Anthropology, Demography, and the Search for a Critical Analysis of Fertility: Insights from Russia

The socialist and postsocialist contexts offer important challenges for anthropologists developing a critical analysis of fertility. The need for fertility studies to address class and gender inequities is often overlooked by postsocialist scholars, whose work is mired in responses to the socialist past and ongoing pronatalist campaigns. I examine the ways that fertility analysis has been used in national political struggles in Russia, and explain why supporters of democratic reforms and women's rights have neglected to address gender and class issues in their fertility studies. While Russian nationalists cite fertility decline as proof that market reforms threaten Russia's existence, defenders of neoliberalism draw on demographic transition theory to redefine fertility decline as a universal sign of socioeconomic development. Working with conventional demographic paradigms and a postsocialist cultural logic, Russian transition theorists simultaneously oppose pronatalist politics, support women's reproductive choice, and reproduce the limitations of liberal paradigms regarding the family, society, and public policy. This article shows how anthropological critiques of demographic transition theory can be expanded and nuanced by considering the ways this theory gets adapted to particular cultural logics and political contests. [Keywords: anthropology and demography, postsocialism, Russia, fertility decline]     

Explicating the Air: The new Smokefree (and beyond)

In this paper, I examine how the explication of the air has figured environments, places, politics and the constitution of ‘the public’ in the era of smokefree. I argue in this paper that an especial imaginary of the air, one that recalls and revitalises much earlier notions of the air as bearer of miasmatic pollution, and even earlier ideas about the physical quality of the air and its relationship to the political state, has shaped how persons and places are formed and subject to inclusion and exclusion as part of the new politics of ‘the public’. I draw attention to the ways in which these configurations of persons and places have relied upon the explication of the air itself, and to the consequences of explicating the air.     

Debates, divisions, and decisions: recombinant DNA advisory committee (RAC) authorization of the first human gene transfer experiments.

Possibly the most far-reaching, controversial research currently being conducted in the international biological science community involves human gene therapy experimentation. In this paper, I report the dynamics of the political process which ultimately found the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) of the National Institutes of Health approving for the first time protocols of this genre. A full appreciation of the policy-making dialogue shows that significant participants perceived the process from very different vantage points regarding the way in which the American political system works and the way in which it ought to work. I argue that, if we are to understand how the RAC should proceed in orchestrating a human gene therapy policy agenda, then we must flesh out and critically analyze these competing vantage points. To that end, I postulate seven possible "action models" for characterizing how protocol assessments of the type at issue might be developed given the nature of our politics, reaching the conclusion that one of these models holds out the most promise for synthesizing efficaciously the key factors involved. In conclusion, I discuss how the RAC might profitably employ this preferred strategy in these and other cases.     

Social and River Networks for the Trees: Wounaan's Riverine Rhizomic Cosmos and Arboreal Conservation

ABSTRACT   The effects of environmental conservation and development are of significant anthropological interest. Recent focus on the politics of knowledge and translation has shown the importance of cosmology in conservation encounters. I examine how Wounaan indigenous peoples and extralocal conservation practitioners "translate" eastern Panama based on their own cosmologies. ¹ Specifically, I explore how Wounaan's social and river-networked rhizomic cosmos is overlooked in the practice of forest-focused conservation. This results from Panama's environmental history, in which actors simplified early representations of a complex landscape to one characterized by forests, as well as a Western bias toward forests with scant attention paid to cosmology. Finally, I note how Wounaan negotiate this cultural disconnect by emphasizing their ties to forests. In so doing, they buttress the arboreal bias, in turn reinforcing power relations, but also giving themselves political leverage in conservation activities. These results inform recent discussion about politics and scientific praxis in conservation.     

Canvases of Political Competition: Image Production as Politics in Tamil Nadu,India

In this article, I explore the production of political images in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The state is known for the ubiquitous presence of banners, murals and posters in its public spaces, featuring prominent politicians and actors. It is commonly argued that these images help to convey the heroic or exclusive status of political leaders. However, such images are actually produced by party workers and therefore do not simply transpose status and image. Instead, political supporters praise their leader via these images and act as ‘kingmakers’ in constructing reputation and power. Simultaneously, by putting political images on display, supporters also authorise their own power. While praise is important in showing a person's dedication to a political party, the images, in the motivations of their producers, are suffused with ambivalence and competition as well. Hence, I argue, political image practices are not representative of politics, they are politics.     

Biophysical Reviews’ “Meet the Councilor”—a profile of Anastasia A. Anashkina

As one of the twelve Councilors of the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics elected in summer 2021, I have been asked to provide this short biographical sketch for the journal readers. I am a new member of the IUPAB Council. I hold a specialist degree in Applied Physics and Mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and PhD in Biophysics from Moscow State University. I have spent my entire professional career at Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where I am currently a senior researcher. I am Associate Professor at the Digital Health Institute of the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University since 2018, and have trained undergraduate students in structural biology, biophysics, and bioinformatics. In addition, I serve as the Guest Editor of special journal issues of International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Frontiers in Genetics BMC genomics. Now I joined Biophysical Reviews Editorial Board as IUPAB Councilor. I am a Secretary of National Committee of Russian Biophysicists, and have helped to organize scientific conferences and workshops, such as the VI Congress of Russian Biophysicists.

     

Dancing with a Difference: Reconfiguring the Poetic Politics of Aboriginal Ritual as National Spectacle1

This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross‐cultural encounter that engages Aboriginal identities with those of the Australian nation. I question the nature of this encounter in terms of a performative dialogue that is both musically and kinesically presented by indigenous communities and ‘translated’ into political discourse by the government. The sentiments of ‘translation’ raise questions as to how local ritual expressions of Aboriginal dance can mediate dialogue when presented as national spectacle. What is being meditated? What is happening in the process of evocation? In this performative nexus, I focus specifically on the poetic politics of Yolngu ritual as spectacle; the nature of performative dialogue in terms of shared dance forms between indigenous communities; the problem of the authentication of dance identities; and how corporeal dispositions of indigenous dance genres influence national sentiment by their symbolic power. I pursue these issues through an analysis of how ancestral dances have been repositioned in national performance venues, such as concerts, cultural centres and ritual arenas, as a means of asserting performative statements about indigenous positioning within the nation‐state. The nature of this dialogue raises questions of authenticity and processes of authentication. It highlights indigenous concerns to control representations of indigeneity as national event, as well as a desire to convey something of the sentiment and sentience embodied in the poetics of their ancestral performances.     

Conceiving silence: infertility as discursive contradiction in Ireland

This article examines the production and reproduction of silence around infertility in Ireland. Based on narratives collected during 18 months of fieldwork, this article locates the contradictory role of silence in both the private experiences of individuals faced with a difficulty conceiving and in institutions constituted as mechanisms of public support. For many people who experience infertility, silence is rooted in the social stigma associated with reproductive failure or sexual inadequacy. Silence protects privacy while at the same time foreclosing both challenges to assumptions that fertility is the norm and any counterdiscourse to the heteronormative, profamily society in Ireland. I show how the reproduction of silence about infertility is a legacy of Ireland's history, reproductive politics, and the cultural idiom of choice. I argue that support networks and Internet bulletin boards on websites create opportunities to dialogue in silence, reproducing isolation rather than creating public discourse.     

Dying under the bird's shadow: narrative representations of degedege and child survival among the Zaramo of Tanzania

In this article, I examine the cultural interpretations of degedege, an indigenous illness commonly recognized by the Zaramo people of coastal Tanzania as life threatening. Drawing on the narratives of three bereaved parents who lost a child to degedege, I analyze the contextual and circumstantial factors involved in these parents' negotiation of the identity of an illness and in their subsequent therapy seeking behavior. I show that even though cultural knowledge and etiological beliefs about degedege may be shared locally, there is significant variation in the therapeutic pathways that parents follow to deal with an actual episode of the illness. I emphasize the need for more contextualized data on health-seeking behaviors, and argue that it is necessary to pay attention to the micropolitics of health care decision making at the household level. Finally, I also call attention to the politics of provider-patient communication at public health facilities as a means to improve public health interventions to increase child survival.     

The Taste of Nationalism: Food Politics in Postsocialist Moscow

In this article I consider how Muscovites cultivate and express nationalist sentiments through their food choices. During the last ten years of the post-socialist transition, Russian consumers have encountered an expanding and increasingly transnational commodity market. Locally produced elements of Russian cuisine both compete with and imitate foreign food products. In response to perceptions that foreign cultures are displacing or subsuming local cultural forms, Russian officials have launched a 'Buy Russian' campaign. Domestic food producers, store clerks, and customers collaborate to classify foods and other products as either 'Ours'(Nash) or 'Not Ours' (Ne nash) and describe local goods as superior to foreign goods in terms of taste, quality, and healthfulness. In their own narratives about consumption choices, Muscovites echo these nationalist themes by explicitly linking their personal food experiences with broader political issues. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on foodpractices in Moscow(1995-2001), I suggest that consumption strategies mediate Muscovites' experiences with growing nationalist sentiments in the context of a globalizing Russia.     

At the back stage of prenatal care: Japanese Ob-Gyns negotiating prenatal diagnosis

In this article, I explore the reluctance of Japanese ob-gyns to discuss prenatal diagnosis (PND) tests with pregnant women. The analysis focuses on the culturally specific ways in which ob-gyns formulate their cautiousness and criticism toward PND while invoking a local moral economy. Analyzing ob-gyns' accounts, I show how the ambiguities of PND are constituted in a specific moment in Japanese culture, history, disability politics, and national reproductive policies and are formulated through local paradigms of thinking about pregnant women, their fetuses, and the process of becoming a person in Japanese society. Finally, I show how PND in Japan is pushed to a "back-stage" realm in which the diagnosis for fetal anomalies is practiced in secrecy.     

Intimacy on Display: Movie Stars,Images and Everyday Life in South India

Because of the close links between the Tamil movie industry and politics, and the position of fans in this, everyday engagements of fans with their actors are generally overlooked. This article focuses on how fandom unfolds in the familial space in Tamil Nadu state, South India. Brothers fight over images, newlywed couples insert movie stars in their wedding photography, and fathers take a son to their favorite star to get him back on the right track. I argue that fandom is inflected in familial relationships as well as being informed by them. Further, I argue that personalized images of movie stars play a crucial role herein.     

Indigenous in the city: the politics of urban Mapuche identity in Chile

In this article, I analyse how urban Mapuche indigenous organizations in Chile conduct politics, both externally in relation to the state and internally in relation to other Mapuches. I suggest that the state creates the context for their politics through enacting centuries of policies that put Mapuche identity ‘under siege’. My analysis shows that urban Mapuche organizations respond to this context in three central ways. Some organizations refuse the moniker ‘urban’ and are temporarily urban. Others embrace their urbanity and are adamantly urban. Still others try to overcome the rural-urban divide to become reconciled urban. Each of these strategies deploys ideas of authenticity in different ways, opening possibilities for different kinds of political alliances. My research argues that when the stakes are high for claiming a racial or ethnic identity, choosing which aspects of identity on which to base political demands has profound political consequences.     

MORAL EXPERTISE: A PROBLEM IN THE PROFESSIONAL ETHICS OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICISTS

Philosophers, particularly moral philosophers, are increasingly being involved in public decision-making in areas which are seen to raise ethical issues. For example, Dame Mary Warnock chaired the ‘Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology’ in the UK in 1982–4; the Philosophy Department at Auckland was commissioned by the Auckland Regional Authority to report on the ethical aspects of fluoridating the public water supply in 1990; and many of us are serving on ethics committees of various sorts. Not only are philosophers actually being called on or consulted, but many of us would argue that a philosophical contribution in such areas is essential. The involvement of moral philosophers in public policy decisions raises a question of professional ethics, viz, what role should a philosopher's own moral perspective or judgements play in the advice s/he gives, or contribution s/he makes, to public decision-making on ethical issues. Like most problems in professional ethics, this prompts reflection on the nature of the profession, and in particular on the expertise we take moral philosophy to offer. It also prompts reflection on how processes of public decision making in ethically problematic areas should be understood. I explore these issues in this paper.     

Desire Work: Producing Heterosexuality in South African Pentecostal Gay Men

Gay men in Cape Town, South Africa joined a Pentecostal ministry in an attempt to produce what they understood as ‘natural’ heterosexual attraction. In this article, I explore how these gay men try to form new selves through what I call ‘desire work’, or physical and emotional micropractices and discipline. Desire is not ‘natural’, but it is produced through a multitude of engagements with cultural norms, public life, political economies, and social forces. New selves are built through concerted bodily changes and comportment [Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], and although gay Pentecostal men shared this process, their success was limited. I understand desire work as a response to a larger context in which many Pentecostals are disaffected with the post-apartheid government and withdraw from politics as a result. Their fears of the uncertainties of democracy pushed them to engage in optimistic fantasies of heterosexual lives, which were not often realised [Berlant, Lauren Gail. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press].     

The Rights and Blights of the Politics in Indigenous Higher Education

The Seventh Berndt Foundation Biennial LectureIt is clear from their voluminous scholarly output over five decades that Ronald and Catherine Berndt were keen observers of ‘the winds of change’ that were blowing strongly across most of Aboriginal Australia in that period. We contemporary scholars are closely watching both changes emanating from outside our communities and those that we as Indigenous Australians have instigated and moulded from within. A particular focus of this paper is how Indigenous Higher Education policies, programs and practices have been shaped by the politics of Indigenous self-determination and supported by social justice and human rights agendas. These frameworks have also guided argument, advocacy, and activism in the wider arena of Indigenous affairs, providing much of its language and forms of analysis. Today, however, there is evidence of a growing frustration that such frameworks have prevented alternative arguments, priorities, and possibilities from entering public discourse. In this paper, I discuss how these frameworks mutually constitute and uphold forms of analysis in Indigenous academia and Indigenous affairs in ways that fail to engage with the complexity of the contemporary space in which we as Indigenous people find ourselves today.     

Culture,Conflict, and Translocal Communication: Mobile Technology and Politics in Rural West Bengal,India

As media reports of political movements from various locations have shown, mobile technology can be a powerful political instrument. This paper examines how political activists in West Bengal, India use mobile phones for their daily political work. I seek ways to recognize the disruptive and political potential of mobile technology without ignoring its social and cultural rootedness. I illustrate how riots and protests relate to the increase in translocal communication enabled by phones. I also demonstrate how the political use of mobile technology for extra ordinary events is grounded in the social and political processes of ordinary everyday life and draws from the local understanding of politics by emphasizing certain aspects of it. My article confirms the cultural continuity amidst the increase in translocal relationships but it also pinpoints how cultures harbour conflicts and alternative discourses which translocal communication helps to amplify.     

Moral encounters: drawing boundaries of class,sexuality and migrancy in paid domestic work

I examine how migrant–national encounters are morally framed through boundary making based on intersections of class, sexuality, ethnicity and migrancy. Encounters are a fruitful lens for the study of the everyday politics of diversity and belonging. By focusing on encounters it is possible to analyse whether close contact does in fact reduce prejudice, as has been argued in research on cosmopolitan urbanism. I present the notion of contact space as a conceptual tool for such analysis, as well as examples of contact spaces in the private and public spheres. I use ethnographic data on the employment of domestic workers in Naples, Italy, to show that close contact does not alleviate prejudices in societies that offer little possibility of social advancement for migrant workers.     

‘Wasting mbeng’: Adventure and Trust Amongst sub-Saharan Migrants in Morocco

This article examines how irregular migrants from Central and Western Africa stranded in Morocco forged tenuous but essential relationships in the face of hostile and violent border politics constraining their mobility and resulting in systematic infringement of their rights. I examine the basis of trust amongst migrants in Morocco, who called themselves ‘adventurers’ on a quest for the ‘objective’ (e.g. ‘finding their lives’, usually through getting into Europe). Although most of them had embarked on individual journeys, they regularly needed to cooperate in order to face arduous living conditions and attempt crossing the border into Spain. The article demonstrates how trust was entangled not only with hostile migration politics but with regular moral conundrums as migrants needed to manage a balance between collaborating with other migrants and reaching their own ‘objective’.