HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Lebensphilosophie and the revolution in anthropology: Uncovering the original “turn to life”
No full textIn two recent themed collections in this publication, numerous contributors have explored the term and concept of “life” in its relationship to ethnographic theory. This article seeks to uncover a historical precedent for this constellation. More precisely, I argue that anthropology has seen an original “turn to life” within the very foundations of modern fieldwork methodology. Rarely acknowledged in the history of anthropology, the development of “participant observation” drew significantly upon the continental Lebensphilosophie tradition and popular vitalist practices. In a larger project, I demonstrate this intellectual history of the ethnographic method across national schools. In this article, I focus on Bronislaw Malinowski and British social anthropology
The ontological antinomy: Food, surfaces, and transcendence in the village of Awim, Papua New Guinea
No full textIn anthropology, antinomy has generally been conceived negatively, metaphorically, and within the limits of epistemology alone. In presenting the ontology of the Sepik people of Awim, which is drawn from their conceptions of and practices related to food, I engage with Martin Holbraad’s Cuban-based ontological project, due to similarities in its ethnography, but also due to its differences in the approach to antinomy. I show that antinomy is not necessarily an obstacle to the discipline’s progress, but rather offers the possibility of its advancement. By taking antinomy seriously, that is, ontologically, it is shown that a prefigured possibility for such advancement resides dormant within Holbraad’s work itself. In ethnographically giving shape to ontological antinomy, I propose the concepts of surface and resurfacing to rethink the difference between immanence and transcendence as well as the form and site of ontological transformation
Hindu nationalism’s crisis machine
No full textThis essay looks at Hindu nationalism’s investment in a crisis machine linked closely to digital media networks in India. Media infrastructures have provided right-wing populism with new techniques for performative action and network-driven collective expansion. A crisis ontology inherent in digital media has helped Hindu nationalism to optimize techniques of mobilization across time and space. While ambulatory, media-enabled populations are subject to periodic political stimuli, online collective movements are driven by a cluster of Hindu nationalist microcelebrities and regional performers. Hindu nationalist supporters periodically initiate multiple event chains to attract users across digital platforms. What we see is the “eventalization” of time where online populations are drawn into periodic bursts of sustained intensity. In this process, graphic video documents once seen as peripheral to public culture are now periodically occupying center stage in the current political spectacle. Within the space of a few years, Hindu nationalism’s crisis machine has substantially shifted the public culture of the republic
A time of peace: Divergent temporalities in Jewish–Palestinian peace initiatives
No full textThis article considers the conflicting temporal models of peace among Jewish Israelis, specifically between liberal Zionists who populate the traditional peace camp, and the broader population that largely ignores or opposes such initiatives. We compare the mainstream peace process with budding alternative non-liberal peace initiatives on one issue—the relative importance of a signed peace agreement—to explore diverging visions of temporal progression as they relate to the shared value of peace. The article claims that peace initiatives emerging from the liberal worldview reflect a vision in which the transition to peace will be a concrete temporal event, and that the horizon of peace is achievable, qualitative, and permanent. By contrast, the non-liberal initiatives reflect a belief that peace is modular and relative, that the transition to peace is inherently gradual, never to be fully achieved, dynamic, and impermanent
Passions and pathogens: Notes on the uncertainty of heritage
No full textThis response to Zoë Strother’s “Iconoclasms in Africa,” specifically its attention to the historical entanglement of museums and iconoclasm, reflects on the notions of collection, curation, and heritage. I pay special attention to the idea of curation as a form of healing, exploring this idea in the context of the renewed debate on restitution and repatriation. I argue that not only is uncertainty inscribed into the notion of heritage but that uncertainty itself has become a form of heritage
Sustainability enclaves in Southeast Asia
No full textResource regimes in postsocialist Laos have been dominated by foreign actors in ways that frequently dovetail with the prerogatives of multilateral investment and the work of nongovernmental development organizations. A common theme among these diverse actors is that the Lao government regularly delegates certain kinds of governing activity to these foreign actors, resulting in specific territories over which foreign organizations can frequently play a dominating role, albeit in highly diverse and idiosyncratic ways. Following on Ong’s concept of graduated sovereignty, I term these governance regimes sustainability enclaves, noting that they frequently revolve around resource extraction, and that “sustainability” broadly construed characterizes contestation over how development should take place. Sustainability enclaves are the outcome of a postsocialist policy of cautious openness toward foreign actors. They involve specific but heterogeneous governance regimes that can and frequently do overlap. They often have important effects on the dilemmas of everyday life for those who live within their domain, while they also characterize the practicalities of state management of foreign organizations operating in the country
Consuming belief: Luxury, authenticity, and Chinese patronage of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary China
No full textThis essay examines two domains in which wealthy Chinese seek to cultivate social distinction. The first section examines luxury consumption and highlights the ambivalences surrounding global luxury goods in China. Given that luxury goods often fail to deliver on their promises of distinction, many wealthy Chinese have turned to new forms of money-mediated spirituality—in particular, patronage of Tibetan Buddhism. I argue that in a context in which forms of value, authenticity, taste, morality, etc., are all too easily reduced to quantitative, monetary terms, appropriation of the spiritual power of Tibetan lamas and the authenticity associated with Tibetan Buddhism has become increasingly attractive to wealthy Han Chinese. This appropriation, however, has generated tensions between practitioners for whom Buddhist patronage is an extension of worldly projects of social distinction and wealth accumulation and those for whom Buddhism is imagined as an isolated spiritual retreat from those same concerns