HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
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A political anthropology of finance: Profits, states and cultures in cross-border investment in Shanghai
No full textBased on participant observation with financial professionals working for a mergers and acquisitions consultancy company in Shanghai, this essay shows that they conduct these transactions by mobilizing imaginaries of “profits,” “states,” and “cultures.” These imaginaries concern professional and nonprofessional life and are multiple, sometimes contradictory, and mutually constitutive. This shows that the analytic claim about a “real economy,” against which financial practices would be gauged, misses the multiple meanings whereby these practices make sense for those who carry them out. The article proposes instead a pragmatist approach of money, whose political import would be to focus on how the practices and meanings of financial professionals, as they channel money to certain activities at the expense of others, contribute to produce global social hierarchies in the access to monetary resources
Indigenous peoples boxed in by Brazil’s political crisis
No full textAgribusiness has unprecedented leverage over highly unpopular Brazilian president Michel Temer, who is faced with several corruption charges and is struggling for political survival. In a little over one year, the agribusiness lobby and its allies have managed to erode thirty years of human rights and conservation laws. Indigenous peoples and their territorial rights are among the main targets of such policies, and there is no resolution to the situation in sight. With the insight of several scholars, the following forum assesses the consequences of losing the protection the Citizens’ Constitution of 1988 once afforded indigenous peoples in Brazil
The formalisation of social-science research ethics: How did we get there?
No full textIn the United States, the “common law,” that regulates ethics review is being overhauled. We ask how UK University Research Ethics Committees (U-RECs), following the American model, have been able to shape social-science research without much commotion, and whether it is time for change.Despite the misbehavior of some ethnographic researchers, most social science research is valued for and motivated by its expert engagement with moral questions regarding discrimination, unfairness, exploitation, and so on, at home and abroad: knowledge of and sensitivity to the complexities around the violation of socio-economic, political, and cultural norms and values are carried high in the social science banner. Yet, since the 1990s, social science research projects in the Anglo-American world have increasingly entrusted research ethics to the scrutiny of U-RECs.This ethical delegation gives a mandate to U-RECs, often without suitable expertise, to vet research projects in a bureaucratic and time-consuming manner. It does not just lead to misunderstandings and frustration; it also privileges research as defined by research ethics committees rather than in negotiation with the ethics we encounter “in the field.” Although formal research ethics is clearly confusing early career researchers (and others!) about the role of ethics (which?), its forms have come to shape our disciplines. How did we get there? How do we move forward
The virtues of cosmopolitics
No full textComment on Sahlins, Marshall. 2017. “The original political society.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (2): 91–128
Methods really do matter
No full textComment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Violence from beyond
No full textComment on Turner, Terence. 2017. “Beauty and the beast: The fearful symmetry of the jaguar and other natural beings in Kayapo ritual and myth.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (2): 51–70
Wette, wedding
No full textThe hereby accomplished publication of a short summary of a talk that Marcel Mauss gave at the Société d’histoires du droit on May 10, 1928, is a continuation of a recent trend aimed to make more of Mauss’ work available to scholars who are unable to read French. The talk was originally published in 1928 in Revue Historique de Droit français et étranger, quatrième série, Vol. 7: 331–333. The original in French is also reproduced below. Translated from the French by Nora Scott
Writing’s edges and the sex of Earth beings
No full textComment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Staging magic
No full textComment on Jones, Graham M. 2017. Magic’s reason: An anthropology of analogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Comparison as critique
No full textComment on van der Veer, Peter. 2016. The value of comparison. Durham, NC: Duke University Press