Everyone Will Be Jealous For That Mutika

In this paper I describe a phenomenon I refer to by its Aboriginal English name — ‘humbugging’ — in a western Arnhem Land Aboriginal settlement. By discussing the focal object in this phenomenon — the ‘mutika’ (car)¹ — I argue that a most interesting process of de-commoditization is occurring in this settlement. I use examples of humbugging to illustrate how the car in this community has tremendous symbolic as well as practical significance. I use. in particular, the work of Douglas and Isherwood (1979) and Appadurai et al. (1986), and argue that their ‘social life of things’ theoretical framework is appropriate for interpreting the importance of the ‘mutika’. I also suggest, however, that this framework needs to be re-thought in order to incorporate the challenge which de-commoditization presents to it.     

The Good Farmer: Morality,Expertise, and Articulations of Whiteness in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

In Zimbabwe, land has always been a visible index of racial domination and oppression. Following independence in 1980, the redistribution of white property to black farmers emerged as one of the most contentious battlegrounds for refiguring citizenship and nationhood. This article explores how white farmers in a small community in western Zimbabwe fought to establish claims to belonging as they faced the threat of imminent land reform at the turn of the millennium. Drawing upon Tania Li’s concept of articulation [2000. “Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42 (1): 149–179], I suggest that farmers constructed themselves both as moral subjects who cared for the environment, and skilled subjects with the technical know-how to safeguard and maximise the country’s resources. In the absence of claims to indigeneity, farmers attempted to offset their own compromised morality by invoking the language of expertise. By examining this intersection between morality and expertise, I argue that white farmers in Zimbabwe brought together logics typically imagined to be distinct as a strategy to claim moral belonging while obscuring the historical and political factors that threatened to void those same claims.     

Hip Hop Aesthetics and the Will to Culture1

In this paper, based upon my field work with the self-styled ‘Hip Hop Community’ in Sydney, in the early 1990s, I examine the material processes by which ‘cultural’ significance is articulated to a number of key practices, specifically, break-dancing, rapping and graffiti. I argue that these practices are understood, within the scene, as being aesthetic practices, which operate to mimetically ‘represent’ a pre-existing cultural essence—Hip Hop. Using a Peircian semiotic model, I argue that the maintenance of performances of these key Hip Hop practices functions over time, within the Hip Hop community, to affirm the legitimacy, authenticity and reality of the idea of Hip Hop.     

The state as a whiteman,the whiteman as a /’hun: personhood,recognition, and the politics of knowability in the Kalahari

The article is dedicated to the loving memory of !A|’xuni.

The Ju|’hoansi of east central Namibia sometimes refer to the state as a whiteman and to the whiteman as a /’hun (steenbok). In this article, I contextualize these naming practices by tracing the history of colonial encounters on the fringes of the Western Kalahari through a small-scale animist perspective. I then discuss what this means for the concept of ‘recognition’, which I treat as a two-way intersubjective process of making oneself un/knowable to others. I argue that the Ju|’hoansi have engaged in parallel processes of mis/recognition vis-à-vis their colonial Others. By failing to enter into reciprocal relations with the Ju|’hoansi, the whiteman and the state have remained outside of the Ju|’hoansi's social universe and have thus compromised their own personhood.     

Ethnocentrism and ideology*

Ethnic politics is a paradoxical phenomenon in France. While predominant French ideologies and institutional arrangements reinforce a ‘no ethnic politics’ model, there have been substantive challenges to this traditional model, including changes in state practices, and the political emergence of Franco‐Maghrebis and the immigrant association movement. Using the affaire des foulards [headscarves affair] of 1989 as a case‐study, the article seeks to clarify the ethnic politics paradox in France. I argue that the emergence and configuration of ethnic politics in France are being shaped by a series of constraints. These constraints are reflected in the ways in which the headscarves affair was created, defined, and managed. I suggest that the constraints are rooted not only in French ideologies and institutional arrangements, but also in the ‘nationalist logic’ of contemporary French immigration politics, the integrationist strategies of Franco‐Maghrebi groups, and the immigré perspective of the state and political community.     

Politics of Presence at the Urban Margins. Emplacement as a Performative Force Among Migrant-Settlers in Chile*

ABSTRACT

Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Arica, a northern Chilean city, this paper addresses the process of ‘emplacement from the margins’ as a performative force in which materialities, affective dimensions and claims are tied together. It analyses how migrants become settlers in unauthorised camps on the fringes of Arica. I argue that in this process a ‘politics of presence’ emerges, intimately imbricated in the material constitution of these settlements. I explore the potential of such politics to break the ‘sensible’ order and open the possibility for ignored actors to become present as legitimate urban interlocutors. I discuss aspects of what Kathleen Stewart describes as ‘ordinary things that matter’ because they shimmer precariously, such as the dynamic contingency derived from the building procedures commonly used in unauthorised camps.     

Framing the Loss of Solace: Issues and Challenges in Researching Indigenous Compensation Claims

The 2016 judgment in the ‘Timber Creek’ compensation case (Griffiths v Northern Territory of Australia (no. 3) (2016) FCA 900) signals an end to an era of extinguishment-related injustice and inequality, representing, as it does, the first litigated Federal Court award of compensation for the loss or impairment of rights and interests, under the 1993 Native Title Act. In this paper, I explore some of the methodological challenges and conceptual issues confronting anthropologists involved in researching compensation claims. In drawing upon my experience in researching two such claims, I discuss how the issues of gender, resource development, environmental transformation, the Stolen Generation, and the history of Indigenous-European relations in remote and rural Australia impact upon investigations into the loss or diminution of traditional attachments to land. In conceptualising this loss of connection, I discuss material relating to the ‘anthropology of emotions’, and I point to some of the obstacles encountered when talking about emotions cross-culturally. In conclusion, I explore research undertaken into the social and psychological impacts of ecosystem distress, loss of place, and environmental change, and I posit the value of Glenn Albrecht’s concept of ‘solastalgia’ (2005. “Solastalgia, a New Concept in Human Health and Identity.” Philosophy Activism Nature 3: 41–44) in framing research into the loss of solace, and in expanding upon the legal notion of this loss as ‘inconvenience’ and ‘injured feelings’.     

Fragments of a Composite Identity: Aspects of Australian Nationalism in a Sports Setting1

I argue that it is erroneous to view nations as culturally homogeneous entities. Rather, all nations are riven by multiple divisions. What characterises a nation is that the people constituting it believe that they share a sameness with their co-nationals. So, the idea of cultural homogeneity is a myth that breathes life into nationalism: it is a cohering leitmotiv, a predicate of the ‘imagined community’ that can be subscribed to in different ways by people of diverse social locations and of disparate interests. Whereas most writers on nationalism write from a top-down perspective, I side with Hobsbawm in posing the question of how ‘ordinary’ people embrace a belonging to their nation. I maintain that there is no single, simple axis of national cohesion: rather, in any nation, there are multiple ways of identifying with and intuiting the collectivity. The emergence of the axioms of Australian nationhood, particularly with regard to how ideas of Australian distinctiveness emerged in counterpoint to British based discourses, is explored. I suggest that people ‘lock-in’ to these axioms through the symbology of specific events and situations. Attention is directed to the Stawell Easter Gift professional running carnival as an event that, amongst other things, provides occasions that enable participants to ‘lock-in’ to the meta-discourse of national identity.     

Memes and Metaculture: The Politics of Discourse Circulation in Fiji

To address the question of what makes cultural products circulate successfully or unsuccessfully, I use the analytical tools supplied by two emerging disciplines, memetics and the study of metaculture. The case that I examine is the widespread circulation of the phrase ‘failed businessman’ to describe the leader of Fiji's coup d'état in 2000. In analysing the ways that the phrase circulated globally in international news accounts (and the pages of this journal as well), but did not circulate well within Fiji itself, I argue that the concept of ‘metaculture’ gives us more sophisticated analytical tools and a fuller, richer sense of the dynamics of cultural circulation than memetics does.     

On fun and freedom: young women's moral learning in Indonesian Islamic boarding schools

This article analyses the role of fun and freedom in the moral learning of young women students in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Recent debates about Islam and ethical subject formation have centred on the assumed tension between Islam and freedom. I examine decisions about television viewing and dress to illustrate both the flexibility and fixity of moral values and evaluation in girls’ lives. I argue that anthropologists of morality and Islam should take seriously moments of fun as important instances for ‘moral ludus’ or ‘moral play’ – the testing, shifting, and reshaping of the boundaries of moral behaviours that involve balancing the demands of various social fields and the larger ethical community in which a person is embedded. I suggest that these moments be viewed not as ruptures or instances of hypocrisy but as everyday occurrences of embedded agency in the lives of piety-minded individuals.     

Swimming in and out of Focus: Second Contact,Vietnamese Migrant Others and Australian Selves

Anthropologists and others have always used the Other to define themselves. Using Michael Taussig's idea of ‘second contact’, I argue that this is inappropriate and that the imagined borders between us and them in relationships between Vietnamese and other Australians are less than stable, continually losing their polarity and swimming in and out of focus. In light of the Vietnamese migrant case, I argue that similar ethnographic research projects cannot rely on stable boundaries between the host and the migrant community to organise explanations. Rather than simply registering ‘cultural contacts’, we have to engage the interplay between the strange and the familiar in specific contexts. Furthermore, my reading of Vietnamese migrant identity obliges us to listen to Vietnamese Australian voices as they attempt to respond to the fluctuating interstices of an intercultural borderland. This implies the mutual anthropological interrogation of both self and other.     

EQUALITY AND THE TREATMENT‐ENHANCEMENT DISTINCTION

In From Chance to Choice, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler propose a new way of defending the moral significance of the distinction between genetic treatments and enhancements. They develop what they call a ‘normal function model’ of equality of opportunity and argue that it offers a ‘limited’ defence of this distinction. In this article, I critically assess their model and the support it (allegedly) provides for the treatment‐enhancement distinction. First, I argue that there is a troubling tension in the normal function model. Secondly, I argue that neither of the rationales invoked by Buchanan et al. really serves to justify this model or the results they seek to derive from it with respect to the significance of the distinction between treatments and enhancements.     

White cruelty or Republican sins? Competing frames of stigma reversal in French commemorations of slavery

Abstract

This paper explores how French activists use claims about the history and legacies of slavery to combat stigmas associated with their group membership. Using a case study of a French Caribbean association (CM98) and a pan-African association (COFFAD), I examine how two organizations produce competing models for challenging and reversing the stigma of slavery. Through a process of normative inversion, activists assert the moral inferiority of dominant groups. CM98 rejects both a racial and an African identity, and seeks recognition for ‘French descendants of slaves’, using the language of citizenship to criticize the French government. COFFAD, by contrast, asserts an Afro-centric black identity and stigmatizes white Europeans. I argue that both destigmatization strategies unwittingly reinforce the stigma of historical enslavement.     

What really is the nature of suffering? Three problems with Eric Cassell’s concept of distress

Eric Cassell famously defined suffering as a person’s severe distress at a threat to their personal integrity. This article draws attention to some problems with the concept of distress in this theory. In particular, I argue that Cassell’s theory turns on distress but does not define it, which, in light of the complexity of distress, problematizes suffering in three ways: first, suffering becomes too equivocal to apply in at least some cases that Cassell nevertheless identifies as suffering; second, Cassell’s account does not explain what sort of experience suffering is, resulting in theoretical and practical difficulties in distinguishing it from other medical conditions; third, there is good reason to believe that, in medical contexts, ‘distress’ just means ‘suffering’ or some cognate concept not yet distinguished from it, rendering Cassell’s theory circular. I consider a rebuttal to my objections and reply, concluding that Cassell’s theory of suffering needs a definition of distress to settle what the nature of suffering really is.     

Unravelling the Philosophies Underlying ‘Animal Personality’ Studies: A Brief Re‐Appraisal of the Field

The last decade has seen lots of studies on ‘animal personality’ (i.e. the study of consistent between‐individual behavioural differences). As timely and promising as this field is, its development has come with a diversity of research questions. As an unfortunate consequence, it now suffers from substantial confusion about what ‘animal personality’ is, and how relevant related research frameworks are. Here, we stress the current inconsistencies and sources of confusion pertaining to the field, and their consequences on terminology used and miscommunication between researchers. In an attempt to unravel and clarify the concepts underlying the field, we identify two distinct, but complementary, theory‐driven conceptual frameworks: the intra‐individual variability (IIV) approach and the life‐history (LH) approach, which we believe encompass the vast majority of existing ‘personality studies’. Finally, we argue in favour of theory‐driven studies of consistent behavioural differences and state that the integrative statistical properties of random regression models should not override the merit of alternative conceptual frameworks. We then provide brief guidelines and warnings for a parsimonious and sound use of terminology.     

Hope For/Against the State: Gridding in a Besieged Sarajevo Suburb

Anthropological dealings with the state often convey hope by replicating the hope of their subjects against the state. This libertarian paradigm provides effective analytical tools to grasp people's evasion of state grids, through cultural resilience-in-authenticity and/or autonomous self-organisation. Yet it cannot conceptualise their affective and practical investments in ordering statecraft, i.e. their hope for the state. Through a case study of self-organisation in the besieged outskirts of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, this article traces inhabitants’ yearnings for ‘normal lives’ and their efforts to allow the latter to unfold. I focus on schooling and its temporal calibration of routines, framed in the vertical encompassment of statecraft. Against the reduction of hope to hope against the state, the complementary analytical tool of ‘gridding’, I propose, allows an alternative form of replication, capturing people's yearnings for the convergence of top-down and upward/outward organisation of predictability on different scales.     

Making secular ‘French’ medical ethics: transcendent morality and patient subjectivities in southern French hospitals

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with physicians and nurses working in two state-funded southern French hospitals, this article explores why and how medical care providers connected their everyday deliberations about patient care to what they considered to be distinctively French forms of medical responsibility. Many healthcare professionals saw French medical morality in opposition to ‘Anglo-Saxon’ discourses of individual autonomy and transactional choice. In contrast to such ‘transactionalism’, they insisted that ‘French’ ethics required limits that transcended particular circumstances. And yet it was difficult for doctors and nurses working in secular and increasingly neoliberal hospitals to argue against individual transactionalism in an overtly moral register, one that might appear religious and paternalist. Through a close look at two different cases – one in assisted reproduction and one in palliative care – I show how the language of folk psychoanalysis provided some health professionals with a way out of this impasse. Care providers used pseudo-psychoanalytic accounts of patient subjectivities to depict individuals as incapable of knowing, let alone ‘owning’ or rationally mastering, themselves. This, in turn, suggests that some aspects of French secularity may be far less Protestant and liberal than contemporary anthropological work tends to assume.     

In the shadow of industry: a study of culturization in Papua New Guinea

The activities of extractive industry have recently been framed by a language of corporate social responsibility that relies on a system of legibility and objectification. This process reifies ‘cultural units’, abstracting them from the rules of kinship, migration, and exchange that ensure social and economic security. I refer to this process and the ideology of ‘development’ that accompanies it as culturization and examine it in the context of oil extraction in Papua New Guinea's Kutubu region. Drawing on debates on the indigenization and politicization of ‘culture’, I present culturization as a process that relies on rules of inheritance and property to impose a structure of difference in contexts of extractive industry that ignores the intricacies of sociality that ultimately give life meaning. The aim of the paper is to both illustrate the consequences of this process and consider cognate ideas of ‘culture’ vis‐à‐vis ‘sociality’ to emphasize their mutual theoretical importance to contemporary anthropological inquiry.     

Counterpolitics of Liberation in Contemporary China: Corruption,Law, and Popular Religion

This article explores the hidden transfers between law and religion by focussing on the conditions of existence of ‘liberated’ peasant subjects in contemporary China. The post-Maoist era sought to create new citizens from the collectivised Maoist masses who are subject to market reforms and a new politics of ‘governing through law’ (fazhi). At the same time, new religiousities have blossomed in the Chinese countryside. Representing ‘feudal superstition’, their collective practices remain illegal until today. I argue that, beyond the issue of belief, contemporary ‘feudal superstition’ does not represent a form of anti-secular resistance, but rather confirms the central tenets of Chinese secularism from the perspective of ‘failed’ peasant subjects. Where the realities of market liberalisation and governing through law are experienced as corruption, feudal superstition recreates the conditions to realise liberated peasant subjects: a participatory local public sphere, political visibility, investments in the public good, and a new collective property.