Anthropological Work Research Articles

Political uncommoning through anti-gender mobilization by radical right-wing online voices

The exclusionary political languages and imaginaries of radical right-wing political actors are becoming ever more creative, productive, and influential. These actors use social media communication to promote and instrumentalize anti-gender (sexist, homophobic, anti-gender-equality) arguments to change societal relations and norms. Relying on the results of a comparative research initiative on radical right-wing social media communication in five European countries, this article explores how these communication acts strive to establish political commons by interlacing visions of inclusion and exclusion. These acts portray various threats to patriarchal power practices by eliciting both positive and negative emotions, including fear, anger, love, and solidarity. These radical right-wing forces call for the establishment of a new morality and commonality by complying with some principles of commoning, yet they actively engage in political uncommoning. The article also reflects on the difficulties of doing anthropological work on ‘enemies of liberal democracies’ and ‘people whom we dislike’.

Crafting and maintaining socio-ecological commons: Notes from a city of ruins

Once dismissed as a model of resource management that is doomed to fail, over the last three decades the commons have been taken up in academic research and social practices as a form of self-governance providing paths away from profit-oriented development in urban and rural settings. This article draws on research on a situated commoning project in a post-industrial area in Rome, Italy, to explore how contemporary activist practices complicate prevalent definitions of the commons based on the bifurcation between active human collectives and passive resources. It begins by briefly outlining influential perspectives on the commons, including Anna Tsing’s anthropological work on ‘latent commons’. Then, it problematizes and extends these debates through the analysis of the Italian case. Drawing on feminist perspectives on more-than-human interdependences, as well as Marxist insights on contentious commoning, it brings to the fore relations of care and repair that strive to create enduring paths of urban decommodification, as well as forms of collective flourishing in contexts of uneven social and ecological precarity.

Leaking panic as policy: Bordering, scaling, and forming in Austrian distributive politics

The article argues for a theoretical vocabulary to analyse how processes of demarcation and exclusion can be accompanied by a language of sharing. The article analyses how neo-nationalist and white supremacist exclusions in Austria were often justified by political panics about ‘leaking’. Leaking panic is a trope in which presumably hideous Others siphon resources from an imagined ‘us’, used for proposing targeted attacks at ‘them’ to secure warm and communal sharing among that imagined ‘us’. I bring this observation to a discussion of recent work in economic anthropology on sharing and its promise for transnational distribution. To theorise how imaginaries of sharing rest on constructions of the community of sharing and distribution, I propose to add bordering, scaling, and forming as auxiliary concepts. I take these theoretical instruments to investigate the cutting of welfare benefits for the children of transnational labourers in the name of ‘fairness for Austrian families’ and the protection of private foundations to defend them from foreign capital through the affectionate language of ‘Austrian family enterprises’. The discussion reveals the importance of understanding demarcation and categorisation to legitimise exclusions by rhetorics of sharing.

Divine Care: Care as Religious Practice

Abstract This essay compares Christian and Buddhist narratives of care in conversation with anthropological work on relationships mediated through the divine. Within these traditions, care is a divine activity in which humans participate by engaging in caregiving practices. Gods care, receive care, and elevate care to a sacred action. I argue that the act of caring, as a religious practice, calls for an existential reflection upon the boundaries of the self, and includes not only the giver and receiver of care but also other humans and the divine. Studying care in religious contexts helps us better understand the social science of care, even in secular spaces. I conclude with lessons we can learn from religious institutions to better cultivate expanded networks of care in civil society, such as infrastructure to support relationships between strangers and across generations.

On ‘Wise Cunning’ and ‘Clever Methods’: Framings of Environmental Protection in Rural Mongolia

ABSTRACT A significant number of works in environmental anthropology explore how environmentally protective practices are based on representationally truthful claims about the world. This article, in contrast, makes the case for an analytically more expansive approach for studying such activities, and does so by arguing for anthropological attention to practices whose conceptual persuasiveness and affective force derive from their ‘cunning’ construction. It does so by drawing on ethnography from central Mongolia where haunting narratives, whose origins are credited to ‘wise people’ who lived long ago, cunningly instrumentalise stories of vengeful and powerful spirits to deter people from harming environmentally vulnerable areas (here, wooded ones).

The moral and ethical worlds of coercive confinement: A prologue

‘Morality’ and ‘ethics’ are terms which are peppered throughout political and academic discourse on coercive confinement, but which feature such diverse ways that their usage is bound to confuse or even disconcert. The introduction to this themed issue offers a more deliberately conceptualised account of morality and ethics, and outlines what studying them empirically could bring to prison studies and other studies of confinement. It starts by outlining some central claims to an empirical study of ethics, drawing heavily on work in anthropology, where this sub-discipline is very well-developed. It then describes the main contributions that the empirical study of ethics could make to studies of coercive confinement, all of which are demonstrated by the papers in this issue. The studies cover a range of geographical regions (India, Central America, the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom) and contexts of confinement (prisons, nursing homes and post-release community settings). It ends by looking back at the perspective for which it advocates, questioning its value and considering whether there is a role in this approach for critique.

Resilience—Peril or promise? Mapping current and future directions in the anthropology of resilience

AbstractResilience is everywhere in contemporary US discourse. In this article, we map anthropological research on resilience and suggest future contributions to resilience studies. To date, anthropological work either uses resilience to describe practices of human survival in adversity or studies resilience as a policy discourse. While anthropologists have long been concerned with human adaptation to adversity, we theorize that resilience discourses hold a particular appeal to a Euro‐American middle class newly affected by crisis and precarity. We offer scenes from preliminary fieldwork on resilience discourses in three domains in the United States: middle‐class parenting guides, urban governance and future planning in St. Louis and New York City, and the cultural productions of Black and Indigenous activists and artists. Drawing these sites into the same analytic frame reveals how resilience discourses can serve distinct political ends, from accommodation to the status quo to qualified social reform to resistance to socially unjust systems. We conclude with a call for more synthetic and comparative research, greater clarity about the distinctiveness and benefits of resilience over other terminologies, and analyses that consider resilience as both a discourse and a ground‐level experience in different global sites.

ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH DIRECTIONS OF THEORIES OF ETHNIC IDENTITY

This article provides a comprehensive overview of key theoretical frameworks, taking a deeper look at contemporary theories in the study of ethnic identity. Since the basis of this concept originates from Western sociologists and anthropological scientists, their concepts and works were differentiated. It explores various perspectives on the formation of ethnic identity in modern society. This is because ethnic identity is a complex and multifaceted construct that includes various disciplines and has attracted the attention of researchers. It is important to compare the ways of understanding the theories of ethnic identity and to identify the relevant perspectives. In addition, the article examines the methods of primordialism, constructivism, and instrumentalism, which are important in the study of the issue of ethnicity and nation. And in the course of the discussion, theories that offer opposing views on ethnic identities will be discussed. Through this multidimensional analysis, the article attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the study of ethnic identity. Combining insights from various theoretical perspectives, it offers insights into the dynamic nature of ethnic identities and their relationship to social cohesion and cultural diversity in contemporary societies. The importance of combining various theories for a comprehensive understanding of ethnic identity is emphasized, and recommendations are made for developing an appreciation of cultural diversity.

Upcycling Agency: Material and Human Transformation for Sustainability in Fashion

In this paper, we offer some conceptual building blocks, or rather conceptual flows, towards a radical processual rethinking of the type of agency that allows for the sustainable production and consumption of fashion. Appeals to principled decision making or calculating costs and benefits instrumentally fail to engender the necessary behavioural changes, and more importantly, our current conceptual apparatus cannot account for the relationality that fosters sustainable lifestyles. An empirical study of upcycling practices allows us to interrogate the agency involved in sustainable organising and acknowledge the complex forms of valuation that take place in and through the making process. Our data were analysed through the lens of John Dewey’s pragmatist perspectives on valuation and were brought into conversation with literature on ‘making’, more specifically through the anthropological work of Tim Ingold. We contend that current conceptualisations of sustainable organising are inadequate because they undermine the relational orientation that sustainable organising entails. We argue for a processual, relational approach to valuation, which allows for the accommodation of a plurality of ways of thinking about what sustainable organising may mean. To live sustainably, one has to stay close to materials, engage relationally with one’s histories and contexts, and allow valuation to present itself as part of everyday practice.

Being There as Socialism Unravels

Early studies of the transition after 1989 focused primarily on the national and international consequences of bank reform, marketization, and political realignments. Far less attention was paid to the everyday experiences of those living through these momentous events. The work of anthropologists, in contrast, was concerned with the mundane hassles and existential quandaries people were facing, while never losing sight of the broader processes underway. Four ethnographies based on field work in this early period are discussed to illustrate how this focus reveals complex accounts of the transition as a dynamic and often contradictory series of events: border realignment, privatization of industry, decollectivization, and the restructuring of class relations.

Crossroads: leprosy, Igbo cosmology and cultural worldviews

AbstractThis research examines the continuity and changes in Igbo thoughts on leprosy by exploring Igbo cosmology and its relationship with Christian and colonial ideas about the disease. The perception of leprosy in precolonial Igboland reveals a shocking similarity with the later Judeo-Christian identity and the perception of leprosy that dominated the area during colonialism. It argues that colonial and Christian missionary ideas did not radically transform the perceptions of leprosy in south-eastern Nigeria. Instead, what happened was merely an adaptation and continuity of prevailing thoughts about the disease. Using oral evidence, archival materials and existing anthropological works on Igbo worldviews and cosmology, this research shows the changes in the colonial socio-cultural knowledge of leprosy. After careful analysis, it concludes that, while colonial medicine and the missionaries’ idea of leprosy healed leprosy sufferers and transformed their identity, most Igbo people continued conceptualizing the disease as an aberration and maintained the stigmatization of sufferers.

Medicalisation, development and adult power: Exploring the contributions of the medical system to child disenfranchisement in theory and society

AbstractThe marginalisation of children globally is frequently justified by appeal to medical, developmental science. While childhood has increasingly become recognised as a social construct, this research has focused largely on education and legal structures, leaving this medicalisation unexamined. This essay closes that gap by examining the medicalisation of childhood and the contribution of the medical system to adult power. These are approached in separate sections. The first portion of this essay addresses the theoretical and rhetorical manner in which children are medicalised, using Piaget's theories as examples of a trend to over‐state the universality of childhood deficiencies and assume adult competences. Latour's work on the scientific black‐box is combined with Halliday's assessment of scientific language to examine how these theories are transformed from specific psychological findings, into assumed objective truths, carrying disenfranchising assumptions about children into public discourse. The essay's second part examines the practical role of the medical system in mobilising adultist discourses and disempowering children, through the operation of scientific management. This is built up from discussions of childbirth and adolescence to wider issues of medical power as it permeates educational, legislative and media spaces through Samuel's concept of biocertification. Finally, these two parts meet in highlighting the role of medicalisation in maintaining the hegemony of adult power through its veil of objectivity and expansive reach. I contend anthropological works referenced throughout the essay show that medicalised narratives of childhood are insufficient but culturally contingent and thus open to revision.

When Multispecies Ethnography Encounters a Shelter-Based Clinic: Uncovering Ecological Factors for Cultural Psychiatry.

Through a longstanding collaboration, psychiatrists and anthropologists have assessed the impact of sociocultural context on mental health and elaborated the concept of culture in psychiatry. However, recent developments in ecological anthropology may have untapped potential for cultural psychiatry. This paper aims to uncover how "ecologies" inform patients' and clinicians' experiences, as well as their intersubjective relationships. Drawing on my ethnography with Jerome, a carriage driver who became my patient in a shelter-based psychiatric clinic, and on anthropological work about how psychic life is shaped ecologically, I describe how more-than-human relationality and the affordances of various places-a clinic and a stable-influenced both Jerome's well-being and my perceptions as a clinician. I also explore how these ecologies shaped our different roles, including my dual roles as psychiatrist and ethnographer. In the discussion, I define ecological factors, describe their implications for clinical practice, and suggest how they could be integrated into DSM's cultural formulation.

La pertinencia del Ensayo sobre el don de Marcel Mauss

2022 marked the 150th anniversary of Marcel Mauss's birth. Along with him, his work is recognized as a source and inspiration for countless contemporary anthropological works. His writings favored multiple theoretical currents and influenced dozens of anthropologists: from the structuralism of Levi Strauss to Marcel Griaule, Maurice Leenhardt, Louis Dumont and Roger Bastide, among others. In a modern world characterized by the economic logic of the market, interest, consumption and profit, a revision of Mauss' work, such as the one carried out by Alain Caillé's Movement Anti-utilitarianism in Social Sciences (MAUSS) (2000), can mean significant rediscoveries in contemporary societies of other hidden logics involving reciprocities driven by the symbolic.

Making rent: how forced migrant families access private rental housing in the Biqa’ Valley, Lebanon

The private rental market is a key provider of housing to forced migrants. This paper examines qualitative data from case study research in rapidly urbanizing towns in the Biqa’ Valley, Lebanon, focusing on Syrian forced migrants’ efforts to access housing through the local private rental sector. Building on literature about landlord–tenant relations and anthropological work on kin, I argue that rental agreements ought to be understood as both financial and social arrangements, which involve family members, landlords and middlemen ( shaweesh) in complex rental ecologies. I find that young Syrians are caught up in evolving financial and social obligations, which make inhabitation possible, but which perpetuate gendered and xenophobic forms of dispossession. I argue that humanitarian and development actors advocating for the right of forced migrants to settle in urban areas ought to avoid perpetuating reliance on an inequitable private rental sector.

Real cameras, irreal things: Image‐making and ethnographic insight

AbstractThis article explores the effects of image‐making on ethnographic insight. The topic is approached within the epistemological framework of recent revisions of anthropology's reflexive turn. Empirical observation, photographic experiments, and the work of anthropologists, historians, and philosophers are employed to argue that photography—and, especially, experimental techniques—brings together different modes of knowledge and make communicable an array of irreal things. By working with data gathered serendipitously outside of the author's ethnographic project, the arguments of this article extend further and recover older theoretical assertions that ethnographic knowledge production involves the whole self.

Space of perception of holidays by Ukrainians: towards the possibilities of conceptualization

The article is devoted to the study of the perceptual space of the functioning of the holiday in Ukrainian society. The authors refer to the materials of the multi-year survey-omnibus KІIS with the aim of analyzing the differentiation of distances and relationships between a number of religious, secular, and state holidays in Ukrainian society using the method of multidimensional scaling. The article proposes its own conception of the space of perception, built on a number of known concepts of social perception. Proposing hypotheses regarding the potential axes of spatial structuring is carried out using the work of such sociologists and anthropologists as representatives of the College of Sociology (J. Bataille, R. Caillois), classical sociology (E. Durkheim) and carnival theory (M. Bakhtin). At the conceptual level, the authors take into account the dialectic of unity and struggle of individual and collective, sacred and profane, rational and irrational, public and intimate, etc. in the holiday. Within the framework of the analysis, the authors identified and described the axes that are stable and reproduced in all years of the KІIS omnibus survey, which the authors designate as "rational modernity - irrational archaic" and "publicity - privacy". The authors pay special attention to the dynamics of the holidays selected for analysis; they refer to the holidays that demonstrate the greatest "movements" in space over the years. Considerable attention is paid to attempts to explain the reasons for such dynamics, which the authors look for in externalities relative to public awareness of holidays (political events, pandemic (self) isolation, cultural processes, social phenomena, etc.). Among the holidays, the authors receive special attention Trinity, Victory Day (May 9), Independence Day of Ukraine, Defender's Day, New Year, Christmas, International Women's Day, which, firstly, turned out to be the most sensitive to the factors of dynamics specified by the authors, and - the second - the most dynamic and sociologically demonstrative. A number of prospects for further research of this topic are proposed, starting from what the authors have already achieved in this article.

Digital Distributed Selves: Reconceptualizing Personhood in the Age of Social Media

This article introduces the concept of "digital distributed personhood" as a theoretical framework for understanding how digital technologies and social media are reshaping experiences of selfhood across cultures. Drawing on recent work in psychological anthropology and digital ethnography, we argue that personhood in the digital age is increasingly characterized by multiplicity, networked relationality, algorithmic co-construction, digital embodiment, temporal flexibility, and cultural hybridity. Through an analysis of ethnographic case studies from diverse cultural contexts, we demonstrate how this framework manifests in everyday life. The article challenges traditional anthropological models of bounded, stable personhood and proposes a more dynamic understanding that accounts for the complex interplay between individuals, digital platforms, and cultural contexts. We discuss implications for psychological anthropology, including the need to rethink fundamental assumptions about self, identity, and social relationships in light of digital realities. The article concludes by suggesting directions for future research, emphasizing the importance of longitudinal and cross- cultural studies, developmental perspectives, and investigations into the mental health implications of digital distributed personhood.

Exercises in ethically engaged work in biological anthropology.

An ethical paradigm shift currently taking place within biological anthropology is pushing scholars to envisage and develop paths toward more ethical futures. Drawing from case studies in our own teaching, research, and fieldwork experience, we reflect on the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of ethical considerations in our field. We discuss the acquisition and institutional narrative of a human osteological teaching collection at the University of Louisville as an embodiment of structural apathy turned structural violence, and the need for professional guidance in the potential retirement of deceased individuals from our classrooms. In documented collections (i.e., the Robert J. Terry Collection), we share our process and scholarly reemphasis of the humanity of a deceased individual through contextualized analysis (i.e., osteobiography and archival history) and postmortem agentive acts. Lastly, we present an archeological site in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which poses ethical concerns as biocultural bioarcheologists and archeologists attempt to negotiate the possible wishes of the deceased with the cultural value of reconstructing the community's otherwise undocumented past, all amidst the immediate threat of anthropogenic climate change. We offer these exercises and discussion in ethically engaged projects transparently and with an overarching admission that none are models for replication. Rather, at various stages in our careers and engagement with ethics, we acknowledge that progress is worthwhile, albeit challenging, and that proceeding forward collectively as biological anthropologists should be deliberate, reflexive, and compassionate for deceased individuals and their descendant communities, as well as among and between colleagues.

Commemorating the monkey bars, catalyst of debate at the intersection of human evolutionary biology and public health.

Play is an essential part of childhood, and growing attention has focused on the potential health benefits of 'risky' or 'thrill-seeking' play. Such play behavior is readily observed on any playground, where it can sometimes lead to injuries--most often from fall impacts--that require medical attention. Monkey bars account for ~7% of childhood arm fractures in the USA, an alarming statistic that raises difficult questions over its costs and benefits. Many authors view monkey bars as a public health hazard, but it is plausible that our childhood impulse toward thrill-seeking play is a result of selective pressures throughout our primate evolutionary history. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests that the developmental benefits of thrill-seeking play extend into adulthood, outweighing the occasional costs of injury. Disparate and consequential, these dueling perspectives have fueled debate among health professionals and policymakers, but with little attention to the work of biological anthropologists. Here we call attention to the hominin fossil record and play behaviors of non-human primates, providing a novel perspective that bolsters arguments for the adaptive significance of thrill-seeking play. The moment for such a review is timely, for it commemorates the centennial anniversaries of two playground icons: the jungle gym and monkey bars.