Anthropology and Inheritance

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeAnthropology and Inheritance An Introduction to Supplement 25Laurence RalphLaurence Ralph Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI am excited to share with our readers a themed issue, Anthropology and Inheritance, which brings together significant theoretical concerns voiced by anthropologists across various subfields of the discipline. The anthropologists in this issue work with fragile and fragmented pieces of evidence to recreate imaginaries of past and future worlds as well as chosen communities. They illuminate ethnographic processes by which material “traces” become legible. Lingering on these traces allows them to explore how anthropologists mediate memory, construct frontiers of modernity and capitalism, and see and unsee the violence in their midst.The authors in this issue—each in their own way—complicate notions of inheritance. João Biehl does so through his excursion into the history of Brazilian migrations in the second half of the nineteenth century and the memory archives of subsequent generations. By exploring the Mucker movement, he details the German arrival in Brazil and the peasant culture they brought as a way to investigate broader ideas of affective worlds and world-making in anthropology.Adam T. Smith examines inheritance through his treatment of silences surrounding the Armenian genocide. He develops a Trouillot-inspired theory of “unseeing” as a means to interrogate how archaeological absences become powerful silences that bolster state-sponsored narratives. More generally, this article is a thoughtful call to consider scholarly and research practices and the precarity they introduce for colleagues working in totalitarian states.Sam Challis and Brent Sinclair-Thomson investigate inheritances in their examination of southern African rock art by divulging mechanisms through which traditions mesh and creolize during cross-cultural contact. Their paper is a valuable exploration of how rock artists in southern Africa have historically highlighted certain aspects of the past while disrupting the socioeconomic conditions that threatened to displace them from traditional land. The article documents how rock artists portrayed processes of contact and colonization in a way that defies the enduring ideas of a “bounded” or “socially isolated” culture.Meanwhile, Aihwa Ong explores the inheritance of ideas about modernity and the future, encapsulated in her concept of “pastoral geopolitics.” Ong’s ethnography is situated in 2007, before the global financial crisis, when China and Russia were positioning themselves as allies to the West. During this period, the United States and England were embroiled in conflict in the Middle East and determined to turn Iraq into a democratic, parliamentary, multicultural, “free,” and privatized neocolony. To understand this moment of economic and political reckoning, Ong points to the failures of “universalisms,” thereby demonstrating the strength of anthropological critique.Finally, Tim Ingold critiques the notion of biological inheritance, noting that “knowledge … does not ‘descend’ from generation to generation but is regrown in each.” His article is a bold effort to meld ethnographic practice and social theory into the models and assumptions developed by evolutionary biologists. Taking issue with biological modeling in genotype-phenotype correlations, the continuity of culture and apprenticeship, and social learning, which often assume that cultural traits are either learned or not, Ingold advocates for more nuanced ways to understand the relationship between culture and biology. This is a critical intervention from which we all stand to benefit.Whether it is through moving autoethnographic description that weaves historical analysis with the personal, in-depth analyses of how archaeologists are trained to unsee, an exploration of an archaeological record that goes back 2,000 years, observation of “the civilizational imagination” at a contemporary economic forum, or an overarching analysis of the cutting edge of evolutionary theory, the articles featured in this issue represent anthropology at its best. They are beautifully written, surprising, deeply informative, and intellectually provocative. The editorial team at Current Anthropology hopes that you enjoy them as much as we do! Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 63, Number S25December 2022Anthropology and Inheritance Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/722740 HistoryPublished online December 02, 2022 © 2022 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reservedPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.