Anthropological Inquiry Research Articles

AI (anthropological inquiry) on AI (artificial intelligence)

AI (anthropological inquiry) on AI (artificial intelligence)

Introduction | Will Work: New Anthropological Perspectives on Human Volition

ABSTRACT This special issue aims to deepen and diversify anthropological explorations of human volition. While volition is a central theme in philosophy and theology, its anthropological dimensions are less explored. This edited collection seeks to reposition human volition as a pivotal element of anthropological inquiry. The investigation extends into the realms of ethics/morality, freedom, and experience, opening new avenues for research. Comprising four anthropological studies, we explore volition across varied ethnographic settings, providing a rich backdrop for examining how volition is differently conceptualised, exercised, and contested. This issue introduces a conceptual framework, which offers a new lens to understand the heterogeneity and dynamics of volition, emphasising the balance between personal interiorities and sociocultural exteriorities, and between universalist humanism and cultural relativism. By offering fresh insights into human volition, we contribute to ongoing dialogues in anthropology about human agency and the complex interplay of cultural and social influences on willing.

Raised under bad stars: negotiating a culture of disaster preparedness

PurposeThe ways communities have regarded disasters and natural hazards in the cultural sphere can provide a lens to inform the understanding of their ability to withstand shocks and the factors that led to such conditions. Only by tracing the complexities of creating, transmitting and preserving a culture of preparedness among disaster-vulnerable communities can researchers and practitioners claim to be working toward policy that is informed by the communities’ own experience and design policy or programming on their behalf.Design/methodology/approachIn efforts to prevent, respond to and recover from disasters, what alternatives are available to top-down strategies for imposing expert knowledge on lay publics? How is the context of communities’ socioecological context understood in the development of programs and policy on their behalf? What can be learned from community narratives and cultural practices to inform disaster risk reduction?FindingsI collected examples of how different communities perceive, prevent and respond to disaster through art, music and literature and analyzed how these were embedded into local narratives and how historical context influenced such approaches. My findings show that communities use cultural practices to contextualize experiences of hazards into their collective narrative; that is, storytelling and commemoration make disasters comprehensible. By incorporating such findings into existing policies and programs, institutions may be able to more effectively apply them to affected communities or build new ones around their actual needs and experiences.Originality/valueBy framing disasters as an anthropological inquiry, practitioners can better recognize the influence of a place’s nuance in the disaster management canon–guided by these details, not despite them.

Can anthropologists get humor? A collaborative experiment on empathetic knowing at a time of predicaments

AbstractAs a pandemic‐era collaborative writing project undertaken amid rising geopolitical tensions, this article demonstrates understanding humor in contemporary China as an ethnographic project leading toward deep, empathetic knowledge at a time when in‐person fieldwork became difficult. Through deciphering and translating layered meanings “encrypted” in and intentions signaled by humor in a new comedy program launched in 2021, we dive deep into the lively social life in contemporary China. Humor, via “thick description,” offers valuable insights into life in “fieldsites” that were hard to access during the pandemic time, amid political tensions. It provides a unique lens to examine the unspoken but shared sentiments in societies where humor has become a fundamental mode of public expression. It alerts us to existential anxieties in social life, the subtle voices of social critique, and the yearning for empathy. Humor is not only a valuable object for anthropological inquiry but also a vantage point to reflect on ethnographic methodology and epistemology. We examine humor, with its sentimental and ethical potentialities, and through spontaneous collaboration of mutual support, envision new possibilities in anthropological knowledge production.

Tasting the Soil and Mobilizing the Future: Pedagogies of Hope in Timor-Leste’s Permaculture Youth Camps

This article localizes the traveling concept of permaculture in Timor-Leste as a pathway into studying the juventude permakultura (permaculture youth) movement, its pedagogies of hope, sensory learning, and emotional mobilization. Focusing on permaculture-based community gardening and water conservation projects in Timor-Leste in relation to projects implemented by the nation’s significant government-NGO nexus opens up anthropological inquiries into various social, political, and ecological phenomena. It contrasts divergent imaginaries of shaping young persons’ selves and futures and taps into issues of food security, environmental awareness, and alternative knowledge construction. Although ongoing research localizes the traveling concept of “permaculture” in Timor-Leste through tracing, exploring, and juxtaposing methodologies, this article focuses on the practice-oriented sensorial pedagogy of permaculture youth camps. It inquires how the eco-social youth movement contests the marginalization of vulnerable communities by acknowledging local knowledge and connecting it with translocal permaculture techniques. More precisely, the article focuses on the sensory and affective dimensions of learning in vulnerable communities and disaster-prone landscapes. It zeroes in on tasting the soil and mobilizing the future as pedagogies of hope and considers these powerful ways of securing (future) livelihood.

Introduction to ethics in ethnography: The practical politics of predictability

This introduction to the ‘Ethics in ethnography’ special issue analyzes a crisis facing anthropology and especially ethnography, its primary research method. It highlights how an outdated and parochial ethics model, strengthened by fears of litigation and simplistic views of ethnographic research, threatens the spontaneity and investigative freedom necessary to the method's exploratory character. Contributors to the discussion explore the spectrum of strategies – from compromise to confrontation – for addressing the challenges posed by the bureaucratic oversight of ethics, unrealistic expectations of predictability in fieldwork, the impact of legitimate post‐colonial critique and funding constraints on research freedom. They variously address the arbitrariness of bureaucratic procedures and the potential stifling of anthropological enquiry under the guise of ethical oversight. Drawing on the range of experience in anthropology and related fields represented here, the introduction opens the collection with a call to maintain ethical sensitivity while challenging attempts to police fieldwork using inappropriate conceptions of science and ethics.

The Role of the French Language in facilitating Trade: A Case Study of Maje Border Town Markets

This study explores the role that the French language plays in promoting trade in Maje's marketplaces, a well-known border town. Maje, which is located where cultural and economic exchanges converge, provides an intriguing backdrop for examining the complex relationships that exist between language, trade, and cross-border connections. The research explores the particular ways in which the French language influences business operations, communication patterns, and market dynamics in Maje through the use of a case study technique enhanced by anthropological inquiry. The study looks at how common French is among dealers, clients, and other stakeholders as a lingua franca through observations, interviews, and linguistic studies. The study looks into the various ways that the French language is used in the marketplace to facilitate cross-cultural interactions, negotiate agreements, and mediate transactions. It examines the linguistic tactics used by market players, such as code-switching, language accommodation, and cultural adaptation, to take capitalize on French proficiency for business benefit. The study also assesses the effects of fluency in French on competitive advantage, market segmentation, and market integration. It takes into account how linguistic asymmetries and impediments may affect a variety of stakeholders' access to markets, ability to establish trust, and economic prospects. Our understanding of the socio-economic dynamics driving cross-border commerce is enhanced by this study's illumination of the complex interactions between language and trade in border town markets. In border regions where the French language is significant, the findings offer insightful information to policymakers, market participants, and language planners who aim to encourage inclusive economic development and cross-cultural understanding. Keywords: French language, Trade promotion, Linguistic tactics, Market dynamics, Cross-cultural interactions, Competitive advantage

Pamana uso pa ba?: Acculturation and the peril of Assimilation to the Surat Mangyan and Ambahan of the Hanunuo-Mangyan of Sitio Calibang, Tanawan and Sinugbuan, Brgy, Panaytayan, Mansalay Oriental Mindoro

It is a grand narrative that culture yields identity, but what if the acculturation of a particular indigenous group fails to be balanced? Would it be at the edge of cultural assimilation? This account ends to determine the status quo of the Surat Mangyan and Ambahan of the Hanunuo-Mangyan of Sito Calibang, Tanawan, and Sinugbuan, Brgy. Panaytayan, Masalay Oriental Mindoro. Through an Anthropological inquiry, this paper determined the relevance of Surat Mangyan and Ambahan in conducting their rites and in day-to-day parlance among their small-scale community. It even went further to gauge the knowledge of Hanunuo-Mangyan [of the mentioned Sitios] regarding the nature and significance of Surat Mangyan in their cultural identity. As a kind of Anthropological qualitative research, this paper also discussed some characteristics of culture appropriate to explicate the existing condition of Surat Mangyan and Ambahan. Thus, the nature of this piece is both narrative and expository. By analyzing and interpreting, this paper concluded that while the Hanunuo-Mangyan [of the said Sitios] manage to entertain the culture of Tagalog/English language within their culture viz. language (acculturation), there is a possible threat of assimilation of Ambahan and Surat Mangyan since most of the interviewed Hanunuo-Mangyan asserted that Ambahan and Surat Mangy them have inadequate knowledge of on how to conduct such cultural practices among themselves. Yet, they are fully aware of the significance of Ambahan and Surat Mangyan as cultural treasures.

Introduction to the Special Issue: New Anthropological Perspectives on Children and Youth on the Move

This special issue of Anthropology in Action focuses on the intersection of two equally important, and yet unequally researched, areas of anthropological inquiry: migration and childhood. In recent years, the mediatic attention to migration has led to an increased visibility of children and youth moving through transnational contexts, often with limited access to social and economic resources. Undoubtedly, the transnational movement of young people is far from a recent phenomenon. On the contrary, historically these individuals had more chances to successfully travel long distances in search of a more fulfilled life than their older counterparts. Migration – a movement of people, associated with hopes and prospects for a better life, but also driven by fears of violence and poverty – has always had a young face.

Silent witnesses: the disputed landscapes of Belgium’s black country

ABSTRACT Through historical and anthropological inquiry, this paper addresses the issue of memory antagonisms involving cultural landscapes in the context of a former mining region: the Belgian Black Country. This region, which became increasingly industrialized in the 19th century through the massive development of coal mining and steel industry, subsequently experienced deindustrialization, and now finds itself mobilized in a process of ‘post-industrial’ mutation. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, it examines how the landscapes inherited from industry, and in particular the slag heaps of the coalfield, have over time become repositories of a working-class memory, through the living and working practices of the communities surrounding the mines. It also documents the various representations attached to these landscape objects, whose contradictions echo the oppositions between capital and labor that have marked the development of industrial capitalism. The second part of the paper, which focuses on the present situation, examines how these representations are remobilized in the valorization processes that are initiated by different actors, in the context of a ‘post-industrial’ urban transition strategy that seeks to produce a unified and pacified historical narrative. We’ll be looking at how historical conflicts still permeate the representations of these landscapes, the question of their conservation, and their possible future.

Extra/ordinary medicine: Toward an anthropology of primary care

Primary care is at the forefront of healthcare delivery. It is the site of disease prevention and health management and serves as the bridge between communities and the health care system As ethnographers of primary care, in this article we discuss what is gained by situating anthropological inquiry within primary care. We articulate how anthropologists can contribute to a better understanding of the issues that emerge in primary care. We provide a review of anthropological work in primary care and offer empirical data from two ethnographic case studies based in the United States, one focused on social risk screening in primary care and the other examining the diagnosis and care of people with dementia in primary care. Through these cases, we demonstrate how research of and within primary care can open important avenues for the study of the multidimensionality of primary care. This multidimensionality is apparent in the ways the medical field addresses the social and structural experiences of patients, scope of practice and disciplinary boundaries, and the intersection of ordinary and extraordinary medicine that emerge in the care of patients in primary care.

Dancing your Aliyah passage: An Anthropological Inquiry into the Acclimatisation and Integration of Turkish Jewish Immigrants in Israel

ABSTRACT Anthropologists and sociologists explore dance as a political and cultural performance to express beliefs, ideologies and social ideas. This article examines the impact of Israeli folk dance on the socialisation and integration, of Jewish newcomers (Olim) from Turkey into contemporary Israeli society. Based on in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and spontaneous conversations, as well as auto-ethnographic writings, the article clarifies how, by dancing Israeli folk dance, and particularly through participation in the Israeli folk dance troupe, Olim manage diverse social interactions and cultural negotiations within Israeli society, construct their national identity and shed light on tensions and changes regarding homeland, immigration, and Jewish peoplehood. It argues that Israeli folk dance is an important channel in their process of Israelization. On the one hand, it connects them to Israeli culture and strengthens their Jewish pride; on the other, it clarifies the distinction between life in the diaspora and life in an ethno-national space, expressing otherness while encouraging them to bring their own traditions to an Israeli stage.

Editorial Introduction: Poetics of Self-construal in Postcolonial Literature

How man is made and how he makes himself was at the crux of the anthropological inquiry launched by Immanuel Kant in his 1798 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. The subsequent story of the discipline, progressively aided by others, both from the field of humanities (philosophy, sociology, psychology, ethnography) and of sciences (biology, physics, physiology, psychiatry), followed one or the other paths opened by the Königsberg philosopher. The self grounded in physiology is considered by Kant egoistic, self-centred and motivated by irrational drives: involuntary perception, subconscious associations, arbitrary taste or unaccountable desires. On the contrary, the pragmatic self is historically and culturally generated in an individual who has a motivation and a purpose in his effort to civilize himself, living in the spirit of law and morality. As values transcend the empirical self and are shared in common with peers, these constitutive states and activities of the psyche point to the existence of a common human nature which, however, changes across time and space.

Re-Centering Race in Emancipatory Entrepreneurship: Black Female Tech Founders, Money, and Meaning in a Detroit-Based Incubator Program

This study is an anthropological inquiry into the perceptions and attitudes of Black female tech entrepreneurs towards capitalism in the context of an incubator program in Detroit, USA. Drawing upon ethnographic data from the STEM Entrepreneurial Excellence Program (STEEP), the study reveals the intricate relationships that Black female founders maintain with money and capitalism. These complexities manifest in moral quandaries related to fundraising and distrust in outsourcing financial management, emanating from a long-standing scepticism towards capitalism and intertwined with historical traumas. The research emphasizes the significance of comprehending minority entrepreneurs’ historical inequalities and lived experiences with capitalism to discern their diverse attitudes and performances in entrepreneurship – an aspect frequently neglected in entrepreneurship scholarship. By examining the intersection of race, gender, and entrepreneurship, the essay contributes valuable insights into the nuanced dynamics shaping entrepreneurial experiences of Black women in the technology sector.

Business Anthropology and Education: Approaches, Methodologies, and Implications

The contribution of anthropological contents and methods in different aspects of the study of education is significant. The business functions of education in terms of leadership and management of humans, materials and financial resources for optimal outcomes mandates anthropological insights and underpinnings in educational systems. The early works of Hewett, Boas and Montessori paved the way for the application of anthropological contents and methods to the study and practices of educative processes and systems for better understanding and improvement of learning. Anthropological concepts and principles are integral to the domains of foundations of education, curriculum development, culture studies, classroom interactions, multicultural education, business education, policy implementations, educational research and educational administration. In this study, efforts have been made to show the contributions of both anthropologists and educators in the rise of a new field of anthropology of education since the early decades of the twentieth century. The study, thus, examines the confluence of business anthropology and education resulting in the field of anthropology of education. It highlights the historical development of the convergence of anthropology and education, implications of anthropological concepts, contents and methods in educational studies, and the anthropological approaches in the areas of educational research. Ethnographic methods such as grounded theory, documentary content analysis, and action research have greatly contributed to the knowledge of complex educational issues and challenges. They are integral to the study of educational issues through the techniques of purposive sampling, interview, observation, constant comparison, triangulations, key incident, narration, interpretive stance, and other tools of data gathering, interpretation and analysis. The present study emphasises on the significance of anthropological methods in the study of life in classrooms in term of interactions, and the impacts of the classroom environment on learning as school settings and classroom life provide the requisite environment for anthropological inquiries. It also addresses the current practices in the applications of anthropology of education in the areas of teacher education, curriculum development, multicultural education and educational research.

Afterword

The articles in this special issue of Social Anthropology reposition volatility as a critical concern for anthropological enquiry. At a time of global uncertainty – marked by environmental, economic, geopolitical and humanitarian crises – it seems that everyday life is more volatile than ever. But what does describing it so actually mean? Volatility is commonly understood to be a characteristic of, or a tendency for, things to change quickly and abruptly. It is often a way to describe a person's behaviour or even their character – to account for someone's rapid and perhaps surprising switch to anger and rage, for example. Some may, though, more usually think of volatility as an explanatory term that economists, business strategists and risk managers employ to describe, understand and forecast fluctuations in financial markets, trading and commodity price shocks, or when analysing the boom-and-bust nature of oil production and energy-dependent economies (e.g. Andersen and Bollerslev 2018; Campello and Zucco 2021; Sinclair 2013). Sociologists and political scientists also think of volatility as a useful hermeneutic for analysing the fragility and precarity of societies and political systems, as the editors and contributors of a recent book do when considering the future of democracies in Asia (Hsiao and Yang 2022). Ecologists talk of volatile ecosystems (e.g. Exton et al 2014), the nature of which become more urgent to understand in a rapidly changing world, and although the idea of abrupt change in climate systems and ecosystems is not new, the vast and ever-growing body of scientific literature about it now drips with references to thresholds and tipping points, to uncertainty, unpredictability, and to the transgression of planetary boundaries (e.g. Lenton 2013; Bonan and Doney 2018; Steffen et al 2018).

Folklore, Storytelling and Coping with the Internet on TikTok

Social media platforms such as TikTok are often regarded as constituting a fundamental shift in everyday modes of sociality; their immense scope, mysterious algorithms and darker subsections seem to pose a threat to ‘traditional’ forms of social communication. In downloading TikTok during an undergraduate degree in anthropology, however, and furthermore in conducting that degree during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have in fact found some of the most essential components of ‘traditional’ sociality, and thus the traditional subjects of anthropological inquiry (specifically folklore and storytelling), to have emerged in my interactions on the app. As I have studied anthropology during a global pandemic, so too have I learnt the varied social rules and collective norms of TikTok, which provided many with a sense of sociality which was lost during lockdowns, and in my involvement with the TikTok Ethnography Collective at Goldsmiths I have found new possibilities of conducting ethnographic fieldwork at a time when it seemed impossible. In this article, I draw on my experience of using TikTok whilst conducting my degree in order to highlight the richness of sociality which is present on the app and the ethnographic possibilities which it holds.

An ontological struggle: Islamic political theology and the criminalization of same‐sex sexuality in Indonesia

AbstractThis paper examines legal efforts to criminalize same‐sex sexualities between consenting adults by conservative Muslim movements in Indonesia, epitomized by the Constitutional Court of Indonesia's 2016 Judicial Review on the Indonesian Penal Code, continuous resistance to the Sexual Violence Law, and the current Indonesian Penal Code. Based on my ethnography of the Judicial Review's court transcript and other legal archives, I argue that the conservative Muslim movements’ legal effort to criminalize sexuality in Indonesia is an exercise of Islamic political theology revolving around a certain ontology of personhood concerning the relationships between “the human” and God, the state, and the nation. This ontology is apparent in their assertion about the intrinsic difference between sexual violence (“kekerasan seksual”) vs. sexual crime (“kejahatan seksual”). This paper aims to: (1) demonstrate that anthropological inquiries of ontologies can further develop the conceptual framework of political theology, especially in elucidating how ontological imposition of “the human” and its personhood plays a pivotal part in conservative movements’ repertoires in criminalizing sexuality; and (2) make use of Southeast Asian studies’ scholarships and cases to speak back to the broader discussion on the fissures in/of secular imaginaries and secularization processes.

Visual Biopolitics of Multiple Insecurities: Anthropological Inquiries in Eastern Europe

Visual Biopolitics of Multiple Insecurities: Anthropological Inquiries in Eastern Europe

Anthropology in Australian Indigenous Legal Cases: What I've Learned from the Law and What Lawyers Have Learned from Me

ABSTRACT Reflecting on several decades of my applied research, expert witness roles and a forensic methodology, this article addresses the application of anthropological studies in Australian legal cases concerned with various aspects of Indigenous customary law. In the context of traditional land claims, cultural heritage assessments and native title, both the achievements and challenges for anthropological inquiries are canvassed. Against arguments from some academics that applied work is intellectually inferior and politically compromised, the article reports my experiences in an arena of complex and enriching social science inquiry. The article engages with Indigenous land aspirations in a settler society while considering the implications of cultural change and adaptation, strategies of recuperation of customary knowledge, and the robustness required for successful anthropological studies of this kind.