HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Youth political agency in Hong Kong’s 2019 antiauthoritarian protests
No full textThe Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) protests have witnessed unprecedented levels, both in terms of size and violence expressed by the young protesters of Hong Kong. The outbreak of the revolt against Beijing has surprised many because it was widely believed that Hong Kongers had lost the heart to fight for freedom and democracy after the failure of the Umbrella Movement in 2014. The Anti-ELAB protests constitute a paradoxical phenomenon that leads one to question what has caused disillusionment and low political engagement of young people since 2014, and their violent comeback in 2019. This essay endeavors to unravel possible sources of anger, fear, and despair that have prompted so many young people to act collectively and violently in the current antiauthoritarian protests
“Signs that herald the future”: Lévy-Bruhl and games of chance
No full textThe response addresses Lévy-Bruhl's 1926 essay, “Primitive mentality and games of chance,” focusing on the gambler's role as an interpreter of the present for the sake of the future. Through a discussion of Lévy-Bruhl's articulation of the gambler's mentality, the gambling game fafi, and the invisible forces that dictate chance, the piece offers a reading that emphasizes the significance of interpretation and a collective capacity to read the “signs that herald the future.
Hesiod’s Theogony and analogist cosmogonies
No full textPhilippe Descola’s work on ontologies has created new possibilities for exploring the rich connections between creation myths and their ontological underpinnings. This has proven fruitful in studies of animist and totemist narratives whose myths often obsess with their respective ontological orientations. Analogist cosmogonies, however, remain more problematic. Descola argues that analogist ontologies are based upon a basic discontinuity between the diverse components of the cosmos. However, many analogist cosmogonic myths appear to depict a world based on continuity, kinship, and even monistic origins. While this discrepancy between ontological assumptions and cosmogonic myths may in some cases present a problem for Descola’s model, it does not invariably do so. In this essay I argue that at least Greece’s earliest cosmogonic myth, Hesiod’s Theogony, has little to do with a neatly unfolding harmony. Rather, Hesiod describes an inherently dangerous world composed of multiple and discrete elements in need of imposed order
Reclaiming the sublime: The (un)making of the people’s constitution in India
No full textThe Currents section foregrounds the work of Indian scholars who examine the ramifications of state responses and counterresponses regarding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019. This amendment to the Constitution of India granted citizenship to persecuted minorities from three nearby countries—namely, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan—but not to those who were Muslim. The act brought into question not just the issue of barring certain refugees to the country but also the relationship of India’s minorities with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that is at the helm of a Hindu right-wing wave. The contributions focus on the implications of the amendments and the protests against them for minority and/or Muslim identities through a combination of historical, autoethnographic, ethnographic, media, and theoretical perspectives in the midst of growing religio-political communalization in the subcontinent
“I was at the right place at the right time”: The neglected role of happenstance in the lives of people and institutions
No full textThis paper presents coproduced ethnographic material concerning the development of mental healthcare services in Oxfordshire, UK. Our collaborative working method highlights arbitrary events and connections in both individual lives and in the lives of institutions. We introduce the analytic concept of happenstance to make sense of this. Happenstance helps us theorize how chance arises in particular social contexts, contains both randomness and patterning, and becomes entwined with agency. The notion of happenstance thus enables us to retain a sense that chance is social and makes links between individuals or institutions and their social surround independently of structuration or habitus. The anthropology of bureaucracy has focused on the clumsiness of institutional mechanisms and the strategies people adopt in response. We suggest a new angle, combining happenstance with Ian Hacking’s notion of “ecological niche” to suggest how an openness to happenstance might create a different kind of evolving institution
Further thoughts on iconoclasm
No full textInspired by the thoughts of Zoë Strother, in this short piece I rethink my previous work on iconoclasm in West Africa, saluting her invitation to consider iconoclasm as part and parcel of African culture and her methodological combination of history, aesthetics and semiotics. Her approach and ideas have made me particularly aware of the relevance of iconoclasm (and its connection to debates around restitution) for a wider anthropology of place making, temporalities, and connections, as well as for the anthropology of creativity and imagination
Invaluable enmeshments in pedagogy: An autoethnography of an anthropologist in the classroom
No full textThis article explores the enmeshments and vulnerabilities that emerge in undergraduate courses on gender and sexuality. In these classrooms students don’t just listen and learn, but seek to find the basis upon which they can not only speak about their own lives, but speak up against systems of violence that operate both globally and on campus. Through a series of stories that highlight issues of voice, representation, safety, and danger, I explore the limits of pedagogy in spaces where commitments to reflexivity, solidarity, and decolonization meet an earnest desire for better, safer lives. In particular, by exploring the issue of trigger warnings I raise questions about the kinds of pedagogical commitments we can make to students marginalized by structures of gender and sexuality
Dislocating responsibility
No full textPuccio-Den’s reflections on mafiacraft are an insightful contribution to the broader project of tracing societal changes in the nature of personal responsibility and how this is contested and dislocated. The way in which individual mafiosi are impelled to act might also say something about the nature of responsibility everywhere, as intrinsically indeterminate and a consequence less of freedom than of susceptibility to the address of others