HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Insecurities of nativism: A woman ethnographer studying her own community
No full textThis article, through various ethnographic encounters, highlights the advantages and explores the challenges of fieldwork for a female researcher studying what might be taken to be her own community. Doing a native anthropology in a marginal borderland that has not been explored anthropologically before turns out to be an interesting experience. On the one hand, the identity of being a native of the region carves out ways in the field that help her overcome barriers; on the other hand, the same identity, through her common ethnic and cultural belonging, kinship relations, and local familiarity restricts her in many ways. Through explorations of her identity in the field along gender, caste, class, and ethnic lines, the work highlights how sometimes she is an insider, sometimes an outsider, and sometimes a partial-insider-outsider, thereby collapsing the strict division of a researcher into categories of an outsider and an insider
The role of volunteers in pilgrimage studies: Autobiographic reflections on belief and the performance of multiple roles
No full textGiven the predominantly secular approach towards religion by anthropologists and sociologists, we contend that a discussion of the researcher’s positionality with regard to faith and belief, as well as the autoethnographic approach in pilgrimage studies, is methodologically important. Drawing on years of volunteering at two pilgrimage sites, we explore what kind of methodological impact our role as volunteers and our private lives have had on both research at and interpretations of the pilgrimage sites. For one of us working as a volunteer was a personal choice motivated by faith, while for the other it was based on the pragmatics of doing research. In both cases gaining access involved the generation of social capital through the gifting of time and free labor within a hierarchical structure of power exchange. Our role as volunteers gave us an opportunity to explore the faith-based positionality and self-interest which informs pilgrimage volunteering and involves power exchange. Our article seeks to show how we address our own religious beliefs but, at the same time, stay grounded in ethnographic observations and analysis
What does genocide feel like? An autoethnography of visual affect
No full textThis article reflects on relations between individual and cultural experience to illuminate how anthropologists and political scientists approach Uyghur narratives of genocide. Uyghur perspectives are often overlooked in global media coverage that represents them through narratives of China’s “restive region” or Western sanctions. The article analyzes my own role in analyzing experiences of violence in a public setting, the Uyghur Tribunal, committed to assessing the truth of Uyghur claims. The method is a reluctant autoethnography, in between Leon Anderson’s “analytic autoethnography” in which researchers are full members in a group setting committed to understanding a phenomenon, and Carolyn Ellis’s “heartful autoethnography,” which crafts evocative stories that create reality. The analysis of visual affect at the Uyghur Tribunal builds on Brian Massumi’s approach, which considers that researchers must be open to affecting and being affected by the world to understand it or to communicate the meaning of their findings, particularly in cases of genocide
The crisis of China research in an age of genocide
No full textSince 2017, it has become increasingly undeniable that crimes against humanity are occurring in the area now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This article examines the particular ethical dilemmas posed to China-focused academics by these events. A generation of researchers who began their careers engaging with a “rising power” now face a state openly engaged in genocide. Academics who have come to see their jobs as “understanding” China now face realities beyond comprehension. Speaking honestly is the only dignified option, but it is at the same time also the most difficult path, on account of the Chinese state’s aggressive monitoring of public commentary, control over research access, and extraterritorial harassment of critics. How are research and academic discourse on China impacted by these developments? And what can academics do, or not, to live up to the urgent challenges of this historical moment
Kurdish transformative politics in Turkey
No full textThis article discusses the transformative potential of Turkey’s pro-democracy movement which has emerged out of a long history of Kurdish political struggle. It looks at the development of a two-fold strategy that understands internal transformation as a precondition for democratic transition in Turkey. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has been the most recent iteration of this strategic and ideological reconfiguration. Built on in-depth interviews with key movement actors, this article examines (1) the historical context out of which the HDP materialized, (2) the politics introduced as democratic autonomy, (3) the transformative potential of the party’s women’s politics, (4) the limits of debates on “Türkiyelileşme,” and (5) the role of the non-Kurdish opposition. Assessing the opportunities and impasses, I argue that, despite the recent state-orchestrated clampdown on Kurdish politics and its sites of articulation, Kurdish transformative politics remain a key asset for democratic transition in Turkey, though facing internal and external challenges
Tabula rasa: Han settler colonialism and frontier genocide in “re-educated” Xinjiang
No full textIn his analysis of the frontier genocides waged against the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia, Benjamin Madley () identified three phases. The first is initiated by colonial invasion: economic and political frictions develop as settlers and indigenous peoples struggle for limited resources and power. In Phase Two, indigenous peoples attack settlers to reclaim lost resources and land, and this prompts a genocidal military campaign. In Phase Three, the settlers’ government incarcerates the indigenous peoples in concentration camps, where it continues genocide by attrition (through malnutrition, inadequate medical care, overwork, unsanitary conditions, and violence). All three genocides began with the assertion that the land was empty or should be made empty. Here, I consider how far the concept tabula rasa (“a map scraped clean”) applies to contemporary “re-educated” Xinjiang on China’s northwest frontier
Eliminate all illegal births: Negative eugenics and Uyghur women as objects of contestation
No full textIn 2021 state statistics demonstrated that for the first time in modern history the Uyghur population itself has begun to recede. This demographic shift is the result of both endemic family separation and the implementation of systematic gynecological exams, IUD insertions, and surgical sterilization. This article places this negative eugenics campaign in conversation with older colonial systems that strove to maintain control over women’s bodies by considering anthropological scholarship on hygiene and reproduction. It contends that contemporary eugenics in China should be seen as related to the history of racial and colonial logics, and the normalization of public health discourse in Europe and North America, even as it is adapted to new “counterterrorism” purposes in Northwest China