Catherine Alexander | Durham University (original) (raw)

Drafts by Catherine Alexander

Book Reviews by Catherine Alexander

Michael Brown opens with a ventriloquist act. The title raises a question that is by now so famil... more Michael Brown opens with a ventriloquist act. The title raises a question that is by now so familiar and so certain to raise hackles in one way or another that it comes as something of a shock to realize that activism over indigenous rights has only been flourishing and making headlines since the mid-1980s. Since then, there has been a steadily growing eruption of indignation against old and new forms of appropriation that often appear all the more insidious because they have increasingly come to focus on things that are not readily made explicit or tangible , and are thus not easily delineated into an object in which an absolute claim may be staked. Who Owns Native Culture? is a provocative and highly stimulating account of the rise of indigenous movements since the 1980s and their attempts to reassert control over both sacred lands and their cultural productions, including knowledge. Further, Brown questions the legitimacy of material benefit, made from appropriation of these productions, which all too rarely filters back to its origi-nators. The case studies of such grievances and attempts to address them are wide-ranging and careful in their delineation of the complexities of each instance. Brown takes us from Hopi Indian rituals captured in photographs, through the fiendish ins and outs of Australian courtroom disputes over reproductions of sacred art; the contested use of the Zia tribe emblem for New Mexico's flag and so on to the murky maze of ethnobotanical claims for effica-cious plant compounds, ending with rival claims to land sacred to Native Americans. It is a dazzling array of material. But though clear inequities are revealed, Brown is also careful to highlight where defense of indigenous rights has played into the " if you can't beat 'em, join 'em " game replicating the very logic of privatization, whereby corporations seek to annex to themselves the sole access to and use of such products. Brown rejects any easy or single solution— especially those crafted in law. What he does explore is the extent to which a notion of group privacy may be fruitfully employed as opposed to the familiar dichotomy opposing individual privacy to publicness; how far ideas about intellectual property rights may be usefully applied to native cultures; and the need for negotiated compromise. It is this middle ground that affords a way out from the locked horns of extremism: indigenous rights protectionists on the one hand and public domain advocates on the other.

Papers by Catherine Alexander

The paper tracks housing protests in Kazakhstan’s former capital city, Almaty from 1989 to 2016 f... more The paper tracks housing protests in Kazakhstan’s former capital city, Almaty from 1989 to 2016 for what they reveal about shifting ideas of rights and obligations between citizens and state. Three broad models of moral economies of housing emerge. First, the Soviet period, where equal access to housing was nominally in return for labour. Second, the early Republican period when pro-Kazakh policies favoured previously marginalized ethnic Kazakhs, and, third, the years from 2004, when the country’s wealth increased before the 2008 crash and the plunging value of the local currency. This was when a professional class became increasingly valorized with housing support mechanisms created specifically for them. The various protests highlight the failures of each model to provide secure, adequate housing. A constant theme of ‘illegal legality’ and informal practices, variously construed by citizens as moral, pragmatic or immoral, has consistently undermined both the achievement of housing promises and the safety and security of housing. The article explores the paradox of why citizens continue to demand help and interventions from the state amidst such pervasive untrustworthiness.

The concept of moral economies of housing centres and links the Introduction and contributions to... more The concept of moral economies of housing centres and links the Introduction and contributions to the Special issue. A number of themes emerge. First, a variety of moral communities exist, sometimes rivalrous, sometimes internally riven, sometimes with expectations of reciprocal obligations. We therefore move away from the idea of a dyadic relationship between a singular authority and a singular recipient, be that individual citizens, households or indeed a singular moral community. Instead we uncover overlapping relations, both vertical and horizontal, as different groups make claims and invoke obligations at multiple levels. Second, several actors appear, or are invoked as authorities to be appealed or performed to for satisfaction of rights, from state bodies and individuals to banks, third sector and collective organisations and social movements. Third there is often lack of clarity over how to assert rights or engage with authorities. Two final characteristics are the loss of a perceived moral right to a secure home and a sense of betrayal. In some places, housing conflicts lead to protests and resistance as people perform this sense that political and economic elites have violated or reneged on moral obligations of intervention and / or protection. And yet, these protests are often ephemeral, ‘moments rather than movements’ (Calhoun, 2012), swiftly fracturing into the multiple moral communities and individuals who briefly conjoined. These protests may be seen as a key artefact of late capitalism linking social atomisation with a lingering sense of customary obligations.

Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and ine... more Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and inequalities between donor and recipient, sometimes compounded by spectacular displays of giving or by aid, both humanitarian and faith-based, from the global north to the south. Other accounts complicate this understanding, variously showing the charitable gift as the recipient's right or considering charitable work as a technology of self care. The context and nature of the donation also affect both donor and recipient; money and blood have very different connotations and effects as charitable gifts. Ethnographies of charitable action suggest it is a total social fact, entangling economic, politics, religion and notions of relatedness. 108 words

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023

This volume follows failures out into the world, exploring how they unfold ethnographically. Taki... more This volume follows failures out into the world, exploring how they unfold ethnographically. Taking a longer view shows how objects, narratives, and diagnoses of failures may be crafted, acted on, suffered, resisted-unmade or recomposed. Thus while tropes and diagnoses of failure can temporarily (re)organize, narrate, and stabilize the world, the kinds of failures explored here also indicate a mode of uncontainable excess that refuses the boundedness of knowledge objects, temporalities, and spaces. This volume offers three main interventions. The first concerns knowledge production: how objects of failure are crafted through selective ways of knowing that occlude both other modes of apprehension at different scales and failure's many affective valences. The second thinks through the knotted temporalities-whether pasts, futures, suspended presents, or repetition and sedimentation-that make and are made by failure. Finally, writing about unfurling failures requires careful attention to non-linear reverberations and traces as well as to open-ended and mobile narratives that produce different social and material effects. A sense of failure hangs in the air. 1 The COVID pandemic foregrounded the creaking strains of global society, the latest reminder that lethal economic and health inequalities persist, whetted on postwar development projects aimed at their amelioration. With almost unbroken war over the last century or so, this has been the most murderous period in history (Hobsbawm 2002). The Doomsday Clock shows 100 seconds to midnight. The list spools out of modernity's failed projects of social transformation and is met by failures of planetary care. Alternatives crumble as they are proposed (Newell & Taylor 2020), perhaps because, as Marilyn Strathern observes, they rehearse the same habits of thinking, deaf to other voices (Strathern & Latimer 2019: 487; see also Prince & Neumark 2022a; Stengers 2015). Apologies and acknowledgements neither atone for nor staunch the systematic violence of dispossession, genocide, and destruction across the modern age. Whether we're hanging by a thread or in freefall is moot. 2 But ideas about failure's positive generativity also flourish. Gaily taking Joseph Schumpeter's prophetic obituary of capitalism's ultimate self-immolation for a manual on how to succeed (Schumpeter 1942; see also Birla 2016), Silicon Valley has equally

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023

Tracing the history of terrestrial fusion energy to a giant multinational experimental fusion fac... more Tracing the history of terrestrial fusion energy to a giant multinational experimental fusion facility under construction reveals a series of consequential failures, re-evaluations of once defunct designs, but also persistence. To account for how this vast enterprise, dogged by failure, endures, I suggest that different ontological narratives re-orientate the enterprise both temporally and vis-à-vis different forms and valences of failure. Thus the rhetoric of mission-driven project vies with that of open-ended, present-focused experiment: the former is positioned as the crucial solution to the threat of climate change; the latter 'bakes in' virtuous failure as integral to creative practice. Visionary promise moves to a focus on the meanwhile. Finally, the sheer unfurling size to which attention is constantly drawn offers a disorientating spectacle, denying perspective or closure and acting to suspend judgements of failure.

$Research paper thumbnail of From Biopower to Energopolitics in England\u27s Modern Waste Technology$

Two energy-generating technologies in Britain which transform waste into a resource are compared.... more Two energy-generating technologies in Britain which transform waste into a resource are compared. One is the (in)famous Combined Heat and Power incinerator in Sheffield, the other a forgotten biological digester in Devon utilizing anaerobic microbes. Both sites are early exemplars of experimental and biopolitical waste disposal technologies—incineration and anaerobic digestion—now regarded as leading alternatives for reducing the United Kingdom’s dependence on landfill and fossil fuel; both sites also inspired public resistance at critical moments in their development. The analysis here relates how activists and technicians struggle to demonstrate competing truths about alternative energy. Through comparison, it becomes clear that, beyond the validity of specific truth claims, energo-politics mediates the formation of technological legacies. Examining the traces energy facilities leave behind—whether in the landscape or online—we ask what it means that various claims made about some...

Recycling and Reuse in the Roman Economy, 2020

Although many of the chapters in this volume focus on a single class of object or material, it is... more Although many of the chapters in this volume focus on a single class of object or material, it is clear that recycling and reuse activities frequently occur together, regardless of the material in question, or its provenance. The picture we can currently offer of Roman recycling and reuse is necessarily partial, but it is also profoundly important for wider understanding of Roman society, technology, and culture. Recycling and reuse are embedded in the social and cultural as well as the economic, and may be constrained or enabled by technology. In this concluding chapter, we sketch out some of the most prominent parts of this emerging picture, from the chaîne opératoire, to scales and methods of analysis, labour, organization, knowledge and skills, and value, and make recommendations for future work in this promising and rich field of inquiry.

Comparative studies in society and history, 2021 [Peer Reviewed Journal], 2021

This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Arist... more This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Aristotelian oikos, has long fuelled derogatory discourses in Britain aimed at low-income urban residents who practise quite different forms of thrift. Since the 1970s this trope has migrated across scales, proving a potent metaphor for national economic policy and planetary care alike, morally and economically justifying both neoliberal welfare retraction compounded by austerity policies and national responses to excessive resource extraction and waste production. Both austerity and formal recycling schemes shift responsibility onto consumer citizens, regardless of capacity. Further, this model of thrift eclipses the thriftiness of low income urban households, which emerges at the nexus of kin and waged labour, sharing, welfare, debt, conserving material resources through remaking and repair and, crucially, the fundamental need of decency expressed through kin care. Through a historicised ethnography of a London social housing estate and its residents, this paper excavates what happens as these different forms and scales of household thrift co-exist, 2 change over time and clash. Ultimately, neoliberal policy centred on an inimical idiom of thrift delegitimizes and disentitles low-income urban households of their capabilities to enact livelihood practices of sustainability and projects of dignity across generations.

Comparative Studies in Society and History

This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Arist... more This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Aristotelian oikos, has long fueled derogatory discourses in Britain aimed at low-income urban residents who practice quite different forms of thrift. Since the 1970s this trope has migrated across scales, proving a potent metaphor for national economic policy and planetary care alike, and morally and economically justifying both neoliberal welfare retraction compounded by austerity policies and national responses to excessive resource extraction and waste production. Both austerity and formal recycling schemes shift responsibility onto consumer citizens, regardless of capacity. Further, this model of thrift eclipses the thriftiness of low-income urban households, which emerges at the nexus of kin and waged labor, sharing, welfare, debt, conserving material resources through remaking and repair and, crucially, the fundamental need for decency expressed through kin care. Through a historicized...

Comparative Studies of Society and History, 2022

This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Arist... more This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Aristotelian oikos, has long fueled derogatory discourses in Britain aimed at low-income urban residents who practice quite different forms of thrift. Since the 1970s this trope has migrated across scales, proving a potent metaphor for national economic policy and planetary care alike, and morally and economically justifying both neoliberal welfare retraction compounded by austerity policies and national responses to excessive resource extraction and waste production. Both austerity and formal recycling schemes shift responsibility onto consumer citizens, regardless of capacity. Further, this model of thrift eclipses the thriftiness of low-income urban households, which emerges at the nexus of kin and waged labor, sharing, welfare, debt, conserving material resources through remaking and repair and, crucially, the fundamental need for decency expressed through kin care. Through a historicized ethnography of a London social housing estate and its residents, this paper excavates what happens as these different forms and scales of household thrift coexist, change over time, and clash. Ultimately, neoliberal policy centered on an inimical idiom of thrift delegitimizes and disentitles low-income urban households and undermines their ability to enact livelihood practices of sustainability and projects of dignity across generations.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2020

In line with rising public and policy concern about wastes, there has been a distinct rise in sch... more In line with rising public and policy concern about wastes, there has been a distinct rise in scholarly analyses of these and other developments associated with economies of recycling, focusing especially on people’s material and moral encounters with reuse. These range from nuanced investigations into how lives and materials can both be re-crafted by recovering value from discards; following an object through its many social lives; or focusing on a material such as plastic or e-waste and tracking how waste is co-produced at each stage of creation and (re)use. Examining contested property rights in wastes, together with the infrastructures and ethics of engagements with wastes and their recovery or otherwise, reveal how global economies intersect with a rapidly shifting policy environment and systems of waste management. The global entanglement of policies and practices not only shapes what becomes of waste but also how it is variously imagined as pollutant or resource.

Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and ine... more Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and inequalities between donor and recipient, sometimes compounded by spectacular displays of giving or by aid, both humanitarian and faith-based, from the global north to the south. Other accounts complicate this understanding, variously showing the charitable gift as the recipient’s right or considering charitable work as a technology of self care. The context and nature of the donation also affect both donor and recipient; money and blood have very different connotations and effects as charitable gifts. Ethnographies of charitable action suggest it is a total social fact, entangling economic, politics, religion and notions of relatedness.

This article starts by anatomising the various strategies used by the Soviet regime to contain an... more This article starts by anatomising the various strategies used by the Soviet regime to contain and ‘disappear’ the nuclear weapon test site in Kazakhstan before moving on to outline attempts by the...

The recycling and reuse of materials and objects were extensive in the past, but have rarely been... more The recycling and reuse of materials and objects were extensive in the past, but have rarely been embedded into models of the economy; even more rarely has any attempt been made to assess the scale of these practices. Recent developments, including the use of large datasets, computational modelling, and high-resolution analytical chemistry, are increasingly offering the means to reconstruct recycling and reuse, and even to approach the thorny matter of quantification. Growing scholarly interest in the topic has also led to an increasing recognition of these practices from those employing more traditional methodological approaches, which are sometimes coupled with innovative archaeological theory. Thanks to these efforts, it has been possible for the first time in this volume to draw together archaeological case studies on the recycling and reuse of a wide range of materials, from papyri and textiles, to amphorae, metals and glass, building materials and statuary. Recycling and reuse...

Critique of Anthropology, 2018

Struggles over housing are one of the most pressing social, economic and political issues of our ... more Struggles over housing are one of the most pressing social, economic and political issues of our time. Yet questions over access to, plus the redistribution and maintenance of secure housing have only recently begun to be considered anthropologically. Drawing on E.P. Thompson's concept of moral economy, this special issue addresses these questions and considers how contemporary moral economies of housing play out. Citizens try to make their demands for adequate and safe housing heard, but such aspirations are often undermined by, political rhetoric, state officials, loan terms and the law. People claim allegiances to particular moral communities, thus (re)constituting themselves as deserving of secure tenure and proper homes, often in the face of stigma, laws or policies that construct them as the very reverse. By placing fine-grained ethnographic analysis in conversation with the political economy of housing, we redefine housing as an essentially contested domain where competin...

Critique of Anthropology, 2018

This article tracks housing protests in Kazakhstan’s former capital city, Almaty, from 1989 to 20... more This article tracks housing protests in Kazakhstan’s former capital city, Almaty, from 1989 to 2016 for what they reveal about shifting ideas of rights and obligations between citizens and state. Three broad models of moral economies of housing emerge: the first, during the Soviet period, where equal access to housing was nominally in return for labour; the second, during the early Republican period when pro-Kazakh policies favoured previously marginalised ethnic Kazakhs, and, the third, in the period 2004 – 2008, when the country’s wealth increased, before the financial crash and the plunging value of the local currency. This last period was when a professional class was increasingly valorised by the government with housing support mechanisms created specifically for them. Protests in each period highlight the failures of each model to provide secure, adequate housing. A constant theme of ‘illegal legality’ and informal practices, variously construed by citizens as moral, pragmatic...

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023

$Research paper thumbnail of From Biopower to Energopolitics in England\u27s Modern Waste Technology$

Recycling and Reuse in the Roman Economy, 2020

Comparative studies in society and history, 2021 [Peer Reviewed Journal], 2021

Comparative Studies in Society and History

This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Arist... more This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Aristotelian oikos, has long fueled derogatory discourses in Britain aimed at low-income urban residents who practice quite different forms of thrift. Since the 1970s this trope has migrated across scales, proving a potent metaphor for national economic policy and planetary care alike, and morally and economically justifying both neoliberal welfare retraction compounded by austerity policies and national responses to excessive resource extraction and waste production. Both austerity and formal recycling schemes shift responsibility onto consumer citizens, regardless of capacity. Further, this model of thrift eclipses the thriftiness of low-income urban households, which emerges at the nexus of kin and waged labor, sharing, welfare, debt, conserving material resources through remaking and repair and, crucially, the fundamental need for decency expressed through kin care. Through a historicized...

Comparative Studies of Society and History, 2022

This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Arist... more This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Aristotelian oikos, has long fueled derogatory discourses in Britain aimed at low-income urban residents who practice quite different forms of thrift. Since the 1970s this trope has migrated across scales, proving a potent metaphor for national economic policy and planetary care alike, and morally and economically justifying both neoliberal welfare retraction compounded by austerity policies and national responses to excessive resource extraction and waste production. Both austerity and formal recycling schemes shift responsibility onto consumer citizens, regardless of capacity. Further, this model of thrift eclipses the thriftiness of low-income urban households, which emerges at the nexus of kin and waged labor, sharing, welfare, debt, conserving material resources through remaking and repair and, crucially, the fundamental need for decency expressed through kin care. Through a historicized ethnography of a London social housing estate and its residents, this paper excavates what happens as these different forms and scales of household thrift coexist, change over time, and clash. Ultimately, neoliberal policy centered on an inimical idiom of thrift delegitimizes and disentitles low-income urban households and undermines their ability to enact livelihood practices of sustainability and projects of dignity across generations.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2020

Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and ine... more Anthropological analyses of charity are often based on Maussian theories of gift exchange and inequalities between donor and recipient, sometimes compounded by spectacular displays of giving or by aid, both humanitarian and faith-based, from the global north to the south. Other accounts complicate this understanding, variously showing the charitable gift as the recipient’s right or considering charitable work as a technology of self care. The context and nature of the donation also affect both donor and recipient; money and blood have very different connotations and effects as charitable gifts. Ethnographies of charitable action suggest it is a total social fact, entangling economic, politics, religion and notions of relatedness.

Critique of Anthropology, 2018

1. Introduction Catherine Alexander and Victor Buchli 2. Astana: Materiality and the City Victor ... more 1. Introduction Catherine Alexander and Victor Buchli 2. Astana: Materiality and the City Victor Buchli 3. Almaty: Rethinking the Public Sector Catherine Alexander 4. Tashkent: Three Capitals, Three Worlds Marfua Tokhtakhodzhaeva 5. City of Migrants: Contemporary Ulan-Ude in the Context of Russian Migration Galina Manzanova 6. The Creation and Revitalisation of Ethnic Sacred Sites in Ulan-Ude since the 1990s A. Hurelbaatar 7. The Homeless of Ulan-Ude Irina Baldaeva 8. New Subjects and Situated Interdependence: After Privatisation in Ulan-Ude Caroline Humphrey

Anthropological Quarterly, 2014

Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2008

Waste Strategy 2007 recognises first, third sector (TS) organisations' contribution to meeti... more Waste Strategy 2007 recognises first, third sector (TS) organisations' contribution to meeting raised targets for reuse, recycling and composting and secondly, the need to identify the full range of benefits they offer. In response, this paper presents a methodological analysis of how ...

Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy, 2022

Thrift is a central concern for most people, especially in turbulent economic times. It is both a... more Thrift is a central concern for most people, especially in turbulent economic times. It is both an economic and an ethical logic of frugal living, saving and avoiding waste for long-term kin care. These logics echo the ancient ideal of household self-sufficiency, contrasting with capitalism’s wasteful present-focused growth. But thrift now exceeds domestic matters straying across scales to justify public expenditure cuts. Through a wide range of ethnographic contexts this book explores how practices and moralities of thrift are intertwined with austerity, debt, welfare, and patronage across various social and temporal scales and are constantly re-negotiated at the nexus of socio-economic, religious, and kinship ideals and praxis.

Capturing a unique historical moment, this book examines the changes in urban life since the coll... more Capturing a unique historical moment, this book examines the changes in urban life since the collapse of the Soviet Union from an ethnographic perspective, thus addressing significant gaps in the literature on cities, Central Asia and post-socialism.

It encompasses Tashkent, Almaty, Astana and Ulan-Ude: four cities with quite different responses to the fall of the Soviet Union. Each chapter takes a theme of central significance across this huge geographical terrain, addresses it through one city and contextualizes it by reference to the other sites in this volume. The structure of the book moves from nostalgia and memories of the Soviet past to examine how current changes are being experienced and imagined through the shifting materialities, temporalities and political economies of urban life. Privatization is giving rise to new social geographies, while ethnic and religious sensibilities are creating emergent networks of sacred sites. But, however much ideologies are changing, cities also provide a constant lived mnemonic of lost configurations of ideology and practice, acting as signposts to bankrupted futures. Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia provides a detailed account of the changing nature of urban life in post-Soviet Asia, clearly elucidating the centrality of these urban transformations to citizens’ understandings of their own socio-economic condition.

For some, recycling is a big business; for others a moralised way of engaging with the world. But... more For some, recycling is a big business; for others a moralised way of engaging with the world. But, for many, this is a dangerous way of earning a living. With scrap now being the largest export category from the US to China, the sheer scale of this global trade has not yet been clearly identified or analysed. Combining fine-grained ethnographic analysis with overviews of international material flows, Economies of Recycling radically changes the way we understand global and local economies as well as the new social relations and identities created by recycling processes. Following global material chains, this groundbreaking book reveals astonishing connections between persons, households, cities and global regions as objects are reworked, taken to pieces and traded. With case studies from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, China, the former Soviet Union, North America and Europe, this timely collection debunks common linear understandings of production, exchange and consumption and argues for a complete re-evaluation of North-South economic relationships.

Catherine Alexander charts how Turkish people, both within and outside the state bureaucracy, att... more Catherine Alexander charts how Turkish people, both within and outside the state bureaucracy, attempt to personalise the impersonality of the state. Based on a detailed study of the nationalized Turkish Sugar Corporation, she considers how people from the highest levels of the statebureaucracy to farming villages understand 'the state', and how, in turn, they imagine themselves to be perceived. The narratives and metaphors used in these constructions draw on resources close to hand such as the material organization of state factory compounds, state personnel encountered inthe course of everyday life, and the image of the family structure. By also exploring notions of state and personhood within the highest echelons of the administration itself, Alexander shows how ideas of 'the state' recede once one is actually 'within'. For officials the state becomes otherinstitutions and Ministries with which they have little contact. The continual process of striving to make connections with other groups and people occurs both at all hierarchical levels of the Sugar Corporation and between farmers and factory engineers. This elegant, nuanced ethnography of modernity will cause scholars of state institutions across a broad range of disciplines radically to rethink what 'the state' actually is, and the relations that create it, thus taking understandings of the state to an entirely new level.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023

Written during troubled times when failure seems to hang in the air, this volume follows failure ... more Written during troubled times when failure seems to hang in the air, this volume follows failure out into the world, examining how it unfurls in diverse ethnographic settings ranging from post-welfare to postsocialist and postcolonial regimes, from multinational experimental collaborations to finance markets and domestic care. Across nine essays, we investigate ill-fated attempts to improve global health, energy provision, air quality, and independent news reporting, or to attribute clear-cut causes to public housing conflagrations and violent unrest. Where 'failure' suggests a once-and-for-all judgement, what emerges from investigating its aftermaths is something that resists containment and a singular way of knowing.

What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive n... more What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though they were valueless waste. This volume uses the concept of indeterminacy to explore how conditions of exclusion and abandonment may give rise to new values, as well as to states of despair and alienation. Drawing upon ethnographic research about a wide variety of contexts, this volume explores how indeterminacy is created and experienced in relationship to projects of classification and progress.

Contributions by Catherine Alexander, Niko Besnier, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Elena Gonzalez-Polledo, Eeva Kesküla, Cathrine Moe Thorleiffson, Susana Narotzky, Joshua Reno, Felix Ringel, Andrew Sanchez, Elisabeth Schober

The opening chapter to this collection explores indeterminacy through three modes: lack of recogn... more The opening chapter to this collection explores indeterminacy through three modes: lack of recognition or incorporation in a given classification system; undetermined futures or directions, and a resistance to totalising systems. By exploring indeterminacy as a third term that challenges classificatory binaries of waste/value, we make the case for it being distinct from cognate words and a common condition of our times. Tracking the relationship between ideas of indeterminacy and order through the modern age we find multiple traditions where uncategorisable dissolution and excess are variously seen as the enemy of order and progress, intrinsic to modernity or the joyful means of resisting oppressive ordering practices. Recent engagements have tended to follow only one or another of these tracks, but an insistence on keeping them all in view reminds us that we need to be attentive to emic experiences of modes of indeterminacy in all their unexpected variety.

Cultural Anthropology, 2019

This piece, written in honour of Keith’s life and works, was never going to be a conventional Fes... more This piece, written in honour of Keith’s life and works, was never going to be a conventional Festschrift. Rather, we felt it was entirely in Keith’s spirit that it should be rendered as an open-ended, far-reaching, and multi-voiced conversation, in which Keith was an active participant.

The current version published on Cultural Anthropology's Member Voices site, is a transcription of the conversation we held for Keith, which took place at the 2018 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) meeting in Stockholm. We asked people to think about the great themes of Keith’s work, including both methods and topics: money and currency; and scale and how to bridge individual experience, global process, and world history.