Anthropological Work Research Articles

Secularize, psychologize, neoliberalize: The entangled Jewish self of North American Jews

AbstractThis article unpacks the construction of the Jewish spiritual self in three current projects of Jewish spirituality in North America—Jewish mindfulness, the neo‐Musar movement, and the nascent Positive Judaism—and explores their relations with the neoliberal economic regime and ideology. Based on the content analysis of 30 popular online and offline texts, among them promotional websites, podcasts, and published works, and data gathered during long‐term ethnographic study on Jewish spirituality in Israel and North America, the article argues that the highly individualized Jewish spirituality has become an institutionally mediated form of Jewish self‐expression. By building on anthropological works about the cultural implications of neoliberalism on the self and following the lead of the foundational works linking Jewish cultural production and neoliberalism in North America, this article offers a perspective on Jewish spirituality that recognizes the relations between neoliberalism, self‐cultivation, and community life. Fusing the spiritual, therapeutic, and neoliberal discourses, projects of Jewish spirituality package neoliberal ideals such as choice, emotional, resilience, well‐being, and happiness as Jewish spiritual commodities. At the same time, the subjectivity cultivated in these projects is a Jewish‐specific formation—a self that is highly individualized but remains strongly connected to its religious‐ethnic community and cultural tradition. Jewish spirituality is thus used here as a case study for how neoliberalism affects contemporary forms of religious practice and creates new ethical orientations to communal belongings.

ПРОЛОНГИРАНО РАСЕЉЕНИШТВО И КУЛТУРНО ПАМЋЕЊЕ: АНТРОПОЛОШКА СТУДИЈА СЛУЧАЈА РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЈЕ ЖИВОТА СРБА НА КОСОВУ И МЕТОХИЈИ

Given that anthropological work is a collaborative endeavour, this paper focuses on analysing collective memory practices through material gathered during interviews with the interlocutors from the fieldwork on displacement of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija conducted in Niš, Belgrade, and in the region of Kosovo and Metohija in the period from 2020. to 2022. Through contextual analyses of literature and documentary films about the life of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, this case study examines social, political and cultural circumstances which affect the production of chosen works. The amateur documentary films Life Defined by a Loaf (2013), Pristina: Imperfect (Unfinished) Story (2016), Yellow Buss (2018), Vidovdan: One Day of Life (2019) and books Pristina, Pristinians and Time (1999), Kosovo and Metohija: to have and to have not (2004) of one of the main interlocutors, Radmila Todić Vulićević, who is herself a displaced person, are taken as primary material for the case study and compared with narratives collected during fieldwork. Since the paper is covering the fields of visual anthropology and anthropology of literature, the methodology is based on anthropological premises that memory is intersubjecitve. Treatment of memory as a social process therefore allows analysis of imagolocical aspects of the chosen works. The main aim is to contribute to the understanding of how remembering and forgetting intertwine in periods of social and cultural upheavals, and of the effects of post-war conditions on the life of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as displaced persons.

Religion in the Folded City: Origami and the Boundaries of the Chronotope

AbstractIn this article we rethink the chronotope approach by examining what happened to religious space-times in a Chinese urban development project that completely transformed what had once been five relatively rural townships. What happens to chronotopes when a place is so completely transformed? We focus on multiple chronotopic dimensions in the religious experience of those villagers whose families had long occupied this land, but who now live separated from their old neighbors, without their old livelihoods, having lost their old temples, and surrounded by new migrants who are generally wealthier and better educated. Building on recent anthropological work on chronotopes, coupled with insights taken from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, this article explores the complex interrelationships and workings of chronotopes through the idea of the fold. This approach reconsiders what the boundaries between chronotopes might look like—not necessarily straight lines that are difficult to cross, but more like the infinite inflections of curves as those curves intersect and interact with each other. Rather than thinking of chronotopes as structured wholes separated by clear boundaries—much as we also tend to think about “states,” “cultures,” or “ontologies”—folding allows us to reconceptualize the kinds of interactions that take place when one space-time touches another. We examine in particular three ways in which folding elucidates how chronotopic boundaries can work: they can make the distant near, separate inside from outside, and complicate the boundary by interdigitating.

When the clinic becomes home: on the limits of kinship care in an eating disorder treatment centre in Italy

Drawing on fieldwork in a public residential facility for eating disorders in central Italy, the paper examines the relational temporalities of therapeutics by looking at how time affects treatment at the intersection of professional and family care practices. In arguing that ‘chronic cases’ put into question the specific kind of kinship care that is at the basis of treatment, the paper contributes to the anthropological literature on eating disorders by bringing time under the analytical lens, and to the literature on ‘chronicity’ by complicating simplified assumptions about structural care problems. In addition, the paper draws on and goes beyond anthropological works that have highlighted the potentially harmful side of kinship – including those that have explored how kinship can be framed as a source of mental distress and at the same time as a therapeutic tool. Kinship as a therapeutic tool here becomes risky because professionals need to borrow from kinship practices in their own work with patients, balancing those with the necessary clinical detachment. The paper shows that the time chronic patients need in residential treatment generates a particularly complex mix between what is seen as ‘functional’ and what is seen as ‘dysfunctional’ in kinship care, because the ‘efficacy’ of the kinship work that is at the basis of treatment rests on that being partial and temporary. Long term care in the facility complicates what otherwise allows clinical detachment: the treatment team ends up literally substituting the patient’s family, with professional and family care mixing ‘too much’ with one another.

Традиционные семейные ценности в общественно-правовой мысли России в XIX – начале XX века

Introduction. An important guideline in the legal evolution of Russia is the preservation of traditional family values. The idea of preserving traditional family values is reflected in the Basic Law and official policy papers and is consistently implemented in state programs and national and federal projects. The understanding and legal formalization of the concept of traditional family values are conditioned by the need to preserve the Russian identity and moral guidelines in society. The analysis of historical experience will contribute to the development of an adequate model of Russia’s cultural identity. The research on the concept of traditional family values in the works of outstanding pre-revolutionary ethnographers, anthropologists, historians, philosophers, lawyers, and public figures has formed the purpose of the study. Methods. The methods of historicism, systematicity, analysis and comparative law. Results. The study analyzes the works of Russian pre-revolutionary ethnographers, anthropologists, historians, philosophers, lawyers, and public figures according to the concept and content of traditional family values in Russia in the 19th – early 20th centuries; a theoretical and legal analysis of the categories “tradition”, “value”, and “family” is also made; and the role of traditions in law is investigated. Conclusions. The preservation of traditional family values, increasing the role of the family in society and increasing the authority of parenthood in the family and society are currently relevant priorities for state family policies. The pre-revolutionary Russian legislation considered marriage a religious act; hence, the legal regulation of family relations at the conclusion and dissolution of marriage was based on the religion of the spouses and the recognition of the exclusively ecclesiastical form of marriage. According to the Russian social and legal thought of the 19th – early 20th centuries, traditional family values were based on such aspects as natural (sexual), including the physiological mutual desire of spouses; spiritual, consisting in mutual love and affection of spouses; reproductive, associated with childbirth; and the desire to continue the family and transfer knowledge and skills from generation to generation.

Introduction: The Work of Anthropology

Introduction: The Work of Anthropology

Banding together to avoid exploitation: Dominant (but not prestige-based) leaders motivate collective moral opposition from followers

Although dominance is a common strategy for attaining high social rank, it often entails exploitative behavior, bringing leaders into conflict with followers. Anthropological work suggests that a long evolutionary history of such conflict has set the stage for moral systems designed to reduce exploitation from powerful people. Here we establish links between dominance (and prestige) and moral leadership, reporting three studies (total N = 1246) demonstrating that, in response to dominant leaders, followers band together in collective opposition aimed at resisting, and even toppling, incumbent leaders. These studies also identify specific social psychological pathways through which dominant leaders elicit moral opposition—low levels of trust and gossip both mediated effects of leader dominance on collective opposition by followers. While dominance may allow people to rise through the ranks of a social hierarchy, the long-term durability of dominance as a leadership strategy may be undermined by collective moral opposition from followers.

What Is Light in Dark Times?

Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden's Light in Dark Times (2020) began as an address by the president of the American Anthropological Association and was transformed into "a work of art and anthropology" by a member of the audience. The result was a coauthored book-length graphic essay that is expansive in subject matter, and in the representation of ideas, scholars, and questions about what it means to be human and how we will pass the time that is given us on earth. Light and dark are central to the visual representations that serve as the background to a story about what is necessary to become a person who is honest. This critical assessment reflects on the content and form of that story, which predated the COVID pandemic, widespread political unrest, and assaults on truth, evidence, language, categories, education, and "others" in the US and elsewhere. The format is both challenging to read and interesting to think with. As teaching and learning increasingly become animated and visualized, Light in Dark Times is a worthy introduction to these ways of apprehending the vexing questions and conundrums presently in such abundant supply.

Predicted changes to the rate of human decomposition due to climate change during the 21st century

Estimating the post mortem interval is an important aspect of the work of forensic pathologists and forensic anthropologists. Whilst temperature is generally agreed as the most important variable affecting decomposition, some formulae also incorporate relative humidity for a more detailed estimate. Both these variables are impacted by anthropogenic climate change. This study aims to provide a first overview of the likely extent to which anthropogenic climate change will affect future rates of decomposition. The post mortem interval from death until skeletonization (PMIDS) was calculated using the formula by Vass [1], as well as temperature and humidity predictions from two different climate models, to predict changes in the speed of decomposition between the decades 2020–2029 and 2090–2099. The changes are calculated for different climate zones, and a global average, as well as different climate change scenarios, and for decomposition starting in January and July. The estimated PMIDS is significantly (p < 0.05) decreased in most scenarios, with the largest global decrease of 33.5% in the SSP5–8.5 scenario, with decomposition starting in July, and the smallest decrease of 2.6% in the SSP1–2.6 scenario, with decomposition starting in January. The significantly accelerated decomposition in the SSP5- 8.5 scenario will increase the workload of forensic anthropologists, by decreasing the time until skeletonization, after which the expertise of a forensic anthropologist is more likely to be needed. However, climate change is also predicted to decrease the accuracy of the formulae used for PMI estimation, even in regions where levels of precision are currently good. The present authors therefore argue, that the impacts of climate change will warrant increasing attention in the field of forensic anthropology, and that more research into PMI estimation will be needed particularly in warmer and drier regions.

A desirable privation: Exploring silence as a mode of zoo visiting

This article describes and discusses a set of exercises in silent zoo visiting conducted at two zoos in the Southwest of the UK in 2019. The visits were part of a wider project on the auditory culture of zoos, institutions which have tended to be analysed by reference to their concern with the visual display of captive other-than-human animals (henceforth animals). Linking ideas on silence that have emerged from work in anthropology and sound studies respectively, the article explores the notion that among many other affordances, silence can generate opportunities for reflection and the consideration of alternatives, in this case in relation to a prevailing zoo visiting culture often characterised by loud anthropogenic sound. Examining extracts and observations from discussions among participants, the article illustrates how this novel form of visiting fostered a variety of types and qualities of experience. It also provided an impetus for participants to notice and focus on specific animals and aspects of animal lives they might not otherwise have considered. Such meditation could foster feelings of connection to particular zoo animals, while also opening up possibilities for more detached contemplation. The silent visits led participants to produce critical perspectives on conventional zoo visiting, and to imagine future possibilities for the auditory culture of zoos. The article shows that silence can serve as a productive methodological tool in the exploration of human-animal relations, and demonstrates how sound is integral to the formation of those relations within, and by implication beyond, the zoo.

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

Contributors

Other| May 01 2023 Contributors Gastronomica (2023) 23 (2): viii–ix. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2023.23.2.viii Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Contributors. Gastronomica 1 May 2023; 23 (2): viii–ix. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2023.23.2.viii Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search Indira Arumugam is an anthropologist working in Tamil Nadu, South India, and among the Tamil diaspora in Singapore. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. She is working on a forthcoming book titled Visceral Politics: Intimate Imaginaries of Power in South India. Angela Babb is a critical human geographer who strives for food justice through research and activism. Angela is a research scientist at Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, co-founder and director of the Critical Food Studies Lab, dog and turtle parent, candlemaker, and aspiring farmer. Megan Betz is a local food scholar, activist, and practitioner. She lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana, and is currently CEO/president of Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, a local community food resource center. Her work and scholarship focus on building community around and shared ownership of our food resources.... You do not currently have access to this content.

‘Sacred’ Icons from Below as Objects of Anthropological Inquiries: A Reflexive Synthesis

This reflexive article argues the validity of ‘sacred’ icons as potential objects of anthropological inquiries. The first component of this paper will present works of anthropologists that include icons of saints as subjects. Moreover, this component will highlight the importance of specific social contexts that make these icons socially relevant and worthy of anthropological scrutiny. Furthermore, each anthropological work will serve as grounding for the second component of this paper, in which I will link Sherry Ortner’s (2006) two- field types of agency, which are agency of intentions, and agency of power to the icons of saints in postcolonial settings.

Preparing for the deployment of ready-made stories in social interaction: reflexivity and narrative practices in professional communication

Abstract Since the nineties, the idea that narratives are essential for an efficient communication has massively spread in management, marketing and politics, supported by the profuse publication of storytelling guides and criticized by a number of social commentators. Nevertheless, little is known about how reflexive activities specific to professional communication partake in the visibility and solidification of this specific way of conceiving the use of stories. Drawing on semiotic-inspired works in linguistic anthropology, studies on talk-in-interaction and narrative analysis, this article analyzes how reflexive activities contribute to the construction of specific conceptions of what narratives are and what they do in professional communication. To achieve this, the article relies on a single case study that details the kind of ready-made stories and contextualization devices a storytelling guide provides for its readers. The analysis shows that the storytelling guide builds up a cultural model that is both archiving past narrative situations (a model-of action) and potentially generating new narrative situations (a model-for action). By doing so, the storytelling guide not only singles out specific communicative resources but also fuels a metapragmatic model in which accomplished storytellers are at the top of the social structure.

Beyond the Limits: Medicine, Healing, and Medical Anthropology.

Beyond the Limits: Medicine, Healing, and Medical Anthropology.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS IN SCIENCE AND HIGHER EDUCATION

The research possibilities of a qualitative approach have a long tradition in the social sciences and humanities, including different perspectives on theoretical foundations, research strategies, techniques, and data collection and analysis methods. The qualitative methodology first developed in cultural anthropology and ethnology, where the anthropological works of Malinowski, Strauss, Boas, and others marked the foundations of the field method of collecting data and conducting ethnographic studies. However, to date, there is no single definition of qualitative methodology, just as there are no studies that do not require the dimensions of different approaches. Starting from the observation that the question of the compatibility of qualitative and quantitative research methods is still a source of disagreement among researchers, arising from academic criticism of the quality and reliability of qualitative research, this study aims to highlight the role and importance of qualitative research in the scientific and educational process. Through the theoretical analysis of the relevant sources of methodological studies, the authors present some fundamental principles of the qualitative approach and its leading research strategies, illustrating the theoretical aspects with the most important constructs in this methodological area. The findings of this article show that despite the diversity of scientific literature and research on defining the value of qualitative research, a systematic and in-depth study of qualitative methodological issues is still needed to contribute to the improvement of the literature and increase the value of this approach in scientific and educational research practice. Accordingly, although the authors sustain a mixed research approach, they also emphasize the importance of qualitative methods, which should not be viewed separately from the research process.

Good, Bad, and Hopefully Not the God Trick: Technological Systems in Qualitative Inquiry

This article is a tangle of threads made possible by theoretical and practical snags in my work with qualitative inquiry technology. One snag pulls at the term “technology” and its etymology to think about technology as a creative system used in the production of knowledge. That snag leads to a study of early anthropological work and technology to better understand the history that feeds into qualitative inquiry. And another snag considers who and what is involved in the making of technological tools used in research. These unraveling snags entangle together to consider technology as an open-ended system consisting of a variety of tools used to create political, cultural, and social realities. Such thinking offers a space to contemplate how technological advances have shaped qualitative inquiry’s past, present, and future. The forceful snags studied in this article begin to ask the question, “Can we think of qualitative inquiry without technology?”

Crisis, urgency and the problem of discernment

Crises proliferate. Not just as labels but as the actual state of affairs, of impasse, ruination and breakdown. As an anthropologist working on Syria with extensive fieldwork inside the country before the uprising of 2011, and later with ongoing fieldwork in Lebanon, Jordan and with exiled Syrians in Europe, I find it safe to say that crisis is polyvalent. Crisis is slow and urgent as it moves with Syrians in time and across locations. This piece argues that we need urgent engagement with slow forms of crisis and slow engagement with calls to urgency. This calls for an exercise in discernment, which takes urgency and claims it as a diagnostic for ethnographic exploration.

Engaging with Joanna Leidenhag's Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation

AbstractThis article appreciatively reviews Joanna Leidenhag's work Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation while also responding critically to some aspects of Leidenhag's approach and content. The authors acknowledge several strengths of Leidenhag's work, then turn to how a panpsychic framework comports with Christa L. McKirland's recent work in theological anthropology. Finally, Eugene Fuimaono proposes areas of expansion for Leidenhag to consider – specifically as this relates to the value of engaging indigenous perspectives.

Gifted Earth: The Ethnobotany of the Quinault and Neighboring Tribes by Douglas Deur

Reviewed by: Gifted Earth: The Ethnobotany of the Quinault and Neighboring Tribes by Douglas Deur David Harrelson GIFTED EARTH: THE ETHNOBOTANY OF THE QUINAULT AND NEIGHBORING TRIBES by Douglas Deur and the Knowledge-Holders of the Quinault Indian Nation Oregon Sate University Press, Corvallis, 2022. Photographs, maps, bibliography, index. 272 pages. $29.95 paper. The author’s collaboration with Quinault Tribal Government and its citizens has created a field guide conveying aspects of human-plant relationships and cultural obligations known to the Quinault people. This compilation is presented as a gift to the Tribe, insuring that the lessons, responsibilities, and practices of stewardship are available for future generations. In the author’s words: “By respecting this natural and cultural inheritance, and by continuing to learn of it and embrace it, countless future generations of Quinault people will be sustained, along with their new neighbors in the Pacific Northwest — This place we together call home” (p. xvii). This volume is centered on the point where Indigenous voice, knowledge, and responsibilities intersect with the floral-botanical world of southwest Washington State. In this manner, it distinguishes itself from many other field guides catering to a Euro-American extractive approach to floral resources. Readers are invited into an understanding of People’s and Tribe’s interaction with plants today as the result of relevant, ongoing, cultural practice. Prior to this guide, readers with a desire to understand the region’s Indigenous botanical information turned to Erna Gunther’s Ethno-botany of Western Washington: Knowledge and Use of Indigenous Plants by Native Americans, a volume with inconstancies in tribal understanding of the flora of the region. It is commonly known among tribal people that Gunther’s book was based on anthropological work done with tribal peoples that was not focused on ethnobotany. In refreshing contrast, this book is the outcome of ethnobotanical research conducted in partnership with tribal people. Indigenous voices are present throughout as direct and relevant citations from community. This volume follows a trend seen elsewhere by which publication of ethnobotanical information is understood to be the information and authority of sovereign tribal governments. It is theirs to share, translate, or limit to outside audiences. This is significant because voices of Indigenous peoples and their nations have long been seen as an extractive commodity by which uninvited authors reap personal benefit. This volume, however, upholds the best intentions of collaborative informed consent centered on Indigenous understanding and intellectual property. It is important to note [End Page 99] that the monetary value of time for this project sponsored by Quinault as well as volunteered by others is unlikely to be recaptured within a person’s lifetime. The value of this work is an assurance that the knowledge will not be forgotten. Gifted Earth will be of interest to future generations of the Quinault people. Other audiences who will find interest in this volume include Quinault’s neighbors in the Pacific Northwest. Neighbors who are likely to find the greatest interest are those engaged in conservation, applied anthropology, and botany. The guide’s color-coded section tabs make identifying sections of the book accessible. Headings such as “Traditional uses,” “What it looks like,” “Where to find it,” “When to gather,” “Traditional management and care,” and “Cautions” encourage readers to develop their own understanding of plants. It is clear that Douglas Deur and Quinault staff gave deliberate care and consideration to responsibly sharing cultural knowledge regarding the treatment and transmission of the Tribe’s intellectual property. Sensitive information has been paraphrased or redacted and numerous warnings and advisories provided. Nevertheless, this guide is likely to be of interest to individuals identified by tribal communities as culture vultures. This term is reserved for the type of person who seeks cultural information from tribes to fulfill their own selfish needs, profits, or other extractive practices. Those who choose this path disregard relationships, customs, responsibilities, or obligations associated with knowledge. They do not seek to be in a reciprocal relationship with the people from whom the knowledge originates, nor the plant communities depended on. Individuals using this book can honor what is asked of them in the book: “The tribe chooses to share this information so that the...