Anthropological Engagement Research Articles

It's Ok To Coddiwomple: Anthropology, Peacebuilding and (Em)Bracing the Vague

Abstract This white paper takes the unknown and the vague and movement towards/in those realms – as frames for a discussion of present practice and emergent potentiality of anthropological engagement with peace (building) studies. Arguably, embracing the unknown or vague as generative constants as well as fundamental elements of non-linear peacebuilding further open collaborative, communicative spaces of possibility. Aspects of this discussion are drawn from broader conceptual/methodological considerations in both peacebuilding and social anthropology so as to contribute to an interdisciplinary alignment. Furthermore, the positions and persuasions in this work are (in)formed by extensive, on-going examinations of research and narratives active in Southeast Europe today. By looking to emergent concepts in peace studies via anthropology while moving with regional-specific ethnographies that speak back against North Atlantic hegemonies, there is offered a discussion that brings local realities into transnational (socio-academic) deliberations.

Syrian futures: Percolation, temporality and historical experience in the plural

ABSTRACT A key ambition of this introduction is to bring the question of temporality to the centre of anthropological engagements with Syria and the diverse legacies of the past thirteen years of upheaval. Engaging with temporality, tempo and tempus are central to this endeavour. How can we, as scholars, speak across the moving and malleable terrain of discrepant Syrian experiences that are themselves moving in time - that are speaking back to what happened and holding on to hopes and futures envisioned in the past, while simultaneously moving towards new and different understandings and futures? By way of introduction to the issue, this article offers some theoretical reflections on this question in conversation with Syrians' varied and changing engagements with the past, which are crucial to comprehending how Syrians are moving towards the future, or more accurately different futures. Centrally, the text advances an understanding of how time and history not simply flow but rather, as Michel Serres points to, they percolate. Attending to such percolation allows us to appreciate the plural Syrian engagements with the past, present, and future.

Bandak, Andreas & SimonColeman (eds). Different repetitions: anthropological engagements with figures of return, recurrence and redundancy. 128 pp., bibliogr. London: Routledge, 2021. £38.99 (e‐book)

Bandak, Andreas & SimonColeman (eds). Different repetitions: anthropological engagements with figures of return, recurrence and redundancy. 128 pp., bibliogr. London: Routledge, 2021. £38.99 (e‐book)

Applied anthropology, injustice, and the ethics of intervention

AbstractFifty years ago, anthropologists, including applied researchers, were caught up in a dilemma of ethics and practice, in the face of criticisms of ethnographic embroilment in colonial, military, and neocolonial projects. But the epistemological crises that this provoked, together with anthropological engagement in political movements, sharpened our commitment to work with others to counter systemic, structural, and enacted violence. Today, continued inequality at local and global levels is deeply complicated by corporate globalization and climate change. Ethnographic research and anthropological engagement is urgent and critical, requiring our persistence to redress social wrongs through supportive, generous partnerships, as advocates and as outspoken witnesses.

Why Gerontology Needs Anthropology: Toward an Applied Anthropological Gerontology.

In this essay, we argue that gerontologists should increase their engagement with anthropologists to increase transdisciplinary collaboration, fulfill the interdisciplinary promise of gerontology as a field, and to ensure the work of anthropologists is formed by, and employed in, situations where meaningful engagement with practitioners and policymakers can lead to social change. Anthropology is the study of human societies in historical, biological, and sociocultural context, comprising a holistic field of study that can contribute unique methods, approaches, and theories to the field of gerontology. Although increasing amounts of anthropological scholarship have focused on older adulthood, this critical work of anthropologists still needs to be utilized by those in positions of power to enact change. Furthermore, the work conducted by anthropologists of aging has not consistently been recognized as anthropological scholarship. Therefore, a notable gap exists between the promise of the anthropology of aging and the utilization of the field, its findings, and engagement with the broader gerontological academy. As such, the contributions of anthropology to aging scholarship and the resulting reduction in inequities in the aging experience are not always adequately recognized. By examining the history of anthropology's engagement with aging and the lifecourse, we argue for a more applied anthropological gerontology. We conclude with a call to action to ensure that anthropological gerontology is seen as a fundamental branch of scholarship, both within anthropology and gerontology, which can be used to improve the lived experiences of older adults globally.

Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti

AbstractBuilding on a growing anthropological engagement with and interrogation of the multiple forms and meanings of activism, this article—based on over 20 years of activist engagement and ethnographic interviews spanning 11 years—offers ethnographically grounded understandings of solidarity activism. The rich and at times messy (auto)ethnographic data suggest that contradictions inherent to liberal humanism can increase hierarchies and social distance between groups across national boundaries. Further, new social media technologies notwithstanding, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) remain hegemonic vehicles for this transnational exchange. The experience in Haiti, dubbed the “Republic of NGOs,” highlights contradictions within solidarity activism, generating a useful set of questions for other activist anthropologists and solidarity activists who work elsewhere. Moving beyond the discussion of what anthropology brings to activism, or the reverse, this article offers insights from ethnographic analyses of NGOs, or NGOgraphy, to critically understand and assess anthropological activism. Specifically, building off insights of “NGOing” as a verb, this article interrogates the (micro)politics, structures, and consequences of intervention. Further, international solidarity activism often operates on logics of projects and deliverables, and therefore NGOing can eclipse other “metrics,” disrupting and dividing local communities. Like NGOs, anthropologists function within a hierarchical transnational political economy and division of labor. [activist anthropology, Haiti, NGOs, solidarity, autoethnography]

What’s Law Got To Do with It?: Anthropological Engagement with Legal Scholarship

Among law and society fields, legal anthropology has experienced markedly high highs and low lows. Its parent disciplines, law and anthropology, have fluctuated from intense and productive engagement with one another to mutual disregard for each other’s ways of knowing. Most commentary on the trajectory of this interdisciplinary relationship has bemoaned anthropology’s (ir)relevance to legal scholarship, but this introduction and the symposium essays that follow invert the usual narrative by asking how—and why—formal law might matter to anthropology. The symposium is part of a dual special issue that grows out of a multi-year conversation between legal anthropologists representing varied institutional and intellectual backgrounds. Drawing on that conversation and on the essays it has produced, this introduction argues that anthropologists would do well to abandon their prepositional attitude to formal law and, instead, to build on the strengths of anthropological analysis by “cultivating attentiveness” to things legal.

“‘Are you Jewish?’”: ethnography and Indian Jewish identities

ABSTRACT This paper lies at the intersections of Jewish Anthropology, History, Diaspora Studies, and cross-cultural Jewish Studies. It intertwines two analytical trajectories. The first is the thematic core: extensive ethnographic research conducted among Indian Jewish communities living in Israel, some of whom made aliya over four decades ago. The second trajectory entails self-reflections on my subject-position as a non-Jewish, non-Israeli researcher conducting fieldwork among over 125 Indian Jews living across Israel. This paper delves into the process of doing Jewish Anthropology by identifying the spaces where shared cultural and linguistic “Indian-ness” intersected to dissolve boundaries of “difference” between my respondents and myself, facilitating community inroads and culminating not only in the successful accomplishment of extensive fieldwork but in creating enduring bonds of personal engagement. In stepping back to reflect on my own journey, I offer possibilities to understand certain nuances in the process of anthropological engagement, more specifically in doing Jewish Anthropology.

Traveling Concepts: Anthropological Engagements with Histories of Social Science

This article discusses historical and anthropological approaches to the life of social science. After presenting the thematic of social science concepts that figure as found object in cultural anthropology, this review briefly introduces the domain of history of social science (HSS). It then examines HSS studies that could enrich anthropological encounters with social science concepts, both methodologically and through the vivid social histories of relevant concepts, categories, and methods. I complement my review of these approaches in HSS with a discussion of anthropological studies of social science concepts. I review both the historical and the anthropological literature with the same key questions, focused on the analytical tools that each approach brings to the study of social science: what conditions of emergence of these social imaginaries are incorporated in the analyses, what contexts and processes relevant to their appropriation and travel are presented, and how these enquiries examine the effects on the worlds in which they circulate. In my conclusion, I point out how cultural anthropology can uniquely contribute to the domain of HSS.

Anthropological Engagements with Global Health

Epidemic infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Ebola, and more recently COVID-19, have persistent and devastating impacts in human populations across the globe. In this Review essay, we consider together the monographs Epidemic Illusions (Richardson 2021) and Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds (Farmer 2020), as well as the documentary film Bending the Arc (Davidson and Kos 2017), Together, they demonstrate the history of transnational colonialism, the significance of structural violence as a contributor to global health inequity, and the increasing presence of co-occurring epidemics worldwide, topics which are often absent from discussions of global health systems. These three works discuss epidemics as pathologies of history and sociocultural patterns of colonial dispossession in global health systems; the inclusion of patient narratives in two of them, the film Bending the Arc and the book Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, is pivotal in describing the intricacies of HIV infection and other infectious diseases, as well as the complexity of gaining control of syndemic diseases. Further, these three materials point to the importance of health education in communities and of access to healthcare by community members, and to the roles that health education and access play in health policy implementation.

An ethics of anthropology-informed community engagement with COVID-19 clinical trials in Africa.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has reinforced the critical role of ethics and community engagement in designing and conducting clinical research during infectious disease outbreaks where no vaccine or treatment already exists. In reviewing current practices across Africa, we distinguish between three distinct roles for community engagement in clinical research that are often conflated: 1) the importance of community engagement for identifying and honouring cultural sensitivities; 2) the importance of recognising the socio‐political context in which the research is proposed; and 3) the importance of understanding what is in the interest of communities recruited to research according to their own views and values. By making these distinctions, we show that current practice of clinical research could draw on anthropology in ways which are sometimes unnecessary to solicit local cultural values, overlook the importance of socio‐political contexts and wider societal structures within which it works, potentially serving to reinforce unjust political or social regimes, and threaten to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the research. We argue that more discerning anthropological engagement as well as wider collaboration with other social scientists and those working in the humanities is urgently needed to improve the ethics of current biomedical and pharmaceutical research practice in Africa.

Anthropological Engagement in the International Sphere

As anthropologists increasingly embark upon the study of the international sphere, this often builds on different forms of engagement within and around organizations, processes, and institutional corridors. The co-authors, building upon a round table exchange, address the advantages and dilemmas of anthropological engagement in the field of international governance, including humanitarian work, diplomacy, international organizations, the Swiss federal government, NGOs, and multinationals.

Militarization: A Reader ed. by Roberto J. Gonzalez et al., and: Militarized Global Apartheid by Catherine Besteman

Reviewed by: Militarization: A Reader ed. by Roberto J. Gonzalez et al., and: Militarized Global Apartheid by Catherine Besteman Leah Zani Roberto J. Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Gustaaf Houtman, eds. Militarization: A Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 424 pp. Catherine Besteman. Militarized Global Apartheid. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 208 pp. I open Militarization: A Reader and find a brief editor's note explaining that the volume is the result of an initiative by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) to oppose the militarization of anthropology.1 The editors—Roberto Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, and Gustaaf Houtman—are all founding members of the NCA. The table of contents includes many other NCA members, including Catherine Besteman (author of Militarized Global Apartheid), Andrew Bickford, David Price, David Vine, and Catherine Lutz. The NCA formed as an independent network of US-based anthropologists promoting an ethical, demilitarized anthropology that refuses to participate in the US Army's Human Terrain System and related projects of the war on terror.2 These scholars are building on a century-old tradition of critical anthropological engagement with the American war machine, going back to Franz Boas's (1919) indictment of American anthropologists who worked as spies during World War I. The NCA previously published The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual (2009) (a teardown of the US Army-Marine Corps's Counterinsurgency Field Manual), with an excerpt from the text appearing in the final section of the Reader. Thus, I initially thought of Militarization: A Reader as the group's unofficial next book. To my surprise, the edited collection is a very different kind of book, softer and more invitational. The introduction begins with an account of toy soldiers: a son's love of toy soldiers, his father's grief after the death of his son in war, the father who then modifies toy soldiers as a memorial to [End Page 475] his son. The volume's cover image—a GI Joe army man—can, at first, be easily mistaken for a real soldier. It's a heartrending ethnographic account of father-son relations in a militarized American society that sells war to children. The editors go on to discuss the military-industrial complex, the invention of action figures in the 1950s, as well as ongoing collaborations between the Pentagon, Paramount Pictures, and Hasbro to design new weapons systems alongside the films and toys that feature them. The gentle, empathetic introduction shies just short of an overt critique of American militarism. There is no mention of the editors' founding membership in the NCA or the organization's mandate. The editors go right up to that line and then stop. I put the book down, confused. Where are the Concerned Anthropologists? The editors bring a compelling and timely ethic of demilitarization to our discipline—one that I share. However, I would have liked the editors to explicitly disclose that ethic in the body of the work. Back in 2019, when the collection went to press, I would likely have agreed with this gentler approach. But 2020 was a crucible of a year that has made the concerns of this volume feel more urgent. Published in 2020, by comparison, Besteman's Militarized Global Apartheid is outraged and uncompromising. Amid a global pandemic, the Reader's softness now feels a bit too parental. We've grown up. The study of militarism has become more necessary and our responsibility more pressing to model ethical anthropology. We live in a world radically transformed by pervasive militarization, especially American militarization. The Reader is a much-needed cross-cultural reference for militarization in different contexts with a focus on the United States and its outsized impact on global conflict. The volume's strength is its comprehensive coverage and intersectional, multidisciplinary approach to militarization and its impacts. The edited collection is divided into 12 sections organized by theme, each section heralded by an introductory essay: Militarization and Political Economy; Military Labor; Gender and Militarism; The Emotional Life of Militarism; Rhetorics of Militarism; Militarization, Place, and Territory; Militarized Humanitarianism; Militarism and the Media; Militarizing Knowledge; Militarization and the Body; Militarism and Technology; and, lastly, Alternatives to Militarization. There are many entrances into the study of militarization, and this...

(En)acting our experience: Combat veterans, veteranality, and building resilience to extremism

Drawing from emerging arenas within (applied) anthropology and informed by ongoing ethnographic fieldwork alongside combat veterans in Southeast Europe, this paper follows indications that veterans and veteran organizations are potential enablers/maintainers of resilience to violent extremism within societies. This position builds from the recognition that veterans embody a unique capacity for resilience; a capacity generated by surviving combat and deepened as veterans encounter the struggles of life after service. Exploring this proposition of veteran contribution and collaboration suggests a (re)theorization of the veteran in society is required. In service of this (re)theorization, the concepts of "veteranality" and "critical veteranality" are introduced to signify and engage a social ontology representing the dynamics of the veteran life-world. In conclusion, it is argued that (re)theorization, ethnographic methodologies and anthropological engagement will guide how socio-political strategies countering extremism can be opened to veteran (en)acted experiences with resilience.

How Others See Us: Anthropologists, WikiLeaks, and the Vertical Slice

Abstract Drawing on Laura Nader’s concept of the vertical slice, this article reviews the hundreds of instances where the work of anthropologists, or anthropologists themselves appear in the leaked US State Department documents known as the “Manning Cables” published by WikiLeaks. The analysis of these documents shows anthropologists engaging with the US government in various ways, including in advisory capacities or bringing cultural or political knowledge from peripheral geographical regions to the core. Ethical, political, and disciplinary dimensions of these interactions are discussed, and Nader’s conception of the vertical slice is used to distinguish political dimensions of these anthropological engagements with state power.

Acting counter to our time

This essay poses the question of the timeliness of anthropological knowledge. Paul Rabinow’s writings suggest that anthropological research has a particular relationship to the demands of the present day. The role of the anthropologist is neither that of the technical expert who can provide an instrumental solution to a given problem, nor that of an authoritative commentator who delivers a rapid assessment of the significance of an unfolding event. The essay explores a period of Rabinow’s work in which he articulated a distinctive form of anthropological engagement with present developments in the life sciences. In this work, Rabinow argued that the anthropology of the contemporary should not focus on contests over meaning and value, which tend to remain relatively stable, but instead should seek out transformations of forms, which “can provoke astonishment or arouse hatred.” The concept of assemblage, he suggested, could equip an observer to recognize such form-events as “the curious and potent singularities that they are.”

The Anthropological Rise of Palestine

This article traces the rise of anthropological scholarship on Palestine and/or Palestinians from 2011 through the present, providing readers with a comprehensive bibliography of anthropological publications related to Palestine over that period. Drawing upon the author’s experience as a scholar of Palestine and a publicly engaged anthropologist, it accounts for the factors fueling the proliferation of this domain of knowledge production and the implications this has for representations of individual and collective Palestinian human conditions. The article argues that contemporary anthropological research and writing provide Palestinians with intellectual tools for discursive enfranchisement. Such anthropological engagement also makes possible global solidarity wherein Palestinians are recognized as epistemic equals, rendering legible the heterogeneity and complexities of Palestinian lived experiences.

Building a #COVIDSyllabus: Lessons for the Future of Collaborative Pedagogy

In early March 2020, Teaching and Learning Anthropology (TLA) initiated a crowdsourced document entitled “Teaching COVID-19: An Anthropology Syllabus Project.” This essay reflects on TLA’s #COVIDSyllabus in the context of a broader shift toward the use of crowdsourced hashtag syllabi – or #syllabi – in social justice movements. I argue that the #COVIDSyllabus holds important lessons for anthropological teaching and learning. As a collaborative, open-access pedagogical project, the syllabus points to new possibilities for 1) expanding public anthropological engagement with contemporary social issues; 2) democratizing knowledge practices and centering the contributions of often marginalized scholars and activists; and 3) building shared communities of praxis within the discipline and among scholar-activists. The full syllabus can be downloaded from this essay’s supplemental materials; the live document is available at https://bit.ly/TeachCOVID19.  

Terms of engagement

Terms of engagement

Introduction: Towards an anthropology of data

AbstractThe world is talking ‘data’. The early cross‐disciplinary, business‐orientated hype around the potential of ‘big’ data, with its promises of unprecedented insight into social life, has given way. Data now motivates a sweep of dystopian visions, from rampant commodification to the invasion of privacy, political manipulation, and shadowy data doubles. Yet anthropologists have been cautious in taking data itself as their object, even as the social life of data practices becomes manifest in our ethnographies. In this introduction, we argue for an anthropology of data that is ethnographically specific and theoretically ambitious, putting forward a case for why anthropological engagements with the data moment might be not only politically important but also conceptually generative.