HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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The psychedelic ritual as a technique of the self: Identity reconfiguration and narrative reframing in the therapeutic efficacy of ayahuasca
No full textAlthough so-called “psychedelic” substances have recently experienced a revival of interest in their therapeutic properties, the underpinnings of their effectiveness remain poorly understood. Based on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in a Peruvian Amazon clinic, this article proposes an anthropological approach to their therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of addiction. Using an analytical framework rooted in interactionism, narrative approaches, and cultural phenomenology, I argue that psychedelic rituals are best conceptualized as transformative techniques of the self leading the participants to reinterpret their identity, their biography, and their daily behaviors in the light of a new cultural model. I claim that the “dissociative” states induced by psychedelics, usually considered as side effects or adverse reactions, are in fact a driving force in therapy. Beyond neuropharmacological and psychodynamic models, my analysis points out the importance of relational, narrative, and “spiritual” processes as key therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics
Spreading whose word? Militarism and nationalism in the transnational Turkish mosques
No full textIn this article, I explore the role of religious discourses and practices in the diasporic Kurdish-Turkish conflict and investigate the ways in which presentations of the political conflict has been disseminated and reproduced via Turkish mosques located in Europe and the United States. Through extended ethnographic research, I examine the imagination of Turkish political theology and the exclusion of the Kurds from the imagined transnational Muslim ummah for which Turkish Islamist discourse promotes the Turkish state as the flag-bearer. I demonstrate that the existence of the Kurds, by virtue of their exclusion from this imaginary worldview, unravels the limitations of Turkish pan-Islamist discourse
Affect, sociality, and the construction of paternalistic citizenship among family caregivers in China
No full textIn recent years, the Chinese state has made family members care for and manage persons diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. Many of these caregivers are also former socialist workers to whom the state has broken its promise of paternalism. This article examines the affective experience, sociality, and citizenship claims of these caregivers. My fieldwork shows that, despite state agents’ attempts to depoliticize their feelings, caregivers construct narratives of suffering together, which allow them to make sense of their systemic marginalization and the state’s hypocrisy. They engage in complicit but righteous searches for welfare, healthcare, and leisure resources together, while also publicly demanding the state’s recognition of and support for themselves and their loved ones. I examine the promises and perils of this “paternalistic citizenship” as exemplified by caregivers, and consider the affective transformations it needs to open new political horizons
The pedigree of the house: The case of Vdra-ba
No full textVdra-ba society in western Sichuan, China, has been represented by evolutionist Chinese scholars as a primitive matrilineal society that was in transition to a patrilineal system, and it has been likened to that of the Na/Moso. This is a misleading characterization. Vdra-ba society has no tribal organizations and was critically shaped by the overarching Tú-sī system for many centuries. The kinship system is centered on the “house,” and is better described as undifferentiated. The gá-yì (visiting) relationship, with marriage in rare occasions, and conventions of adoption, allows their ideal of a female line to be practiced and transformed in the house into an undifferentiated form of inheritance and accession. There is no descent group. The Vdra-ba kindred, however, is individual-centered rather than ancestor-centered, with its bilateral character
Politics of indifference: Mourning Wang Yue in late-socialist China
No full textThis article examines the changing sociological meaning of indifference in urban China after the tragic death of a two-year-old girl in a road accident in 2011. My analysis suggests that, in China where the political state had tried to claim credit for all altruistic behaviors, anxiety about indifference allowed citizens to sidestep socialist ethics in conversations about civic mobilization. University students used the language of feeling and mourning to reinvent the protagonist, culprit, and victim in the accident, thereby developing new rationales for committing good deeds without acknowledging the moral leadership of the state. As opposed to the standard association of indifference with civic disengagement and social disintegration, this article suggests that indifference has civic potential to connect. Like skepticism, cynicism, and disappointment that people might develop in response to the genre of socialist heroism, indifference could anchor civic articulation of alternative futures that were yet to take shape
Turkish Islam and Kurdish difference
No full textIn this article I discuss the ways in which the Turkish state uses Islam as a weapon to delegitimize and render unnecessary Kurdish distinctiveness and associated rights claims. Drawing on the particular discourse employed by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a series of political rallies in Diyarbakır, the symbolic capital of Turkish Kurdistan, I highlight key patterns in the instrumentalization of religion to maintain Turkish dominance. The Kurdish question as it is experienced by Kurds of Turkey, contrary to expectations, is not at all a matter of “discrimination” and “otherization.” Rather, the Kurdish problem arises from a lack of recognition of the Kurds as a separate self
Travel time activities: Mobility and femininities in the ladies’ compartments of the Mumbai local trains
No full textActivities undertaken during everyday commutes have often been studied to prove the inherent value of travel time to the commuters. Women commuters using the ladies’ compartments of the Mumbai local trains use this time to eat and share food, shop, chitchat, and watch sitcoms on their phones. Undertaken in a gender-segregated space, these activities make women’s mobility an avenue for the performance of their femininities. Thus, while the association between masculinity and mobility stands questioned, what merits enquiry is whether mobility for women is premised on their effective performance of hegemonic femininities
Meeting grounds: Art and anthropology in the Everglades
No full textThis article considers issues raised while working at the intersection of anthropology and visual art in Everglades National Park and during the months that followed. Based on a May 2019 residency as an AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) fellow, the material expression of my efforts consists of volumes of visual fieldnotes and what I call anthro-artists’ books. For this article I take an intimate route, one that foregrounds the experience of being in a place and attempting work at disciplinary intersections. Set against a backdrop of theoretical issues in both anthropology and art as well as overarching social, cultural, ecological, and political concerns of the region, the resulting journals and handmade books are meant to create an emotional, emplaced, and bodily experience for the people who engage with them