anthropology in the news | antropologi.info

Panic, joy and tears during fieldwork: Anthropology Matters 1/2007 about emotions

Published on February 19, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

How to understand religious experiences when you have not ‘experienced’ the experiences? What is the function of emotions in the anthropological research process? Do emotions operate as ‘anthropology’s taboo’? Or are they key tools in our understanding and openings to our ‘informants’? And what are the effects of the emotional appeal of human rights activism on the resulting work?

The new issue of Anthropology Matters – one of the few online journals in anthropology – focuses an very interesting topic: Emotions – both as a state or research method during fieldwork and object of study. Editor Ingie Hovland writes in her introduction:

Emotions are inextricably tied up in our anthropological research and writing-in our apprehensive anticipation of the field, our feelings of helplessness once there, our anger at ‘informants’, our moments of panic, exuberance or exhaustion, our joy over the development of meaningful relationships and our excitement when we are ‘struck’ by something, and the despair, resignation or satisfaction that accompany writing up.

Yet these emotions are often dismissed in a number of curious ways: frequently left out of anthropological research methods courses, frequently edited out of ethnographic texts, admonished when they slip into PhD seminars, in general confined to personal fieldnotes, at times turned into jokes or asides, and at other times treated with uncertainty, embarrassment or silence.

How has this state of affairs come about? Is it only due to anthropology’s over-reliance on the Western academy and its Enlightenment split between knowing and feeling, turning emotions into the dangerous ‘other’ of knowledge? Or does it go beyond the question of hierarchies of knowledge and probe into the regulatory regimes of the anthropological community itself, turning emotions into an object of discipline?

>> overview over all articles in Anthropology Matters 1/2007

As we remember, blogger Antropyton, currently on fieldwork in Nicaragua has been very open concerning her emotions recently.

How to understand religious experiences when you have not 'experienced' the experiences? What is the function of emotions in the anthropological research process? Do emotions operate as 'anthropology's taboo'? Or are they key tools in our understanding and openings…

Book and papers online: Working towards a global community of anthropologists

Published on February 10, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, globalisation, journal articles / papers, Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, University / Academia

How many Siberian anthropologists do you know? What are Chinese anthropologists engaged in? The discipline of anthropology is quite ethnocentric. It is dominated by research institutes in the U.S and Britain. Only a small elite interacts on a global level. It’s time to globalize anthropology! To connect anthropologists from all over the world, to make anthropology more multivocal, richer and diverse. We need to create World Anthropologies.

That’s the endeavor of the World Anthropologies Network.

One year ago, Gustavo Lins Ribeiro and Arturo Escobar published the book World Anthropologies. Disciplinary Transformations within Systems of Power. Now, you can read the whole book online, including more recent papers.

Among others, you can read Reshaping Anthropology: A View from Japan (by Shinji Yamashita), Anthropology in a Post-Colonial Africa: the Survival Debate (by Paul Nchoji Nkwi) or World Anthropologies. Cosmopolitics for a New Global Scenario in Anthropology (by Gustavo Lins Ribeiro) and many more.

“We intend this volume as a contribution to the making of a new transnational community of anthropologists”, Gustavo Lins Ribeiro and Arturo Escobar write in their introduction. “Anthropologies everywhere will benefit from the scholarship already existing in globally fragmented spaces”:

We see a tremendous transformative potential in embracing this project. Whether conceived in terms of diversifying anthropological practices while maintaining a unified sense of the field or adumbrating a ‘post-anthropological era’ in which the idea of a single or universal anthropology is put into question, we believe there are great gains to be made by opening up to new possibilities of dialogue and exchange among world anthropologies.
(…)
Eurocentrism can only be transcended if we approach the modern colonial world system from the exteriority, i.e. from the colonial difference (modernity’s hidden face). The result of this operation is diversality or the possibility of epistemic diversity as a universal project.

>> continue reading the introduction

>> overview over all papers of the World Anthropologies Network

The network already has quite a lot of members from all continents – except from Africa (typical somehow!)

In Anthropology News October Gustavo Lins Ribeiro wrote about the lacking globalisation of anthropology, see my summary How can we create a more plural anthropological community?

(Thanks to the journal Ethnologic at the University of Munich for the link. The World Anthropologies website has been down for several month, but now it’s up and running again)

Open Source Anthropology : Are anthropologists serious about sharing knowledge?

For an Anthropology of Cosmopolitanism

The Future of Anthropology: “We ought to build our own mass media”

More and more anthropologists, but they’re absent from public debates – “Engaging Anthropology” (1)

The Five Major Challenges for Anthropology

Fieldblogging from Nicaragua

Published on February 9, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, Latin- and Central America, University / Academia

desk It’s a privilege to be an anthropologist on fieldwork. Reading Cicilie’s field blog from Paris and now also Antropyton’s field blog from Nicaragua makes me wonder: Why am I still sitting on my messy desk (picture) in Oslo?

A few weeks ago, Antropyton has arrived in Nicaragua, and has now started blogging about her experiences including her mixed feelings before she left Norway:

I was terrified by where we were supposed to live, by not understanding Nicaraguan Spanish (especially my hosts!), by not having a will to get to know them, by the scorching heat and by all my ideas dying in the shadow of volcanoes! I wasn’t on cloud nine at that time. Frankly speaking, excitement that was accompanying me for so long, disappeared as if by magic.

But then in Latin-America, everything changed:

Once I landed in San Jose in Costa Rica, I did realize that reading anthropology is something totally different than DOING anthropology.
(…)
I knew at once that this was going to be hard. But I was excited. Still, I had the will to conquer the world and carry out what I had planned the last few months. The world was new and beautiful and waiting for me.
(…)
It’s much better now, as one could suppose. I’ve started classes and tamed the city. Usually I don’t need much time to adapt myself to new environments. Albert Camus has a point in one of his essays (…) Like me, after a night in a hotel, the next morning he goes out on the street and click! you feel at home.

>> read the whole entry “Bienvenido”

Her most recent entry is about Nicaraguan conference culture:

The event was inaugurated with a national anthem, something that gave a dignity to the event. And the opening words seemed to go on endlessly. Every member of the organizing committee was welcomed and mentioned by name, academic title, organisations and institutions one belongs to and a post one has.

(…)

Every presentations was followed by a discussion that almost always ended with talk about politics, the new government and changes in policy that are essential to improve the health condition for the people. (…)What I observed was that presentations from Sweden (the conference was organized in cooperation with Lund University) were more “society friendly”. I mean that they presented not only results from their research, but also suggestions for how to apply this knowledge into society.

>> read the whole post ” III Conference on Multidisciplinary Environmental Research, Managua”

Also take a look at her pictures of volcano Cerro Negro and her new hometown Leon.

UPDATE (14.2.07): What happened? In her newest post she asks us Do we need/have to like our informants?

Open Source Fieldwork! Show how you work!

Paper by Erkan Saka: Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork

Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: Who are the exotic others?

On fieldwork: “Blogging sharpens the attention”

Fieldwork as cab-driver: “An amazing other world”

It's a privilege to be an anthropologist on fieldwork. Reading Cicilie's field blog from Paris and now also Antropyton's field blog from Nicaragua makes me wonder: Why am I still sitting on my messy desk (picture) in Oslo?

A few weeks…

“Anthropology needs to engage in an activist way”

Published on February 8, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, books, ethics, Latin- and Central America, poverty

“Anthropology needs to develop a listening capacity and to engage in an activist way, to become involved with the problem, not just to observe it from a distance”, says Brazilian anthropologist João Biehl in a portrait on the website of his university (Princeton University).

Biehl has conducted fieldwork in Vita, a site in Porto Alegre that is populated by the sick, mentally ill and poor who have passed beyond the care of families and social institutions. He wrote about his experiences in “Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment” which revolves around an ethnographic study of Catarina, a young women who was considered by her family and various doctors to be insane. With no one to look after her, she had ended up at Vita. Se died in Vita in 2003.

Working with Catarina taught Biehl anthropology in a new way, he says.

Describing the impact of the book, Princeton anthropologist Carolyn Rouse said, “In addressing social policy and ethics, ‘Vita’ demonstrates how one person’s life can be a basis for thinking about complex issues.”

According to Biehl, places like Vita are emerging everywhere in urban Brazil, and the book shows “how economic globalization and state and medical reform coincide and impinge on a local production of social death.”

>> read the whole portrait on Princeton University’s website

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find more texts by or about Biehl. His anthropology department looks like one of the worst faculty website on the web. But you’ll find three papers on the website of Anthropology, Art, and Activism Series (Brown University).

UPDATE (9.2.07): Read the comment by Anne Galloway (Space and Culture)

“Discuss politics!” – How anthropologists in Indonesia engage with the public

More and more anthropologists, but they’re absent from public debates – “Engaging Anthropology” (1)

Interview: Anthropologist studied poor fast food workers in Harlem

Collaborative Ethnography: For Luke Eric Lassiter “among the most powerful ways to advance a more relevant and public scholarship”

Poverty and health policies: Listening to the poor in Bangladesh

Too engaged anthropology? The Lumpenproletariat on the US-Mexican Border

"Anthropology needs to develop a listening capacity and to engage in an activist way, to become involved with the problem, not just to observe it from a distance", says Brazilian anthropologist João Biehl in a portrait on the website of…

A subculture of hefty, hirsute gay men is attracting the attention of academics

Published on February 8, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, gender

Richard A. Kaye, associate professor of English at Hunter College in New York, writes about a new and rather unknown research area – Bear studies.

– Oh, by the way, in addition to 19th century American literature, I work on bear studies, a candidate for an academic position once said.

– Bear studies? Do you mean bears in literature — say, William Faulkner’s story ‘The Bear’, the interlocutors asked.

NO! By “bear studies,” he meant an area of academic research that explored “the subculture of hirsute, usually heavy-set gay men” — burly guys who identify with a masculine style and who shun the popular image of homosexual guys as smooth, hairless, Calvin-Klein-ish blond young men.

“What fascinates these scholars is that self-identified bears have created a kind of counterculture, with its own language, values and rituals”, he writes.

>> read the whole story in the Los Angeles Times

Richard A. Kaye, associate professor of English at Hunter College in New York, writes about a new and rather unknown research area - Bear studies.

- Oh, by the way, in addition to 19th century American literature, I work on…