Key informants on the history of anthropology: an itinerary

The history of anthropology is a growing field of study within the discipline itself. Our series ‘Key Informants on the History of Anthropology’ contributes to the discussion of how anthropology, as it is understood and practised today, evolved and took shape. In the following invited contribution Marc Augé, Professor of Anthropology at École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, reflects back on his work in Africa, in light of his more recent explorations of contemporary global issues. He observes how history intervenes also with previous research ‘as if the facts which I observed in former times were only taking on their full meaning today’. This relationship between past and present research reinforces his faith in social anthropology as a discipline that is particularly well suited to address contemporary issues of globalisation.     

The anthropology of deep history

The history of anthropology reveals a discipline driven by fission and fusion. In this article I use the framework of deep history as an example of what might be achieved if anthropology resolved to travel the road of fusion rather than continue with atomization. I will illustrate the pathway by examining the fusion of interdisciplinary endeavour that is encapsulated in the concept of a social brain. By placing social life at the heart of the historical process we find common ground for all the fields of anthropology, and beyond to other disciplines. Here anthropologists have the opportunity to set the agenda. The social brain works in deep as well as shallow history. It unites experimental and historical science. And it marks a return to those core principles which Lubbock and the founders of our Institute established.     

On the Limits of Life Stages in Ethnography: Toward a Theory of Vital Conjunctures

This article argues for a new anthropology of the life course, one founded in indeterminacy and innovation. The fact that vital life events are rarely coherent, clear in direction, or fixed in outcome dramatically limits the usefulness of the life cycle model. In its place, I propose a unit of social analysis based in aspiration rather than event. I call this the vital conjuncture—integrating the "vital" of demographic vital events with Bourdieu's conception of the conjuncture of structure and action. Vital conjunctures suggest a new way of aggregating life history experiences and thus working between the individual and the social, free from the stultifying assumption of Stapes de vie. To illustrate the usefulness of the concept of "vital conjuncture, I focus on motherhood among young, educated Beti women in southern Cameroon. I demonstrate that rather than a clear threshold into female adulthood, here motherhood is a loosely bounded, fluid status. Contrary both to folk intuition and to the assumptions of a life cycle framework, Beti motherhood is not a stable status. Beti women who have borne children are not necessarily mothers, at least not all the time. Motherhood, instead, constitutes a temporary social status, an agent position that can be inhabited in specific forms of social action. The material offers perhaps an extreme example of what I argue is a more general phenomenon: "life stages" emerge only as the result of institutional projects, their coherence should be an object, rather than an assumption, of ethnographic inquiry. [Keywords: life course, Africa, demography, vital conjuncture]     

Medical Anthropology: Toward a Third Moment in Social Science?

This article about medical anthropology was inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically, his efforts to reconcile the antinomy of a "social structuralist" and a "cultural constructivist" perspective. These perspectives are often opposed in the literature, but, in Bourdieu's view, human life cannot be studied without taking into account both how individuals are situated within and constrained by social structures and how those individuals construct an understanding of and impose meaning on the world around them. I argue that the special subject matter of medical anthropology--human health--demands that a synthetic approach be taken in our theory and research. I illustrate this argument with examples from my own research on social and cultural factors associated with blood pressure, and I point to other examples of this synthesis in medical anthropology. The results of this research hold promise for the continuing refinement of culture theory.     

Reclaiming Applied Anthropology: Its Past, Present, and Future

Growing concerns about anthropology's impact in both academia and the broader social arena have led to calls for more "public" and more relevant anthropology. In this article, we expand on these exhortations, by calling for systematic joining of critical social theory with application and pragmatic engagement with contemporary problems. We argue for the repositioning of applied anthropology as a vital component of the broader discipline and suggest that it should serve as a framework for constructing a more engaged anthropology. In revisiting disciplinary history and critiques of applied anthropology, we demonstrate the central role that application has played throughout anthropology's evolution, address common misconceptions that serve as barriers to disciplinary integration, examine the role of advocacy in relation to greater engagement as well as the relationship of theory to practice, and conclude with an assessment of the diverse work that is subsumed under the inclusive rubric of "anthropology in use."     

The Difference that Diaspora Makes: Thinking through the Anthropology of Immigrant Education in the United States

In this article, I examine the possibility of a productive dialogue between diaspora studies and the anthropology of immigrant education in the United States. Arguing that their respective views on the nation-state is a key source for their different orientations toward migrant social and cultural worlds, I nevertheless argue that an engagement between these two fields of study will yield more critical understandings of nationalism, the category of the "immigrant," and multiculturalism within both these areas of scholarship.     

Landscape, Violence and Social Bodies: Ritualized Architecture in a Solomon Islands Society

This article considers the interplay between the bodily experience of landscape and the formation of sociality. We investigate the social experiences of landscape in nineteenth-century Roviana Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, dealing specifically with the ritualized architecture of a fortification on Nusa Roviana Island. Drawing on oral tradition and archaeological and historical data, we argue that the architectural remains reflect a powerful mode of shaping social experience and notions of personhood in the manipulation of ideology. The Roviana landscape creates a world in which genealogical lines are sedimented to place, and practices of ritual violence and head-hunting are made to appear necessary and natural. Paying attention to both oral and material history allows a greater understanding of the ways in which such social structures are reproduced, and adds to the construction of a rich historical anthropology.     

Giving Voice to Children's Voices: Practices and Problems, Pitfalls and Potentials

In this article, I explore the lessons that the anthropological debates of the 1980s about writing culture might have for contemporary childhood research within anthropology and the social sciences more generally. I argue that the current rhetoric about "giving voice to children," commonplace both inside and outside the academy, poses a threat to the future of childhood research because it masks a number of important conceptual and epistemological problems. In particular, these relate to questions of representation, issues of authenticity, the diversity of children's experiences, and children's participation in research, all of which need to be addressed by anthropologists in their own research practices with children. Unless anthropologists do so, childhood research risks becoming marginalized once more and will fail to provide an arena within which children are seen as social actors who can provide a unique perspective on the social world about matters that concern them as children.     

Can there be a "cultural epidemiology"?

A brief excursion through the history of social medicine suggests that, at least in principle, epidemiology and anthropology are natural allies in the study of disease in human populations. In practice, however, this alliance has been limited and remains problematic. This article examines the possibilities for interdisciplinary research, taking cancer epidemiology as a case in point. I argue, on the basis of participant-observation over a period of nearly two years in the epidemiology department of a medical research institute in Catalonia (Spain), that bioscientific uses of the concept of culture have led, disappointingly, to its reification as "beliefs" and its incorporation into the naturalist epistemology of Western institutional medicine. The unfortunate consequence is the medicalization of culture understood as "difference," which often stands in for social class.     

A Gifted Amateur: The Case of George Washington Ellis

George Washington Ellis published Negro Culture in West Africa in 1914 in response to the social gospel prophets' racist and stereotypical perspectives of West Africa and Africans. In so doing. Ellis attempted to shift the discourse from one that emphasized African barbarism to one that repudiated the idea of African inferiority. Unwittingly, however, Ellis preached a brand of romantic racialism—a benign doctrine that was commonplace in the racial discourse of African American elites at the Turn of the Century. Asa consequence, his loyalties were divided between 19th-century ethnological science and the "new ethnology" of Franz Boas. [Keywords: George Washington Ellis, history of racism, antiracism, African American anthropology, social gospel prophets]     

Understanding the Rise of Consumer Ethnography: Branding Technomethodologies in the New Economy

ABSTRACT   In this article, I aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the changing public role of anthropology by exploring the rise of branded ethnographic practices in consumer research. I argue that a juncture in the "New Economy"—the conjoining of corporate interest in branding, technology, and consumers, with vast social changes—may explain the rapid growth of ethnography for consumer research and predict its future direction. An analysis of branded propaganda from ethnographic vendors that claim their technology-enhanced methods innovate "classic" anthropological practices discloses the way corporations employ technologically mediated means to focus on the reflexive self in consumer research. In this analysis, I reveal that technological methodologies are central to the production of branded ethnographic practices, as forms of branding and technology legitimate consumer–corporate flows of interaction. The conclusion raises awareness to the ways in which modern branding practices reconstruct anthropology in public discourse. [Keywords: branding, consumer research, ethnography, reflexivity, technology]     

The State of Biological Anthropology in 2008: Is Our Discipline Strong and Our Cause Just?

ABSTRACT   Biological anthropologists inform a largely professional discourse on the evolutionary history of our species. In addition, aspects of our biology, the ways in which we vary, and certain patterns of behavior are the subjects of a more public and popular conversation. The social contexts in which we work not only define our times but also produce the anthropologists that in turn construct an emergent understanding of our species' (and our societies') inner workings. In this review of scholarly production, I focus on developments within a selection of "sub-subdisciplines" that were particularly influential in bending the arc of biological anthropology in 2008, namely: evolutionary medical anthropology, anthropological neuroscience, forensic anthropology, primatology, and paleoanthropology. Ultimately, this review demonstrates, yet again, anthropology's great contribution: the ability to incorporate new technologies and research methodologies into a synthetic and integrative interdisciplinary approach toward the elucidation of human behavior, evolution, and biocultural engagements with the environment. [Keywords: biological anthropology, year in review, 2008, science and society]     

Pentecostal peacefulness: virtue ethics and the reception of theology in Nepal

The anthropology of Christianity has struggled to theorize the place of theology in Christian social life. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre's account of virtue ethics, in particular his concepts of practice, narrative, and moral tradition, I explore the reception of Pentecostal theology in the Nepali city of Bhaktapur. I show how local Christians have drawn on Pentecostal eschatology to develop a pacifistic ethics, allowing them to negotiate local social and religious conflicts. The belief that Christ has decisively defeated evil spirits allows local Christians to detach themselves from cycles of aggression connected with witchcraft accusations, providing a space of security in which to cultivate distinctive practices of care. Connecting this local theology with a wider tradition in Pentecostal moral thought, I argue that MacIntyre's virtue ethics provides a powerful tool for interpreting the relationship between local circumstance and extra‐local theology, and for studying cross‐cultural patterns of theological reception.     

Research for Change versus Research as Change: Lessons from a Mujerista Participatory Research Team

In this article, I aim to further the discussion of engaged research in anthropology and education by examining the unique changes promoted by participatory research in contrast to policy-oriented activist research models. Drawing on my work with Latina immigrant mothers in a school reform movement, I argue for a Latina feminist view of participatory research that illuminates and builds on Latina women's capacities for social critique and transformative resistance.  [participatory research, activist anthropology, Latino parents, school reform]     

Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others

This article explores the ethics of the current "War on Terrorism, asking whether anthropology, the discipline devoted to understanding and dealing with cultural difference, can provide us with critical purchase on the justifications made for American intervention in Afghanistan in terms of liberating, or saving, Afghan women. I look first at the dangers of reifying culture, apparent in the tendencies to plaster neat cultural icons like the Muslim woman over messy historical and political dynamics. Then, calling attention to the resonances of contemporary discourses on equality, freedom, and rights with earlier colonial and missionary rhetoric on Muslim women, I argue that we need to develop, instead, a serious appreciation of differences among women in the world—as products of different histories, expressions of different circumstances, and manifestations of differently structured desires. Further, I argue that rather than seeking to "save" others (with the superiority it implies and the violences it would entail) we might better think in terms of (1) working with them in situations that we recognize as always subject to historical transformation and (2) considering our own larger responsibilities to address the forms of global injustice that are powerful shapers of the worlds in which they find themselves. I develop many of these arguments about the limits of "cultural relativism" through a consideration of the burqa and the many meanings of veiling in the Muslim world. [Keywords: cultural relativism, Muslim women, Afghanistan war, freedom, global injustice, colonialism]     

In the shadow of "death with dignity": medicine and cultural quandaries of the vegetative state

In this paper I address one site of technological development and cultural production, the permanent or persistent comatose condition and the institutions and practices that enable this life form to exist. As with other medical sites of ambiguity and change under recent scrutiny by anthropologists, the locations in which comatose bodies thrive are those in which the routinization of technology use in the clinic and a legitimating social and economic context come together to permit and create a further remapping of the notions of "life" and "person." I explore the new forms of knowledge, practice, and the body that are created at this site and how they are negotiated, and I discuss how the shifting understanding of "'culture" and "nature" both have an impact on and are informed by American quandaries about approaching death. I argue that beings who are neither fully alive, biologically dead, nor "naturally" self-regulating, yet who are sustained by modern medical practices, destabilize the existing social order in ways that are different from other hybrid forms, [medical anthropology, anthropology of the body, bioethics, personhood, culture/nature dichotomy]     

The history of psychological categories

Psychological terms, such as 'mind', 'memory', 'emotion' and indeed 'psychology' itself, have a history. This history, I argue, supports the view that basic psychological categories refer to historical and social entities, and not to 'natural kinds'. The case is argued through a wide ranging review of the historiography of western psychology, first, in connection with the field's extreme modern diversity; second, in relation to the possible antecedents of the field in the early modern period; and lastly, through a brief introduction to usage of the words 'soul', 'mind', 'memory' and 'emotion'. The discussion situates the history of psychology within a large historical context, questions assumptions about the continuity of meaning, and draws out implications for the philosophical and social constitution of 'psychology' and 'the psychological' from the existing literature. The historical evidence, this paper concludes, does not support the conventional presumption that modern psychological terms describe 'natural kinds'.     

Cough sweets and angels: the ordinary ethics of the extraordinary in Sufi practice in Lebanon

This article presents an ethnographic account of the social production of the miraculous in Sufi practice in Lebanon, including displays of bodily mortification. It examines the interdependence of the extraordinary and the ordinary/everyday, following, but problematizing, Max Weber's classic discussion of charismatic authority. For Weber the extraordinary lies outside the bounds of rules. Adopting the terms of some recent interventions in the anthropology of ethics, I claim on the contrary that the extraordinary has its ordinary ethics too. In so doing I not only add to the anthropology of wonder but also challenge those who would argue that anthropology's especial focus is on the ordinary, to the exclusion of its opposite. If this is not to be mere piety, sorting out what belongs to which category will prove challenging. Especially within the anthropology of religion, one can hardly do with one without the other.     

How Do Real Indians Fish? Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Contested Indigeneities in the Colorado Delta

ABSTRACT   There has been a growing interest in anthropology regarding how certain political conditions set the stage for "articulations" between indigenous movements and environmental actors and discourses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how these same conditions can suppress demands for indigenous rights. In this article, I argue that the pairing of neoliberalism and multiculturalism in contemporary Mexico has created political fields in which ethnic difference has been foregrounded as a way of denying certain rights to marginalized groups. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Mexico, I analyze how the arguments of a group of Cucapá for fishing rights in the Colorado Delta have been constrained within these political circumstances. I argue that cultural difference has been leveraged by the Mexican federal government and local NGOs to prevent the redistribution of environmental resources among vulnerable groups such as the Cucapá.