Unsettling Power: Domestic Violence,Gender Politics,and Struggles over Sovereignty in Ghana

This article provides a new lens for analyzing power formations in human rights practices by examining Ghanaian struggles over a Domestic Violence Bill. While the hegemonic character of human rights advocacy is well-established, we know less about exercises of power in discourses and practices that oppose rights. I analyze how the Ghanaian government constructed the discourse of cultural sovereignty and deployed it against women's rights. The government legitimated this discourse by appropriating the voice of ‘the people’ and superimposing notions of ‘foreignness’ onto both the Bill and Ghanaian women's rights activists. Drawing on the historiography of colonialism and ethnography of political performance, I argue that this case illustrates how the discourse of cultural sovereignty is mobilized in a struggle over shifting configurations of gender, political activism, and state sovereignty.     

‘A Culture of Immediatism’: Co-optation and Complicity in Post-war Angola

This article explores the notion of a ‘culture of immediatism’ that characterises the current political and socio-economic environment of Angola, according to residents of its capital, Luanda. Analysing the material and symbolic affects of the post-war economic boom in the lives of ‘ordinary’ citizens, the article proposes to read the discourses and practices deployed on the ideological terrain of ‘immediatism’ as renegotiations of hegemony. By ethnographically unpacking the ‘aesthetics of power', I sketch out the contours of hegemony to see how power relations change in practice over time. This then sheds new light on the social processes involved in rapid economic change and contemporary, ‘neo-authoritarian’ statecraft, balancing the standard ‘clientelist’ account of power in post-war Angola.     

Restaging the Will to Believe: Religious Pluralism, Anti-Syncretism, and the Problem of Belief

In this article, I examine anthropological conceptions of religious belief by concentrating on the problems that arise in employing them in socioreligious fields characterized by pluralism, a high degree of mobility in changing religious affiliation, and by what Rosalind Shaw and Charles Stewart have called "anti-syncretism" (1994). Instead of discarding the concept for anthropology, however, as some scholars have proposed, I suggest that indigenous discourses referring to and practices of belief represent an important field of anthropological inquiry, particularly as concerns non-Western forms of Christianity. In this article, I argue that people's ideas of and experiences with spiritual entities engender particular ways of talking about and practicing belief. Analyzing religious practices among the Zambian Gwembe Tonga, it is shown that some conceptual problems can be overcome by shifting the focus from belief as a stable and perpetual interior state of religious practitioners to the practice of cyclically regenerating a condition of internalized "believing."     

The struggle that cannot be named: violence,space and the re-articulation of anti-racism in post-Duggan Britain

The history of black struggles in Britain has often centred on spaces of violence and resistance. While there has been significant attention paid to how racism is articulated through particular places, less has been said about anti-racism being communicated through its associations with space and place. Using Tottenham (north London) as a case study, I draw on ethnographic observations at demonstrations and public meetings, in addition to semi-structured interviews with anti-racist activists resisting policing in post-2011 London. This paper argues that, over time, racist metonyms describing places racialised as black have led to the rise of a metonymic anti-racism. Metonymic anti-racism is used alongside more overt anti-racist language, and has profound implications for understanding struggles against police racism in Britain. The paper analyses these implications, contextualizing them historically, in light of neoliberalised racial discourses and how anti-racist metonyms shape articulations of black struggle against policing in post-2011 Tottenham.     

Mitochondrial DNA haplogroups in Amerindian populations from the Gran Chaco.

Mitochondrial DNA from 141 individuals was typed for diagnostic restriction sites and the 9-bp region V deletion to examine the distribution of the founding mtDNA lineage haplotypes in three Amerindian populations (Mataco, Toba, and Pilagá) who currently inhabit the Argentinian part of the Gran Chaco. All four lineages were identified in the three tribes and four population samples studied. Disregarding ethnic or geographic origin, haplogroups B and D exhibit high incidence among the Gran Chaco inhabitants, whereas haplogroups A and C are present in a lower frequency. Three individuals possess none of the characteristic markers and, therefore, could not be assigned to one of those lineages. A neighbor-joining representation of F(ST) distances reflects the current geographic location of the populations, and this also corresponds to their historic distribution. After separating South America into four major regions (Tropical Forest, Andes, Gran Chaco, and Patagonia-Tierra del Fuego), the Gran Chaco populations present the highest average intragroup variability (Hs = 0.64) as well as the lowest intergroup diversity (G(')(ST) = 0.06). These findings suggest high levels of gene flow among the Chaco tribes, as well as with neighbor populations from outside the region.     

Reflexivity,tradition and racism in a former mining town

In this article I examine the formation of white working-class racialized discourses in a former coal-mining town in Leicestershire. I draw upon my ethnographic research in the area to explore the conditions in which young white adults confront, challenge and question what they perceive to be others’ conventional racist attitudes and beliefs, for example, the racist attitudes of members of their nuclear and extended families, friends and acquaintances. I argue that it is vital to examine these “moments of questioning” if white hegemony in predominantly working-class areas is to be understood.     

The weight of the self: care and compassion in Guatemalan dietary choices

The Public Health Nutrition (PHN) community categorizes dietary-related chronic illnesses as "noncommunicable," fixing these afflictions within individual bodies where they are best managed by individual choices. Yet within clinical encounters in Guatemala, nutritionists and patients treat eating and dieting as relational, transmissible practices. Patients actively seek nutritionists' care, asserting their self-care attempts have failed and they need support from others; nutritionists meanwhile develop treatment plans that situate "personal choice" as lying outside the control of a solitary individual. This article moves between international policy-pedagogy and patient-nutritionist interactions to examine forms of personhood, responsibility, and rationalities of choice present in body weight-management practices in Guatemala. Although nutrition discourses might appear to exemplify how institutional (bio)power manifests through internalized self-monitoring and preoccupation for one's own self, I argue that within the lived experiences of "nutrition-in-action," the self-body of the patient becomes broadly conceived to include the nutritionist, the family, and the broader community.     

"Kissing a Baby Is Not at All Good for Him": Infant Mortality, Medicine, and Colonial Modernity in the U.S.-Occupied Philippines

Feminist scholars have begun to consider the ways indigenous practices of child rearing were and are challenged in (post)colonial discourse and practice, and how these practices have become a terrain on which definitions of nation, state, and economy are contested. In this article, I adopt a historical anthropological approach to consider how Filipino child-rearing strategies were described and stigmatized in educational, public health, and public welfare discourses in the U.S.-occupied Philippines in the early 20th century. I demonstrate how public health practices and discourses that were generated as part of a "benevolent" campaign against high rates of infant mortality were strategically used as a weapon against Filipino arguments for independence. I also consider how discourses constructing Filipino caregivers as overly indulgent were linked to metropolitan concerns about production of the "new industrial man" and were used to develop a racialized critique of the cultural practices of Filipinos.     

Conjuring spirits: melancholic play and refusal among alcohol-drinking Lisu men on the China-Myanmar border

Among the ethnic minority Lisu in the Nu River Valley on the China-Myanmar border, Christian missionization and Chinese development have led to cultural loss by paradoxically erasing and reifying Lisu cultural practices. Responding to loss, non-Christian Lisu men gather regularly to drink alcohol, a practice denigrated by state and Christian discourses. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article argues that alcohol drinking is a form of melancholic play – a mode through which non-Christian Lisu men objectify and refuse cultural loss. Revising conventional understandings of melancholia, in which people are said to be haunted by loss, I analyse how the men exert a haunting force through melancholic play. Incorporating forgotten rituals and summoning abandoned spirits, they reverse hegemonic hierarchies, reshape communal boundaries, and remember lost lifeworlds. By illuminating how melancholia constitutes an active refusal of loss rather than a pathological return of the repressed, this article contributes to understanding how people transform loss into social creativity, agency, and political action.     

Flexible kinship: shaping transnational families among the Chinese in Tahiti

This article examines the practices of ‘flexible kinship’ used by Chinese migrants in colonial Tahiti. ‘Flexible kinship’ draws attention to the strategic uses that are made of kinship in the context of migration and diaspora: the adjustments to cultural, political, and legal borders that lead to changes in family forms and in the relations between kin. Using a multi‐generational perspective, I examine how families were shaped by successive changes and reversals in legal‐political and economic events and conjunctures over the long twentieth century. I argue for the importance of addressing transnational border‐crossing practices that involve not just a spatial extension of networks but also legal strategies within the host locality. I further show that if it is true that the Confucian hierarchical order has conditioned transnational practices of flexible kinship, then this hierarchy has not only bent to the circumstances, it has to a great extent been weakened. Finally, I argue that the history of familial adjustments has shaped a habitus that maximizes economic and legal security, especially among women.     

Resituating the Place of Educational Discourse in Anthropology

This critical essay examines the place of educational discourse in contemporary anthropology. I address the growing influence of "cultural studies" frameworks in anthropology—especially in research on popular culture, media, and identity—and the corresponding neglect of specifically educational discourses and practices, in and out of schools. To illustrate, I briefly examine recent research by four noted cultural anthropologists who mention the effects of schools at their field sites but pay insufficient attention to complex educational discourses and practices. Then I address the reasons why most contemporary anthropologists outside the subfield of "anthropology of education" ignore or downplay the role of modern schools in structuring identities and power relations, both locally and globally. I end with a programmatic synthesis: to recognize and account for the continuing power of schools in most contemporary ethnographic sites, even as we broaden our vision of "education" and extend our analytic tools well beyond schools. This resituating of educational discourse in anthropology might accomplish two important things. First, it could arrest the trend toward subfield specialization and provide a more unifying research program. Second, it would promote anthropology's renewed engagement with some of the most pressing problems of democracy and public policy, fostering an organic link between our multiple roles as teachers, researchers, and institutional actors, [education, identity, cultural studies, ethnographyJ     

The consumption ofTypha domingensis pers. (Typhaceae) Pollen among the ethnic groups of the Gran Chaco, South America

The gathering of Typha domingensis pollen and the modes of preparation and consumption edible products with it by seven ethnic groups of the Gran Chaco (Chulupí, Lengua, Maká, Mataco, Pilagá, Toba and Toba-Pilagá) in Argentina and Paraguay are described in this paper, together with those product’s local names and chemical compositions. Pollen provides an excellent food for those groups, because of both its nutritional value and its availability in periods when there is a scarcity of fruits and vegetables. The ethnic groups of the Gran Chaco do not eat any kind of pollen other than that ofT. domingensis.     

Introduction: Reconsidering Agency—Feminist Anthropologies in Asia

The five articles in this Special Issue are introduced by contextualising them broadly within feminist poststructuralist, postcolonial and anthropological approaches. After a brief exploration of methodologies that link ethnography with poetics and historical analysis, a general theoretical critique of modern Western forms of agency, especially liberal notions of autonomous rational choice, is offered. Western philosophy and theory, argues the author, have implications well beyond social formations in the West and she outlines their impacts on the agency of women in Asian societies. While cautioning against the pitfalls of both under and overvaluing agency, the author then offers a reconsideration of its analytical utility. Agency needs to address the gaps between everyday reflection and practices and hegemonic discourses or symbolic structures. In this gap, where women who fall outside the parameters of dominant notions of womanhood are considered ‘unstable’, both resistance and constraint are possible. Dominant discourses certainly have durable effects but their tools and symbols have been reinscribed to produce agency in hybrid forms. Agency is thus thought to arise from within existing societal discourses and symbolic structures rather than in opposition to them. In this process multiple positionings for women, all of which are performative, are created. These reconsiderations of agency are mirrored in the articles which follow. Agency in its modern forms is deemed inadequate by these authors to explain the agency of women in Asia. Rather than proposing a hierarchy of agency in its significant and insignificant forms, the authors in this Issue provide much needed accounts of socially and culturally situated agency, significant in both their breadth and depth.     

Being and place: movement, ancestors, and personhood in East Java, Indonesia

This article is about the transformation of the frontier character of East Java and the impact that such a transformation and the migrations that precipitated it have on forms of personhood in a specific locality. Within this context, it enquires into the capacities of human subjects to create place and the capacity of place to create persons. In particular, it looks at the ways in which memories, kinship, and ritual practices are spatialized and the manner in which such practices, once solidified and coagulated into topographies that map social relations, give rise to particular conceptions of place and personhood as mutually constituting and equally fluid and alterable.  

Résumé

L'auteur traite de la transformation du caractère de frontière de l'est de Java et de l'impact de cette transformation et des migrations qui l'ont suscitée sur la notion de personne dans une localité spécifique. Dans ce contexte, il étudie la capacité des êtres humains à créer des lieux et la capacité des lieux à créer des personnes. Il examine en particulier la manière dont les souvenirs, la parenté et les pratiques rituelles sont spatialisés et dont ces pratiques, une fois agglomérées dans des topographies représentant les relations sociales, suscitent des conceptions particulières du lieu et de la personne comme constitutifs l'un de l'autre et tout aussi mouvants et changeant l'un que l'autre.     

Community Life and Discourses among Fiji Islanders in Kantō, Japan

This article examines how Fiji Islanders of diverse ethnic backgrounds living in Japan's Kantō area reflect on and constitute community life in the diaspora. While they occasionally refer to the ‘community’ and speak about its social value, get-togethers of significant numbers occur infrequently. Ultimately, a Fijian-centred community is virtually absent in the everyday lives of Japan-based Fiji Islanders. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Tokyo Metropolis and its neighbouring prefectures, this contribution suggests that for Fiji Islanders in Kantō, talking about ‘community’ serves two particular purposes: on the one hand community discourses create an emotional bond, both among the migrants and between the migrants and their place of origin. At the same time, discourses on the relevance of the community without undergoing efforts to maintain it, serve as strategies of navigating self and belonging in a critical and reflexive way. As migrants’ social lives are complex and shaped by numerous economic, spatial, and individual disjunctures, Kantō Fiji Islanders contextually configure and extend their social relations with regard to their socio-cultural heritage, their place of residence in Japan, their gaikokujin (foreigner) status, and their life-work cycles.     

Techne, Technoscience, and the Circulation of Comestible Commodities: An Introduction

In this "In Focus" introduction, we present the ways in which discourses of techne (craft or artisanship) and technoscience mediate the production, consumption, and circulation of food and drink. The authors in this "In Focus" examine food and drink as localized instances of large-scale spatial and temporal processes and as cultural-material markers of power/knowledge. Our work on the current controversies surrounding foie gras exemplifies how specialty commodities marketed as "artisanal" are simultaneously legitimated through technoscientific practices and invocations of tradition or nature. Claims to distinction based on tradition or "terroir" are also imbricated in global industrial production and distribution.     

'Common sense' and 'governmentality': local government in southeastern Ireland, 1850-1922

Early paradigms in political anthropology identified formal government councils as a subject for cross-cultural comparison (structural functionalism) or as a political resource for goal-orientated actors (transactionalism). Recent concerns with power and regulation can also profit from a focus on local-level government councils by using them to explore the conceptual and empirical linkages between 'common sense' and 'governmentality'. In this article, as a point of entry, we highlight a key moment in the history of Britain's colonial and hegemonic project in Ireland, namely the orderly administrative transition from colony to state which occurred in Ireland after 1919. By constructing a historical narrative of a local government council in the southeast after 1850, and of its material and discursive bases, we show how the actions and ideologies of elite farmers were implicated in this orderly administrative transition and, therefore, how the concepts of governmentality, hegemony, and common sense might be linked.     

The Uncertainty of Prosperity: Dependence and the Politics of Middle-Class Privilege in Maputo

In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a ‘middle class’ in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to ‘new’ middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these ‘emerging middle classes’ are central for economic growth and the safeguarding of a stable, liberal order. The case of Mozambique complicates this assertion and demonstrates an occurrence now taking place across the globe. When the relationships of dependence and obligation and the narratives that justify them erode, the structures of power that may have once been mutually constitutive between an emerging middle class and the state can become damaging as the system they once upheld loses its legitimacy.     

Responsible choices: situating pregnancy intention among Haitians in South Florida

In this article, I focus on unintended pregnancy as a means to interrogate the intersections of abortion and prenatal discourses in the United States, and the ways in which these discourses assume certain kinds of moral, liberal subjects. Using media material, congressional legislation, public health policy, and ethnographic data from South Florida (2004-06), I trace how these discourses assume that women will behave in "rational," "responsible" ways to plan their reproductive futures, and how these assumptions intersect with Haitian women migrants' lived experiences in South Florida. My research illustrates how decisions about family planning are situated within particular local moral worlds, where gender relations, religion, power, and desires for children inform women's everyday lives.