Critique of Anthropology recent issues

Introduction: The Limits of Neoliberalism

Kingfisher, C., Maskovsky, J. — 2008-05-28

Neoliberalism has emerged as one of the key concepts for studies of cultural and political-economic change on a global scale. Yet its enthusiastic adoption and application in recent anthropological work raises some significant theoretical and political problems. At the center of these is the challenge of discerning its limits. This Special Issue argues for the need to move beyond abstract and totalizing approaches that treat neoliberalism as a thing that acts in the world. We argue instead for approaches that stress its instabilities, partialities, and articulations with other cultural and political-economic formations, and that direct attention to the ways that culture, power and governing practices coalesce into concrete governmental regimes with their attendant patterns of inequality. Specific articles probe the limits and boundaries of neoliberalism as it plays out in different cultural and political-economic contexts.

Neoliberalism, Indigeneity and Social Engineering in Ecuador's Amazon

Wilson, P. C. — 2008-05-28

This article examines a state-sponsored hacienda invasion by indigenous people in Amazonian Ecuador in the context of neoliberal state restructuring and decentralization. Studies have demonstrated how neoliberal reforms limit the delivery of social services by the state, but in the case examined, the municipal government offered increased access to basic infrastructural and social services to residents of the new community and encouraged the land invasion. This may indicate shifts in neoliberal policy in parts of Ecuador, where decentralization is accompanied by promises of enhanced state services. I argue, however, that Ecuador's changing neoliberal agenda may provide new mechanisms for state control in Amazonia while reinforcing enduring racist ideologies of modernizing nationalism.

Is China Becoming Neoliberal?

Nonini, D. M. — 2008-05-28

Contemporary China has recently been seen as in the throes of `neoliberal restructuring'. This claim is contested on theoretical and methodological grounds. During the period of economic liberalization since the death of Mao, China has shown a hybrid governance that has combined earlier Maoist socialist, nationalist and developmentalist practices and discourses of the Communist Party with the more recent market logic of `market socialism'. A new cadre-capitalist class has emerged during liberalization, while large numbers of farmers, urban workers and a `floating population' of urban migrants have been dispossessed of land, employment and political rights. Reactions by many higher-level Party cadres against dispossession show a residual commitment to socialist values. Guanxi personalist ties within the new cadre-capitalist class simultaneously blur the `state'/`market' boundary, lead to dispossession and create conditions for accelerated capitalist growth. The conclusion is that contemporary China is not becoming `neoliberal' in either a strong or weak sense, nor undergoing a process of neoliberalization, but instead shows the emergence of an oligarchic corporate state and Party whose legitimacy is being challenged by disenfranchised classes, but is still in control through its efforts at modernization.

Neoliberalism, the Special Period and Solidarity in Cuba

Powell, K. — 2008-05-28

While the Cuban state's resistance to neoliberalism and to US dominance in particular has been vigorous, it is nonetheless subject to the constraints of neoliberal hegemony, and has entailed a degree of accommodation: the partial introduction of a market economy within a socialist political framework has given rise to some strong contradictions, most notably a sharp increase in inequality. This article considers to what extent the contradictions arising from these reforms have effects within everyday practices of struggle which threaten to problematize dispositions to solidarity — dispositions which are central to continued resistance, and an important social and political resource in confronting and shaping the future.

The Homeland Archipelago: Neoliberal Urban Governance after September 11

Ruben, M., Maskovsky, J. — 2008-05-28

In the post-9/11 period, the power of the concept of neoliberalism to describe US social and political dynamics has been questioned, particularly in light of discourses emphasizing the disaggregation of state power. Relying primarily on ethnographic data collected in Philadelphia between 2000 and 2005, this article examines the melding of neoliberal governance and Homeland Security ideology in the figure of `home', as a social construct more collective than the individual and more private than the community. Examining the arenas of community-based policing through Town Watch, and urban redevelopment through eminent domain, the article argues that the protection of `home' has become a mechanism through which the sometimes contradictory imperatives of capitalism and state governance may be promoted by municipalities and contested by urban residents, particularly those in minority and working-class communities.

The Neoliberal American Dream as Daydream: Counter-hegemonic Perspectives on Welfare Restructuring in the United States

Morgen, S., Gonzales, L. — 2008-05-28

Despite the efforts of its supporters to cast welfare `reform' in the United States as a successful achievement of neoliberal public policy, we argue that among low-income people who have received public assistance, counter-hegemonic interpretations and `possibilities' coexist with, texture and sometimes, challenge hegemonic assumptions about poverty, the state, motherhood and relations of power. Paying attention to these counter-hegemonic perspectives reveals ideological and political possibilities that are foreclosed when neoliberal hegemony is theorized as seamless and complete, rather than partial and vulnerable to disruption. That neoliberalism must be actively produced helps to explain the powerful processes that subject poor women and men, more intensely than many others, to practices and discourses designed to shape compliance with neoliberalism.

Public Health, Patronage and National Culture: The Resuscitation and Commodification of Community Origins in Neoliberal Brazil

Collins, J. F. — 2008-05-28

This article examines state and citizens' reliance on patron—client relations during neoliberal restructuring. It contends that neoliberalism is not an objectively apparent set of processes but an ideology. Building on this insight that emphasizes contradictory power relations, I focus on residents of a historical center, the Pelourinho, and their interpretations of the packaging of their practices as patrimony. As a result of their experience with institutions and patronage networks, these people have cobbled together surprising approaches to their state and its production of value from their habits and themselves. Thus, even as the state structures its attempt to commodify habits around a mix of techniques and patronage, residents employ related idioms to make demands on that state. I develop this argument in relation to an earlier period that was influential in putting together the lineaments of the national culture that is commodified today to argue that a double-bound debunking takes place in the Pelourinho, due to the workings of patronage and an ostensibly objective social science. Such a relational engagement with state attempts to sanitize vernacular habits suggests ways of understanding state institutions and NGOs that are so much a part of ideologies and their contestations under neoliberalism.

Book Review: Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006

Stepputat, F. — 2008-05-28

Recently Published

2008-05-28

Dispossession and the Anthropology of Labor

Kasmir, S., Carbonella, A. — 2008-02-19

This article develops an approach to the anthropology of labor that seeks to transcend the North/South and working class/poor oppositions that have long framed our understanding of social inequality. Drawing upon David Harvey's understanding of the ways in which capitalism always creates its own Other through dispossession, as well as historical case studies of struggles against dispossession, we emphasize the mutability of class relations in both the global North and South, and point to the complex interconnections of the social movements of waged and unwaged laborers across the globe. This focus on the connections between peoples who are differently marked by processes of dispossession, we argue, simultaneously enriches our understanding of social inequality and furthers the project of decolonizing anthropology.

The Making of Space, Race and Place: New York City's War on Graffiti, 1970--the Present

Dickinson, M. — 2008-02-19

This article examines New York City's war on graffiti from 1970 until the present and the ways in which the city's reaction to the popular youth practice was largely shaped by the neoliberal restructuring process occurring throughout the same period. It explores the racialization and criminalization of the youth who practiced graffiti, and the ways in which this process manifested itself as a contestation over the use of urban space. Finally, it explores the practice of graffiti and the role of cultural practices more generally in relation to an anti-racist discourse.

Assessing Phenomenology in Anthropology: Lessons from the Study of Religion and Experience

Knibbe, K., Versteeg, P. — 2008-02-19

How did phenomenology inspire anthropology to re-evaluate its principal method: participant observation? This question is answered by exploring how phenomenology has contributed to the anthropological study of religion. The focus in this field is not only on the way people perceive but also how they experience the world. This allows for a view that does not treat experience of the world separately from cognition of the world. Religion can thus be studied as it is lived and acted in concrete situations. By seeing the scholar as part of the life-world of the people in whose lives she participates, phenomenology in anthropology goes against the tendency to privilege `scientific' knowledge over other kinds of knowledge. This has some important theoretical ramifications, most notably the refusal to transcend lived experience through theory. This discussion will be illustrated from authors' fieldwork. The influence of phenomenology in anthropology also raises some important doubts. At the end of this article, these doubts will be addressed.

Cultivating Autonomy: Power, Resistance and the French Alterglobalization Movement

Williams, G. — 2008-02-19

This article explores the resistance of alterglobalization activists on the Larzac plateau in southern France to various forms of power. As part of a technique of resistance activists cultivate themselves as `autonomous' political subjects and organize a movement considered to be an `autonomous' counterpower. In addition to being a political goal, autonomy is problematically tangled up in many aspects of their lives and is of frequent concern in their efforts to resist. Autonomy also constitutes a theoretical problem in anthropological discussions of power and resistance. An autonomous space of resistance is often assumed by social movement theorists or denied by those who argue that power and resistance are inseparable. I argue in this article that autonomy, understood as something socially relative rather than absolute, is produced in the process of resisting via particular practices through which power and resistance come to oppose one another.

Turning Marx on his Head: Missionaries, `Extremists' and Archaic Secularists in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

McBrien, J., Pelkmans, M. — 2008-02-19

Christian and Muslim religious movements have made significant inroads into post-Soviet Kyrgyzstani society, and have been seen as a threat by the secular establishment. In this article we discuss the defence mechanisms that are locally employed to ward off the danger that these `new' religious movements represent. Our focus on secular responses not only fills a gap in the available research (which has focused on religious renewal but largely ignored the `secular' majority), but also provides new perspectives on how to view the postsocialist religious landscape. By scrutinizing secular responses we show that what is at stake is not so much atheist ideology but secular understandings of religion that were (inadvertently) promoted by Soviet rule. As such this article shows the curious effect of Soviet legacies on contemporary notions of religion and culture.

Book Review: Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Engaging Anthropology: The Case for a Public Presence. Oxford: Berg, 2005

Mills, D. — 2008-02-19

Book Review: Jaro Stacul, Christina Moutsou and Helen Kopnina (eds), Crossing European Boundaries: Beyond Conventional Geographical Categories. Oxford: Berghahn, 2005

Goode, S. — 2008-02-19

Book Review: Jacqueline Solway (ed.), The Politics of Egalitarianism: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Berghahn, 2006

Lewis, J. — 2008-02-19

Recently Published

2008-02-19

Introduction

Smith, G. — 2007-11-08

Stoneworkers, Masons and Maids: Neoliberal Crisis, Social Fields and Proletarianization in Peri-urban Mexico

Binford, L., Churchill, N. — 2007-11-08

Following William Roseberry, this article treats `local facts as world historical facts' in order to discuss the contours of a conflictive and contradictory process of proletarianization among stoneworkers, masons and maids in one peri-urban community of central Mexico. We analyze the dialectic of internal and external relationships that, over time, shaped social struggles on an uneven field of power in Santo Tomás Chautla (Puebla) before and after the 1994 peso devaluation. Proletarianization in Chautla is uneven, but has in every instance entailed a wider and deeper involvement with commodity production.

William Roseberry, Class and Inequality in the Anthropology of Migration

Lem, W. — 2007-11-08

This article addresses the ways in which Roseberry's work advances our understanding of the processes of transformation under capitalism. Looking at his use of class in selected writings, I explore Roseberry's ideas on class and class analysis by applying them to the case of international migration. While Roseberry did not engage with the subject of migration, I will argue that his discussions of social differentiation, petty commodity production, fields of force and social class nonetheless have heuristic value in the study of contemporary international migration. They provide the conceptual and methodological tools to enhance our understanding of the nature of social reproduction and dynamics of capital formation in different social and economic sites that are configured by migration. Roseberry's analytical insights are applied to cases of migration within China, as well as migration between China and France.

The Rise of a Global Garment Industry and the Reimagination of Worker Solidarity

Collins, J. — 2007-11-08

In 1996, Bill Roseberry published an article in American Anthropologist entitled `The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States'. In it, he explored the connections that linked the rise of specialty coffees marketed at Zabars and Starbucks to new class configurations of consumerism in the US and to new production arrangements in the coffee-producing countries. The article seeks to apply this approach to the analysis of another commodity chain: that of apparel. It explains how recent changes in the global apparel industry are shaped by power and experienced by workers and consumers. It seeks to bridge the divide between industrialized and developing nations by showing the commonalities (as well as differences) experienced by the industry's workers in the US and abroad. And it shows how global production patterns have given rise to global resistance strategies, as workers forge bonds with social movements outside of the factory and develop transnational alliances. In the spirit of Roseberry's work, this account seeks to meld cultural analysis with political economy, and to attend to historical contingency, without losing sight of corporate and state power.

`A Cargo del Futuro' Between History and Memory: An Account of the `Fratricidal' Conflict during Revolution and War in Spain (1936 39)

Narotzky, S. — 2007-11-08

In this article I address conflict during the Spanish Civil War and the immediate post-war years by searching for any discernible social bases for the coalitions that confronted each other locally in a particular rural area in Catalunya. I try to address the real complexity of how civilians locally, and often violently, confronted their close neighbors and how this related to larger issues at stake. The careful reading of one document in this article enables an examination of the particular local expression of the civil war conflict, not just as a source of factual evidence but also as the expression of a particular kind of historicity, that of modernity. In the article I use the production of this document and the explicit aim of its author to confront present-day processes of the `Recuperation of Historical Memory' that are being produced by a wide range of political groups, public institutions and private initiatives in Spain, and which have attracted wide exposure in the media. This leads to a discussion of the issue of the different `regimes of historicity' that can emerge around the recuperation of memory and their political value.

Historical Anthropology as an Ethical Choice in an Age of Genocide

Rebel, H. — 2007-11-08

A consideration of Bill Roseberry's reception of aspects of Clifford Geertz's analytical ethics, this article focuses on concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony as alternatives to the `thick concept' approach that continues to inform, both directly and indirectly, historical narratives in anthropology.

Occidentalism and the Realism of Empire: Notes on the Critical Method of William Roseberry

Roth-Seneff, A. — 2007-11-08

In the last two decades, the problem of the realism of empire and its relation to occidentalism has been addressed in many different and contradictory ways. These conflicting arguments and approaches raise the issue of the need for a method in anthropology that can reveal the cultural and historical dimensions operating in the production and reproduction of the relationship between realism in its scholastic Thomistic sense and occidentalism as a category of representation intimately tied to modern empire. That the anthropological method developed by William Roseberry is an important contribution to this problem can be illustrated through a critical contrast between the historian David Cannadine and Roseberry (anthropologist turned historian). Both scholars reflected on the meaning and experience of coming of age during a major shift in modern empire. The contrasts between their reflexive ways are relevant to the examination of their very different modes of inquiry into the relations between culture and history.

Remembering Bill

Polier, N. — 2007-11-08

Book Review: Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson (eds), The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006

Pons, C. — 2007-11-08

Book Review: Deema Kaneff, Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in a `Model' Bulgarian Village. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004

Weszkalnys, G. — 2007-11-08

`Right There with You': Coca-Cola, Labor Restructuring and Political Violence in Colombia

Gill, L. — 2007-09-10

The article examines how state terrorism operates alongside neoliberal capitalism and has reconfigured labor relations and generated new forms of oppositional politics. Focusing on the struggles of Colombian Coca-Cola workers, the article first considers how neoliberal restructuring and political violence have fragmented social relationships and aggravated inequalities among workers and between them and the Coca-Cola Company. This is a process that is based on widespread impunity. The article then examines how trade unionists have struggled against the degradation of work and the violation of their human rights by internationalizing their struggle against Coca-Cola and building broad alliances that extend beyond the workplace. Finally, it considers the problems, possibilities and new tensions that emerge from the union's internationalism.

Cultural Seduction: American Men, Mexican Women, Cross-border Attraction

Campbell, H. — 2007-09-10

Recent anthropological studies have emphasized power, domination and hegemony. The US—Mexico border is a key site for ethnographic research on such issues. This article uses an ethnographic approach to examine cross-border sexual encounters in the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso area. Through a study of Anglo/Mexican sexual interactions and the blurred boundaries between the cross-border marriage market and sex tourism, I explore the cultural dimensions of attraction and seduction within the contexts of unequal power relations. This approach moves beyond moralistic reductionism and one-dimensional views of power relations and inequality in order to provide a richer perspective on cross-cultural sexual encounters.

Food Values: The Local and the Authentic

Pratt, J. — 2007-09-10

Concern about the agro-industrial food system has generated movements that reconnect producers and consumers, either through alternative distribution networks, or through providing histories of each quality foodstuff. Although these movements share a romantic discourse, they have a range of objectives and a more complex relationship to the mainstream than first appears. The article analyses particularly the concept of authenticity, first in representations of food, then more widely as a value that links production and consumption. The material illustrates a wider analysis (in Graeber, Harvey) of the coexistence of monetary and non-monetary value in an economy dominated by the commodity form. Following on from this, the article sets out the different judgements that have been made about the transformative political potential of these movements.

The Philosopher's Gift

Argyrou, V. — 2007-09-10

This article considers Derrida's critique of Mauss's The Gift and the philosopher's argument that the gift is impossible. In the spirit of the gift, the article engages Derrida in a potlatch-like manner and subjects his critique to the same sort of critical interrogation to which he subjects the gift. The key question raised is why Derrida should want to give this gift of knowledge, namely, that there is no gift. The article argues that despite appearances, and the contradictions in his argument aside, Derrida's gift is the same as the anthropologist's gift. It is the gift of human unity and hence purity and innocence, which is (a) given only insofar as there are no giving agencies — `man', for instance, or the West.

`Dinheiro Vivo': Money and Religion in Brazil

Sansi Roca, R. — 2007-09-10

For decades, social scientists have seen money and religion in Brazil as two incompatible terms. In contrast, this article shows how money has always been present in Brazilian popular religion. This argument leads to a second point: a criticism of the interpretation of Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal churches as `money fetishists', religions of neoliberalism and globalization. Neo-Pentecostals in Brazil appropriate money not just for economic ends, but also with the political project of Christianizing the country. More generally, the article introduces a different perspective both from the classical discourse on money as an agent of globalization and modernity on the one hand, and a more recent literature on the personalization of money and alternative currencies, on the other. In both the discourses on modernity and personalization, nation-states are increasingly marginal. But the nation is still very much at the centre of the Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal project.

Book Review: Nicole Constable (ed.) Cross-border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Trans-national Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005

Charsley, K. — 2007-09-10

Book Review: Ulf Hannerz, Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (with a new afterword). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN 0 226 31576 2 (pbk)

Weszkalnys, G. — 2007-09-10

Book Review: Thomas M. Wilson (ed.), Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and Identity. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005

Heath, D. B. — 2007-09-10

Book Review: Jens Andermann and William Rowe (eds), Images of Power: Iconography, Culture and the State in Latin America. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005

Beasley-Murray, J. — 2007-09-10

Recently Published

2007-09-10