Anthropology Today Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

On January 6, 2021 an overwhelmingly White Christian mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. as part of a rally to “Save America.” Moving beyond media reports and analyses of popular pundits, we provide an ethnographic... more

On January 6, 2021 an overwhelmingly White Christian mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. as part of a rally to “Save America.” Moving beyond media reports and analyses of popular pundits, we provide an ethnographic outline of some of the complexities and contradictions on display that day. Thinking with Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Ladurie, Ursula LeGuin and others, these notes frame the rally preceding the attack on the Capitol in terms of historical narrative, carnival aesthetics, and Christian symbolisms of salvation. The rally and attempted insurrection displayed multiple social and symbolic inversions, combining yearnings for order and stability with parody, playful optimism, and violent threat. Unlike many other pre-Lenten carnivals, here it was never entirely clear which social order was being overturned and which was being reinstated, one result of the deeply divided worldviews that currently characterize much of the U.S. population.

Like the recent World Cup in South Africa and the Beijing 2008 Olympics, December 2009's Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Laos were embraced by the state as evidence of national achievement and progress. Yet, just like these much larger... more

Like the recent World Cup in South Africa and the Beijing 2008 Olympics, December 2009's Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Laos were embraced by the state as evidence of national achievement and progress. Yet, just like these much larger global sporting events, a range of controversies threatened to turn the pride of the Games into embarrassment. Of particular concern was the fact that, despite significantly reducing the size of the Games, Laos — one of the smallest and poorest countries in Southeast Asia — depended greatly on foreign help to conduct them, especially from China. The ultimate success of the SEA Games in Laos reinforced the power of sport to consolidate nationalism, despite the paradox in Laos of nationalism emerging from a complex mix of autonomy and dependence.

This paper for general readers is an accessible synthesis of how money allows us to combine the personal and impersonal aspects of what it means to be human. Humanism 1.0 (the Renaissance) simply added to the abstractions that govern us... more

This paper for general readers is an accessible synthesis of how money allows us to combine the personal and impersonal aspects of what it means to be human. Humanism 1.0 (the Renaissance) simply added to the abstractions that govern us an active personal dimension (but look where it got Romeo and Juliet). Money made the world we live in and its forms desperately need radical reform in the human interest. Humanism 2.0 would add that, in order to be more fully human, we have to integrate the personal and impersonal poles of our humanity and make them subject to our individual and collective will -- in other words conducive to democracy. Money schools us daily in how to span the extremes of self and world, of everyday life and the vast social engines that have brought us this far. The present article was the first and perhaps the best of my attempts to articulate this position. I have published an accessible book in 2022 on this theme, Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HartSelf. The present article was based on two earlier books, now available in free pdf, The Memory Bank: Money in an unequal world (2000) https://www.academia.edu/43704787/The_memory_bank_book_on_money
and The Hit Man's Dilemma: Or business personal and impersonal (2005)
https://www.academia.edu/84600911/THE_HIT_MANS_DILEMMA.

Cm 4262. 1999. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: The Stationery Office. One America in the 21st Century: Forging a New Future. The Advisory Board's Report to the President. Washington: US Government Printing Office. Banton,... more

Cm 4262. 1999. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: The Stationery Office. One America in the 21st Century: Forging a New Future. The Advisory Board's Report to the President. Washington: US Government Printing Office. Banton, Michael. 1964. The Policeman in ...

Over the last few years, a growing number of residents of my long-term fieldsite in Bugamba Sub-County, in rural southwestern Uganda, have become committed fans of English Premier League (EPL) football. As one might expect, this trend has... more

Over the last few years, a growing number of residents of my long-term fieldsite in Bugamba Sub-County, in rural southwestern Uganda, have become committed fans of English Premier League (EPL) football. As one might expect, this trend has been particularly marked ...

Since the rise of the Islamic State in the Middle East, anthropological research has focused on the many deliberate destructions of cultural heritage in the region. Whilst such analyses can offer important insights into the... more

Since the rise of the Islamic State in the Middle East, anthropological research has focused on the many deliberate destructions of cultural heritage in the region. Whilst such analyses can offer important insights into the multidimensionality of contemporary warfare and the important role of culture in perpetuating physical violence, heritage ethnographers should also spotlight the post-conflict futures of Syria and Iraq's war-torn heritage. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research on (world) heritage politics in the Russian Federation, this article highlights the strategic manipulation of Palmyra by the Russian Federation and investigates how conservation and reconstruction are also important political episodes in a heritage object's cultural biography.

Cohen and Fukui's Humanising the city (1993), Hendry's Wrapping culture (1993); recently Parker and Gagon's Conceiving Sexuality (1995), Stacia E. Za-busy's Launching... more

Cohen and Fukui's Humanising the city (1993), Hendry's Wrapping culture (1993); recently Parker and Gagon's Conceiving Sexuality (1995), Stacia E. Za-busy's Launching Europe: an ethnography of European cooperation in space science (1995), Gerd Baumann's Contesting Culture: ...

In this article, we compare original ethnographic research among the Makushi people of Guyana and the Matsigenka people of Peru, exploring how chemosensory experiences permeate indigenous understandings of aetiology and efficacy in the... more

In this article, we compare original ethnographic research among the Makushi people of Guyana and the Matsigenka people of Peru, exploring how chemosensory experiences permeate indigenous understandings of aetiology and efficacy in the cosmological and microbiological domains. We synthesize emerging theory in ecosemiotics, embodiment, plant personhood and plant intelligence with the concept of ‘sensory ecology’ (Shepard 2004) to recast multispecies ethnography as a phytochemical, as well as a philosophical, endeavour... If forests think (cf. Kohn 2013), they most certainly do so with phytochemicals, not with the kinds of signs and symbols that anthropologists are accustomed to studying. The biggest challenge facing multispecies ethnography (Kirksey & Helmreich 2010), as we see it, is a methodolog- ical one. The conventional methods of social anthropology are not sufficient for investigating the complex and elu- sive relationships that transpire across species boundaries. As Eduardo ...

This article reports on the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the 13th of September 2007 by the United Nations General Assembly. The article examines the final stages of the negotiation of the... more

This article reports on the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the 13th of September 2007 by the United Nations General Assembly. The article examines the final stages of the negotiation of the Declaration and briefly considers the role that anthropology might play in promoting this new human rights instrument.

Alison Redmayne, who has died aged 76, was one of the most dedicated and meticulous fieldworkers of her generation, known chiefly for her ethnographic and historical research among the Hehe and neighbouring peoples of Tanzania. She was... more

Alison Redmayne, who has died aged 76, was one of the most dedicated and meticulous fieldworkers of her generation, known chiefly for her ethnographic and historical research among the Hehe and neighbouring peoples of Tanzania. She was adopted as a member of the Hehe royal family, and used her Hehe name with considerable pride (Mung’anzagala Gisakamutemi Msengidunda Semugongolwa). Her commitment to fieldwork and devotion to the people she lived and worked among were exceptional, even after long-term illness curtailed her writing and teaching. During her all-too-brief active academic career, she produced a small but important body of published work, and taperecorded a large corpus of oral tradition and musical performances in the field in both Tanzania and Nigeria. The quality of these recordings was recognized by the BBC and they are now preserved and digitized in the British Library. Although the early promise of her work remained unfulfilled, she will be remembered both for her achievements as an anthropologist and for her compassion towards the people she treated as her own kith and kin.