HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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Life on the cusp of form: In search of worldliness with Palestinian refugees in Tyre, Lebanon
No full textThis essay argues for making worldliness a question for anthropological inquiry, and a heuristic concept for exploring how life itself is unequally capacitated or disabled under current conditions of existence. I take worldliness in its widest sense to refer to the practical, material, semiotic entanglements by way of which human and other beings, upon “appearing” (Arendt) into the world, extend and anchor themselves in it. A form of life, on that account, mediates not just the formation of meaning, as anthropologists have long used the concept. It also mediates the possibility of worldliness itself as it intensifies and amplifies the appearingness of some while curtailing the insertion into the world of others. These conceptual claims emerge out of, and are embedded in, an effort to give a precise ethnographic account of the inequality of lives introduced into the world with the slot assigned for the (in this case, Palestinian) refugee
“An abundance of meaning”: Ramadan as an enchantment of society and economy in Syria
No full textThis article explores the ways in which Ramadan charity and almsgiving in Aleppo before the current conflict provided an occasion for Syrian merchants to enjoy enchanted conceptions of society and economy. Recent anthropological analyses of Muslim charity and almsgiving have argued that religiosities focused on “moral reward” (thawab) are aligned with and shaped by modern neoliberal rationalities. But my interlocutors, in the ways they talked about thawab, were often fascinated less by the possibility of maximizing reward and more by the way that rewards we redistributed through moral networks. They apprehended moral merit and blessing not as values to be maximized but as qualities whose exchange, circulation, and distribution defined the social. I analyze their practices of imagining society and economy as processes of enchantment that produced an abundance of meaning rather than—as in arguments about neoliberalism—an abundance of wealth or salvation
For an anthropology of destiny
No full textThis preface develops an argument for a comparative anthropology that takes the concept of destiny as a fertile laboratory for anthropological thought. The articles in this collection show how destiny’s distinguishing heuristic feature may be what we call “malleable fixity”: a paradoxical juxtaposition of images of temporal and historical fixity with a practical reckoning and open-ended self-reorientation. Exploring the radically different ways in which destiny is evoked, enacted, and (re)theorized locally, we argue that an anthropology of destiny is, at its heart, the comparative study of diverse temporal orderings of human—as well as divine and cosmic—action
Anthropological investigations of vitality: Life force as a dimension distinct from space and time
No full textIn what ways do anthropologists study vitality? Located in a familiar anthropological predicament—a return to a once familiar place like a field site after a significant gap of time—this article argues that in ways ranging from the everyday question“How are you?” to the familiar research tool of the household survey, we are already implicated in the study of vitality. Rather than a precise definition of vitality, this article offers the idea of life force as a dimension, analogous to space and time that anthropologists and their interlocutors inhabit and investigate. Drawing on the ethnographic strangeness of mundane alterations over time and with help from the Henry James novel The sacred fount, this article offers three critical issues in the anthropology of life force: the desire to know and to measure life force; subsequent doubts about life force, including whether or not it exists at all; and vampirism and envy in transactions of life force
Surviving loss and remaking the world: Reflections on the singular universal in a West African setting
No full textAs an ethnographer, I am obliged to reflect on the philosophical implications of my work to the same extent that I assume that any productive engagement with the human condition necessarily involves both participation in and observation of lived situations and actual events, and not simply the experience-distant interrogation of collective representations or the interpretation of texts. Accordingly, the following account of bereavement among the Kuranko of northeast Sierra Leone will show how phylogenetic elements and psychological processes, readily recognizable to anyone in any society, are dynamically counterpointed with cultural elements that are peculiar to this West African lifeworld
A minimalist ontology, with other people in it
No full textResponse to rejoinder to Keane, Webb. 2018. “Perspectives on affordances, or the anthropologically real.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 27–3
Smuggling realities: On numbers, borders, and performances
No full textThis essay seeks to describe the efforts made to portray the “reality of smuggling” in Brazil by analyzing the instruments and the strategies of the actors involved in these efforts, such as the Institute for Social and Economic Development of the Borders (IDESF), the National Forum Against Piracy and Illegality (FNCP), the Brazilian Institute for Ethics in Competition (ETCO), and the Brazilian Association for Combating Counterfeiting (ABCF). Smuggling has emerged as a critical topic in the agenda of the antipiracy coalition, and is associated with certain spaces, actors, and dynamics that define its key circuits, both territorially and socially: land borders (especially with Paraguay) traversed by commercial circuits that feed popular markets. By contemplating the actors, performances, instruments, and variables chosen to compose the figures of smuggling, it is possible to appreciate the agenda that is being put forward and the effects on the government and management of those circuits
Soybean, bricks, dollars, and the reality of money: Multiple monies during currency exchange restrictions in Argentina (2011–15)
No full textThis article aims to show that the properties of money are temporally and relationally contingent. Through the effects of the currency exchange restrictions implemented in Argentina in 2011–15, we develop this perspective to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of currency pluralism. Based on a fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2015 in the cities of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, we describe uses and meanings of multiple currencies on two specific markets (real estate and soybean production). In these two cases, besides the long-term use of the US dollar for different transactions, the creation of new currencies relies on the definition of what is considered “real” in each universe (for instance, soy producers who take the “soybean” as the unit of account and store of value, or real estate developers who use “square meters” as a unit of account). The two cases we present here provide insight on the connections between dynamic currency pluralism, the temporality of transactions, and the experiences of money’s reality
Toward a new humanism: An approach from philosophical anthropology
No full textIn this introduction to the special section, we revisit the case of humanism, including some challenges to its outworn and problematic metaphysical assumptions. We suggest that a new kind of humanism is demanded despite the many calls that humanism, of any form, should be jettisoned. The new humanism we propose rests on an ethnographically based philosophical anthropology which keeps in mind its reference to humankind while acknowledging the indeterminacy or inherent transcendence of human life in its sociocultural and ecological situatedness. We believe that there are ontological, epistemological, and ethical reasons to pursue the idea of a timely humanism, without which the social sciences and the humanities are at risk of losing orientations to their own domains as well as their political bearings
