HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Not a member yet
1288 research outputs found
Sort by
Saharan genealogies: Beyond constructivism in kinship studies
No full textThe main criticism of constructivism in kinship studies is its persistent obsession with nature, despite its primary intention to oppose it. Underlying this critique is the idea that constructivist thinking does not exist outside modern theories produced by critical thinkers. In this article, I distinguish between critical constructivism, whose agenda is to “unveil” the logics that determine behavior, and symmetrical constructivism, an approach that recognizes actors as possessing the same capacity as anthropologists in identifying social constructions, as opposed to given realities. Each of these approaches proves inadequate for understanding most of the emic conceptualization of genealogies and kinship ties. This article is based on long-term ethnographic study of the Aït Messaoud, Saharans from southern Morocco, who are certainly a radical example of the possibility of dissolving the idea of a dichotomy between “human fabrication” and “that which belongs to the world itself,” and thus of overcoming the barrier of constructivism in kinship studies, in Morocco and beyond
Imamat in stone: Theologies of the present in the Karakoram Mountains
No full textIn Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountain range, two Shi‘i Muslim communities write monumental messages in stone. Nizari Isma‘ilis celebrate the continuation of their Imamate, a divine political institution led by a Hazar [present] Imam. Twelver Shi’a signal their loyalty to their own system of Imamat, which paused at the concealed twelfth Imam whose return promises to restore justice to the world. Shi‘i mountain writing is found in direct conversation, surfacing the theological schism that bifurcates these Muslim communities, and inviting acts of comparison between two interpretations of the divine institution of Imamate. This article contends that the scale of analysis in this comparative exercise is the present, understood here as a theological interface that connects immediate and latent situations, and affairs that lie beyond the human horizon
Kaleidoscopic identities: Orientalism and cultural intimacy in the construction of Arab/Syrian-Lebanese identities in Brazil
No full textCultural apocalypses and psychopathological apocalypses
No full textThis article is a translation of an essay that Ernesto de Martino wrote during the preparation of his monograph on apocalypse, published posthumously as La fine del mondo [The end of the world]. It provides an insight into his wider project and the complex theoretical apparatus he employed to explore the relationship between apocalypse, mental illness, and culture. Here, de Martino takes on the role of a “cultural clinician,” delving into the “cultural apocalypse” of contemporary Western literature and offering a first treatment of it vis-à-vis the “psychopathological apocalypses” arising in some forms of mental illness. Written sixty years ago, the essay and the larger project behind it are still breathtakingly current today