Anthropological Theory current issue

Where thought belongs: An anthropological critique of the project of philosophy

Jackson, M. D. — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:56:37 PST

Adorno, Arendt, Badiou, Derrida, Heidegger and Rorty have variously called for radically new conceptions of philosophy, but none has made a case for turning from the historical and genealogical past to the anthropological present. Taking the view that thought cannot escape the impress of a thinker’s immediate situation, this article invokes the phenomenological notions of lifeworld and lebensphilosophie to explore the social spaces where thought arises and transpires. Beginning with Hannah Arendt’s conception of thinking as grounded in the vita activa rather than the vita contemplativa, it is suggested that ethnographic method provides a compelling way of realizing her vision of thought as inextricably political and tied to events — expressions of the power relations between human subjects, and between private and public realms.

Hope dies last: Two aspects of hope in contemporary Moscow

Zigon, J. — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:56:37 PST

The concept of hope has, for the most part, been neglected by anthropologists. Recently, however, hope has been analyzed by two prominent anthropologists who view it either as a passive attitude or a future-oriented stance toward a good. My research in Moscow, Russia, suggests that hope is not so easily conceived. In this article I suggest that hope is more precisely understood as having two aspects: persevering hope as the temporal structure of unreflective being-in-the-world, and active hope as the temporal orientation of intentional and ethical action. In exploring the ways in which my interlocutors describe hope, I critically engage not only conceptions of hope as passive, but also those that view it as utopian. The majority of my Muscovite interlocutors simply hoped for what they called ‘a normal life’ consisting of, for example, a family, a career, and stability. I suggest that such hoping demystifies the common understanding of hope as both passive and utopian and makes it available to anthropologists as a concept for understanding everyday human practices.

Technologies of the spirit: Devotional Islam, sound reproduction and the dialectics of mediation and immediacy in Mauritius

Eisenlohr, P. — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:56:37 PST

Users of contemporary media technology in religious settings often oscillate between immediacy in spiritual interaction and the increasing complexity and visibility of media technology as human artifacts. Drawing on approaches to mediation from philosophy and media theory, I examine Mauritian Muslims’ uses of sound reproduction in performing a devotional genre to show how theological assumptions about mediation shape the domestication of media technology in religious settings in different ways. A semiotic approach can throw new light on the dialectics of mediation and immediacy that frequently result in searches for technical solutions to bypass established forms of interacting with the divine.

Non-hegemonic globalizations: Alter-native transnational processes and agents

Ribeiro, G. L. — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:56:37 PST

Discussions on globalization tend to focus on processes commanded by powerful agents in a top-down perspective. In this article, I explore alter-native political and economic grassroots processes and agents as forms of non-hegemonic globalization. I analyze other political globalizations by considering the anti-globalization movement, and the alter-globalization initiatives represented by the World Social Forums. My arguments on economic globalization from below are based on the activities of ‘trader-tourists’, street vendors and markets of global gadgets or ‘pirated’ goods. I rely mostly on Brazilian and Paraguayan examples, but there are evidences of the existence of a veritable non-hegemonic world system. I want to call attention to other political and economic dynamics of globalization, a universe where the normative and repressive roles of nation-states are heavily bypassed.

On the Geopolitics of Identity

Chun, A. — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:56:37 PST

The trope of identity has served in recent decades as a powerful construct in literary criticism, cultural studies, history, race and gender studies, invoking in turn identity politics of various genres. Despite its seemingly interdisciplinary usages and broad theoretical ramifications, the concept of identity has been conditioned by semantically flawed usages and provincial disciplinary assumptions, which have not only reified myopic fields and positions but also influenced the way we understand its presumed relevance to social relations and concrete institutional practices. I argue first of all that ethnicity, culture and identity are analytically distinct notions whose meaning and usage have been muddled in disciplinary practice. Identity’s relationship to ethnicity in particular is tied less to the putative existence of groups (or an assumed sameness) than to a notion of subjectivity that must be seen in the context of evolving social and political forces. These forces are more complexly nuanced than the way they have been used by theories of social construction or Bourdieuan practice prevalent in the literature. In sum, the pragmatics of identity is less a political contestation per se over ethnicity and culture than abstract struggles within these geopolitical processes.