Anthropological Literature Research Articles

Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa by Noah Tamarkin

Reviewed by: Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa by Noah Tamarkin Kimberly A. Arkin Noah Tamarkin, Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 280 pp. Noah Tamarkin's Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa is a fascinating exploration of why and how the Lemba of South Africa became interested in and engaged with genetic studies of Jewishness. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lemba leaders—most particularly the entrepreneurial, unrecognized traditional Lemba leader Kgoshi Mpaketsane and members of the Lemba Cultural Association (LCA)—eagerly agreed to and facilitated testing of male elders. They also celebrated the results of these studies, which documented high incidences of the so-called "Cohen Modal Haplotype" on the Y chromosomes of Lemba test subjects. The high frequency of this haplotype, which got its name from its relative frequency in the genomes of men who claim descent from Cohanim, or the Jewish priestly class, offered a particularly useful kind of "proof" for many Lemba of what they had always already known: they were black Jews. Unlike much of the flourishing anthropological literature on DNA science, Tamarkin is not interested in what happens in genetics labs or in the ways that scientists involved in this kind of research (sometimes inadvertently) naturalize certain kinds of social categories. Instead, he traces out what he calls "genetic afterlives," by which he means the production and circulation of genetic knowledge that happens outside of laboratories and peer-reviewed journals. In particular, he asks how subjects of genetic research make sense of and produce their own stories with genetic research. He writes: [End Page 187] My contention is that there are multiple worlds in play in this kind of genetic research that are not necessarily shared among all actors, and if we focus on the knowledge politics of scientists exclusively, it is at the expense of other, less powerful actors who ultimately must continue to live with genetic ancestry's implications in ways that geneticists are not subjected to (25). And indeed, without attending to these "afterlives," the Lemba's voluntary participation in Jewish genetic research might look like support for the racializing logics behind long-standing European interest in Lemba as Jews. For late 19th and early 20th century colonial researchers who conflated race, place, and culture, Lemba Jewishness solved a particular kind of categorical problem: the existence of a Bantu population with "non-Bantu" cultural practices, including a refusal to eat pork, the practice of endogamy, and a commitment to early circumcision. Jewishness solved this problem by giving the Lemba "extra-African" origins. For late 20th and early 21st century scientists interested in "Jewish DNA," genetic ancestry testing has been a way to document not only the relatedness of (predominantly white) Jewish populations all over the globe, but also the difference between Jews and other "Semitic" populations, most notably Palestinians. Much like its antecedent in the colonial period, this project also seeks to solve a particular kind of problem by offering genetic "proof" of Jewish indigeneity in Israel, exile from Israel, and persistent, distinctive peoplehood in diaspora. But Mpaketsane and other members of the LCA firmly rejected the foundational premises of both of these projects. For many Lemba, genetic Jewishness is not a sign of non-Africanness. Instead, Tamarkin's interlocutors insisted in a whole range of ways that all Jews were originally African and that therefore they were the original Jews. As a result, many Lemba argued against the idea that they were a "lost" tribe with residual Jewish practices. They were also not a victimized population in need of being "rescued" and "returned" to an Israeli homeland. Nor did they need to stop being Christian in order to be Jewish. Furthermore, Lemba cultural leaders insisted that they had always known they were Jewish and had not needed a test to provide this information. So why, exactly, were they eager participants in this research? Tamarkin shows why through a masterful ethnographic exploration of the way scale and context matter in the production of genetic meaning. His first chapter attends to the apartheid history of Lemba engagement [End Page 188] with questions of Jewishness and ancestry. The second chapter...

Perception of COVID-19 in Bangladesh: Interplays of Class and Capital

This article delineates the lay perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. More specifically, it discusses how people interpret the origin and transmission of COVID-19. Like the other countries of the world, this virus appeared as a new phenomenon in Bangladesh and is now known as coronarog. The transmission of this virus added new terms such as lockdown, quarantine, isolation, et cetera, to the popular discourse and produced a new experience. The high rates of infection and death caused by the virus have percolated fear and anxiety among people. Excessive fear about the disease has led to the stigmatisation of the disease and the infected. Drawing on observation, media reports and qualitative interviews, this article argues that laypeople use either a personalistic or a naturalistic explanation to make sense of the disease. Their explanations are associated with their access to different types of capital. This article contributes to medical anthropology literature on health and illness by explaining the cultural model of illness classification related to COVID-19.

Antropología y cambio climático: recorridos, temáticas y propuestas

El cambio climático se ha convertido en una de las principales problemáticas a la que nos enfrentamos hoy y el eje sobre el que giran nuevas políticas, valores, intereses, horizontes y ansiedades. Aunque los estudios antropológicos del cambio climático se encuentran aún en ciernes, están generando una serie de replanteamientos y abriendo un conjunto de líneas de estudio que no solo nos permiten un conocimiento más complejo, situado y simétrico sobre este fenómeno, sino que además sitúan a la antropología en una posición privilegiada de cara a participar en estudios multidisciplinares. Urge por lo tanto realizar una revisión de estos trabajos a nivel internacional, con el objetivo de detallar los principales aportes y líneas de investigación desarrolladas, los interrogantes y respuestas planteadas y el diálogo establecido con otros campos de estudio. Comenzamos con un recorrido por los orígenes y las distintas fases y campos por las que se han extendido los trabajos antropológicos sobre el cambio climático, con especial atención a la literatura hispana y lusófona. Seguimos con sus principales reivindicaciones y planteamientos y los ejes temáticos más consolidados, así como los emergentes. Terminamos con una serie de reflexiones sobre los nuevos escenarios que trae consigo el cambio climático, sus implicaciones para los fundamentos epistemológicos de la antropología y algunas propuestas sobre posibles direcciones que tomar en el futuro.

Experimentality, Surplus Data and the Politics of Debilitation in Borderzones

ABSTRACT The use of digital devices and the collection of digital data have become pervasive in borderzones. Whether deployed by state or non-state actors, digital devices are rolled out despite intense criticism and controversy. In this article, I propose to approach these interventions through the prism of experimentality. Experimentality was initially formulated in the anthropological literature on the globalisation of clinical trials and, more recently, revisited in feminist science and technology studies. Drawing on this work, I argue that experimentality has become a rationality of governing in borderzones, which renders social relations continuously decomposable and recomposable by inserting mundane (digital) devices into the world. The introduction of various digital devices in Greece since 2015, starting with Skype for the pre-registration of asylum seekers, helps shed light on a particular form of governing through experiments without protocol. This form of experimentality has specific political effects for migrants’ lives. Firstly, experimentality builds upon and intensifies neoliberalism by rearranging rather than redressing precarity. In so doing, experimentality through digital devices produces debilitation rather than better connectivity or access to asylum. Secondly, migrants become not only subjects of surveillance, but subjects of extraction of ‘surplus data’ which entangles their lives into the circuits of digital platforms.

How do new nations arise? The case of the Kashubians

The main aim of the article is to describe and interpret the national aspirations of the part of Kashubian leaders. The discussions concerning the ethnic character of the community have been taking place for the last three decades. Different voices could be heard, among which there is one claiming that the Kashubs are a separate nation. In my paper, I focus on three issues. First of all, I analyze how a nation is conceptualized by them, generally. Secondly, I show how they are talking about their group of belonging, what vision of their own nation they share, how they define criteria for membership and how they construct symbolic boundaries. Thirdly, I concentrate on the process which can be named as the mechanics of construction of a nation. This concept well described in sociological and anthropological literature (i.a. A.D. Smith, R. Brubaker, C. Calhoun, T.H.Eriksen. E. Gellner, B. Anderson), still evokes some questions, especially if it is applied to rather new phenomena, as the Kashubian case. At the end, I will deliberate whether the concept of nationalism or the concept of identity politics better explains current ethnic/national processes, especially in the discussed group. The analysis of this case enable not only to show the example of national process taking place in this part of Europe, but also to formulate some general conclusions concerning ethnicity nowadays. An empirical material which will be the base of this paper comes from my field work which I have been conducting since 2008.

The Pentecostal Antirevolution: Reflections from Angola

Abstract This article discusses the so-called ‘revolutionary’ character of Evangelical and Pentecostal movements, as has been proposed in mainstream sociological and anthropological literature. Through a historical and ethnographic account of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in Angola, we suggest that in this country Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism is defined by exclusionary tactics that render most churches compliant with the current political regime, and they in fact act as reactionary, conservative forces in contexts of social and political disruption. This in turn exposes a divergence in terms of political rhetoric and praxis among Evangelical and Pentecostal movements.

Translation of “The Black Woman: A Portrait”

AbstractThis essay introduces the translation of the text “The Black Woman: A Portrait” by Afro‐Brazilian feminist anthropologist Lélia Gonzalez. She is one of the most celebrated black feminist activist‐scholars in Brazil, and was one of the first black women to receive a Ph.D. in anthropology. In her short life, she traveled extensively around the Americas giving lectures on the plight and resistance of black Brazilians, and was one of the most prolific writers. She has been compared to Angela Davis, and would add Claudia Jones, because of her black left feminist ideas. “The Black Woman: A Portrait” is one of the first essays she published over four decades ago in 1979. The essay focuses on the life of a black woman in Rio de Janeiro, highlights essential elements of Brazilian gendered racialized history, some of which have been well‐documented in the anthropological literature on Brazil written in English. This translation project represents an example of the radical citational practices that the Cite Black Women project proposes.

Katapulta, czyli przygody polonistyki niezdyscyplinowanej

This article is about the possibilities of transdisciplinary research and was written from the perspective of the specialist in Polish philology. The paper also refers to proposals presented at the 12th Convention of Specialists in Polish Studies [Zjazd Polonistów] (2011) and the volume Nowa humanistyka (New Humanities) (2017). These texts postulated transforming the specific “identity” of Polish philology into cultural studies or anthropology of literature and an attempt to “build bridges” with other specializations so far falling within the paradigm of interdisciplinarity. The author proposes a better way to cross the traditional divisions between the humanities and sciences and presents the term “transdisciplinarity”, which is somehow connected to the metaphor of “jumping over the wall”. Consequently, he proposes the figure of the catapult, which is used in poetics, is derived from the military machine, and is now understood as a rescue launcher. Thinking in terms of catapult assume a ferocity and the risk of entering foreign territory, the need to enter into a direct, concrete and difficult relationship with another world (of matter, laws, methods and problems).

Lexical Semantics: Mapping Gender and Cultural Geography in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Speculative Fiction

This article attempts to contextualize how the idea of geography plays a significant role in speculative fiction. The resultant contention is that the gender dynamics of space and place, regarded in the setting of literary anthropology, can be studied through a close examination of lexical and semantic patterns. Stemming from this line of enquiry, the article revisits Ursula K. Le Guin’s novelette “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” and discusses the striking co-relations that emerge when reading into the underlying intersections of gender geography and cultural geography.

Karakorum, the first capital of the Mongol world empire: an imperial city in a non-urban society

Cities within a steppe environment and in societies based on pastoral nomadism are an often overlooked theme in the anthropological literature. Yet, with Karakorum, the first capital of the Mongol Empire (AD 1206–1368), we have a supreme example of such a city in the central landscape of the Orkhon valley in Mongolia. In this paper, we ask, what is the city in the steppes? Taking Karakorum as our starting point and case of reference and to attain a better comprehension of the characteristics of urbanism in the steppe, we apply a list of urban attributes compiled by Michael E. Smith (2016) to provide a thick description of Karakorum. The discussion not only comprises comparisons to other contemporary sites in Russia and Mongolia, but also addresses in detail the question of city–hinterland relations as a fundamental necessity for the survival of the city in an anti-urban environment. The analysis shows that during the Mongol period we can identify urbanism but no urbanization: there is no process of independent, natural growth of cities carried out by the population, but cities are “political” in the sense that they are deeply intertwined with the authority and have therefore much to tell about the relation between power and authority on the one hand and the ruled on the other.

How Marcel Proust Can Change Your Life—For Better or for Worse

Abstract This article turns around the role that Proust’s novel played—for better or worse—in my formation as a medievalist and as a full human being. In the curé’s obsession with genealogy and etymology, I recognized in the 1970s a deep medieval mental structure that coincided with contemporaneous work by historians of the Annales School on lineage and by structuralists on the linguistic patterns underpinning kinship. This led to a book, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages. But other strong strains of the Proustian sentimental orbit, doomed love, aligned chronologically and conceptually with the articulation in the 1890s of courtly love and made for dire consequences in a life lived along those lines. My wife, Ellen Handler Spitz, provides an emotionally corrective experience via the question, Was Swann in Love? Using the psychoanalytic concept of the partial object, she shows how limited Proust’s notion of love really is. We end on a note of wild admiration for Proust’s description of what it feels like to be in what he calls “love” but with a dose of skepticism with regard to his framing of the project of love itself.

Examining sources of land tenure (in)security. A focus on authority relations, state politics, social dynamics and belonging

This article reviews the current state of literature on the notion of security of tenure of land. This examination is topical as tenure security has become a key objective for land policies and development interventions. While tenure security is widely defined by people’s perceptions, land policies tend to address it through the registration and administration of land rights. The article argues that these practices ignore the complexity of the sources of tenure (in)security. Building on critical development literature of political ecology, social anthropology and political science, these sources are identified as stemming from the politics of land and linked to authority relations, state politics, social dynamics and belonging. The article concludes that their consideration enables us to contextualise perceptions of tenure security and to conceive practices for securing tenure.

Roma Women between Romni Status and Sexual Democracy: An Essay in Feminist Anthropology

The article draws on more than fifteen years of ethnographic experience among Romanian Roma in different local and national contexts and on classical anthropological literature on marriage. Its aim is to highlight the importance of women as individual and collective subjects within marriage, deemed to be as much an alliance as it is conjugality, meaning a significant relation and a space “of her own.” This is considered in two main domains: (1) the acknowledgement of the value of women as exchange items by women themselves within a “bride-price-like system,” and (2) the role of women as counter-power to the brotherhood-based masculine domination, as played within the purity symbolic order. Last but not least, the article examines how anthropological research focusing on the Roma women’s perspective and subjectivities, whether feminist or not, can contribute to both an understanding of the Roma marriage outside the new public discourse of “sexual democracy” and to a political “sisterhood” position as “we” women against patriarchy and racism.

The Care Work of Balance

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between herding and hunting practices in the mountainous environment of Indigenous Soyots of Okinskii Raion (Oka), Buryatia. It traces an animistic approach to the concept of balance among sentient entities, including landscapes, identifying it as an underlying ethic governing the relationships of domestic and non-domestic animals with humans. Drawing on this ethic of care, the paper identifies practices directed at achieving balance as a form of resistance to assertions of outright control over living beings. The author begins by problematising the concept of care, pointing to basic ontological differences identified in anthropological literature, before addressing how care and balance are related. Here care is understood as a matter of attentiveness: a skill that links herding and hunting practices. The paper then delves into three concrete areas of care: the care of creating life in living and calving spaces; the care of holding life together through material implements and invocation of intangible protective forces; and, finally, care for species diversity in local yak and hybrid breeding practices.

Aktivitas masyarakat jawa dalam novel Bumi Manusia karya Pramoedya Ananta Toer: Kajian antropologi sastra

This research aims to describe the complexity cultures consisting of kinship activities, economy, education, beauty and recreation, religion, politics, and physical needs in the novel Bumi Manusia written by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The approach used in this research is the anthropology literature approach. Read notes, literature, and description of the analysis are methods used in collecting the data. Meanwhile, the data analysis technique used is descriptive qualitative analysis. The results obtained are (1) kinship activities: helping each other, visiting houses and caring among human, (2) economic activities: complementing the needs of human life, (3) educational activities: formal and non formal, (4) beauty and recreation activities: the art of motion and the art of sound done by human, (5) religious activities: marriage and mutual respect for every beliefs between people, (6) political activities: the fields of government and organization, and (7) physical needs activities: the fields of food, beverages, and clothing.

Adaptation of Religion and Local Wisdom in Global Environmental Issues in Indonesia

This study focuses on how the adaptation efforts and survival strategies of local communities in Indonesia to the non-natural pressure on nature and the value of their local wisdom in protecting and preserving the environment. Anthropological, ecological, and related literature on local communities are used as a review and analytical framework. The selected local communities are the Mentawai tribe, the slopes of Mount Merapi, and the Balinese in Indonesia. These three case studies show that the adaptations and strategies carried out by local communities are diverse and have different knowledge implications. The Mentawai tribe in maintaining the tradition of arat sabulungan and Balinese in revitalizing Wariga can adjust and adapt well when faced with natural ecological cycles and non-natural penetration. That is because its application is more flexible, practical, and intellectual than putting forward the device of beliefs and myths. While the case of the local community on the slopes of Merapi, which has local significance in the form of cosmological teachings in disaster management, tends to prioritize faith that is rooted more in myth than knowledge related to the objective world. Therefore, when this set of knowledge in local wisdom struggles to surpass marginalized status, the two cases of the Mentawai and Balinese communities can become persuasive and adaptive. In contrast, the local community on the slopes of Merapi is more challenging to adapt. The study also recommends that it is time for traditional knowledge originating from local wisdom in Indonesia to be adapted, modified and used as an essential resource in managing contemporary environmental issues effectively and collaboratively.

Amerindian conceptions on ‘writing’, as object and practice

In most Southamerican Amerindian languages, the meaning of already existing words was extended to also denote “(alphabetic) writing”. The original words refer to mythic-shamanic graphisms that transform bodies and objects into social beings. The shamanic origin of writing is a theme addressed by a growing anthropological literature, this is the case of the terms kusiwa among the Wajapi of Norteastern Amazonia and kene among the Pano peoples of Western Amazonia. Kene comes from designs on the skin of the mythical anaconda snake, being transposed through graphic metamorphosis onto different bodies, textiles, ceramics. Current examples of this conception are presented, as well as cases that, in contrast, show an apparently non shamanic or profane conception of writing. Among the Kuikuro of Southern Amazonia, the root ahehi refers to the tracing of maps and schemes on the floor, and has come to mean 'writing' since the very first exposure to this new object and practice. Anyway, all Amazonian cases are perceptive and cognitive transpositions that deviate from Western conceptions. This discussion leads to a current debate in anthropology about the need to break with a narrow conception of 'writing' and about the existence of other 'writings'.

Atos de ficcionalizar e emancipação do leitor: para além do oxigênio

Este artigo discorre sobre a relação entre os atos de ficcionalização em leitura literária e a emancipação do leitor. Para tanto, iniciamos pelo cotejo entre a Estética da Recepção e a Teoria do Efeito Estético, no que se refere aos seus aspectos teóricos e metodológicos. Esse paralelo nos revelou, antes, o caráter suplementar de tais teorias do que uma complementaridade entre elas, como outrora propagado. Na sequência, circunscrevemos a discussão sobre os atos de ficcionalizar e a emancipação do leitor no entre-lugar heurístico formulado tanto pela Teoria Histórico-Cultural — do psicólogo russo Lev. S. Vigotski — como pela Teoria do Efeito Estético, e seu prolongamento, a Antropologia Literária — ambas de Wolfgang Iser. A seguir, dissertamos sobre a experiência estética, a importância da incursão do leitor real nessa experiência e a biunívoca relação entre os conceitos fundantes das teorias vigotskiana e iseriana, mostrando como a primeira serve à segunda. Por fim, a argumentação culmina na relevância do ato de mapear a experiência estética como chave para autoconsciência dos processos cognitivos e metacognitivos vivenciados pelo leitor de leitura ficcional ao construir sentido. Essa autoconsciência pode viabilizar o manejo de tais processos, favorecendo o alcance de níveis mais complexos de emancipação. A compreensão da experiência estética é — do nosso ponto de vista — determinante para fomentar uma leitura emancipadora, aproximando-nos, ainda que minimamente, das muitas possibilidades do que somos.

Mancala board games and origins of entrepreneurship in Africa

This study examines the correlational relationship between the historical playing of indigenous strategic board games (also called mancala) and the socio-economic complexity of African ethnic groups as well as the incidence of entrepreneurial pursuits. Anthropology literature suggests that these games may be associated with socio-economic complexity of the ethnic groups—the so-called games in culture hypothesis. I revisit this hypothesis with better data and motivated by anecdotal evidence, introduce a contemporary hypothesis, origins of entrepreneurship hypothesis—that descendants of societies that played complex mancala games are more likely to be engaged in non-farm self-employment today. I compile the first comprehensive database of mancala games in Africa matched to ancestral characteristics data, and for 18 African countries, to the Afrobarometer survey data. Using historical and contemporary data, I do not find evidence for either hypothesis. Despite the null results, I explore how related hypotheses and studies can build on the comprehensive mancala database.

A Convegerence between Anthropology and Literature: How Reading, Writing, and Ethnography Intertwine

This text examines the convergent and double-sided relationship between anthropology as an ethnological study, which of necessity uses literary language - and writing itself as a subject for ethnography. Cultural Reader-response theory shows that every text involves some participation on the reader’s part and is not a solitary unchanging object. This response will itself be a function of social and cultural relations. At the same time, cultural and social life, studied by anthropologists, only becomes explicable through language and the results of ethnographic fieldwork are always, therefore, mediated by linguistic forms. The development of literary anthropology gained momentum in the 1980s but had already germinated in the pioneering work of Levi-Strauss whose work on kinship structures in the 1940s and his study of myth turned the attention of anthropologists towards the important and neglected dimension of language. Since then it has been recognised that an anthropologist’s work is diminished if theoretical and linguistic aspects are unaddressed. and the realm of socio-anthropology has been enriched. Disciplinary and genre distinctions have become very fluid in the past few decades and many university departmental studies now blend literary criticism with culture studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, folk discourses, and hermeneutics. While a standard definition of one of any two terms may be possible, it may not always be practical. Therefore, the definition of these two terms—anthropology and literature—needs to be updated from time to time to reflect ongoing developments and the advancements taking place in various fields. In particular, it is evident that coinciding with the linguistic turn’ in English literature studies, the discourse of anthropology has become permeable. A broad ‘literary anthropology’ can become possible as a science only if it maintains a dialogue between ideas, actions, and texts. The results and conclusions of this study substantiate the inseparable and interdependent relationship between two traditional approaches to investigating man as a social being.