Whiteness,class and place in two London suburbs

This article addresses a specific intersection of class, place and whiteness by focusing on distinctions between middle-class owner-occupiers in suburban London. Where whiteness is constructed through association with an imaginary of the unchanging nature of rural England and, in particular, the village, some suburban places provide a more ready village metaphor in support of whiteness than others. In a securely middle-class suburb residents are able to misrecognize their neighbourhood as a village, and beyond the metaphor, report feeling at home in rural England. In a marginal middle-class suburb whiteness is founded on weaker claims to the English village metaphor and, moreover, residents feel less at home in rural England. This article demonstrates the need to go beyond the often made distinction between the tactics of middle class (owner-occupiers) and working class (tenants) by identifying distinctions within the former group.     

Legitimation and the Re-Discovery of Ritual: Intercommunal and Class Relationships in a Bangladeshi Village

Despite the great poverty in the village of Doria, (Dhaka, Bangladesh) it is religious conflicts, and not class conflict, which has become important. The poor in each religious group are made pawns in the competition between wealthy families of different religious groups. In this paper I use the example of a thief-searching ritual, as an element of interconnected ‘social situations’, to illustrate the conflict and cooperation characterising inter- and intra-group relationships in Doria. It shows how a ritual is ‘rediscovered’ and used by religious leaders to achieve instrumental and expressive/ normative ends.     

‘Culture shock’: Black students account for their distinctiveness at an elite college

Previous research on black students attending predominantly white colleges has emphasized race-based differences with white students while downplaying differences in social class. This research indicates that class-based differences are an important component of many black students’ discomfort at ‘Northern College’, a school that has traditionally served wealthy white students. Drawing on interviews and participant observation done on campus, I apply cultural capital theory to explain how differences in class-specific cultural styles make campus life difficult for non-affluent blacks and discuss the implications of the findings for future research on black college experiences.     

Reconstructing feminist perspectives of women’s bodies using a globalized view: The changing surrogacy market in Japan

This paper aims to evoke an alternative viewpoint on surrogacy, moving beyond popular Western feminist beliefs on the practice, by introducing the history and current context of East Asian surrogacy. To elaborate a different cultural perspective on surrogacy, this paper first introduces the East Asian history of contract pregnancy systems, prior to the emergence of the American invention of ‘modern’ surrogacy practice. Then, it examines Japanese mass media portrayals of cross-border surrogacy in which white women have become ‘convenient’ entities. The results of the analysis show how Japanese culture has adopted a rhetoric about the use of white women as convenient surrogate mothers in the global commercial surrogacy market. An essential aspect of surrogacy is the premise that a woman’s reproductive function should be accessible to others. Past discussions among feminists have neglected this important point. Moreover, they share the assumption that white surrogacy clients are exploiters, who take advantage of women of colour as surrogate mothers. The current situation in Asia flips this perspective—with white women regarded as easier targets for exploitation by wealthy people of colour. For Asian clients, Westerners can be easily regarded as ‘others’ whom they can use for their reproductive needs. In today's globalized era, the surrogacy industry is no longer for affluent Westerners only. Considering this change, it is crucial to discuss surrogacy issues by reconstructing feminist perspectives with a globalized view, to help protect women’s bodies, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, or religion.     

Skin colour and race as analytic concepts

White working-class people have been portrayed in the media and political discourse as unable to keep pace with the demands associated with living in multicultural Britain. In this article, I shall challenge such representations of white working-class people's attitudes towards racialized ‘others’. To do this I explore the views of the members of a white working-class family to the changing racial composition of their once ethnically homogenous council estate (municipal housing). My ethnographic attention is directed to the connections, affective ties and emotional investments that the members of this family have with the estate and its community, and the ways in which BrAsians become configured in these narratives of belonging. I will show how analytical attention to the connections and attachments that white working-class people form with those whom they identify as ethnic and racial ‘others’ provides an account of white working-class identities that undermines popular representations of ‘them’.     

The wedding of two trees: connections,equivalences, and subjunctivity in a Tamil ritual

A wedding between two trees in a Tamil village reveals that a tree can be more than, while still remaining, a tree. It needs to be a tree because trees do certain things. It can be made more than a tree, however, through a logic of homological connections which temporarily create equivalences between trees and divinities. The wedding (kalyanam), a ubiquitous Tamil ritual form which pertains not only to marriage, creatively and subjunctively opens up new possibilities to change ‘it could be’ and ‘it should be’ to ‘let it be so’. The wedding of two trees seeks to materialize ideal situations and outcomes by mobilizing the aliveness of trees, a quality they share with humans and animals, without positing personhood, identity, or confusing categories. In making this argument, I question choices of comparators in anthropological analyses which posit a holistic ‘non-West’ against a dualistic ‘West’ and contrast a taken-for-granted ‘us’ with ‘our’ really rather different ‘others’.     

One family: defining kinship in the neighbourhoods of Kumasi,Ghana

This article investigates how the concept that ‘people from one place are one family’ creates an a priori category of relatedness among otherwise unrelated neighbours in Kumasi, Ghana. A connection between spatial and kinship relations is indicated in the common saying, but unlike similar connections elaborated in other locales, residents often do not share activities such as cooking or cultivating prior to making claims to being ‘one family’. Through interviews and the resolution of a neighbourhood dispute, I show that the assumption that co‐residents are family can precede – and instantiate – the practices that indicate shared family. I argue that the equivalence between place and family is a fundamentally ethical equivalence that renders the actions of selves and others evaluable according to a common understanding of what is good for communities.     

Of wildmen and white men: cryptozoology and inappropriate/d monsters at the cusp of the Anthropocene

People on the Indonesian island of Halmahera claim that the hairy and barely human giants that are said to roam the jungle are seventeenth-century Portuguese colonizers. Employing the feminist concept of ‘inappropriate/d’, I show how the appropriation of the Portuguese wildman into village narratives, regional political history, and national development plans as well as into global discourses of science and media in each case inappropriately collapses the boundaries that the white wildman is implicated in maintaining: those between human and animal, the colonial sovereign and ‘the primitive native’, cryptozoology and the politics of the real. The wild-yet-Western figure, I argue, is inappropriate/d – is ‘on the loose’ – across local, regional, and global registers of reality in ways that trouble linear histories of the wildman as fading from reality into allegory. Like so many other monsters of the Anthropocene, the truthlikeness, or verisimilitude, of the white wildman is enhanced rather than attenuated by recent turns in politics and media.     

Gifting as Governance: NGO Service Projects and Disciplinary Power in Rural Migrant Settlements in China

ABSTRACT

In contemporary China, migrant workers have gathered in urban villages and formed communities of their own. The regulative power of the state has not fully penetrated these enclaves, thus creating opportunities for NGOs to shoulder many of the ongoing welfare responsibilities. The primary goal of this study was to explore how NGO service projects can generate a new type of disciplinary power through give-and-take practices. I argue that service projects allow the givers to transform their economic power and social resources into political power, through which social inequality is obscured, legitimised, and translated into the delivery of ‘love’, ‘caring’ and ‘compassion’. Such political power also delivers middle-class values and lifestyles to rural migrants, who feel obligated to transform their subjectivities in order to reciprocate.     

Parenting during Ferguson: making sense of white parents’ silence

This paper examines what white, middle-class parents report saying to their children about racial tension and racial protest when events like Michael Brown’s death and the Ferguson protests are the top news stories. The data come from interviews with forty white, middle-class parents in 2014–15. The study results indicate that few parents recalled speaking with their children about racial tension or racial protest even when such discussions were highly visible in the news and on social media. I argue parents’ silence stemmed from a desire to create a protected, worry-free childhood combined with an inability to understand how such subjects related to their white life. However, not all parents were silent. Twelve participants reported speaking with their children about these subjects via a neutral or a defensive colour-blind frame. Only two participants drew attention to issues of power and privilege.     

Transforming meanings and group positions: tactics and framing in Anishinaabe–white relations in Northwestern Ontario,Canada

Abstract

Antiracism research often examines how stigmatized groups transform the meanings associated with their group. A complementary approach analyses the tactics that dominant and subordinate groups use to defend or advance their ‘group positions’ in situations that threaten the status quo. A case study of the proposed relocation of an Aboriginal child welfare facility to a rural Ontario township sheds light on both processes. Before rejecting the proposal, white residents and municipal councillors used delaying tactics, searched for race-neutral justifications, offered unsolicited advice, created new rules, and censured ‘traitors’. The Native agency (and its few white ‘allies’), guided by traditional decision-making practices, initially tried to provide ‘neutral’ information, stay positive, and emphasize common interests. When these tactics failed, they considered others before foregoing the opportunity to appeal to an independent tribunal. Ultimately, this case shows how laissez-faire frames and small-town dynamics can limit the choice and effectiveness of antiracist tactics.     

Leaving the Magic Out: Knowledge and Effect in Different Places

In 2010, Porer Nombo and I launched a book about indigenous Papua New Guinean plant knowledge to a large audience at a university near to his village on the north coast of that country. Members of the audience commented that the book made a record of important practices. But they asked if those practices were dependent on secret magic to be effective? What gave us the right to include such secrets? Or, if there was in fact something fundamental missing from the book (magical formulae to activate the processes described), then what was the use of publishing the book? Thinking through their questions suggested the need to analyse what ‘knowledge’ is in different places, and why plants might be effective in some, but not others. In this paper I attempt an explanation that does not rely on a ‘social’ explanation of magic but instead suggest that what we call ‘magic’ are mechanisms whereby a gardener (or healer, or hunter) positions an action, or a thing in relation to other things. I liken the way myth works in these systems to the way intellectual property law provides a comparable ‘mythic’ structure that locates effect in the places that have developed ‘knowledge economies’ and I conclude by asking; if places embody their history and politics, and generate different understandings of effect, then what are the implications of calling Porer's practices with regard to plants, ‘knowledge’?     

Black spaces,black places: Strategic assimilation and identity construction in middle-class suburbia

While white ethnics and immigrants of colour have been studied in terms of their attempts to assimilate into the American mainstream, sociologists assume that ongoing racial discrimination obviates the need for an extensive examination of the actual assimilation trajectories of middle-class blacks. Many middle-class blacks travel from the black to the white world rather than existing exclusively in one racially distinct environment. Yet, we do not fully understand how middle-class blacks conceptualize their own integration into American society. Drawing on data collected through in-depth interviews with middle-class blacks and ethnographic research in a white and a black suburb, I establish the link between an affinity for black spaces and the alternative assimilation trajectories of middle-class blacks. I find that middle-class blacks engage in a variant of segmented assimilation, privileging the black world as a site for socializing even if they live in a white suburb. This selective pattern of assimilation, what I term strategic assimilation, suggests that this population of middle-class blacks does not perceive itself as permanently constrained to the bottom rung of a racial hierarchy.     

Eating money: Narratives of equality on customary land in the context of natural resource extraction in the Solomon Islands

Why do Solomon Islands’ villagers continue to engage with large scale logging projects by foreign companies when they have decades of experience of the disadvantages of such deals? This paper explores village level narratives of equality surrounding a logging dispute in a village on Kolombangara Island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. Drawing on empirical evidence I seek to understand firstly, why villagers continue to engage with logging companies, and secondly, why seemingly viable and financially attractive alternative forestry projects may not be taken up. Additionally, I examine legal recognition of a local conservation Non‐Government organisation as an environmental ‘stakeholder’, with an accepted interest in customary land as distinct from the categorisation of ‘landowners’. I conclude that village communities may continue to engage with foreign logging companies, despite their clear knowledge of the disadvantages of such projects, partly as a means of maintaining some measure of social equality in the village.     

Positionings of the black middle-classes: understanding identity construction beyond strategic assimilation

This paper explores the identities of Britain’s black middle-classes. Drawing upon interviews with seventy-two participants, I theorize a ‘triangle of identity’. This triangle emphasizes how black middle-class identities are constructed within the dynamics of three poles. Firstly, there is the class-minded pole whereby class comes to the fore as a conceptual scheme; secondly, there is the ethnoracial autonomous pole whereby ‘race’ is central to one’s identity and whiteness is actively resisted; and lastly there is the strategic assimilation pole, where one continually moves between classed and racialized spheres of action. This tripartite approach to identity builds upon previous research by further exploring the social, cultural and phenomenological distinctions within Britain’s black middle-classes.     

Maori “bird calls” or “whistles”

This article examines the discourse attendant upon ‘old’ places in contemporary Japan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto. It shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's ‘vanishing’ tradition, and how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others about local identity. The guiding axii of this nostalgic discourse are assertions about the typicality of ‘old’ places and their uniqueness. Finally, the article shows how alongside a debate about such communities as repositories of tradition, there is a discussion about their feudal legacy, social control and political conservatism.     

Encountering the ‘Other’: Pilgrims,Tourists and Boatmen in the City of Varanasi

Contemporary studies of tourism in the ‘Third World’ often focus on the farreaching economic, cultural and environmental consequences of tourism on local populations. Scholars have argued that guest/host interactions reflect a relation of domination in which, much like imperialism, wealthy Western tourists travel in search of the exotic Orient. The tourists are then served and catered to by local communities who are dependent on their business. Such polarities tend to privilege the ‘guests’ as the purveyors of change, while the creative and innovative practices of the host group are rendered invisible. In this paper, I examine the boatmen of Varanasi and their role as culture brokers, negotiating the sacred city for visitors who include pilgrims, domestic and foreign tourists. Concentrating mostly on the relationship between the boatmen and foreign tourists, I look at the multiple strategies and tactics that boatmen have developed to satisfy their needs and desires to their own advantage. Such techniques vary according to the visitors and their desired experience. Thus, the boatmen are quick to ‘tune in’ to those with whom they are dealing. Moreover, the close encounters that boatmen have with tourists enable them to view Western culture as well as their own local culture critically.     

What's in a (Big) Name? The Art and Agency of a Bornean Photographic Collection

This article concerns the photographic collection of Paka anak Otor, the Bidayuh owner of a ‘mini-museum’ in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, and how it became entangled in his claims to status within and beyond his village. Superficially, the situation is easily apprehended via two analogous approaches within photographic theory and Southeast Asianist ethnography, which treat objects and images as representations or bearers of power and meaning. Here I suggest that such approaches end up eliding the action-centred nature of Paka's ‘big name’-making ambitions. In response, I approach his photographic collection through an analytical framework deriving from Alfred Gell's seminal theory, Art and Agency (1998), which has hitherto remained marginal to Southeast Asianist anthropology. I argue that, more than merely symbolising or bearing his ‘big name’, Paka's photographs were agentive image-objects that actively instantiated it. I conclude by asking how such an analytical shift might encourage a reconceptualisation of ‘power’ and ‘objecthood’ in Southeast Asianist anthropology.     

Stonhet and Yelotop: Body Images,Physical Markers and Definitions of Ethnic Boundaries in Papua New Guinea

The Wampar of Papua New Guinea are an ethnic group with contested boundaries and a strong ethnic identity and consciousness. Since their first contact with White missionaries, government officials and anthropologists, body images have changed and become more important. ‘Foreign’ migrants from other PNG provinces are now coming in great numbers into Wampar territory, where they find wealthy Wampar make good marriage partners. From peaceful relations with ‘foreigners’ in the 1960s and 1970s, the situation has changed to the extent that Wampar now have plans for driving men from other ethnic groups out of their territory. Within two generations, ideas of changeable cultural otherness have developed into stereotypes of unchangeable bodily differences. In this paper, I describe (1) changes in the perception of foreigners, and in the definition of ‘foreigner’ itself, (2) body images of the Wampar, and (3) conditions for these changes.     

‘It's true,I'm English… I'm not lying’: essentialized and precarious English identities

This article explores relationships between Englishness and racialization in order to consider the potential for English identities that are progressive in anti-essentialist or multicultural terms. The article draws on data from interviews in which people from a South London area talk about Englishness. I will examine how English identities are understood by participants who are white and participants who are not white. While white participants experience Englishness as a taken-for-granted identity, for participants who are not white English identities are a more calculated, precarious performance. I will then examine discussions of ‘who can be English’. While most participants argue that ‘anyone can be English’ in principle, this is not necessarily the case in practice. It will be suggested that talk of Englishness is particularly constrained by relationships between Englishness, whiteness and ancestry, but that for those who experience Englishness as precarious there are signs that this is not necessarily the case.