HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Islamism, the Houthi movement, and the manipulation of self-perception in the context of the Middle East’s encounter with the West
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Feeding donkeys carrots? A banker’s perspective on a temporary occupation’s alter-crafting in Paris, France
No full textThis article explores the political and economic anthropology of alternative futures through an ethnographic study of alter-crafting—a term used to describe the contested processes of value creation in experimental social projects. The ethnographer’s participation in managing a local currency project in Paris, France, within the temporary occupation of a former pediatric hospital set to become a future “eco-district,” serves as an exemplary case study. I describe the historicity, temporalities, and social life of this infrastructure’s hybrid, socio-ecological temporary occupation project through the lens of what I call its neighborhood concerns. I argue that this case offers privileged insights into the politics of value involved in alter-crafting
Two eyes, two natures: Jean Rouch’s “shared ciné-anthropology” and its ontological implication
No full textThe purpose of this article is to examine the implications of Jean Rouch’s work—taken in its entirety—for ethnographic theory. I propose here to go outside of the category of visual anthropology with which it is usually associated, and reconnect it to the much broader area of anthropology-and-cinema where Rouch, in reality, worked. After some preliminary discussions, I first revisit Rouch’s biography and then analyze one of his early films, Yenendi: Les hommes qui font la pluie (1951), in order to identify some fundamental motifs of his work. I then comment on three essential Songhay ontological ideas (bia, hampi, and hunde) and show how these ideas directly constitute the backbone of Rouch’s major films, including fiction films such as Gard du Nord (1965). I suggest that his work was a sort of ontological anthropology avant la lettre, realized by other (i.e. cinematic) means, and it also helps us think further on the issue of “controlled equivocation.
The explosion of the mirror: Uneasy reflections on fieldwork
No full textThe aim of this article is to make visible the mechanisms of data production with which we elaborate our scientific production. Based on qualitative research conducted with non-domestic cleaning workers, both women and men, in the city of Córdoba (Argentina), we seek to critically reflect on how, with whom, and why we do qualitative research. Among the main findings, four analytical dimensions are addressed: the tension between horizontal and/or hierarchical relationships that are built during the research process; the tendency to romanticize the objects of research and the effects that such romanticization may have on the process under scrutiny; the often “toxic” relationships we establish with the theoretical frameworks we work with; and the collision between “native categories” and “theoretical categories,” a process that occurs when the field tells us something different from what is expected. These reflections are not intended to be a methodology manual, but rather to bring to the table those aspects that emerge during fieldwork and are sometimes left out of ethnographies
The settler-colonial ethical outlook in the West Bank settlement project: Or, how a settler-colony fell apart when money entered the frontier
No full textApplying an anthropology of ethics approach to the study of settler-colonialism, this article discloses the settler-colonial ethical outlook that animates the most activist circles in West Bank settlement society. By “settler-colonial ethical outlook” I mean the set of proper and improper motivations for appropriating land (according to the settlers). Such an analysis reveals how in the West Bank settlement project, making a profit from the land is taboo—a taboo that, against the backdrop of the rise in land value, came to haunt a community of settlers and eventually led to its implosion when settlers holding two distinct ethical frameworks (deontological vs. ethics of the “good life”) turned against each other. Tracing this case of “moral breakdown” within the ethical outlook of settler-colonizers, this article shows how in the case of the West Bank settlement project, for-profit imaginations and capitalism more broadly sit in an uneasy relationship with settler-colonial expansion
Malware of history: The encryption of the once and future violence in Novi Sad (Vojvodina, Serbia)
No full textThe article explores a proliferation of architecture to commemorate the events of the Second World War atrocities and their aftermath in Novi Sad. Running serially along the left bank of the Danube are four memorials: a foundation for a controversial monument; a socialist-built, figurative sculptural complex; a cube without planning permission; and a construction site for a future multi-million memorial. Architecturally trivial monoliths are integral to three of them. The overuse of monoliths in memorialization is linked to their semantic opacity since a monolith might commemorate either victims or perpetrators of a violent event. What’s more, opacity makes commemorative monoliths prone to infection with the malware of history, a latency for political violence that haunts a city traversed by an ethno-nationalist politics of history. An analogic transposition between predatory intentionalities of traps and malware affords a reflection on menacing things and names of the dead as a revelatory technique of apophantic justice
