Anthropological Writings Research Articles

Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of Bildung as a moral conception of the good life

While the concept of Bildung has acquired international currency in educational and philosophical studies, its moral implications have been obscured by existing educational accounts. I present the moral implications inherent in the term through specific reference to the early works of Wilhelm von Humboldt. In contrast to previous scholarships, where Humboldt’s theory of Bildung has been deployed for drawing on the account of the true end of the human being and the inner process of interaction between the self and the world, I draw on Bildung as a moral conception of promoting a good life for others. To illustrate this conception, I (a) demonstrate the basic structure of Humboldt’s theory of Bildung by examining its four core components, (b) reconstruct Humboldt’s notion of virtue balanced state of various faculties as a moral ideal (c) consider Humboldt’s philosophical historiography to illustrate how Bildung can be mediated at individual and collective levels, and (d) present the concrete forms of the obligation to promote the good lives of others in his anthropological writings.

Regionalism as anti-colonialism: imaginaries of area in South East Asian omnibus film and database art

ABSTRACT This article responds to debates about the complicity or outdatedness of regionalism in Area Studies by analyzing creative works by local artists that reimagine South East Asia as ‘area’: Ho Tzu Nyen’s interactive database The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (CDOSEA) (2012–present); and two omnibus films – the Asian Film Archive’s Fragment (2015) and the former Luang Prabang Film Festival’s Mekong 2030 (2020), which feature acclaimed South East Asian filmmakers such as Lav Diaz, U-Wei Haji Saari, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and Tan Chui Mui. Diverging from Caroline Ha Thuc’s earlier South East Asia Research article by revisiting vernacular concepts of sovereignty and collectivity such as mandala and zomia in subaltern historical and anthropological writings, it examines how these works highlight the commonality of motifs of ecology, performance, mobility and spirituality. While the digital artwork CDOSEA algorithmically rearranges constellations of images, words and sounds commonly associated with the region, the omnibus films Mekong 2030 and Fragment combine diverse, fragmentary narratives from different locations within a single anthology. Transforming ‘area’ from an object of neocolonial knowledge production to a source of autonomous collective agency, the article explores how these works visualize a provisional community defined by its plurality, fluidity and inclusiveness.

Interior Whiteness: Race and the "Rise of the Novel"

Interior Whiteness:Race and the "Rise of the Novel" Sarah Vandegrift Eldridge Critical whiteness studies in the German context has thus far not examined the literature of the Goethezeit with the same detail as the philosophy of the period or literature and culture of later eras. This discipline also frequently draws on foundational work from the Anglo-American context; Julia Roth remarks that "most German texts on Critical Whiteness relate themselves (at least on the margins) to Toni Morrison's publications."1 Indeed, although Toni Morrison's 1992 Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is concerned specifically with how an "Africanist presence" emerges in and defines literature by white American authors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she poses a series of questions and calls for further examination that I see as entirely applicable to other (pre)national literatures and periods as well.2 In her preface, Morrison questions the relationship between race and notions of humanistic or universal literature: "How is 'literary whiteness' and 'literary blackness' made, and what is the consequence of that construction? How do embedded assumptions of racial (not racist) language work in the literary enterprise that hopes and sometimes claims to be 'humanistic?'" (xii–xiii) Later in the text, she offers an explicit series of calls for projects that she views as essential to understanding literary whiteness. Morrison asks, "In what ways does the imaginative encounter with Africanism enable white writers to think about themselves?"3 She then elaborates on this question by outlining multiple areas for future study: We need studies of the ways in which an Africanist character is used to limn out and enforce the invention and implications of whiteness. We need studies that analyze the strategic use of black characters to define the goals and enhance the qualities of white characters. … We need to analyze the manipulation of the Africanist narrative … as a means of meditation—both safe and risky—of one's own humanity.4 Although she couches these projects in terms of a specifically Africanist presence in American literature, I take these needs to apply to racial others in white cultural traditions in other linguistic contexts. I also take them to require attention from white scholars, of whom I am one, as well as BIPOC scholars inside and outside academia—following the lead of Black feminist writers in multiple national traditions, white scholars need to turn a careful eye on white scholarly positioning and practices, as well as white disciplinary [End Page 125] histories.5 In this reflection I outline one avenue for such work in German studies: the conceptions of selfhood emerging in the eighteenth century and still shaping the genre and scholarship of the novel today. In the German context, the discipline of philosophy has undertaken consideration of the question of race in the eighteenth century, perhaps because philosophy makes some of the most explicit claims to universality of the humanistic disciplines.6 Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze traces how Kant insists throughout his anthropological writings that the inherent nature of nonwhite races makes them incapable of full, rational humanity. That is, "for Kant, then, skin color encodes and codifies the 'natural' human capacity for reason and rational talents," and skin color, for Kant is not "merely a physical characteristic," but rather "evidence of an unchanging and unchangeable moral quality."7 Kant's overall conception of human nature means that racial categories and their moral implications are absolute and essential.8 Robert Bernasconi, Jennifer Mensch, and Susan Shell have all built on Eze's work to discuss further details of Kant's racialized anthropology, the relationship between Kant and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and the connection between Kant's anthropology and his aesthetics.9 Peggy Piesche also points out that Kant's racial anthropology prompts him to de facto remove whites from his racial hierarchies "and place them in a sort of neutrality"—a supposed neutrality that also marks the white protagonists of literary texts of the later eighteenth century but is still contested in its earlier decades.10 Susan Buck-Morss's Hegel, Haiti, and Universal history argues that in formulating his master-slave relation, Hegel was directly influenced by the Haitian Revolution.11 While...

Relational flexibility

ABSTRACTSince the 1990s, training programs for service‐sector jobs have proliferated in India. Frequently referred to as “skills training,” these programs aim to overcome the perceived cultural and professional “deficiencies” of youth from the poorest sections of society. They focus on “soft skills” and “personality development,” teaching body etiquette, time discipline, and emotional control; introducing students to “global” cuisine and commodities; and developing English‐language skills. How do the students in these programs make sense of attempts to train them in new dispositions? An ethnography of Indian skills training finds that capitalism's most marginal subjects creatively engage with its possibilities, in ways unaccounted for in arguments about the making of “neoliberal subjectivity.” For contexts like this—in which neoliberal processes may not necessarily produce neoliberal subjects—a more productive account is found in anthropological writings on split and partitioned selves as deliberate acts of self‐making. Among Indian skills trainees, this may be conceptualized as “relational flexibility.” [skilling, soft skills, personality development, youth, selfhood, neoliberalism, work, India]

Effects of the Doctrine of Discovery: A Strive to Build Sustainable and Peaceful Communities in North East India

The article analyzes the Doctrine of Discovery, which advocates racial superiority and colonization of indigenous lands. Indigenous people of North East India continually strive for sustainable and peaceful situation. A strong relational bond between the ethnic tribes and the environment is fundamental for self-determination, sustainability, and peace. Consequently, humans bond with land stirs a readiness to sacrifice their lives for their motherland juxtaposed in the precarious context of international boundaries and past colonial annexations. The colonial-influenced literature has molded their ethnic identity. This further leads to an upsurge of emic historical and anthropological perspective writings, framing their history, interaction with the environment, the rise of ethnic consciousness and identity politics. There is a continuous struggle to free themselves from the colonial enslavement of the Doctrine of Discovery that has ultimately encroached on their land and culture.

An Exploration of the Aberrant Perceptions Experienced by Westerners in the Peruvian Amazon Amid Shipibo Ayahuasca Practices

ABSTRACTAyahuasca has become a subject of great interest in recent years. Academics, spiritual seekers, communities, and curious individuals have all been intrigued by this topic through either writing about it or direct participation in the contemporary spiritual phenomenon that is ayahuasca, which holds promises of bestowing upon its users profound wisdom or healing. However, what anthropological (but also popular) writings barely comment on are the deviant perceptions that arise out of experiences seeking amelioration or transcendence, and the subjective ways in which those experiences are interpreted. Consequently, I wish to supplement this scope of representation. In this text, I present fieldwork conducted in the Peruvian Amazon amid the Shipibo, focusing on the experiences of the spiritual seekers who came to them in search of healing or self‐discovery. I discovered a unique contradiction—participation in Shipibo ayahuasca practices while simultaneously having or developing a negative perception or attitude towards it. These aberrances are held, as I argue herein, (incognizantly) in the expressed attitudes of the Westerners (especially North American and European) as a result of the positivist notions that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment (but are not limited to it). My priority in this article is to present and expound on these atypical associations and place them against a historical (Western) background to elucidate the origin of the thus found and experienced perceptions.

Die Idee des Schaminstinkts in Kants anthropologischen Schriften

Abstract This paper corrects a historical injustice that has been perpetrated against Kant for some time now. Mostly on good grounds, Kantian ethics have been accused of neglecting the role played by the emotions in moral deliberation and in morally informed action. However, the contemporary moral philosophers who have put forth such a claim tend to bypass textual sources, on the one hand, and to downplay the role played by the anthropological writings on Kant’s practical philosophy as a whole, on the other. Relying on highly relevant pre-critical texts in which Kant sketches future argumentative patterns and discusses the role of negative emotions like shame on the improvement of the human species, I address a mistaken conclusion about Kantian ethics as a whole that is common in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Finally, I raise some paradoxical conclusions that follow from Kant’s argument, once its implicit premises have been brought to light.

Liminoid media: On the enduring significance of USB portable flash drives

This article draws on the findings of in-depth interviews with consumers of portable storage devices in Melbourne, Australia, to explore the enduring significance of Universal Serial Bus (USB) portable flash drives. In the article, we develop the concept of ‘liminoid media’ as a way of coming to terms with continued use, and complications of use. Our understanding of this term is inspired by the seminal anthropological writings of Victor Turner ( pace Arnold van Gennep), more recent scholarship applying liminality to media studies and debates within media theory concerning the status of old and new media (where it has been argued, among other things, that media are always in transition rather than part of a strict old–new binary). Against this backdrop, we employ ‘liminoid media’ as a way of making critical sense of the ‘betwixt and between’ status of USB portable flash drives – their ongoing ‘suspendedness’ – and the complicated tensions that characterise participant use of these devices. For our participants, USBs are understood as fulfilling a compromise between emergent practices of cloud computing and more established forms of centralised data storage; they are understood as temporary data storage devices that are often used in semi-permanent ways to protect against data loss; they are seen as ephemeral devices that are rarely disposed of. USBs are also ‘ritualised’ insofar as they frequently become intimate, aestheticised everyday objects; yet, accompanying this ritualised ‘suspendedness’ are certain forms of risk and danger – of obsolescence, of data loss, of device failure, and so on. USBs, in short, occupy an essential if complicated position in people’s contemporary data storage practices. Examining USBs, and the practices of use that surround them, we argue, provides insight into current (and always ongoing) changes in the media environment, and demonstrates the extent to which liminoid media are contemporary in use.

Writing Anthropology

Writing is key in anthropology, as one of its main modes of communication. Teaching, research, publications, and outreach all build on, or consist of, writing. This entry traces how anthropological writing styles have evolved over time according to changing politics in the discipline. It starts out in the late nineteenth century, showing how early writings in the discipline aimed to be objective. While writing anthropology in a literary mode goes a long way back, it was not until the 1970s that writing began to be collectively acknowledged as a craft to be cultivated in the discipline. This led to a boom of experimental ethnographic writing from the 1980s, as part of the ‘writing culture’ debate. The idea behind experimental narratives was that they might convey social life more accurately than conventional academic writing. Today, literary production and culture continue to be a source of inspiration for anthropologists, as well as a topic of study. Anthropological writing ranges from creative nonfiction to memoirs, journalism, and travel writing. Writing in such non-academic genres can be a way to make anthropological approaches and findings more widely known, and can inspire academic writing to become more accessible. Recent developments in anthropological writings include collaborative text production with interlocutors and artists. However, the tendency for experimentation is also held in check, as publishing in academic publication formats and featuring in citation indices is crucial for anthropologists’ careers. Still, as our writing moves increasingly online, there is a growth of flexible formats for publishing, including online books, essays on current affairs, and conversations in journals.

Genres, Experiments, and Blog Posts Re‐Curated: Three Edited Volumes on Anthropological Writing

Anthropology and HumanismVolume 45, Issue 2 p. 379-385 Book Review Genres, Experiments, and Blog Posts Re-Curated: Three Edited Volumes on Anthropological Writing David Syring, Corresponding Author dsyring@d.umn.edu Department of Studies in Justice, Culture, and Social Change, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1123 Cina Hall, Duluth, MN, 55812Search for more papers by this author David Syring, Corresponding Author dsyring@d.umn.edu Department of Studies in Justice, Culture, and Social Change, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1123 Cina Hall, Duluth, MN, 55812Search for more papers by this author First published: 26 October 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/anhu.12281Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume45, Issue2Special Section: Unsettling Anthropologies of CareDecember 2020Pages 379-385 RelatedInformation

Is Vulnerability an Outdated Concept? After Subjects and Spaces

AbstractTheories of vulnerability have constituted the conceptual core of the anthropology of disaster for roughly 40 years. Yet, there is an undercurrent of disquiet among disaster scholars and community leaders who worry that vernacular uses of vulnerability can be insulting to individuals and communities with whom we work, and/or with whom we identify. There is a growing discomfort that categorizing the “vulnerable” acts to discursively nullify the everywhere‐visible “resilience,” toughness, and genius that exist in communities that are habitually exposed to risk and hazards. We argue that constructing vulnerability as a characteristic of subaltern peoples and marginalized places is truncated at best and can perpetuate violence—epistemic, semiotic, and material—at worst. To identify the “vulnerable” is, we contend, necessarily a process of otherizing and essentializing. We see and are concerned to further encourage an emergent form of disaster anthropology that is particularly oriented toward understanding and theorizing the institutions, systems, and individuals that structure risk, and in the process to focus attention away from “the vulnerable.” To our surprise, this has emerged in recent anthropological writings in very particular ways. We find the orientation away from vulnerable populations among our colleagues who write at the intersections of disaster institutions and local communities. Here, we recognize vulnerability conceived not merely as historical inequity that produces negative outcomes, but as nested and contested sites of struggle for different visions of utopian futures, for contrasting articulations of what constitutes risk, and for diverse cultural logics of the good.

Reviewing the Anthropological Study of Tharus in Nepal


 This paper aims to review the varieties of Tharu anthropological writings in Nepal. It is clear that the basic notion of reviewing any area study is to pave the way for further studies as it reveals the departure and gap from previous study. At this backdrop, the review on anthropological study of Tharu in Nepali socio-cultural context discusses how the writings dealing with the Tharus community seem helpful for opening the way to further studies in this area of ethnicity with multidisciplinary approaches, such as, cultural studies, linguistics, literature, demography, history, folklore, sociology, arts and crafts and ethnography. At the same time, it also enhances to comprehend varied subgroups of Tharus in Nepal, for instances, Dangaura, Rana, Kochila, Chitwaniya and Desaura. Moreover, the present research on Tharus is comparatively more focused on anthropological study rather than other disciplines, such as, folklore, ethno-music and literature, sociology, cultural studies, linguistics, ethno-history and demography. Regarding the Tharu anthropological research, this study is an attempt to portray the huge possibility of further ethnic studies, particularly on many subgroups of Tharus in Nepali territory.

Ethnography Beyond the Human: The ‘Other-than-Human’ in Ethnographic Work

ABSTRACT Recent calls for ‘other-than-human’ ethnographies draw attention to dimensions of life that have allegedly been overlooked or marginalised in anthropological writings. We take such critique as an opportunity to reconsider selected ethnographic accounts asking: What was the role of animals and plants in these accounts, and what ‘hidden stories’ may be discerned in texts and images? What might an informed and careful reading teach us about relations of ethnographic production beyond the human, and about the disciplinary conventions shaping how these relations could (or could not) be conveyed? Juxtaposing older ethnographic texts with state of the art ethnographic insight from the same region, we show that ethnographic attention to the ‘other-than-human’ is not new, but its mode of expression has been thwarted: Shifting theoretical concerns, and human exceptionalism, have shaped ethnographic writing and rendered such modes of knowing less significant than they might have been.

Dewey's Political Technology from an Anthropological Perspective

In this paper, I explore the possibility that John Dewey’s silence on the topic of what constitutes adequate political technology, or democratic means to achieve democratic ends, makes greater sense if we appreciate the notion of political technology from an anthropological perspective. Michael Eldridge relates the exchange between John Herman Randall, Jr., and Dewey in which Dewey concedes 'that I have done little or nothing in this direction [of outlining what constitutes adequate political technology, but that] does not detract from my recognition that in the concrete the invention of such a technology is the heart of the problem of intelligent action in political matters.' Dewey’s concession could be interpreted as an admission that he was working above his pay grade when asked to identify political machinery or institutions suitable for his vision of democracy as a way of life. Not being able to specify adequate means to achieve lofty democratic ends is not so problematic, however, if we appreciate the roots of Dewey’s work (especially Human Nature and Conduct) in the anthropological writings of Immanuel Kant and Franz Boas. For then experience reflects a myriad of social and cultural conditions and specifying explicit means to structure that experience risks stymieing the organic development of political practice. In short, Dewey did not want his ambitious democratic vision to outstrip the possibilities of practice, so he left the task of specifying exact political technology (or making it concrete) open.

Conservationland: Toward the anthropology of professionals in global nature conservation

When reading anthropological writings on global nature conservation, one may wonder: Where are the conservationists? Anthropologists have written nuanced ethnographies of how native people encounte...

A Discursive Analysis of a Century of Anthropological Writings on Missionary Ethnographers

This article examines discussions of missionaries penned by anthropologists and existing in disciplinary consciousness. Questions of alterity, distance and sameness, the potentially exploitative effects of ethnography, and the uncomfortable colonialist underpinnings of both missionary and anthropological pasts come to the fore in these texts. Drawing on a wealth of journal articles, ethnographic monographs, and edited volumes, I identify, describe, and analyze six predominant discourses on missionaries, including anthropological depictions of missionaries as foils (Discourse One), as intermediaries (Discourse Two), and as present in good or bad manifestations (Discourse Three). Other threads constitute missionaries as data (Discourse Four), conceive of them as methodological ancestors and ethnographic colleagues (Discourse Five), or identify them reflexively as both anthropologists and Christians (Discourse Six). I suggest that missionaries serve as an archetypical foil against which the anthropological discipline emerges. Missionary ethnographers are for anthropologists a necessarily uncanny, repressed, productive other.

Kant's Philosophy of Communication

Kant's Philosophy of Communication

Stuck in the Clinic: Vernacular Healing and Medical Anthropology in Contemporary sub‐Saharan Africa

While vernacular therapeutics had long been a topic of interest to many writing about medicine and healing in Africa, with a few exceptions most recent anthropological writings on medicine in Africa are focused on biomedicine. In this article, I trace this shift back to the turn of the millennium and the convergence of three events: the emergence of global health, the accession of the occult economies paradigm, and critiques of culturalism in medical anthropology. I argue that these three shifts led to research projects and priorities that looked different from those defined and undertaken as late as the late 1990s. While seeking to avoid the errors that could come with writing about vernacular therapeutic traditions in Africa as bounded comprehensive systems, I argue that there are empirical, political, and practical reasons why medical anthropologists may want to reconsider our collective research priorities.

Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric

Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric

Reflexões sobre a profissão de modelo: a categoria do exótico na moda e na Antropologia

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar como a categoria do exótico é abordada no campo da moda e nos escritos antropológicos. Inicialmente, procurou-se tratar de questões relativas à profissão de modelo, a construção histórico-social da supervalorização e da padronização corporal e, posteriormente, analisar como o exótico apareceu nesse contexto. A questão racial surgiu atrelada ao termo em evidência nos exemplos dos jovens modelos africanos presentes no campo. Assim, tal conceito nos auxilia a refletir sobre importantes relações de poder existentes nesse universo subscritas por meio da linguagem. Os dados baseiam-se em uma pesquisa etnográfica realizada durante 2012 e 2013 em uma agência de modelos na cidade de Fortaleza (CE).