On the ethics and practice of contemporary social theory: from crisis talk to multiattentional method

Using an approach derived from the anthropology and sociology of knowledge, this article explores the historical emergence of European social theory and its contemporary place in the human sciences. I direct ethnographic attention to a sense of crisis or impasse in social theory’s capacity to frame and to analyze the complexity of contemporary relations in the world. By reanalyzing this crisis talk as a phenomenological reaction to the growing (sub)specialization of social theory, I offer a new way of thinking about social theory in terms of specialized analytical attentions. I also suggest how we can move from crisis talk to a new ethics of theoretical complementarity, inspired by Dilthey, which I term “multiattentional method.”     

Breeding sovereignty: the production of race,nature, and capital in Venezuela

This article explores the efforts of the Venezuelan government to improve food security and rural livelihoods with an experimental cattle-breeding project. It investigates the activities of a state enterprise in the western plains and how the selective-breeding practices of veterinary experts intersect with the logic of capital and biopolitics. Contributing to debates on the interaction between society and environment, the analysis suggests that ‘endogenous development’, or the reduction of poverty through internal markets, draws on systems of knowledge that treat the biology of animals as a field of intervention for the resolution of social contradictions. To reduce reliance on petroleum rent and food imports, Venezuelan experts have sought to create a new breed of cattle suited to the nation's diverse ecologies. But the knowledge systems which guide this project are embedded with a host of cultural and economic assumptions that subvert the successful application of this biotechnology. Ultimately, this article seeks to increase knowledge of the techno-politics of resource states at the start of the twenty-first century and the ways in which cultures of expertise impact food sovereignty.     

‘Black’ and ‘white’ death: burials in a time of Ebola in Freetown,Sierra Leone

The article examines experiences of the 2014‐15 Ebola crisis in Freetown, Sierra Leone, through an analysis of the performance of burials. While most of the city's residents had no contact with the virus, ‘Ebola’ was inescapable, owing to the onerous state of emergency regulations imposed by national and international authorities. All burials, regardless of the cause of death, were to be performed by newly established official teams operating according to unfamiliar biomedical and bureaucratic protocols. Burials became emblematic of the crisis through presenting a conflict between local practices and novel procedures, which was coded locally in a complex racial language of ‘black’ and ‘white’, recalling a long regional history of violent integration into the Atlantic World. Building on long‐standing anthropological discussion on the relationship between ‘good’ death and social order, the article explores how burials became sites around which opposing ‘orders’ were experienced, negotiated, and reconciled in locally meaningful ways.     

Portraiture and Proximity: ‘Official’ Artists and the State-ization of the Market in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

This article traces the production and circulation of state officials' portraits in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, as visual artists engaged in the cultivation of an art market after the dismantling of socialist-era state sponsorship. I argue that these portraits of the president and other high-ranking officials should be considered as an instance of commercialisation of art. Portraiture invoked proximity of artists to their powerful sitters, government officials, and consequently made artists' work more attractive to a particular kind of domestic buyer. Furthermore, I argue that these practices of commodification enable an understanding of how socialist-era legacies of state sponsorship have converted into the logics of proximity to power. The Soviet-era personalistic connections to bureaucrats have transformed into the means for representation of artwork's market value in contemporary Kazakhstan. As such, Soviet legacies of clientelism have rendered state icons as significant authenticators of commercial value and therefore central to the emerging market.     

Back on the water margin: the ethical fixes of sustainable water provisions in rural China

The classical Chinese novel The water margin tells the story of a group of petty officials who take a collective stance against the widespread corruption and unfairness of imperial Chinese society. At the root of this story lies the deeply ethical conundrum of redressing injustice when unchecked power prevails. This article draws from this insight to explore some of the ethical dilemmas Chinese state bureaucrats in Yunnan face today when provisioning drinking water to rural communities. Yunnanese officials are burdened with these dilemmas by the state's conspicuous retreat from rural public services in favour of market‐based supply. Through their ethical interventions, Chinese bureaucrats are able to temporarily defer the collapsing of rural water provisions which is caused by the contradictions introduced by the marketization of water. However, such interventions may be followed by further damage to the environment.     

The visual remaking of urban space: Relocation and the use of public housing in “modern” Cairo

Focusing on an urban group that was moved from the center of the capital during 1979–1981 to public housing in a neighborhood in northern Cairo,1 this article explores some of the strategies used by the relocated population to articulate their daily needs and cultural dispositions with the state's hegemonic construction of “modern” space. The discussion focuses on the visual manifestations of these strategies that localize change in durable forms. It is the visibility of these transformations, the article shows, that makes them important signs of distinction and markers of social status. At the same time, it is this visibility that transforms the housing project and remakes the image of Cairo that the state envisaged.     

‘Community’ and the Re‐Making of 1970s Belfast

This article explores the fraught, shifting terrain of'community’ as lived out in 1970s Belfast. Applying Raymond Williams’ concept of ‘structures of feeling,’ it explores ‘community’ consciousness that is rooted in affection, sensation, and knowledge. It then considers campaigns against redevelopment in west Belfast at this time, and the ways they were inspired and limited by the contemporary experience of ‘community.’ Based on fieldwork, oral histories, and archival resources, the discussion proposes that political action in divided societies is not reducible to sectarian geography. Rather, it advocates analysing the historically specific contours ofnuanced emotional allegiances and spatial associations that motivate and limit political action, and attention to how social content and place figure in conceptions of collectivity.     

Third‐way neoliberalism and conditional cash transfers: The paradoxes of empowerment,participation and self‐help among poor Uruguayan women

The Latin American literature on Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) welfare programs has typically involved the quantitative evaluation of social and economic impact, with fewer studies addressing the qualitative and gendered impacts of CCTs. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in poor squatter settlement communities in Uruguay, this article explores the everyday social realities of poor single mothers who have been disconnected from their kinship networks and must rely on CCT payments for survival. I locate these women's experiences within the third‐way neoliberal discourses of ‘empowerment’, ‘participation’ and ‘self‐help’ espoused by the state, and the various structural conditions, including crime, violence and unequal gender relations, that impact negatively on women's abilities to comply with their social and civic duties. I argue that rather than producing responsible and empowered subjects, Uruguay's recent CCT welfare program has paradoxically limited some women's participation in civic and public life and reproduced their dependent relations with men.     

On the materials of mats: thinking through design in a Melanesian society

This article examines the selective use of plant materials in design in Melanesia. It explores – through an analysis of pandanus leaf mats in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea – how makers select fibres on the basis of their capacity to express social relations to varying temporalities before their natural decay. J.J. Gibson's theory of affordance and Donald Norman's concept of mapping are critically applied for this purpose. This approach emphasizes how social and temporal relations are condensed into objects, and refocuses anthropological attention towards materials and their affordances in the production of material culture.     

The artist Carl Abrahams and the cosmopolitan work of centring and peripheralizing the self⋆

The article looks at the work and life of Jamaican artist and ‘citizen of the world’ Carl Abrahams. Responding to Gell's argument that art should be thought of as a ‘technology of enchantment’, and to a wider approach that seeks to explain art by reference to cultural context, the article takes Abrahams's own Weltkenntnis, or world‐knowledge, as its focus. The Weltkenntnis of an artist, or indeed any person, is often at odds both with their surrounding cultural situation and the technical means they have to express themselves. It is never entirely possible to reduce a particular form of self‐expression either to the wider worldview or to a particular set of technical effects. The article explores the conceptual tensions involved in Abrahams's claims to be a cosmopolitan artist and his work of centring and peripheralizing himself in colonial and postcolonial Jamaica.     

‘An island of socialism in a capitalist country’: Postsocialist Russian science and the culture of the state

Through a comparison of privatization programs in two physics institutes, this article explores the ways in which scientists in the Siberian science city of Akademgorodok adapted to the low levels of state funding available to them in the 1990s. Scientists transformed structures that were available under socialism into hybrid state-private ventures. Rather than ‘freeing’ Russian science from its former dependence on the state, however, these changes have reconfigured, and in some cases even strengthened, the relationship between state power and the production of knowledge. Seeing ‘the state’ as it is constituted in Russian scientists' discourse challenges Western models of the autonomy of science.     

Social capital and music teacher professional development: Principle,policy, and practice

Teacher professional development (PD) is often extended as a driver of good teaching and effective schools. In recent years, teacher PD has increasingly focused on developing teacher social capital by placing teachers within professional communities to collectively solve instructional problems. Using Bourdieu's and Coleman's conceptions of social capital as a theoretical and practical lens, this article explores how a social capital frame could generate more effective PD policy in music education. Areas examined also include the specific ways in which social capital becomes a lever for teacher growth and school improvement and the social dimensions of music teacher PD. The article concludes with principles of social capital-advancing PD policy, examples of principle-aligned PD policies, implications for research and advocacy, and an accounting of challenges and opportunities for the future. The author argues that centralizing social capital development as an aim of PD represents a new frontier in music teacher learning.     

The early history of migration and settlement of Yemenis in Cardiff, 1939–1970: religion and ethnicity as social capital

Utilizing Putnam's concept of bonding social capital, this article explores the under-researched topic of the history of migrant men's reproduction of social capital in Cardiff, Wales. Drawing upon a series of oral history interviews with a respected imam of more than fifty years, and informed by existing research on Muslim migrants, we explore both the advantages and disadvantages of community relationships between Yemeni men in relation to trust, reciprocity and interpersonal well-being. By examining these complex bonds, this article contributes to the literature on religious and ethnic social networks by challenging the assumption that migrants always benefit from social resources (Wilson 1978; Shah 2007), and offers an alternative account of religiously underpinned social capital to those of studies of majority ethnic Christians in North America (Smidt 2003). Uniquely, this article also points to the divergences between religious and ethnic capitals in the context of Yemeni migrants' social resources during 1939–1970.     

Strategies of segregation: race,residence, and the struggle for educational equality

This article discusses the relationship between the socio-economic success of the Chinese in Canada, news discourse and the problematization of nearly 600 undocumented Fujianese migrants who arrived on Canada's western shores from July-September 1999. Our interests rest in examining the thematic patterns of the coverage, i.e. how the migrants' arrivals were 'problematized' and transformed into a discursive crisis centred on the constructs of 'risk' and, more precisely, 'risk avoidance'. It is our contention that news reporting on the migrants holds broader ideological resonances, extending beyond a unilateral concern about the perceived failure of the Canadian immigration and refugee systems. We argue that the reporting of these events serves as an index for collective insecurities stemming from social change, racial integration and contested Euro-Canadian hegemony.     

From Moral Protest to Religious Politics: Ethical Demands and Beur Political Action in France

This paper traces the responses of Muslim youths ('Beurs') to their marginalisation in France. The Beur movement acquired national significance via the politicisation of moral protest in the early 1980s. In spite of early successes, the movement stumbled when the 'politics of austerity' adopted by the French state amplified a social crisis for which migrants became the scapegoats. The Beur movement, like other youth movements of the period, expressed a search for solidarity and a stress on ethical demands. Beurs' disenchantment when their civic elan ran out in the face of everyday difficulties led some to transfer their search for solidarity to the terrain of Islam. Islam, the paper argues, often appears to provide answers to the particular complex of politico-ethical demands for social justice and dignity that the Beur movement expressed. However, the Islamist re-conversion of some Beur militants is to be read as the result of a particular conjunction of multiple power relations which would integrate economic, social, cultural and gender dimensions. It is not necessarily indicative of a failure of the politics of moral protest to promote progressive transformational politics.     

Reflexivity and the Challenges of Ethnographic Film

ABSTRACT

This article explores the cultural geography of a distinctive mode of bridal photography that developed in Taiwan beginning in the 1980s and by the 1990s had become virtually a universal cultural practice for weddings, cutting across the class and urban/rural social divisions. Characterized by large-scale high key portraits of brides and grooms dressed in a variety of finery, posed in numerous settings, and exuding varied emotional states, the photographs are a source of national pride for Taiwan as they are famous throughout the region. Using theories of competitive consumption, imagined community, and time-space compression, the article explores ways in which Taipei's bridal industry commands space and constructs place.     

Opportunism and Diversification: Entrepreneurship and Livelihood Strategies in Uncertain Times

As economic crisis deepens across Europe people are forced to find innovative strategies to accommodate circumstances of chronic uncertainty. Even with a second multi-billion euro bailout package secured for Greece, the prospects of a sustainable recovery in the near future look bleak. However, crisis has also created dynamic spaces for entrepreneurial opportunism and diversification resulting in social mobility, relocation, shifts in livelihood strategy and a burgeoning informal economy. Although economic systems are currently undergoing radical reassessment, social demands such as competitive consumption remain. Opportunities for investment in renewable energy programmes, especially photovoltaics, are also pervasive. By considering cases of business opportunism and livelihood diversification in relation to Max Weber's concept of wertrational and notions of uncertainty, this article brings new perspectives to strategies of negotiating the worst economic crisis in living memory.     

Tales of Decline: Reading Social Pathology into Individual Suicide in South India

In the south Indian state of Kerala, the nation's so-called suicide capital, suicide can often appear self-evident in meaning and motivation to casual onlookers and experts alike. Drawing on explanatory accounts, rumors, and speculative tales of suicide collected between 2004 and 2007, this article explores the ontological power of certain deaths to assert themselves as always-already known on the basis of perceived and reported demographic patterns of suicide. I demonstrate the ways suicides are commonly read, less through the distinct details of their individual case presentations than "up" to broader scales of social pathology. Shaped by the intertwined histories of public health intervention and state taxonomic knowledge in India, these "epidemic readings" of suicide enact a metonymy between individual suffering and ideas of collective decline that pushes the suicide case to fit-and thus to stand for-aggregate trends at the level of populations. Focusing on how family navigated the generic meanings and motivations ascribed to the deaths of their loved ones, I argue that the ability of kin to resist, collude with, or strategically deploy epidemic readings in their search for truth and closure hinged significantly on their classed fluency in the social, legal, and bureaucratic discourses of suicide.     

Schools as “Poetry-Friendly Places”: Michael Rosen on Poetry in the Curriculum

This article explores the views of children's poet Michael Rosen in relation to poetry in education. It is based on an interview in which Rosen not only discusses the significance of encouraging young people to engage with poetry at school but also analyzes a number of threats to poetry's place in the English curriculum. This article identifies parallels between Rosen's views and current education research and shows how in both cases there is a clear awareness of how certain educational policies risk undermining the value of poetry's contribution to young people's learning experience.     

“Frame That Rug!”: Narratives of Zapotec Textiles as Art and Ethnic Commodity in the Global Marketplace

This article explores representations of Mexican Zapotec textiles as texts and as sites of contested values and meanings. Discussion of this indigenous cottage industry begins in the Oaxacan village of Teotitlán del Valle, the site of production, and follows the textile as it moves across social and cultural borders as a commodity in postindustrial consumer culture. The anthropologist's mediating role in brokering Zapotec textiles is considered within the social context of exchange relations between buyer and seller. Ethnographic stories about the production and aesthetics of Zapotec textiles are contrasted with consumers’ self-fashioning narratives of embodied experiences associated with their hand-woven possessions. The article concludes with reflections on the narrative threads of text that comprise a Zapotec textile's intrinsic value as both art and craft.