Anthrozine

Part II The Anthropo Scene

June 5, 2019June 12, 2019 Imo6 Comments

(Continuing from Part I The Anthropo Scene)

Spider:

You’ve been very solemn there in the corner, Squid, and I’d like to hear your thoughts on the term “Capitalocene” and what it means for the people who write about humans and non humans?

Squid:

First allow me to introduce myself. I am the envoy of Donna Haraway, who is a dear friend of my squid squad. Haraway also agrees with you, Spider, that the term Anthropocene avoids calling out capitalism and also puts too much emphasis on humans (2015, 159). Donna always says that language how we build our world, and unfortunately the name of the Anthropocene puts humans in the middle of it (Haraway et al 2016, 538).

Donna Haraway uses a multitude of terms, including the “Capitalocene”, the “Plantationcene” and the “Chthulucene” (Haraway et al 2016). The Plantationcene is an effort to acknowledge that the destructive habits of humans do not only date back to the onset of industrial capitalism. They actually began with the earlier colonialist history that fed into capitalism, where slave labour was used to exploit land for agricultural and mineral purposes. Yet Donna is often criticised for being too political for using the term “Capitalocene” and “Plantationcene”. Humans are strange creatures like this, they try to evade any kind of responsibility, but Haraway actually says that the responsibility of humans is also a “response- ability” (2015, 164).

Humans need to work out how to live with their non-human kin. In fact, in Donna Haraway’s recent book the “Chthulucene manifesto” she has even said that we could even call this present era the “Chthulucene” rather than the “Anthropocene”. This is not actually to honour our leader Cthulhu, but it is to show that humans actually have tentacles (and webs and roots) in the non-human world. When humans study and write about the world, they should make an effort to include the narratives of all entities like us, mushrooms, spiders and squid. I don’t just want to hear the old trees and polar bear narrative. Just look at what is happening with the sixth Great Extinction of plants and animals, maybe a better name for this period is just ‘the trouble’ (Haraway et al 2016, 537).

Haraway says that people are hesitant to act because they haven’t read the newest critique of the system (Terranova 2016). This is one of the problems with academia, it is easy from those academics to say that you don’t know how the world works, because you haven’t read a particular theory and you are just a student, or a taxi driver, or a mushroom, or a spider. The most important thing is that people are recognising that the current system is destructive, even if they don’t have the most fully developed critique of it. What we need to focus on is less on having a perfect vision of what is going on right now and turn towards where we could be going, looking at the possibilities of life on Earth. Science fiction and speculative anthropology are ways of accomplishing this vision, which is why Haraway often works with science fiction writers and anthropologists to create stories for Earthly survival (Terranova 2016).

What I am proposing is a call-to-action for our human kin to respond to this climate emergency and resist individualist or human-centred ways of depicting the world. Otherwise there will be grave and perhaps even chthonic consequences for all of us, a true Cthulu eruption of doomsday proportions! Beware!

Mushroom:

What you are saying seems very morbid, Squid, but I agree with you. Imagining a shared future can be a useful way of acting in the present to avoid the worst of this oncoming storm. My mycelium networks have been retelling a lecture by Bruno Latour, who says that even though the apocalypse is a bit of a literary trope, the only way to move humans to respond to this storm is by telling stories. By the way, where is our friend the ant, who always brings messages of hope from Bruno Latour?

An ANT scurries in, late to the gathering, but carrying a message of hope from Bruno Latour:

So sorry I’m late. It’s so hard to get anywhere on time on the antway, it’s only one lane. I do come bearing a gift for the anthropologists in the room, that is, from my colleague Bruno Latour, who sends his regards.I know you may have your criticisms of the Anthropocene, but really it is an amazing gift. In the age of the Anthropocene, we are acknowledging that humans are quite literally re-shaping the earth (Latour 2014). The links between humans and non-humans are no longer merely the objects of symbolism and myth (Latour 2014). Many hard scientists are realising they too need to ponder the relationship between physical and cultural anthropology, and the blurring of nature and culture (Latour 2014). The Anthropocene has destabilised the hierarchy between hard sciences and social sciences, relieved anthropologists somewhat of having to question: ‘Are we an art or a science?’ and brought a greater appreciation for the multispecies anthropological work anthropologists like Anna Tsing are doing. Isn’t this exciting?!

Mushroom:

Yes it most certainly is. More enthusiasm for interdisciplinary collaboration is a gift of the Anthropocene. If we compare disciplines to genres, it seems even more obvious (Haraway D et al. 2016, p. 553)! Imagine one discipline is a science fiction novel and the other a mystery novel (Haraway D et al. 2016, p. 553). There’d be no reason to doubt we could have a science fiction mystery novel, would there be (Haraway D et al. 2016, p. 553)?

ANT:

That’s very true, Mushroom. And this sort of collaboration is already happening at AURA (Aarhus University Research on the Anthropo-cene) (Latour et al. 2018, p. 598), which is a hopeful outcome, one that shows us that there isn’t even ‘interdisciplinarity’ in the same sense any more, because there are no longer two sides. In the Anthropocene there is no longer a physical and a cultural side–and humans are the center for everyone and for no one. (Latour 2014). And Bruno is very excited about the opportunity for collaborative work with geo-scientists because their science ‘is not a science of the globe, it is a highly local, pluralised, multiple kind of science (Latour2014b)’ (Latour et al. 2018, p. 597). The epistemology of the globe is what got us in the mess we are in. This epistemology is why perhaps Platationocene is a more productive term to describe this era (Latour et al. 2018, p. 591). Bruno would agree with Donna that the Plantationocene is both useful for the reasons you have stated, Squid, but also because, and I think Anna would agree, ‘it refers to a certain, historically specific, way of appropriating the land, namely an appropriation of land as if land was not there. Plantationocene is a historical ‘de-soilization’ of the Earth’ (Latour et al. 2018, pp. 591-592). The modernist and capitalist project is literally founded on the mass extraction of minerals and plants from the Earth and the removal of people from their lands. Metaphorically humans have also been separated from the Earth with the ideology that humans are outside of nature.

Mushroom: By labeling this new age the Platationocene it shifts our awareness to the need for more analytical work in the field that is ‘soil-rich’, and grounded in the arts of noticing (Latour et al. 2018, pp. 598-599)(Tsing 2015, p. 37). This is what anthropologists do best!

ANT:

Yes, exactly, this highly local and pluralised sort of work (Latour et al. 2018, p. 597)! Except now, the field has also changed. We know that any field study (be that anthropological) will be ‘studying devastated sites in crisis’ (Latour 2014). But don’t be confused, this is still a message of hope. Latour believes that it is best to think we are in the apocalypse now (Latour et al. 2018, p. 601). And yes the apocalypse may be a bit of a literary trope, but rather than being catastrophising, apocalyptic thinking spurs us into action (Latour et al. 2018, pp. 603-604). We are not living in the indifferent time ‘after’ an apocalyptic time, nor are we ignorantly waiting for the apocalypse to happen in the future, but we are in it now (Latour et al. 2018, p. 601). The arrival of the Anthropocene as the apocalypse destroys modernization’s ideas about linear progress that fuel capitalism. It also reveals the entanglements, as you might say Mushroom, across space and time of different species to each other as they face extinction (Latour et al. 2018, pp. 604-605). And these entanglements include humans, and as Squid says, the Anthropocene raises the question of human moral and political responsibility (Latour 2014). I think the key question here for scientists (anthropologists included!) is ‘how do we redistribute human agency without being humanist, or post-humanist, or anti-humanist’ while simultaneously humans have become the center of all of our research and the question of what it means to be human has become blurry, as it is now recognised that we are morally tied to what used to be called ‘beyond the human’ (Latour 2014). The gift of the Anthropocene (and perhaps it is a difficult pill to swallow), in short, is that how we define: time, space, and otherness (Latour 2014)–all very important concepts to anthropologists–and consequently how we define anthropology as a discipline needs to change and be reworked!

References:

Terranova, F. (Dir.). 2016. Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival. Icarus Films.

Haraway, D. 2015. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities 6: 159-165

Haraway D. et al. 2016, ‘Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene. Ethnos’, 81(3): 535–564.

Latour, B. 2014. Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene–a personal view of what is to be studied, Distinguished Lecture for American Association of Anthropologists, Washington, <http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/139-AAA-Washington.pdf>.

Latour, B. et al. 2018. ‘Anthropologists are Talking — About Capitalism, Ecology, and Politics’, Ethnos, 83(3): 587-606.

Tsing, A. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Part I The Anthropo Scene

June 5, 2019June 12, 2019 Imo6 Comments

It’s a chilly winter evening and you find yourself in a dimly lit basement bar. Smoke from cigarettes is wafting around the room, and you can hear people clicking their fingers to the soft beats of jazz music. It’s an Anthropo Scene gathering. Some of the most outspoken anthropologists, Anna Tsing, Jason W Moore, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour were unable to attend this gathering, but they have sent envoys to carry their messages. These envoys seem to be posing as undercover social scientists, wearing ill-fitting hip couture in an effort to blend in. They mingle in a corner discussing topics ranging from philosophy to geology to anthropology and you sit at a table nearby and listen eagerly…

What is the Anthropocene?

Anonymous blob wearing dark glasses and a beret: Well, from my understanding, it is a term that was first proposed by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stroermer to the scientific community in 2000 to describe a new geological epoque for the earth (Raffnsøe 2016, p. 3)(Moore, A. 2015, p. 32). The idea is that we have moved into an era where humans have become the most influential factor in global changes–most notably biodiversity loss, climate change and changes in the earth’s fossil record (Raffnsøe 2016, p. 4). It is contested whether this shift began with the Neolithic introduction of farming or much more recently around the time of the Industrial Revolution which caused a massive increase in carbon dioxide levels (Raffnsøe 2016, p. 4)(Tsing 2015, p.19). The shift has also been marked by the testing of nuclear bombs in mid-20th century which disseminated radioactive isotopes all over the globe (Raffnsøe 2016, p. 4). This era is said to continue today and will continue to shape the earth for an indefinite future…

But tell me, what does that mean for anthropology?

Yes, how did this topic of geological science become so influential to social and political sciences?

Mushroom:
Excuse me let me introduce myself. I was bred from an old and deep mycelium, to bring us the message of the Anthropocene anthropologist Anna Tsing. Simply put, in the Anthropocene ‘progress’ stops making sense (2015 p. 25). This view of the world that has been clouded by dreams of progress, science, and advancement is destabilised (Tsing 2015, pp. 20-21). And with it, the Enlightenment dualism between nature and culture and humans and nature is brought into question. This realisation that, in the Anthropocene, humans cause more disturbance to the earth, and by extension non-human beings, than other geological forces means that the distinction between humans and nature is blurred.

Anthropology as a discipline is more important now than ever. The progress mentality that drove humans to look ahead has failed us, and instead we need to start looking around (Tsing 2015, p. 22). We need to revitalize arts of noticing (Tsing 2015, p. 37), like ethnography and anthropology more generally. Anna wants me to pass on the message about the very useful concept of assemblage (Tsing 2015, p. 22). Keeping in mind the concept of assemblage helps us to ask how varied species, human and non-human, influence each other (Tsing 2015, pp. 22-23). The nature of the field has changed. Despite the looming ‘anthropos’ of the Anthropocene that refuses to acknowledge our collaborative survival with non-human beings (Tsing 2015, p. 19), the Anthropocene also forces anthropologists to take note of how the focal subjects our study, humans, are entwined in the lifeways outside of ourselves (Tsing 2015, p. 23). It brings anthropologists an appreciation for multi-species and multi-sited ethnographies. Anna also wanted me to read you this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin:

‘I am not proposing a return to the Stone Age. My intent is not reactionary, nor even conservative, but simply subversive. It seems that the utopian imagination is trapped, like capitalism and industrialism and the human population, in a one-way future consisting only of growth. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to put a pig on the tracks.’ (Tsing 2015, p. 17)

Perhaps the work of anthropologists in the Anthropocene can be that pig on the tracks, to persuade humanity to stop and look around.

Spider:
Let me cut in here, I’m a spider who crept out of Jason Moore’s book “Capitalism and The Web of Life”. I’m here to talk about how Jason Moore thinks the concept of the “Anthropocene” needs to be reframed (2015). I agree that what we are seeing an unprecedented climate emergency, but the name “Anthropocene” can be used be humans to evade responsibility and create apathy. We have even seen corporations hijack the word “Anthropocene” by using it as a buzz word to suggest human exceptionalism. For example, look at this article in The Economist where the Anthropocene is elevated as giving “humans an unexpected promotion—to the status of geological movers and shakers” (The Economist 2016). The reason that the planetary life support system is dying is because of capitalism, a political and economic system that values profit and an uneven distribution of resources.

My suggestion is to rename this era the “capitalocene”, but I’m not just arguing “about replacing one word with another” (Moore 2015, 81). We need to reframe the thinking around it as well. Theorists of the Anthropocene are trying to collapse the old dualisms such as nature/culture. Yet placing emphasis on the idea that it is human activity that is destroying an external nature is also dualistic. Humans aren’t an external force that are impacting the natural world, they are inextricably linked together in the earth system, like it’s just one big web. Capitalism as a socio-economic system is also part of this web, and it is the growth of capitalism is what has caused colossal imbalances in the Earth system.

Anthropocene theorists haven’t quite acknowledged this, although they have tried to overcome dualistic thinking by using new terms such as “assemblages”. I disagree that these theoretical tools are able to destabilise the capitalistic categorisation of nature as a resource external to humans. Post modernist concepts such as “assemblage” diffuse knowledge and make it harder to locate the power imbalances that are destroying living systems (Moore 2015, 5). If we describe the source of climate destruction as the entire human race, as the name “Anthropocene” suggests, then the corporations and countries who contribute the most to climate destruction are let off the hook. The worst experiences of the climate emergency will be in countries who don’t have the infrastructure to cope with extreme climates, which is unfair because it is the Global West and large corporations who contribute the most carbon emissions. The term “Capitolocene” highlights these contradictions.

TO BE CONTINUED….. (see Part II: The Anthropo Scene)

References:

Moore, A. 2015. ‘Anthropocene anthropology: reconceptualizing contemporary global change’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22(1): 27-46.

Moore, J W. 2015. Capitalism in the web of life: ecology and the accumulation of capital. London:Verso Press.

Moore, J W. 2017. The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(3): 594-630.

Tsing, A. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Raffnsøe, S. 2016. Philosophy of the anthropocene : the human turn, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Anthro poetry

June 5, 2019June 12, 2019 SarahLeave a comment

Ethnography these days can be like a jumble of different genres, including poetry, prose, narrative, memoirs and other forms of experimental writing. This pastiche captures anthropology as an art form rather than as a science.

The term ethnography means to write about people. Most early ethnography tried to seem objective by using constructions such as the passive tense, third person pronouns and scientific terminology (Maynard and Cahnmann-Taylor 2010, 2). Yet this detached tone was misleading, since ethnographers are individuals with distinct experiences who can only ever create interpretations of social reality. Since Geertz argued that anthropology is more of an art form, many ethnographers have written “thick description” and embraced their subjectivity by and being reflective of their own position (1979).

Anthropologists such as Adrie Kusserow, Nomi Stone, Michael Jackson, Ivan Brady and Renato Rosaldo have been using poetry to represent their perspectives in ethnography since the 1980s (Maynard and Cahnmann-Taylor 2010, 5). The Society for Humanistic Anthropology also runs an annual poetry competition, to prompt anthropologists to explore the interests of their discipline in other literary forms. Poetry already shares many of the same seeds of cultural anthropology, it is based on human experiences and representation.

Ethnographic poetry is not to be confused with the analysis of poetry within ethnography. Some ethnographers analyse the metaphor and literary forms of a culture, whereas other ethnographers use poetry as a literary genre to convey their experiences during field work. Clearly some ethnographic texts are more suitable to use poetry than others. When encountering a poem nestled in an ethnography, the reader might wonder why the anthropologist doesn’t just pursue poetry as a separate practice, rather than trying to be like a renaissance figure who tries to dabble in a bit of everything. Poetry is an abstract form that might cause misunderstanding for anthropologists who are trying to describe elements of human culture.

But if we assume that anthropology is not just about advancing knowledge, but an attempt to capture and translate other life rhythms and experiences, then poetry is a good fit for anthropology. If everything that could have been known has been known before, there are only “new ways of making them felt- of examining what those ideas feel like being lived” (Lorde 1977, 250). Lorde considers poetry the “revelatory distillation of experience” (248). It should never be considered as a luxury practice that is hidden away in private notebooks (248), just as anthropologists should not be limited to rigid writing styles to circulate within the confines of their ivory towers. For example, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict published her poetry under the name “Anne Singleton”, to avoid scrutiny from Franz Boaz and her other academic associates, who didn’t take poetry seriously (Maynard and Cahnmann-Taylor 2010, 5). The potential of poetry to capture insights into human experience is clear in the following poem of anthropologist and poet Adrie Kusserow (2016, 27-28):

Thirty-One, Anthropologist, No Gods Left,

If meaning has shape,

then I am searching for a bowl of it.

[….]

I don’t know anything anymore

except this:

If Knowledge came to me

in the thickest part of the night,

woke me with a ﬂashlight,

asked me, What do you know?

I would say, nothing, nothing at all,

except diving, and loving this world.

There is plenty of academic writing in ethnography that unfortunately leaves the reader feeling indifferent, alienated or bored. Even the subjects of ethnography, whether people or places, can become “frozen in time” (Kusserow 2013, n.p). Poetry in ethnography can capture the flashes of perception that ethnographers experience. This can have a jolting effect, by displacing the reader from a sense of comfort and reserved distance. For this reason, ethnographers should accept poetic licence as a gift.

References:

Tyler, S. 1984, The Poetic Turn in Postmodern Anthropology: The Poetry of Paul Friedrich. American Anthropologist, 86(2), new series. pp 328-336

Geertz, Clifford. 1973, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. pp 3–30.

Maynard, K, Cahnmann‐Taylor, M. 2010, Anthropology at the Edge of Words: Where Poetry and Ethnography Meet. Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 35, Issue 1, pp 2–19,

Kusserow, A. 2016, A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Edited by Elliott, D and Culhane, D. pp 27- 29.

Lorde, A. 1977, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury”. Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture. Pp 248-250.

Polston, P. 2013, A Conversation With Anthropologist/Poet Adrie Kusserow. Seven Days. https://www.sevendaysvt.com/LiveCulture/archives/2013/06/05/a-conversation-with-anthropologistpoet-adrie-kusserow

Look! Anthropologists apply this one simple trick to get the results they want

June 5, 2019June 12, 2019 Sarah2 Comments

You’ve been lured this far by a clickbait title, so I’m going to use this space to talk about something that I find exciting in current anthropology; activists who are using ethnography to reinforce their social justice agendas.

This seems against the aims of anthropology though?! Can you even be an activist and an anthropologist? My feeling is that anthropology actually has a distinct capacity to take a stance and make change in the world, through the practice of ethnography.

First, lets take a trip back a few years when the anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes rejected anthropology’s aspirations for extreme cultural relativism and objectivity, in favour of taking a moral stance in her ethnographic fieldwork (1995). She endeavoured to stand in solidarity with the communities she was studying, by being a witness to suffering and exploitation. Scheper-Hughes entered Brazil initially as an aid worker, which involved working with the community to ensure better infrastructure, workers rights and healthcare. Then later on in her life, she re-entered this same community as an anthropologist, but she felt disillusioned at the pressure to remain a detached and objective observer. Her work shows that there are the sides of the oppressor and the oppressed, and to not act in the face of suffering is to take the side of the oppressor. Scheper-Hughes believes it seems like a perpetuation of the colonial underpinnings of anthropology when ethnographers try to only be objective and detached from the communities they study.

Since Scheper-Hughes’ call for a militant anthropology, Juris has argued that anthropologists also have a role in alleviating oppression by using ethnography as a tool to build better resistance movements (2008). What Juris and other activist anthropologists advocate for is creating a feedback loop in ethnography, where the data is circulated within the community of participants to improve their practice. This could be a way of bringing anthropology back to a grounded level, rather than the problematic cycle of extracting knowledge from participants for audiences in the ivory tower of academia. Activists use the anthropological delights of thick description and complete participant observation, as insider ethnographers. This means that they can give feedback about social organisation and effective communication to activist communities that they usually already belong to. This type of ethnography is called “ethnography of resistance” (Urla & Helepololei 2014, 431) and the subjects of these studies are usually participants in resistance movements against capitalism and neo-liberal globalisation. Ethnography is a perfect tool for improving social justice movements, it shows the nuanced lives and interactions of subjects whilst also highlighting places where collective effervescence could be strengthened. The very practice of ethnography is a model of how to build a better world, it involves trying to understand and work with other people, and then giving their ideas back, “not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts” (Graeber 2004, 11). Some recent examples of activist ethnographers include Graeber (2002, 2009), Maeckelbergh (2018), Juris (2008) and Tominaga (2017).

Activist ethnography is distinguished from other types of ethnography through the position of the ethnographer, for example ethnographers who are activists will usually observe as a complete participant, whilst being very explicit about their position as a member of the group they are studying. Many anthropologists in activist spaces also choose to not do interviews, because the participants do not want to be “subjects”, or because there are power imbalances in interviews that do not work well in anti-hierarchical organising collectives. It could also be because subjects are in positions where they need to remain anonymous. Another way of making ethnography more accessible to social movements is by publishing them in journals that don’t necessitate institutional access. It can involve using forms that aren’t journals to distribute them easily, including zines, social media and blogs… come and join the ranks of your fellow anthro-blog-ists!

David Graeber is an anthropologist who writes with thick description as opposed to using a lot of theory. His works are largely focussed on accessibility, targeting a popular audience. For example, Graeber’s ethnography “Direct Action” depicts the social relations of the Occupy Wall Street movement, whilst avoiding jargon and theory dumps in the text (2009). His vision for anthropology is that it could create a constant dialogue between the ethnographic project and the utopian vision (Graeber 2004, 12).

I’m excited at the possibility that activists can use ethnography and claim it as a grounded method to build a better world, rather than just watching the problems of the world from a distance. Anthropology also has a place in resisting the problems of colonialism and capitalism that it once contributed to.

References:

Graeber, D. 2004, Fragments of an anarchist anthropology. Prickly Paradigm Press ; distributed by University of Chicago

Graeber, D. 2009, Direct action. [electronic resource] : an ethnography. AK Press.

Juris, J. 2008, Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalisation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Maeckelbergh, M., 2018, “Don’t Get Arrested!” Trust, Miscommunication, and Repression at the 2008 Anti-G8 Mobilization in Japan. Political and Legal Anthropology Reveiw, 41(1). Pp 124-141.

McCurdy, P., & Uldam, J. 2014, Connecting Participant Observation Positions: Toward a Reflexive Framework for Studying Social Movements. Field Methods, 26(1), 40–55.

Scheper Hughes, N. 1995, “The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 36: 3.

Sutherland, N., 2013, Social movements and activist ethnography. Organization, 20(4). Pp 1-45

Urla, J. Helepololei, J. 2014, “The Ethnography of Resistance Then and Now: On Thickness and Activist Engagement in the Twenty-First Century.” History and Anthropology: Rethinking Resistance in the 21st Century. Volume 25, Issue 4.Pp 431-451

Ursula Le Guin and the ethnography of future worlds

June 4, 2019August 6, 2019 Sarah7 Comments

The late Ursula Le Guin could be called an interplanetary anthropologist, since her stories are the twilight zone between ethnography and science fiction. They include anthropologist characters, descriptions, and most importantly, glimpses of possibilities for our planet through the exploration of what appear to be faraway futuristic worlds.

There already are many similarities between works of fiction and ethnographic texts in general. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz even said that ethnographic texts are more-or-less fiction (1973), since they are inevitably shaped by the ethnographer. How about exploring the other side of the coin, that science fiction books could be anticipatory anthropology?

Le Guin’s worlds are so believable because her way of writing about culture is informed by ethnographic writing. Many of her stories include thick description and detailed accounts of cultural practices, so that they may be are accessible to readers who are outsiders to these ways of life.

Her utopias are also never depicted as perfect places, spaces, or social systems. Every society is challenged in different ways, but “the real utopia in Le Guin’s work is […]the act of self transcendence and cross cultural understanding” (Baker-Cristales 2012, 25). As anthropologists know, the endeavour to transcend bias is like the vision of a “utopia”, it is not a place that can ever be reached. But above all, it a task that is worth pursuing.

Le Guin’s writing goes beyond imagining exotic or magical worlds through rich language or fictional tropes, the stories experiment with social structures and human possibilities. Her books also appear realistic because they abandon the gender and race stereotypes that were standard in the fantastical novels in her era. They often portray people of colour and people who are gender fluid, which was fairly radical for the 1980s science fiction scene. The plots also stray from the fantasy and sci-fi tropes that revolve around great conquests and adventures and instead meander through the hum drum lives of inhabitants of other planes.

Latour made a grand claim that the “task of anthropology is to account for how worlds are composed” (2013, 274). Le Guin’s book The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia accounts the social structures of whole planets, it traces a scientist who leaves his anarchist home planet to visit an Earth-like planet. The Dispossessed is similar to a good ethnography in that it makes current social systems appear unusual, throwing our own world into question and experimentation. Viveiros de Castro says in Cannibal Metaphysics that fictions are alternate realities which should be taken seriously. He makes a departure from Latour’s claim, to say that task of anthropology “is not the task of explaining the world of the other, but that of multiplying our world” (2014, 196). Le Guin shows how nothing is permanent or universal, and that people have the power to shape the world.

It is this reason that Le Guin often worked with anthropologists such as Anna Tsing to create works such as Arts of Living On A Damaged Planet. This anthology weaves fictional texts with anthropological texts and works from other disciplines to confront the oncoming storm of our entangled world.

Anthropology is moving further away from trying to represent “realities”, and towards representing what exists in imagined worlds. What is the future of ethnography? Le Guin’s work can raise a lamp to the murky vision of anthropology, which will involve discipline and genre-blurring work in anticipation of the future. For an example of imagining how anthropologists might imagine future worlds, see Dyan’s post PLANTS IN SPACE! On Botanical Colonialism and Selecting “Acceptable” Plants for Space Habitation.

What the literature of Le Guin and the discipline of anthropology both share is a they practice empathy and try overcome the barriers towards mutual understanding. Her work fulfils a vision of cultural anthropology, to make the strange seem familiar and the familiar seem strange. How distant are Ursula Le Guin’s imagined worlds? They may be as distant as we want them to be.

References:

Baker-Cristales, B. 2012, “Poiesis of Possibility: The Ethnographic Sensibilities of Ursula K. Le Guin”. Anthropology and Humanism. Vol. 37, Issue 1, pp 15–26.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, 3–30. New York: Basic Books.

Senior, W. 1996, Cultural Anthropology and Rituals of Exchange in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Earthsea”. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 29(4), 101-113.

Viveiros de Castro, E B. 2014, Cannibal metaphysics : for a post-structural anthropology. Minneapolis, MN :Univocal, pp 196.

Things We Wish We Knew in First Year: Communitas

June 3, 2019June 13, 2019 Madeleine Tan3 Comments

The late Yale graduate Marina Keegan captured the world’s attention in 2012. First, when she died in a tragic car crash at 22, just five days after her graduation, and next, when her last essay for the Yale Daily News, The Opposite of Loneliness, went viral. It writes, hopeful and glittering bright with youth:

“We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life…. It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you.” (Keegan 2012)

What she didn’t know was, at least in anthropology, we do.

It’s called Communitas.

A word tied to Victor Turner and his work on liminality, it is described as a mystical solidarity, or an egalitarian, non-rational bond that forms between people during the liminal state betwixt and between worlds that may not necessarily have been possible or conceivable outside that space. In fact, the state is often characterised by experiences of communitas.

So how does this happen?

Such is the anti-structure nature of liminality that status ‘dissolves’. The boundaries that previously held people apart socially in society, age, status/class, gender, kinship position are all gone and people are instead equal in terms of a shared humanity. It is a sharp contrast to the hierarchy of everyday life, yet it is the place where people can be one and create connections that would not have existed within the social structure of an everyday reality. “… Every normal action is involved in the rights and obligations that defines status and establishes ’social distance’ between men” (Turner 1967, p. 110), but in the liminal space, people are free to “be themselves” as they are released from their normal social confines and customs and no longer feel as if they have to “act” their role.

However liminality cannot be maintained forever without some sort of social structure or order to stabilise it, thus, moments and periods such as these end, and things inevitably return to the categories to which they belong, but, thanks to communitas and the unlikely bonds that people have made in the process, they are not necessarily in the same form in which they left… Thus Turner emphasises the liminal state for social unity due to its capacity to bring people together, inducing solidarity and social order (Turner 1967). It is a way of renewal, and a vehicle for transition, social cohesion, and restabilising order in society.

Although Marina Keegan never discovered this word, I think she encapsulated its feeling rather beautifully – like human-made magic that brings us closer together in this messy, complicated world.

Image Source: Amazon

References:

My article on Liminality

Keegan, M 2012, ‘The Opposite of Loneliness’, Article, 27 May, Yale News, viewed 7 June, <https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/05/27/keegan-the-opposite-of-loneliness/>.

Turner, V 1967, The Forest of Symbols, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Things We Wish We Knew in First Year: Emic + Etic

June 2, 2019June 12, 2019 Abbie Hallinan5 Comments

Emic. Etic. Inside. Outside. Or wait, is it the other way around? Etic. Emic. Outside. Inside? Wait, but inside and outside of what? Of everything? What exactly does this mean? I feel so confused. What exactly was Monica talking about? Wow, she really lost me when she started with this whole emic, etic business. Eh, maybe it’s not so important…

I first came across the terms ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ in Monica’s third year subject, The Anthropology of Nature. My head was already being turned inside out by each new nature/culture concept, let alone trying to fully understand and remember forms of anthropological analysis. I am not ashamed to admit that it took me a while to catch on to this whole ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ thing. As it turns out, they are pretty important approaches to constructing anthropological knowledge. So, here I am to help you out so you’re not sitting in class lost in space (like I was).

The terms ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ were first coined by linguist Kenneth Pike (1967) to refer to the particular sounds of a specific language (emic) and how they are represented and transcribed from an outsider’s perspective (etic). It has since become a common way of describing the research perspectives of anthropologists in the field.

So let’s break this down:

Emic – The ethnographer engages in participatory observation within the field, living or working within a specific cultural place (‘field’) to learn about people and their ways of life. Essentially, emic research is focused on the perspectives of those being studied (participants/peoples/informants).

Etic – The ethnographer tends not to integrate themselves into the culture they are observing and become an ‘outsider looking in’. In this case, the researcher acts as an ‘outsider’ and is expected to have more detached and objective observations of that culture. Etic research is an objective analysis of a culture by the researcher.

Image result for If you're wondering how an outsider knows your business check your insider — Women

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. These terms may be useful in understanding the groundwork of ethnographic research; but ultimately, they cannot really be divided into two separate categories. An ’emic’ perspective assumes that the ethnographer can detangle themselves from their Ethnocentric beliefs and enter the field from a neutral position that enables them to adopt and fully comprehend the cultural belief systems of the ‘other’. However, the idea of neutrality in the field is an illusion. The researcher is always attached to specific relations and identifications from their own culture, histories and personal narratives.

Marvin Harris (1976), an American anthropologist, argues that creating an ‘etic’ and ’emic’ division can produce problems in the construction of anthropological knowledge. He stated that ’emic’ models and observations of culture are ‘invented’ rather than ‘discovered’ by the researcher. He questioned whether there could actually be a cultural authority and if we could guarantee that the observer’s supposedly ‘etic’ research perspective isn’t actually their own ’emic’ one. In this respect, the mere presence of the researcher brings their ‘subjectivity’ into the field site and results in unique interactions specific to their personal characteristics. As a result, these interactions are un-replicable and become “artefacts” of the field instead of true reflections of what is actually there (Pachirat 2017, p.19).

The division of ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ alludes to broader philosophical debates on ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’, which highlights controversial issues revolving around the construction of anthropological knowledge.

So, where to from here?

Well, I am no expert in this debate. However, one of our core philosophies as anthropologists is to understand. Perhaps the magic in our work actually emerges from our continual efforts to merge the ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ observations we have. While there may be subjectivities inherent to all work that academics conduct, we can seek to maintain a higher level of awareness of our positionality and the repercussions this has in the ‘field’.

References:

Harris, M 1976, ‘History and significance of the emic/etic distinction’, Annual review of anthropology, vol. 5, no.1, pp.329-350.

Pachirat, T 2017, Among wolves: Ethnography and the immersive study of power, Routledge.

Pike, K.L 1967, Etic and emic standpoints for the description of behavior.

Anthropology and Mediumship: Should anthropologists access spaces beyond the Earth realm?

June 1, 2019June 12, 2019 Abbie Hallinan2 Comments

Pictured above is the “Arthur Findlay College” located in Stansted, the UK. The college is a spiritualist residential centre where some of the best mediums and psychics from around the world gather to study and deepen their natural abilities.
Arthur Findlay

Elderly couples sat in the rows behind me, all dispersed throughout the back rows. A few elderly gentlemen were scattered in between. I, sitting eagerly in the front row, was accompanied by an elderly woman – who I later discovered had been attending the church for close to fifty years. The whispers and chatter of others in the audience slowly began to fade away as my mum stood forth for platform and began to connect with spirit. Directing her attention to an elderly gentleman in the crowd, she began to bring evidence through and asked for confirmation of a little boy in the spirit world, with long white socks and sandy hair, that she could see running excitedly around her in circles. She continued on to describe and confirm his cause of death to the gentleman and brought through the little boy’s message…

What I have described above is a common ritual practice amongst spiritualist communities both in Australia and around the world. Often on a Sunday afternoon or evening, the community gathers for a ‘church’ service that often includes a philosophical talk on spiritualism, a meditation, singing and a demonstration of mediumship (‘platform’). During the demonstration of mediumship, the medium is connecting to the spirit world and may either bring through evidence of deceased loved ones – now ‘spirits’ in the ‘spirit world’ – or channel a philosophical message from a spirit, entity or other consciousness.

For the members of this community (including myself), our loved ones and the spirit world are always accessible to us and always present in our day-to-day lives. This world, in many respects, forms part of what Deborah Dixon (2007) termed ‘extra-geographies’ – spaces of experience that we do not necessarily see with our physical eyes or truly understand, yet have a significant influence on the ways we experience the world. Many individuals attending the services will come to hear from their loved ones in the spirit world; many may speak of their ‘spirit guides’ who in meditation provide them with wisdom for their problems. Some may even ask their angels to reserve a parking spot for them in an otherwise packed carpark. For me and many others in this community, these are the ‘normal’ day-to-day practices of our lives. However, I imagine that the multiple aspects of this ‘spirit world’ may prompt many ‘outsiders’ to wonder where on earth it is and how do you access it?

Asking a spiritual medium (my mum) to locate the spirit world, she described:

“This spirit world is all around us. Most people can’t see it and generally we can’t see it with our real eyes. To me, it’s like walking through an invisible door and there’s the spirit world (some people call it heaven). It’s a different dimension, if you like. It’s all around us…the spirit world is a form of energy, so it’s everywhere. It’s not like heaven is up in the sky like Catholics are taught – it can be in your heart, it can be in your aura, it can be anywhere and everywhere.”

The spirit world is, therefore, part of our modern social landscape. It is a world, a space and a ‘cultural site’ existing in the everyday lives of many individuals. If this world is so real for so many people, in all its physical, spiritual and mental domains, why does it remain such as under-investigated ‘field’ in anthropology? Why aren’t ethnographers venturing into this space? From an anthropological perspective, should exploring the cultural and symbolic complexities within these unearthly worlds be “off limits”?

If you were engaging with more traditional ethnographers, perhaps the answer would be ‘yes’. From a historical perspective, the ‘field’ in anthropology has been described as a physical location that includes a specific group of people, language and culture that are bounded to one area (e.g. think Margaret Mead’s research in Samoa). As a result, ethnographic material has often been retrieved from participant observation that relies heavily on information from the ethnographer’s five senses: taste, touch, sight, sound, smell. This grounded evidence is what has often made anthropology unique from other disciplines, enabling many anthropologists to claim ‘authority’ from their personal experiences within a cultural field.

This old-hat way of approaching ethnographic research restrains our ability to explore ideological (e.g. ideas of spirituality) and phenomenological (e.g. experiences of a subject/object) fields, which consequently limits the “philosophical scope of anthropology”. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) briefly touches on this in his conceptualisation of ‘fluid modernity’, whereby individuals around the world now engage in constantly changing locations, relationships, identities and cultures. As Bauman (2000) describes, our understandings and sensations of space are now rapidly changing and becoming irrelevant in a world where our socio-cultural relations are being experienced in virtual realities, online interactive spaces and multi-located cultures. In many ways, we have already moved beyond material places and into a domain where the ‘field’ is defined by communities of shared interests and ‘virtual’ or ‘imagined’ worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft or the Spiritual World).

Maybe it’s time now for us, as young anthropologists, to start dipping our toes in these unfamiliar worlds that transcend the earthy realms we have become so comfortable within!

References:

Baumann, Z 2007, Liquid times: Living in an age of uncertainty, Polity, Cambridge, Cambridge: Polity.

Dixon, D 2007, ‘A benevolent and sceptical inquiry: exploring Fortean Geographies’ with the Mothman, Cultural geographies, vol. 4, no., pp.189-210.

See Also (for more on spirituality and religion): Lionel’s article Tio Gong Tao: Using Witchcraft to Rationalise Sexual Objectification in Singapore; Lani’s article Do you believe in ‘Magic’?; and Sarah’s article Ursula Le Guin and the ethnography of future worlds

Collective Effervescence – it’s bubbly & it’s everywhere!

May 31, 2019June 10, 2019 lanisellers5 Comments

Warning: Once you know this concept you will overthink group situations FOREVER!

I first learned of ‘Collective Effervescence’ in third year when I was telling another anthro major about my study habits. I told her how much trouble I had studying at home, but there was something about going to the Baillieu library. Being surrounded by other people working hard (or appearing to work hard) always gave me more motivation. She immediately replied, “Collective Effervescence!” Embarrassed that I didn’t know this term (or had forgotten it) I simply nodded and looked it up as soon as she left.

Collective Effervescence was first introduced by Emile Durkheim in his book ‘Elementary Forms of Religious life.’ He used the phrase to describe the inner experience that can occur during religious events. When a group with shared beliefs, such as a belief in God, come together and engage in ‘sacred’ rituals there is a build of energy and emotion. Praying, chanting and meditating are experienced quite differently when performed alone because in a group there’s a kind of ‘social heat’ in the air. Durkheim believes this ‘social heat’ sparks feelings of excitement within the individual and unifies the group. Religious rituals were thus seen as integral to maintaining solidarity within society.

One critique of Durkheim’s work is that he paints religion as a social enterprise, but is this always this case? E.g. Ascetic traditions in which connection to God is achieved through withdrawal and isolation. Another major critique of Durkheim’s work is his distinction between the sacred (E.g. important religious rituals) and the profane (E.g. Everyday tasks like cleaning and cooking). Collective effervescence was seen as limited to the ‘sacred.’ However, the line between the sacred and the profane isn’t always so clear cut…and who is say mundane tasks can’t also evoke collective effervescence?

There are a number of circumstances which can foster a sense of collective effervescence that aren’t ‘sacred’ or ‘religious’ – like my example of studying in the Baillieu library. Another popular example is an AFL grand finale (I’m sure many would argue it’s sacred). The experience of watching this match while in the crowd is obviously very different to that of watching it alone on T.V. In the crowd fans are united by their common devotion to the team and throughout the match will feel a shared sense of triumph or heartbreak.

Here are some other examples of activities in my life where I’ve felt or witnessed collective effervescence (whether these are sacred or profane is debatable):

My friends gathered together to watch the Game of Thrones final episodes. I was intrigued by the fact they didn’t really speak or socialize before or after the episode. Their only interaction was the collective gasps to the events on the screen. At first I thought why don’t they just watch it at home where it’d be more convenient, but then I remembered – Collective effervescence.
Going to a lecture vs. listening to it online. There’s something about seeing other people enthralled by the lecturer’s every word that makes me more invested. When I listen at home I’m always more likely to zone out.
Music festivals – these feel like a kind of ‘modern’ religious gathering with a shared devotion to music. The colours, sounds, the ‘flow’ of energy certainly excite the individual (hence post festival depression).

References:

Durkheim, E 1915, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology, Macmillan, Oxford.

Eat, Pray, Love…HATE! A Critique on Journeys of Self-Discovery

May 30, 2019June 10, 2019 lanisellers2 Comments

As an anthropology student, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is a great movie to watch for all the wrong reasons. Left in a state of despair and loneliness after the end of her marriage, Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) embarks on a journey of self-discovery where she ‘eats’ in Italy, stays at an ashram to ‘pray’ in India and finds her one true ‘love’ in Bali.

Where did we get this idea that travel = self-discovery? According to Savage (2013, p. 28) travelling for leisure is a “historical anomaly.” Technology allows us to see the world in a way that was once impossible. If planes and trains didn’t exist would it be impossible to find our truest self?

In addition, solo travel (the epitome of self-discovery) is culturally specific. Carroll (2009) claims that mere consideration of ‘solo travel’ is seen as highly ‘illogical’ for many Lao travelers. Travelling in a group simply makes more ‘sense’ because it provides “social security” and reduces the overall cost because expenses are shared (Carroll 2009, p. 285).

The argument I am trying to make here is that the way we understand ‘self-discovery’ is specific to a certain context and point in time. This notion of self-discovery does not exist everywhere and it is a fairly recent development. This is true of many concepts, but I believe it is especially important that we understand the extent to which ‘self-discovery’ is socially constructed. Self discovery is often conflated with phrases like ‘becoming more aware’, ‘evolving’ and ‘reflecting.’ It therefore seems contradictory to reflect on the self, without reflecting on where this notion that we must find the self came from in the first place.

The kind of journey of ‘self-discovery’ I’m talking about here is also an issue of class and race. Benedetto (2012, p. 34) highlights a major contradiction in Gilbert’s journey, that is she reflects on everything except for her “white privilege.” Throughout the movie Gilbert speaks about the “the commonality of humanity” and positions herself as an authority on everyone’s suffering and life experience (ibid.). For example, the film’s opening lines:

I have a friend, Deborah,a psychologist who was asked by the city of Philadelphia if she could offer psychological counselling to Cambodian refugees…boat people, who had recently arrived in the city. Deborah was daunted by the task. These Cambodians had suffered genocide, starvation, relatives murdered before their eyes…years in refugee camps, harrowing boat trips to the West. How could she relate to their suffering? How could she help these people? So guess what all these people wanted to talk about with my friend Deborah, the psychologist. It was all, “I met this guy in the refugee camp. I thought he really loved me, but when we got separated, he took up with my cousin. Now he says he loves me and keeps calling me. They’re married now. What should l do?” This is how we are.

What films like ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ have created is a “recipe for obtaining enlightenment” which guarantees the traveler “cultural capital” upon return home (Badone 2016, p. 39). In Gilbert’s case she becomes an expert on the human condition: “This is how we are…” Gilbert’s quest for self-realization is achieved through a number of romanticized and reductive depictions of the people she meets along the way. For instance, Gilbert journeys to India because of her attraction to the “radiantly beautiful Indian woman” (Chandra 2015, p. 502). There is an underlying assumption that the ‘spiritually endowed’ Indian woman must heal the ‘spiritually desolate’ American woman (ibid.). The ‘exotic’ people Gilbert meets (including a traditional Balinese healer named Wayan) fade into a “reductive backdrop” where their only purpose is to ‘enlighten’ Gilbert (Benedetto 2012, p. 5).

‘Spiritual voyages’ are often juxtaposed against mass tourism, however, the popularity of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ has resulted in a watershed of commercial opportunities. Intrepid Travel (2018) have recently “built the ultimate Eat, Pray, Love journey of self-discovery” which promises to be a “life-changing adventure.”

After reading so far you may have come to the conclusion that I think we cannot learn anything about ourselves through travel, but that is certainly not the case! Here is where I stand – I believe that travel challenges us in many ways; we are forced out of our everyday routines and can encounter situations which feel strange and foreign. This in turn can lead us to reflect on our ‘normal’ lives back home and perhaps see how limited our worldview was before going abroad. We may also reflect on the self because we can see how deeply our cultural context has shaped our identity.

What I perceive to be the ‘real’ issue with journey’s of self-discovery is when they become reliant on problematic and reductive imaginings of the people we encounter. Stasch (2016, p. 11) argues that travellers sometimes fall into the trap of observing people like they are in a “human zoo.” Tourists become fascinated with the exotic ‘Other’ because they resemble humanity’s “primitive” and “archaic past” (ibid.). When we generalize and stereotype cultures we start to adopt an ‘ethnocentric’ gaze – which as an anthropology major is most likely your worst nightmare! At the end of the day we are all human, and humans who have been raised in particular cultural context (or several) and that has influenced the way we understand the world and other people. No matter how hard we try, can we ever really be ‘objective.’ I personally think not, but I do believe we all have a responsibility to be self-aware of what our biases might be, especially when it comes to journeys of ‘self-discovery.’

References:

Badone, E 2016, ‘Eat, Pray, Love and Tourism Imaginaries’, in L Beaman S Sikka (eds), Constructions Of Self And Other in Yoga, Travel, And Tourism: A Journey To Elsewhere, Springer International Publishing, pp. 37-43.

Benedetto, GD 2012, ‘The Punitive Theatre of the Western Gaze: Staging Orientalism in Eat Pray Love’, International Communication Association, pp. 1-38.

Carroll, C 2009, ‘My Mother’s Bestfriend’s Sister-in-Law is Coming With Us’, Asia on tour: exploring the rise of Asian tourism, Routledge, pp. 277-290.

Savage, E 2013, ‘Confessions of a Fat, Exploitative Tourist’, Eureka Street, vol. 23, no. 21, pp. 28-29.

Stasch, R 2016, ‘Dramas of Otherness: “First Contact” Tourism in New Guinea’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 6, np. 3, pp. 7-27.

Feel like reading another rant on the perils of travel? See also:

Maddie’s article https://anthrozine.home.blog/2019/05/30/a-not-so-lonely-planet/