas passed through predatory local agents with little redress, using terms derived from outside languages. Christianity introduced literacy and created a new administrative and moral terminology derived from Sora roots, but also offered a model of patronage which likened Jesus to a benevolent classic Hindu king. This redistributive reciprocal relationship with authority figures had never before been experienced by the Sora; but as they move from a parasitic to a hierarchical experience of verticality, it is now readily transferred to political leaders as young Sora participate in the modern electoral state and incorporate non-Sora terms into their lives as agents, rather than victims, of their political situation
Beyond vernacular and metropolitan concepts: Good governance, translation and word coinage in Thailand
No full textThis article explores the emergence and transformation of the concept of good governance in contemporary Thailand after the 1997 economic crisis to reveal how it morphed from a technocratic category to a moral one, central to conservative and anti-democratic discourses in the country. By reconstructing historical and contemporary debates over word coinage and translation in Thailand, this article questions the easy distinctions between “metropolitan” and “vernacular” concepts. In so doing, I propose to carve a new space for an ethnographically grounded political anthropology that neither assumes a flattened and universal conception of political categories—such as state, power, or government—nor seeks refuge into pristine “vernacular concepts” but rather explores the processes through which specific people, organizations, and institutions are constantly reworking and diffusing concepts on multiple scales while aligning, challenging, or creating “global hierarchies of value,” in the plural, along which those concepts are positioned
Introduction: Zero-COVID was forever, until it was no more
No full textHow were lockdowns implemented, experienced, and perceived under China’s zero-COVID regime? How do we make sense of its sudden collapse after three years of its hegemonic presence dominating Chinese lives? What does it tell us about the zero-COVID regime’s inherent inconsistencies and sociopolitical contradictions as expressed in everyday life? This essay serves as the introduction to the Currents section, a compilation of seven research articles that delve into the lived experiences of individuals in different cities under China’s zero-COVID regime, particularly during and after the 2022 Shanghai lockdown. By exploring the diverse ways in which individuals navigated through everyday political fickleness, irresolvable contradictions, falsehood and absurdities that turned life around, this essay argues that people often simultaneously upheld zero-COVID and circumvented it in creative ways. While many supported beliefs and practices in line with China’s top-down narrative of nationalistic sacrifice and “positive energy,” others forged alternative interpretations and took on acts of disengagement and disobedience