The Unfamiliar: An Anthropological Journal by The Unfamiliar

UNCERTAINTY

THE UNFAMILIAR

CONTENTS 03 INTRODUCTION BY DR. IAN HARPER

05 A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR EXPERIENCES OF FIELDWORK

08 FACE TO FACE WITH THE LEWIS CHESSMEN // N. LUCY BULL 10 A SENSE OF TOGETHERNESS // EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS

14 MATERNITY & MIGRATION AMONG SOMALIS IN NAIROBI, KENYA // LUCY LOWE 16 THE ISLAND OF CROSSED DESTINIES // ANASTASIOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS

CREATIVE SUBMISSIONS

18 ADOPT DIET // TRISTAN PARTRIDGE

ESSAYS

22 THE GIFT OF UNCERTAINTY // P. JOSHUA GRIFFIN 26 MADUMO // NINA FOUSHEE

28 ARCHEOLOGY & THE UNCERTAIN EDGE // COLLEEN MORGAN

VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

34 ENVIRONMENTS OF AESTHETIC DECAY // PANOS KOMPATSIARIS

38 GROWING FAMILIAR WITH UNCERTAINTY // CLAIRE CROFTON & GRIT WESSER 42 UNCERTAIN LABOUR // MICHAEL HENEISE 48 SWEDISH EXILE // CELINE SMITH 52 ISAAK SERBOV // JULIJA MATULYTE

PARALLEL ESSAYS

58 DRUG (RE) DISCOVERY // LOVRO ZIBERNA 61 DRUGS ‘R’ US // BEN EPSTEIN

BOOK REVIEW

64 THE UNCERTAINTY OF AFRICAN REFLECTIONS // JONA FRAS

68 CONTRIBUTORS

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THE UNFAMILIAR

EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITORS JONA FRAS

GRIT WESSER

MANAGING EDITOR THORALF KARLSEN

EDITORIAL DIRECTORS

EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS // EXPERIENCES OF FIELDWORK JULIJA MATULYTE // VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY KATARINA OCKOVA // PARALLEL ESSAYS

DIGITAL JOURNAL MANAGER MICHAEL HENEISE

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN CHRISTINE WU

PROMOTION & OUTREACH ARMAN ALTUG ROBERT LACOMBE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED WITH PROOF-READING, EDITING, ORGANIZING, AND SUPPORTING US IN THIS JOURNAL RE-LAUNCH AND OUR IMPORTANT SHIFT TOWARD ONLINE OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING. ADDITIONAL THANKS TO: ALISTAIR HUDSON, ANNA HORTON, CAROLINE NGUYEN, CHLOE ORKIN, JAYE RENOLD, KATHERINE STEWART, LUCY LOU, MADELEIN BLYTH AND VALENTINA KARPOVA. SPECIAL THANKS TO THE SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT, THE SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY SOCIETY, THE DIGITAL LIBRARY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, AND DR. IAN HARPER FOR THEIR SUPPORT.

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INTRODUCTION

DR. IAN HARPER I am delighted to be able to support the re-launch of the student-led journal The Unfamiliar, now to be available both on-line and in hard copy. While â&#x20AC;&#x153;uncertaintyâ&#x20AC;? is the theme for this issue, one thing is for certain: The energy and vibrancy of our broader anthropological community is dependent upon, and reflective of, the vigour and creativity of our students and this is amply demonstrated by the work that has gone into this publication. With links to both the Social Anthropological Society at Edinburgh, and within the context of the broader Scottish Training in Anthropological Research (STAR) network, the enthusiasm and productivity of student input into the intellectual life of our discipline will go from strength to strength. I hope you enjoy reading this and future editions, and joining in the debates and conversations generated. Ian Harper Head of Social Anthropology University of Edinburgh

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THE UNFAMILIAR TEAM

JONA FRAS has studied social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, and is currently a graduate student at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His interests include political and linguistic anthropology. He is currently preparing a research project that explores links between language and political authority in the Middle East.

GRIT WESSER has studied social anthropology and politics at the University of Edinburgh and is at present a PhD student in social anthropology at the same institution. She is interested in history & memory, kinship & gender, ritual, ‘post-socialism’ & political anthropology. Her research project explores the continuation and adaptation of ritual practice after political rupture in the post-socialist context of Eastern Germany.

THORALF KARLSEN is an undergraduate studying social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently preparing for his honours dissertation fieldwork research on an oil tanker, operating along the eastern seaboard of South America. His interests include issues of mobility, globalization, transnational processes and intercultural communication in the context of the maritime industry.

EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS is a social anthropology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Edinburgh. He has conducted fieldwork among musicians in Glasgow, Scotland and his research interests include grassroots music participation, creativity and the meaning of music-making as collective action.

JULIJA MATULYTE has studied fine art at the University of Westminster, and has exhibited and published her work in London, Edinburgh and Vilnius. Her interest is in narratives, sense of place and memory, and researching these subjects has led her to become an autodidact of visual anthropology. She will soon be starting a graduate course in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.

KATARINA OCKOVA has studied social anthropology at the Comenius University in Bratislava and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and is currently a PhD student in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her project focuses on the marriage practices among the Jewish minority in post-socialist Slovakia, and her research interests include kinship and relatedness, marriage, religion, memory, and the future.

MICHAEL HENEISE studied social anthropology at the Latin American School of the Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador; theology at the University of Wales; and music at Berklee College of Music and Florida State University. He is currently a PhD student in South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and co-founder and co-editor of the open access journal The South Asianist. His research explores the linkages between dreams, memory and social change in the eastern Himalayas.

CHRISTINE WU is a New York-based designer with a BFA from Parsons The New School for Design. She is currently a MSc social anthropology candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include material culture, digital media, music subcultures and global fashion tribes. At present, she is preparing her master’s dissertation, which explores the connection between subculture fashion and anthropology.

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This second issue of The Unfamiliar is broadly devoted to the notion of ‘uncertainty’ – an increasingly prominent term, as confirmed by a Google search returning a total of 89,900,000 hits of which 64,600,000 are within the past five years alone. But what does uncertainty actually entail? Undoubtedly, its referents are as ambiguous and myriad as its omnipresence seems somewhat of an inescapable fad. It appears to feature everywhere: from the title of a 2009 film by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, to risk analysis based on complex probability calculations via Artificial Intelligence research, to the political-economic debates and everyday struggles regarding the causes and consequences of the Eurozone’s monetary instability and the global financial crisis. The well-known proverb that ‘nothing in life is certain but death’ sums up nicely why we are obsessed with it: we are concerned about our future, or more precisely, about our possible futures and the fact that these are unknown to us. In this way, everything feels uncertain.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

WRESTLING WITH UNCERTAINTY

Unsurprisingly, humanities and social sciences have paid increasing attention to uncertainty as well. The Economic and Social Research Council focuses in its Global Uncertainties Programme on researching issues such as terrorism and trans-national organised crime and this year’s biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists is entitled Uncertainty and Disquiet. But as the Swedish social anthropologist Ǻsa Boholm, with her longstanding research interest in risk, asked in 2003: Can there be an Anthropology of Uncertainty? This issue attempts to illustrate that, in 2012, Boholm’s suggestion that anthropology’s most useful contribution to the study of uncertainty lies in its strength of contextualisation is as topical as ever. The present material reflects the fact that uncertainty is a global human concern by bringing together diverse stories from geographical locations that are, to us, as close and unfamiliar as Glasgow and Edinburgh and as faraway and (un) familiar as India and Kenya. It also demonstrates why social anthropology matters: it investigates the multifarious facets of uncertainty as they are shaped by ‘social relationships, power relations and hierarchies, cultural beliefs, trust in institutions and science, knowledge, experience, discourses, practices and collective memories’ (Boholm 2003: 175). It does so in a variety of visual and textual forms that dare to go beyond the well-worn paths of academic discourse. We are grateful to all contributors and very much hope you will enjoy reading through this issue, find the visual elements beautiful and intriguing, and the texts inspiring and thought-provoking. Drawing together issues as strange and varied as sports doping and archaeology, climate change and migrant labour, it may help to give us all a better sense of what the uncertainty of the modern world is all about.

Grit Wesser Bibliography: Boholm, Ǻ. (2003) ‘The Cultural Nature of Risk: Can there be an Anthropology of Uncertainty?’ Ethnos. Vol. 68:2: 159–178.

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EXPERI ENCES OF FIELD WORK 06

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EXPERIENCES of FIELDWORK EXHIBITION VISION STATEMENT Experiences of Fieldwork sets out to represent the embodied experiences of University of Edinburgh anthropology students during the fieldwork process. The project seeks to demystify the fieldwork process and open up new avenues for discussion and dialogue about the ways in which researchers experience ‘doing’ and ‘being’ in the field. Using a combination of different media; photography, music, video, sculpture, incense and other ‘things’ produced by anthropology students during their fieldwork, the exhibition aims to encourage a multi-sensory exploration of the relationship between the fieldworker and his/her fieldsite. Incorporating material from a diverse range of research projects in both rural and urban contexts around the world, the exhibition will explore the themes of people, place and process. By providing a space in which to consider the significance of random encounters in the field and the throwntogetherness of the places and spaces where fieldwork is carried out, this innovative exhibition will engage with the material expression of ethnography in a very real and accessible way.

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EXPERIENCES OF FIELDWORK

FACE TO FACE WITH THE LEWIS CHESSMEN

FIGURE 1

EXPLORING CHILDREN’S ENGAGEMENT WITH MATERIAL HERITAGE AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND BY N. LUCY BULL

y fieldwork focused upon children’s engagement with museum objects, through an extended period of ethnographic research at the National Museum of Scotland. My thesis subsequently explores the ways in which such objects are employed in museum education programmes and exhibitions to represent Scotland’s archaeological heritage and identity and the ways in which these narratives are adopted and subverted by their child audience. I consider the agency of both children and objects within the power structures of the museum social network. Using the touring exhibition of the iconic Lewis Chessmen as a case study, I also explore the ways in which children in local

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communities in Scotland’s peripheries relate to the National Museum of Scotland and how they employ material heritage to create their own narratives of identity and belonging. Throughout my research, the issue of ‘authenticity’ arose as something of considerable importance to my research participants and I use this concept as a way of thinking about trust and value in relation to the interaction between children and objects in museums. My research addresses important questions concerning the relationship between material heritage and conceptions of local and national identity in a way that employs the words and ideas not only of museum professionals, but, more importantly their audience. uf

N. LUCY BULL

FIGURE 2

spent time working with children on the island of Lewis during the temporary return of the Lewis Chessmen in a high-profile touring exhibition. This broken boat on Barvas beach alludes to the troubled local historical narratives shared by some of the people I met. The landscape is lonely and beautiful, mirroring my experience as a researcher in Lewis (Figure 1).

FIGURE 3

The importance of place became strikingly apparent as I researched the impact of the same exhibition at four very different locations. At each museum, the components of the exhibition assumed different meanings and significance for its audiences. Here, at Museum nan Eilean, Stornoway, local school children engage, upclose, with the small chess pieces and learn to play medieval board games (Figure 2). Long walks around the town of Stornoway gave me time to both think about my fieldwork and get a feel for the place. Importantly, or so it seemed to me, the Chessmen followed me wherever I went. Here, the king has been incorporated into vibrant graffiti art, converting this space into a representation of Lewis and its perceived historical significance (Figure 3).

“THE LANDSCAPE IS LONELY AND BEAUTIFUL, MIRRORING MY EXPERIENCE AS A RESEARCHER IN LEWIS.”

FIGURE 4

“This is my favourite because he’s the king, the most powerful piece on the board” (Scott, P4, Knock Primary School, Stornoway). Taken at Uig Beach, Lewis (the traditional find site of the hoard), the carved figure in this photograph represents the dominant physical presence and personality of the Chessmen, which pervaded both the landscape of the island and my own research (Figure 4). The Unfamiliar

EXPERIENCES OF FIELDWORK

FIGURE 1

A SENSE OF TOGETHERNESS

THE D.I.Y. MUSIC COMMUNITY IN GLASGOW BY EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS

lasgow was recently announced as a UNESCO City of Music, with its music scene generating for the local economy £75 million a year. However, the city’s musical landscape has remained largely unexplored, while the sporadic, non-ethnographic literature has been mainly preoccupied with local music history, rather than the vast array of contemporary, everyday music practices that provide the bedrock of Glasgow’s prolific music scene. My fieldwork focused upon musicians in the margins of the industry and specifically upon the so-called ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) music practices in order to examine the politics of grassroots music participation and the local knowledge

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that informs creativity. My thesis is an account of the explicit music practices, the conventions and constraints relevant to the experience of music-making, as well as the meaning of music as collective action. By employing three case studies - a band, a music promoter and a music collective/record label - I seek to demonstrate that DIY music-making emerged as a socially meaningful practice and process. Furthermore, these examples were indicative of the wider practical considerations and moral implications pertinent to the DIY mode of conduct, but also illustrated the fluid and contested nature of local perspectives on ‘ethical’ music-making. uf

EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

everal local bands occasionally employed stage clothing. Wearing specific clothes or costumes, makeup or body paint, highlighted music performance as a form of spectacle. Despite that in most DIY events musicians were plainly dressed, there were instances where either ready-made masks were used, or considerable effort had been put by bands into preparing hand-made costumes and applying elaborate makeup. This was especially the case with ‘themed’ gigs or events.

The fact that some of the individuals engaging in this practice were Art students or graduates, might explain the inclination to produce such materials in order to enhance their onstage performance repertoire. Although it would be difficult to claim that these specific music events represented particular kinds of socially-productive rituals, the creative synthesis and presentation of these artefacts was nevertheless an effective form of communication with the audience, as well as an expression of the widely held view amongst the local DIY network that a music event was first and foremost a social occasion.

The resulting metamorphoses often bordered on the parodic and the grotesque (Figures 1, 2 & 3), but this deliberate theatricality had also the effect of fostering a different kind of atmosphere amongst audience members: one of my informants noted that people in the audience expected something ‘different’ if the band was dressed up, thus stressing the importance of the onstage performance rather than the actual music played. At other times, it served a practical function, such as holding a microphone in place (Figure 4).

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“WEARING SPECIFIC CLOTHES OR COSTUMES, MAKEUP OR BODY PAINT, HIGHLIGHTED MUSIC PERFORMANCE AS A FORM OF SPECTACLE.”

FIGURE 4

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EXPERIENCES OF FIELDWORK

MATERNITY & MIGRATION

AMONG SOMALIS IN NAIROBI, KENYA BY LUCY LOWE

y fieldwork took place in the Somali-dominated neighbourhood Eastleigh, an area of Nairobi commonly referred to as ‘Little Mogadishu’. The Kenyan refugee encampment policy means that the residents of Eastleigh live in a legally ambiguous context, facing frequent police harassment, including regular raids on streets and in homes. Very few people considered Kenya a permanent settlement, rather they saw it as a transit point while they tried to migrate to another country. My thesis focuses on maternity as a site to examine the effects of displacement and concern for onward migration among Somali women in particular. It will look at how desires for high fertility, as an intrinsic element of what it means to be a woman and particularly a wife, are shaped within a context where marriage is of even higher importance in terms of security and possibilities for onward migration. There are over half a million Somali refugees in Kenya, a source of public fear and hostility as they are portrayed as a security threat, inextricably entwined with piracy and Islamic fundamentalism. Simultaneously, many Somalis live in Eastleigh because it allows them to live their lives away from the scrutiny of the government, the UN, and NGOs. As a result, they have built their own ‘city within a city’, largely invisible to outsiders. uf

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have been threatened by Al Shabaab due to their songs calling for an end to the conflict in Somalia, perform at a UNHCR-organised event intended to promote tolerance of refugees in Nairobi.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4

PRIVATE (Figures 3 & 4): These photos were taken on the street I lived on, so they both remind me of ‘home.’ The effect of 20 years of conflict and forced migration as an ongoing process was evident in the widespread dislocation of families. In the first photo you can see how Somalis appropriated Eastleigh, buying and building property and setting up businesses, often naming places after a location in

LUCY LOWE

PUBLIC (Figures 1 & 2): These photos are from two ‘refugee’ events, one on World Refugee Day with a group performing traditional Somali songs and dances. In the second photo, Waayaha Cusub (‘New Era’), a Somali rap group who

Somalia, in this case Mogadishu. The second photo is from just across the street. All of my informants had relatives in other parts of Kenya or abroad, and most still had family in Somalia. Staying in contact was incredibly important for maintaining relationships and providing support through remittances. This is also where I went to phone my Mum.

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EXPERIENCES OF FIELDWORK

THE ISLAND OF CROSSED DESTINIES

HUMAN & AND OTHER-THAN-HUMAN PERSPECTIVES IN AFRO-CUBAN DIVINATION BY ANASTASIOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS

his thesis focuses on the significance and articulation of divinatory practices in Cuba―a place where a number of different religious traditions (mainly of African and European origins) have come to coexist. Reflecting on the particularities of my ethnography, I concentrate on three such traditions: Ocha/Ifá, Palo Monte and Espiritismo. However, rather than engaging with them as different ‘traditions’ or assuming their syncretic character, I attempt to explore the way in which they constitute distinct but related perspectives on human destiny or, as my friends and informants put it, on people’s ‘path’ (camino). I try to illustrate the nature of

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these perspectives by bringing to the fore the ways in which different divinatory practices instantiate and embody the efficacy or ‘point of view’ of different ‘other-than-human’ beings― be they deities or the dead. Treating these relations as an exchange of perspectives between ‘humans’ and ‘other-than-human’ entities, I argue for the need to focus on ‘ontology’ and the indigenous understanding of these entities’ ‘nature’ in order to avoid both ‘reductionist’ and ‘constructivist’ renderings of divination; in other words, to avoid the theoretical limits of ‘syncretic’ or ‘purist’ readings of the (Afro-)Cuban spirit world and its efficacy. uf

ANASTASIOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS

CONTRAST I In the Afro-Cuban religions, offerings to various deities and spirits of the dead are very frequent. Here is one, at the foot of a tree, in central Havana. The ‘contrast’ (contrast for whom, is the immediate question, of course) here is the ‘Festival of French cinema’ at the background.

CONTRAST II Here is a second ‘contrast’. Another kind of offering to an Afro-Cuban entity, the offering being a goat. The image of the sacrificed animal and the crucifix demolishes decades of efforts to preserve religious and, for that matter, any other kind of ‘cultural’ purity.

CONTRAST III The Afro-Cuban religions are also part of artistic/folkloric performances extracted from their ‘everyday’ ritual context. Music and dance occurs in order to incite the Afro-Cuban deities to ‘come down’ and take possession of certain individuals. But what of the folkloric performances? Where do the deities go?

CONTRAST IV As with the ‘Contrast 3’, this photo also depicts an artistic/folkloric performance of Afro-Cuban religions. An audience of locals, tourists, people initiated in these religions, as well as a statue of neoclassical style are all watching the AfroCuban drums beating.

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CREATIVE SUBMISSIONS

ADOPT DIET

On drink On fieldwork Or

Fragile, Tenuous, Desperate, Uncertain, Contingent, Volatile, Fun. I Am as It Is. (or seems) And, ever: It might just as well have been otherwise. Adopt diet (gesture of necessity) Adapt appetite (gesture of guest/guess) self-led by friends those who are not you yourself Either/Both/And Yes. Yes yes. Drink deep! Have heard more today than in the last combined. Guard down, from state of guard always down. Open. Open: soon enough requires no effort. At all. Or wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

BY TRISTAN PARTRIDGE

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TRISTAN PARTRIDGE

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ESSAYS

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ESSAYS 22 THE GIFT OF UNCERTAINTY P. JOSHUA GRIFFIN

26 MADUMO

NINA FOUSHEE

28 ARCHEOLOGY AND THE UNCERTAIN EDGE COLLEEN MORGAN

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ESSAYS

THE GIFT OF UNCERTAINTY

CLIMATE ETHICS, RISK & THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PROJECT BY P. JOSHUA GRIFFIN

Today’s unprecedented concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. (Source: NASA)1

cholars and activists commonly regard climate change as the unfamiliar: as an unprecedented phenomenon requiring the human community to develop new worldviews, ethics, and institutions. Such novelty is thought necessary because, as the scientists have informed us, we no longer enjoy the same atmospheric conditions “on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.”2 While the unprecedented nature of the complex phenomena we call “climate change” cannot be overstated, I wonder whether our focus on its uniqueness might not obscure that which is common, quotidian, or even mundane about climate change.3 More than one-hundred years ago, while speaking in Edinburgh, William James noted that “[s]cience… catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth from them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates.”4 When reading the graph above, it becomes unclear whether the

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exponential upshot over time is tracking atmospheric carbon dioxide, or my level of anxiety about climate change. Forget the manufactured controversies over scientific consensus;5 the real uncertainties of climate change are the uncertainties of life, the risk of death, and that existential condition which has perhaps always marked the human experience. This latent contingency of existence is increasingly obvious, even in those centers of wealth and privilege where, up until until very recently, it had been obscured. Walter Mosley, the bestselling African-American author and critic, recently told an interviewer that while “people of color in the 20th century suffered under the weight of the distribution of wealth,” nowadays, “everybody has become that colored person in America.” The initial condition “hasn’t changed, but it’s broadened. The suffering has taken up a much larger space.” And, “[t]his so-called middle class, really working class, person—man and woman—has begun to

Even before the most recent economic shocks, Zygmunt Bauman made a similar claim, noting the “passage from the ‘solid’ to a ‘liquid’ phase of modernity,” or the emergence of a condition whereby social forms can no longer “serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life strategies because of their short life expectation.”7 Within this “liquid modernity,” Bauman suggests, “[t]he most harrowing contemporary fears are born of existential uncertainty.”8 Likewise, for Ulrich Beck, “[t]hreat and insecurity have always been among the conditions of human existence.”9 Yet despite the global nature of what Beck calls “world risk society,” when it comes to climate change, that which is remote for most, is already close at hand for many others. The Native Village of Kivalina is no stranger to existential vulnerability. Life in this arctic village of 400 is governed by seasonal ebbs and flows, and the subsistence harvests thereof. Each fall also brings a series of ocean storms, and in recent years, life has become increasingly dangerous on the narrow barrier island. The land-fast ice, which once buffered the island from the sea, is becoming increasingly unreliable. Things are different nowadays. “When there are storms people are very anxious, some people walk all night,” Alice Adams told interviewers.10 Climate-induced changes abound in Kivalina, but increased erosion and the irreducible specter of a storm-surge loom largest in the community. While the physical manifestations of climate change in Kivalina are unprecedented, the human experience of uncertainty, vulnerability, loss, and risk are age-old. Ought not these familiar dimensions of lived-experience be explored empirically? Michael D. Jackson has long considered the ways in which human experience is marked by the “continual, if frequently unreflective, quest for some sense of balance between being an actor and being acted upon.”11 Surely this dynamic is amplified in human encounters with climate change. “We are an adaptable people,”

says Colleen Swan,12 “we have always changed, but since 2004, we just can’t adapt this fast.” The social sciences have adopted the notion of “resilience thinking” from ecology. In our context, “resilience” might refer to those myriad practices by which human beings gain and/or maintain wellbeing under conditions of uncertainty, loss and deprivation.13 In particular, ethnographers might direct our attention toward practices of resilience, resistance, and restoration under conditions of environmental risk at the ecological margins.

P. JOSHUA GRIFFIN

embrace what black and Latino people knew all through the 20th century.”6

Bruno Latour suggests that we approach reality in general, and specifically climate change, not as mere “matters of fact,” but rather as “matters of concern, whose import then will no longer be to debunk but to protect and to care.”14 How does another person’s experience of suffering become the subject of our concern and/or compassion? “We get a lot of sympathy, from a lot of people,” says Enoch Adams Jr.,15 “but we need more than sympathy, we need empathy.” Is empathic solidarity possible across authentic epistemological difference and the power dynamics thereof? Jackson has further observed that anthropologists are so often “focused on what is culturally unique that… [we] overlook what is existentially universal.”16 On the other hand, careful attention to what is existential universal might help to cultivate the sort of “knowledge [which would] …contribute to tolerant coexistence in a world of entrenched divisions and ineradicable differences.”17 What grounds do human beings have for cooperation amid authentic differences, especially our differing exposure to environmental risks? Could the universal human experience of existential uncertainty a productive starting point for a new form of global solidarity? On whose terms is another to be protected and from what? Who is to care for whom? Social ethicist Sharon D. Welch points out that “what counts as ‘responsible action’” among people of privilege “is predicated on an intrinsically immoral balance of power.” Welch argues that in pockets of relative comfort a “moral and politiThe Unfamiliar

ESSAYS

cal imagination… shaped by the [a normative] ethic of control” will only lead to “cynicism and despair.” Instead, she suggests an “ethic of risk,” a form of “communicative ethics” that could enable “a thorough engagement with other communities, with other systems of knowing and acting,” and a “mutually self-critical engagement with difference.”18 Communities living on the frontlines of climate change have long called for “climate justice.” Anything approaching that condition will require, on the part of the globally privileged, far more acceptance of uncertainty than our governing elites are currently willing to allow. U.S. obstruction and delay of the UNFCCC process means that climate justice will be built, if at all, from the ground up drawing on the paradoxical strength found only in weakness—a solidarity born of collective uncertainty. If we have any hope at all it may be this: by coming to terms with our own experiences of uncertainty, risk, and vulnerability, global elites might experience enough humility to embrace what has elsewhere been called the “moral risk” of meaningful climate action.19 For all the horror that is “climate change”— its magnification of contemporary oppression and historical trauma, and the deeply rooted structural violence it amplifies—the phenomenon also offers the gift of uncertainty. Climate change reminds us that our illusions of power and control are always, at the end of the day, temporary; it offers those who would risk it the chance to meet in weakness and vulnerability—a place of mutual recognition—and maybe, just maybe, presents us with a new ethic of authentic human solidarity. uf

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1 http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ (Accessed February 3, 2012)2 James Hansen et al., “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?,” Open Atmos. Sci. J.

15 Enoch Adams Jr. is chair of the Kivalina Relocation Planning Committee and an ordained deacon of the Kivalina Episcopal Church.

2 (2008): 217-231.

16 Michael D. Jackson, Between One and One Another (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 2.

3 I would not have thought to explore this question about climate change had Michael D. Jackson not made a similar point about biotechnology. See: Jackson, “Biotechnology and the Critique of Globalisation,” Ethnos 67, no. 2 (2002): 141-154. 4 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Modern Library Paperback. (New York: Random House, 2002), 534. 5 Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt : How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).

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NOTES

17 Jackson, Between One and One Another, 7. 18 Sharon D. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 14–17. 19 Stephen Gardiner, “A Perfect Moral Storm: Climate Change, Intergenerational Ethics and the Problem of Moral Corruption,” Environmental Values 15, no. 3 (2006): 397–413.

6 Kai Ryssdal, “Walter Mosley Touches on Economic Injustice, Race in ‘Shoot My Man’,” Marketplace (National Public Radio, February 9, 2012), http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/big-book/walter-mosley-toucheseconomic-injustice-race-shoot-my-man. 7 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Polity, 2007), 1. 8 Ibid., 92. 9 Ulrich Beck, World at Risk (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009), 4. 10 The words belong to Alice Adams, quoted in: Michael Brubaker, J. Berner, et al., Climate Change in Kivalina, Alaska Strategies for Community Health (Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortiium (ANTHC), 2010), 17, http:// www.anthc.org/chs/ces/climate/climateandhealthreports. cfm. 11 Michael D. Jackson, Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies and Effects (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 182. 12 Colleen Swan sits on the Kivalina City Council; until 2010 she had served 18 years as Tribal Administrator for the Native Village of Kivalina. 13 I am influenced here by Jackson’s recent ethnography of “wellbeing.” See: Michael D. Jackson, Life Within Limits: Well-being in a World of Want (Duke University Press, 2011). 14 Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 232.

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ESSAYS

MADUMO

THE EXPERIENCE OF WITCHCRAFT BY NINA FOUSHEE

nthropology, with its implied relativity and subjectivity, is rife with uncertainty. The anthropological literature surrounding witchcraft reflects the difficulty with which anthropology as a discipline arrives at agreed upon characterizations of cultural phenomena. Mary Douglas argues that witchcraft accusations are a means of solidifying social relations and encouraging some types of behavior over others (Douglas 1970: xvii). Alternatively, Peter Geschiere frames witchcraft in an African context as a response to the dislocations of modernity and urbanization (Geschiere1997: 2-3). Adam Ashforth’s book, Madumo, presents another analysis of witchcraft through the story of a young South African man who feels that he has been bewitched (Ashforth 2000). Ashforth’s depiction of Madumo’s experience may support the idea of witchcraft as a manifestation of mental illness.

At the start of the book, the main character, Madumo, grieves the death of his mother. However, Madumo’s grief codified into an all-encompassing problem when his family was told by a prophet in their church that Madumo had used witchcraft to kill her. Madumo’s situational descent seems to stem from feeling a loss of autonomy upon internalizing the idea that he is bewitched. Madumo’s situation arises in South Africa, a country with the null hypothesis that witchcraft exists and is active in the world. Postapartheid, the fight for freedom disappeared as a unifying force in black African communities, leaving a void that allowed the belief in witchcraft to reemerge as a more potent, ubiquitous cultural force (Ashforth, 2000). During Apartheid, there existed an extended kinship network in South Africa to which people would turn in times of misfortune. Accordingly, a person like Madumo could react with an acute bout of dys-

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function to an emotionally traumatizing accusation of witchcraft and still be met with support instead of rejection and isolation. Madumo’s experience of being accused of witchcraft is depicted as emotionally traumatizing given his intermittent bouts of anxiety, paranoia and hyper-arousal. Unfortunately, Madumo suffers at the hand of a culture that would give immense weight to a claim of witchcraft, but, post-apartheid, would provide none of the preexisting support mechanisms by which a person would recover from such a claim. Madumo’s recovery from witchcraft does not match the trajectory of recovering from a death. While his behavior and emotions following his mother’s death are characteristic of bereavement, his subsequent experience of witchcraft seems to provide the means by which these manifestations of bereavement are fertilized and preserved into something more enduring and serious. His situation appears to house some forces of depression. An understanding of the aptness of a depression diagnosis would be best achieved by ascertaining that the year following the accusation of witchcraft was permeated by the feelings of worthlessness, diminished interest in activities, and suicidal ideation that the book insinuates may have been present. If not adequately suited to a depression diagnosis, Madumo’s experience of witchcraft could be better characterized by what Nigerian psychiatrist Adeoye Lambo notes as transient psychoses without a biomedical cause but generated by socio-cultural factors (Lambo 1965: 62-83). Madumo’s forms of hallucination and delusion don’t seem to be pathological symptoms of a lasting, cohesive psychosis. Cultural belief in witchcraft facilitates a different attribution of the origin of stimuli then what is deemed acceptable in Western thought. Accepting Rosenham’s notion that the capacity to hallucinate is

The modes of treatment for depression and psychoses in the United States share some basic characteristics with the modes of treatment for victims of witchcraft in South Africa. The patient and psychiatrist relationship in the U.S loosely parallels that of traditional healer and witchcraft victim in South Africa with the ideas of prescription and trust. In both contexts, a substance and set of activities are proscribed with the understanding that the trust and ethos transferal existing between the two entities works in synergy with the placebo effect of the substance proscribed, regardless of any actual biomedical or physical changes that take place because of the substance. The psychiatrist advises therapy or pharmaceuticals, the traditional healer proscribes herbs for vomiting, ritualistic cutting, and feasts for the ancestors. One major difference, ultimately, is that while the psychiatrist views his role as treating mental illness, inyangas purport to battle a kind of corporeal attack on their patient. One facet of witchcraft that Madumo experiences, the isidliso, is described as a “small creature lodged in the gullet”(Ashforth 2000:187). The expression of physical pain caused by the isidliso is reminiscent of the neurasthenia model in China, in which one legitimizes an emotion or conviction based on a physically experienced symptom. This kind of bodily experience coupled with a propensity to define life events as tangible signs of witchcraft shapes a cognitive model of witchcraft that necessitates the kind of physical treatments and practices of an in-

yanga. The inyanga upholds the body’s role as vessel for witchcraft by practicing a mode of treatment that includes vomiting, as well as absorbing herbs. After two years of experiencing witchcraft and seeking help from an inyanga, Madumo has a traditional feast for his ancestors and feels that he is cured. But Ashforth is left unsettled. In addition to ethically rejecting the presumption that a culture’s belief system can be utterly invalid, Ashforth recognizes that the same dramatic, dogmatic culture that generated witchcraft also produced Madumo, thus providing the context for his and Madumo’s fraternal bond. Even after identifying an ingrained, pervasive cultural belief as source of distress, one cannot remove its victim or strip them of culture as a means of “treatment.” Culture itself lacks a cure, and none are immune to its isolating effects on our perception of what makes someone ill or well. Given that it is inseparable from culture, good anthropology seems to require a measure of comfort with ambiguity. Ashforth is a product of a culture that cannot fathom the faith required of succumbing to and emerging from witchcraft. Ultimately, Ashforth cannot respond to Madumo’s quandary with a definitive or guaranteed solution. uf

NINA FOUSHEE

directly correlated to the capacity to believe, it can be inferred that Madumo’s hallucinations, which arose in the context of his fervent belief in witchcraft, were neither unusual nor indicative of actually being psychotic. What the Western world would call Madumo’s delusions, or fixed false beliefs, are based on being culturally primed to interpret and assign a witchcraft origin to stimulus, such as bodily sensations. Accordingly, in Madumo’s case, what could be deemed delusions have a cultural basis that make them incompatible with the definition of a psychotic as someone with an impaired ability to judge what is and is not real.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 Ashforth, Adam. 2000 Madumo: A Man BewitcheD. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2 Douglas, Mary, ed. Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations. London: Tavistock Publications 3 Geschiere, Peter. 1997 The Modernity of Witchcraft. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia 4 Lambo, T. Adeoye (1965). Schizophrenic and borderline states. In: DeReuck, A. V.S.; Porter, R. (eds). Transcultural Psychietry (Ciba Foundation Symposium). Churchill: London, pp.62-83.

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ESSAYS

ARCHAEOLOGY & THE UNCERTAIN EDGE BY COLLEEN MORGAN

TABLE 1 The author, drawing in the field, 2012. Photograph by Ruth Hatfield

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squares with little tufts of grass on the top, English archaeologists use hachures to indicate slope across their wide-open trenches. While American-style archaeological technical drawing has few conventions, English archaeologists have standardized lines and rugged tracing paper called permatrace so that they can overlay the drawings of the deposits in stratigraphic order. These differences aside, learning to see and draw archaeological deposits remains at the core of our profession.

As Tim Ingold (2011:177) notes, archaeology is one of the few specialist disciplines where drawing is still valued as part of our daily practice, as a way to record, understand and engage with the materials of the past. We represent skeletons, landscapes, walls, houses, pottery, rocks and stratigraphic sections in technical, measured to scale drawings. While some of the illustrations end up in our lectures in publications, the majority of these drawings are by archaeologists, for archaeologists, and remain in our grey literature. Still, drawing is a vital part of the most important skill in archaeology—learning how to see, or what Charles Goodwin (1994) calls “professional vision.”

This most important skill, that of learning to see and describe archaeological deposits is almost impossible to teach within the confines of a classroom. We rely on field schools to impart this information, taking students to archaeological excavations so they can interact with the archaeology. Sometimes while training students we inscribe the ground with our trowels, teaching them how to see subtle differences in colour or texture. While working in red dirt with colourblind archaeologists in Texas I had to use sound to establish the difference between solid ground and a posthole, tap-tap-tapping my way across the ground with the butt of my trowel until there was a slight change in tenor. Tap-tap-tapthud-thud-tap-tap-tap, there was the hole that the Caddo dug for the centre post of their structures. Still, there are times that we are uncertain, even after many years of experience. During these times the solid line jolts back to life, a jagged heartbeat of subjectivity in a profession that still struggles for objectivity even after postmodernity.

By drawing we intimately inspect our subject, gaining knowledge that transcends taking a photograph or even a laser scan of the same feature. Learning how to discern the stratigraphic relationships in archaeology is a difficult task and “drawing a definite line around something rests on reserves of professional confidence and interpretative skill” (Wickstead 2008:14). To add to the complexity, there are very few universally agreed-upon drawing conventions. I was trained in both American and British styles of excavation and the accompanying drawing conventions wildly differ across the Atlantic. American archaeologists draw the sections of their meter-

This small selection of photographs and gifs that I have taken during my time as a field archaeologist in Qatar attempt to demonstrate the concept of the uncertain edge in archaeology. Perhaps as a parallel to teaching field archaeology in a classroom, demonstrating the uncertain edge through photography might be an impossible task; therefore I have chosen to augment a selection of the photographs, sometimes directly inscribing them with the Museum of London Archaeological Service drawing conventions. In this I hope to convey insight into the craft of archaeology and to the interpretive process during excavation. uf The Unfamiliar

COLLEEN MORGAN

ntil this point the line had been steady, confident, true. The sandy, shelly deposit curved left, then right, was truncated by a later fire pit, then continued west-ward and my pencil recorded all of the contours in a perfect 1:20 centimetre representation. But then the deposit lost its hard, defining edge, feathering out, getting mixed and lost in an interface with the underlying dirt. Where did the sandy shelly deposit stop? Where did the layer beneath it begin? My pencil hesitated then drew a series of quick zigzags, reminiscent of a line of heartbeats on a heart monitor from a dramatic TV scene, arcing around my deposit. Upon excavating the deposit, I may go back to the drawing, erase the zig-zags and replace them with a single, smooth line. But for now, the edge was ambiguous, open for interpretation, and so I used the drawing convention of a zig-zag, indicating an uncertain edge.

ESSAYS

TABLE 2 At times we directly inscribe the dirt in order to teach students, or even to remind ourselves. This is not favoured amongst many, and certainly I do not do it before I take photographs of the deposit. I scored this deposit to show my workmen where to begin digging.

TABLE 3 Some features on archaeological excavations seem obvious, even when the features are intercut. There are four fire pits here; in the single context methodology we record the cut of the fire pit and the fill of the fire pit as two separate events.

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COLLEEN MORGAN

TABLE 4 Larger surfaces can be more ambiguous; the sunlight, differential drying, and relative cleanliness can all make deposits look very similar or radically different. I have indicated the uncertain edges of this deposit, though I have since excavated the area and found more certain edges. In this gif the dot-dash-dot lines indicate the limit of excavation and the double dot-dash-double dot lines indicate truncation lines. In single context drawing, each of these cuts and deposits are drawn on individual sheets of permatrace then overlain to replicate the stratigraphy of the site.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being alive: essays on movement, knowledge and description. London: Routledge. 2 Goodwin, Charles. 1994. “Professional Vision”. American Anthropologist. 96 (3). 3 Wickstead, Helen. 2008. “Drawing Archaeology,” In Drawing - the purpose, ed. Duff, Leo, and Phil Sawdon. Bristol: Intellect Books. 13-29. All photos by Colleen Morgan (unless otherwise noted)

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VISUAL ANTHRO POLOGY

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V is ua l

ANTHROPOLOGY This section is aimed to discuss and represent a wide range of visual material, classified under the broad term of Visual Anthropology. The use of photography, drawing, film and new media is very versatile, and we are hoping that through this section we will be able to share some great images and discuss their purpose: documentation, illustration, exploration or formal research material. In this issue we are featuring work bouncing off the topic of uncertainty, encouraging a critical yet open approach towards the pictorial information, whether it is an ethnography of a last century, or an art project of the current times.

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ENVIRONMENTS OF AESTHETIC DECAY Notes on a visual ethnographic approach BY PANOS KOMPATSIARIS

hotographic images exist as material objects that travel, mediate affect, change hands, hard drives and online hosts, are used as forensic evidence, objects of symbolic exchange, generators of meaning. I am concerned here with the ways in which ethnographic research can engender questions of meaning while delving into the familiarities and unfamiliarities that riddle visual representations. More specifically, with how respective images that bear some formal and contextual resemblance could be used as a starting point for working with an ethnographic project. I do not intend to address the ways that the images themselves have been created – availability of technical equipment, means of transportation, the economic and social background of the producer and so on (although this would definitely tell us a lot about the particular contexts in which they appear). Rather, I intend to map a possible ethnographic reading that can emerge from the formal and contextual encounters between the two images presented in the text. On what grounds can an ‘ethnographic account’ start from these particular visual objects, ‘follow’ them and proceed in an investigation of their workings?

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Photos (from top to bottom): 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; 3rd Athens Biennale, 2011 All photos by Panos Kompatsiaris

Both images have been taken by me in two different contemporary art biennials - the Venice Biennale and the Athens Biennale. The Venice Biennale is and has been one of the most established and well-funded institutions for showcasing contemporary art; it takes place in one of the most touristic cities in the world. The Athens Biennale, on the other hand, is an emerging and still poorly funded institution, that takes place in a city in crisis. The first image represents an artwork that appeared in the 54th Venice Biennale; the second one is an image of a random, but very characteristic part of the venue where the 3rd Athens Biennale was held.

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VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Let us briefly look at the images. We know that they are both taken at art biennales, that is to say, in sites where contemporary art is commonly showcased. They both show ‘environments’ that intend to acquire their meaning within a framed aesthetic regime of art-display. They bear, then, a contextual resemblance. If we look at their formal characteristics more closely, we will notice that a sense of ruin, destruction, squalor, abdication, dirt, dust, abandonment and discomfort runs through them. They, therefore, both seem to share a common aesthetic, a formal resemblance of decay. A process of defamiliarizing these commonalities may begin by posing a random question, say the question of ‘authorship’ vis-à-vis these two staged ‘environments’. This question is posed not from some methodological necessity, but from the standpoint of the contingent character of methodological processes, of any performed method of analysis. If we proceed in our research by asking who is the ‘author’ of these ‘environments’, we may initially find out that the first picture depicts an ‘environment’ made by Mike Nelson, artist representing Great Britain in the Venice Biennale 2011. Nelson has transformed the British pavilion into an uncanny maze of dark corridors and dusty chambers, where hidden memories and traces could possibly manifest themselves. This was a creative process that lasted for three months, and where the ‘creative gesture’ is univocally attributed to the artist (as demonstrated by the general use of his name alongside the title of the work). Later, we may also discover, that the second picture depicts not a carefully ‘made’ environment but an environment which has gradually ‘decomposed’ due to a ‘socio-natural’ process - the abandonment of a building and its gradual decay. Within the long-time sealed off building of central Athens Diplareios School, where the low-budget 3rd Athens Biennale was held, this environment comes to be with little or no ‘creative’ human intervention. In the case of Venice, authorship is unquestionably attributed to the artist, while in the case of Athens, authorship is attributed to the curators, who ‘chose’ to display art in the particular venue. The qualities of practice appear different: a physical creation of a temporary space to be demolished after the exhibition, and an appropriation of an already existing space in order to experience and possibly revitalize it after an ephemeral art event After this brief encounter with the question of authorship, an art theorist could pose questions such as: What do these differences and similarities have to say about the sites where art is displayed? What do questions of aesthetic decay, cultural context, and economic viability have to say about the cities of Athens and Venice, their art audiences, their social composition, their ‘global’ character? Why does an artist choose to create ruins for aesthetic display? On the other hand, why does a curator choose to appropriate and aestheticize pre-existing ruin? The art theorist would then proceed in examining these questions through an experiential lens, attached to particular social and theoretical readings.

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PANOS KOMPATSIARIS

In what ways can ethnographic research generate storylines, different from that of the art theorist? The ethnographer follows the images. She or he physically visits the cities and looks for arbitrary connections between them, examines the two different exhibitions. Who participated, how did the selection process proceed and why? How were these two sites produced? Why ruins, why destruction? The ethnographer then asks the organizers, the artists, the curators. Why all this decadence? What meaning do they put in the process of aestheticizing ruins? In what degree was this ‘choice’ dictated from material constraints? What does this have to say about agency, intellectual property and authorship in relation to the particular socio-economic contexts? What does it mean to turn a decayed environment into an object of aesthetic appreciation? In what other art venues has ‘decay’ been consciously or unconsciously put on display? The ethnographer visits them and observes them. What cultural codes need to be performed in order for them to plead for aesthetic appreciation? She or he then goes on to physically spend time in other squalid environments, say old abandoned buildings. In what ways is this experience different from experiencing ruins in an art exhibition? A first research question then can vaguely start to emerge: Under what conditions do decayed ‘environments’ enter the realm of art and what social processes determine their performance in relation to aesthetic appreciation? The sites explored and studied will necessarily be multiple: decayed environments, art exhibitions, cityscapes. The ethnographer will then follow the abstract connections, concepts, threads and flows of such processes. In this sense, the ‘visual’ can be the starting point of an ethnographic project, rather than its mere illustrative material or final outcome. uf

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GROWING FAMILIAR with UNCERTAINTY BY CLAIRE CROFTON & GRIT WESSER

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These photographs trace a complex portrait of the uncertainty experienced in the occupied West Bank and in Israel. They seek to illuminate the growing normalcy, of what appears to us, a strange reality.

The West Bank is inhabited by 771,000 registered Palestinian refugees, a quarter of whom live in refugee camps1. More than sixty years after Palestinians were first evicted from their homes in 1948, it remains uncertain whether their right to return will ever materialise. The key symbolises a hope of return, and also reminds the younger refugees of their familiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; origins - Photo A (left): outside Aqbat Jaber refugee camp, 3km southeast of Jericho. Similarly, the mural in photo B (right) taken in Aida refugee camp, near Bethlehem, lists the villages, now under Israeli control that were once inhabited by Palestinians. Another mural in photo C (see reverse) depicts features of the more recent Palestinian past, such as housedemolitions, UN aid trucks and journalists.

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Counterclockwise from top left: photos C~G

All photos were taken June/July 2011 by Claire Crofton & Grit Wesser (unless otherwise noted)

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CROFTON & WESSER

The two cultural centres - Lajee and Al-Rowwad - in Aida encourage young Palestinians to channel their frustrations with the occupation through various creative programmes. Photos D-F were taken by Palestinian children as part of a photography workshop run in the summer of 2011 at Al-Rowwad. In this project, children were given disposable cameras and asked to capture aspects of their daily lives. The eerie presence of the separation wall2 in so many of these photos reflects the inescapability of the political situation. However, other photos taken in this workshop illustrate more mundane aspects of a childhood lived under occupation. Palestinians are faced with a plethora of daily uncertainties. High unemployment (43% in Aida), sporadic water and electricity cut-offs, mid-night raids, security barriers and check points all render daily tasks matters of uncertainty (see Photo F: Elderly man collecting water from a municipal water tap in Aida). The pervasive presence of the Israeli military exemplifies the insecurity experienced on the other side of the separation wall. T-shirts sold in Acre, Northern Israel sport images and playful jokes on the country’s military power (Photo G) illustrate one way in which the conflict has permeated popular culture. The collective memory of the Holocaust is still palpable in both the political and the everyday discourse of Israel3, but whether feelings of vulnerability are real or re-imagined as a political tool is uncertain4. uf

NOTES 1 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees 2012: www.unrwa.org 2 The Barrier’s total length is approximately 708 km. 61.8% of the Barrier is complete; a further 8.2% is under construction and 30% is planned but not yet constructed. When completed, approximately 85% of its route will run inside the West Bank, isolating g 9.4% of West Bank territory, including East Jerusalem and No-Man’s Land. On 9 July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion which stated that the sections of the Barrier route which ran inside the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, violates Israel’s obligations under international law. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, December 2011: http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ochaopt_atlas_barrier_affecting_palestinians_december2011.pdf 3 Professor Carlo Strenger, The Haaretz, 07.03.2012 http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/netanyahu-sdangerous-holocaust-analogy-1.417039 4 Ibid.

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UNCERTAIN LABOUR Migrant workers in karbi anglong, assam BY MICHAEL HENEISE

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MICHAEL HENEISE

iphu, Karbi Anglong, December, 2005. As I walk down the road with my old Nikon SLR camera in-hand, a middle-aged Bihari migrant worker summons me and then waits patiently on his thela gari as I search my pockets for a spare roll of Ilford XP2 film. Communication is limited – managed through a series of hand gestures, some limited Hindi, and laughter. But I surmise that his main objective is the supply and transport of heavy bamboo to building sites where it is employed in scaffolding and in the setting of concrete in multi-level home construction. Like bamboo, red brick is readily available and produced locally – mostly by workers from Bihar. Small plots are leased from local Karbi landowners, kilns are built, and their surnames are proudly baked into each end product. Though situated deep in the jungles of Eastern Assam, Diphu is linked by railway to Guwahati, and thus to the rest of India. The Jan Shatabdi Express only stops for two minutes in Diphu. Getting off is a matter of timing and aiming precision. Following the sound of squealing brakes, dozens of passengers shove to the exit as the train slows to a halt. Holding one’s luggage firmly in one hand, one must aim for a small wooden platform using the luggage as a counter-balance – or plummet nearly six feet into red clay. Since its inauguration in 1970 as the district seat, Diphu has grown from a large village to a proper city of nearly 60,000. Most of the construction related with this growth has been in the hands of Bangladeshi migrant workers skilled in masonry, carpentry, plumbing and electrical work. In order to get a sense of how connected Diphu is to other regions, I entered the local market place. Though much of what is available can be produced locally, vegetables grown cheaply elsewhere are easily shipped in and sold for a profit. To my surprise, the ample supply of silver carp on sale was shipped in from Andhra Pradesh! Local fisheries, I am told, are seasonal and insufficient to meet demand. (Continued on page 47)

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All photos by Michael Heneise

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MICHAEL HENEISE

The cheerful exchanges I had with construction material transporters, shop owners, barbers, carpenters, and Bollywood video-disc sellers that day belied the unease and anxiety one could sense beneath the surface of genuine cordiality. Two months before I arrived, the underground militant groups Dima Halom Daoga (DHD) and United Democratic People’s Solidarity (UDPS) had engaged in a series of tit-for-tat attacks and counter-attacks against villages of the opposing ethnic group. The DHD on behalf of the Dimasas, and UDPS on behalf of the Karbis had been responsible for ninety-one deaths, dozens of burned down villages, and over forty thousand refugees. Though the Indian Army’s involvement was unclear, I could sense the general unease at their presence in and around Diphu. Xenophobia, racial prejudice and violence against migrant workers – particularly Biharis - had also been a growing problem in Karbi Anglong over the past five years or so. The killing of Bihari workers at the hands of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), in particular, had become an expected news item in the daily papers and on local radio stations. The recent violence between the DHD and UDPS created a deep sense of unease and uncertainty for the migrant workers. Their ability to work was contingent upon peaceful relations with local patrons and customers. When tensions ran high, ‘scapegoat’ was an unenviable position to be in. Despite the lack of security, sluggish economic growth and lack of work opportunities in their places of origin - Bihar, West Bengal or Bangladesh – have dissuaded many migrant workers from returning. There is also a great deal of hope that state and central government-sponsored development projects would materialize giving a boost to the construction and services industry. As my short two-week stay in Diphu came to a close, I stuffed the side-pockets of my cargo pants with cartridges of black and white film, and braced myself for the moving Jan Shatabdi Express to Guwahati. Diphu disappeared from view in an instant, though the images and voices of those I met still remain fresh in my mind. Indeed migrant workers in this hidden jungle-city wrestle day-to-day with isolation, uncertainty, and sometimes violence. But they will likely stay and continue to stamp their names into the bricks of small edifices, and brave the Northeast monsoon. uf

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SWEDISH EXILE Hopes & Dreams BY CELINE SMITH

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CELINE SMITH

uring a project in Damascus, covering Iraqi refugees stranded in Syria, it was apparent that most of them hoped for resettlement.

Mehyar, an Iraqi Palestinian, was resettled from Syria to Forshaga; a remote town in Warmland, Sweden. I visited him to understand the complexities behind the resettlement. Swedenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seemingly utopian social system attracts refugees from many countries. Most refugees are deeply scarred by their experience in their home countries; resettlement represents an enormous challenge â&#x20AC;&#x201C; being moved so far from surroundings familiar to them. The outcome of the project is a series of portraits of Mehyar and other refugees I met in Forshaga, such as Htoo and Noella. uf

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HTOO “When I was in Thailand at least I was someone, I was a nurse. Here, I feel like I’m nobody.” I met Htoo in Forshaga. She is a Karen, one of the minorities based in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Her mother left Htoo and her sister with their father to join the Karen Liberation Army. Following persecution, many Karen people have fled to Thailand. Htoo and her family soon joined them and settled in a UNHCR camp on the border separating the two countries. Htoo and her mother worked hard to support her sister’s education.

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NOELLA “La vie c’est compliquée. Il faut commencer a zero. La verité a propos de l’immigration est que personne ne dit toute la verité.” “Life is complicated, you have to start from a scratch. The truth about immigration - nobody tells the whole truth.” Noella is Burundiese and talks about the future Sweden holds for her daughters, not the past in Burundi . Her two girls are aged 14 and 16, both speak English and Swedish fluently. Noella, on the other hand, struggles to find her place in the small town of Forshaga.

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PROFILES IN VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY

CURATED BY JULIJA MATULYTE

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JULIJA MATULYTE

ISAAK SERBOV

(1871 - 1943) ETHNOGRAPHER; FIRST BELORUSSIAN VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGIST

saak Serbov (1871 - 1943) - ethnographer, first Belorussian visual anthropologist. In 1911-1913, funded by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Serbov has set out to the Polesia region to seek and document remains of the ancient tribal union of Dregovichs, who, according to rumours in Minsk, maintained their archaic lifestyle until the beginning of the 20 C. Serbov was calling his field research photo excursions or photo expeditions, as the main purpose of his trips was to photograph the population and environment of Polesia - villagers, their costume, biological features, mundane activities, arts and crafts, utensils, buildings, and transportation. During his fieldwork, Serbov experienced a collapse of the stereotypes about the polessians; though some of the archaic customs still remained. The modern life was affecting Polesia and its inhabitants (ploughs, threshers and bridles were already in use, jackets and scarfs were worn by the youth). According to his accounts, he was depicting life in Polesia as it was, nonetheless; as his Kodak camera was an unseen object in the region, people were always attracted to it. Reactions varied from curiosity to surprise and fear; thus, even the situations that were not simulated (Serbov used method of reconstruction to depict decaying costumes and customs) appear to be enacted. Despite being a slight idealisation of rural life of the region, the archive of Isaak Serbov, 435 items of which are stored in the Manuscript Department at Vilnius University Library, is an invaluable document on life in Eastern Europe of the beginning of the 20 century. uf Based on Labacheuskaya V. (2012). ‘Photography Collection of Belorussian Ethnographer Isaak Serbov at the Manuscript Department of Vilnius University Library: On Question of History of Creation, Attribution and Dating’, Vilnius University Library Yearbook, 2012: 90-121.

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All photos courtesy of the Manuscript Department of Vilnius University Library The Unfamiliar

PARALLEL LELLARAP

ESSAYS

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P a ra llel ESSAYS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Parallel Essaysâ&#x20AC;? is an experimental section featuring short articles on current issues pertaining to culture and society, analyzed from the standpoint of a non-anthropological discipline and published alongside an anthropologically informed response to the article. Through this, we seek to build interdisciplinary dialogue and reveal the potential of both anthropological and non-anthropological approaches to highlight fresh or surprising aspects of various topics treated by anthropology and other disciplines. In this issue, we explore the question of doping in sports, comparing the views of a pharmacologist with those of a postgraduate anthropology student.

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PARALLEL ESSAYS

DR UG (RE) DISCOVERY FROM BENCH TO SPORT SIDE BY LOVRO ZIBERNA

rug discovery makes our lives different. We can live longer and healthier lives, and moreover enhance normal physiology to perform better. But on the other hand, we are also exposed to adverse and toxic effects of drug compounds. Therefore, modern clinical pharmacology puts enormous emphasis on the risk versus benefit debate. The dilemma is welldefined when dealing with patients, as benefits in treating the disease usually overcome the risk of employing pharmacological treatment; however, when top athletes are involved, the benefit of going into a supra-physiological state endangers health and is morally wrong. At the same time, some might argue that allowing doping would induce an equal playing field. This idea is not only absurd, but plainly irresponsible if risks to health are considered. In the age of fame and fortune, pharmacological compounds play an important role in professional sports. But – and this must be something common to human nature – athletes are not the only ones using performance enhancing substances: i) movie actors, singers, show business people, and college students use drug compounds to help them sculpt their bodies in a relatively short time; ii) classic musicians, who can use beta-blockers to improve their on-stage performance; iii) medical and law students, who use nootropics and amphetamines to enhance cognitive performance before important exams; iv) army soldiers, who are given special doping treatments to increase their endurance before engaging in battles; v) other professionals, who must meet tight deadlines and need to work beyond exhaustion. However, regulations – also called anti-doping rules – exist only in professional sports. One can look at these as specific rules of the game, and breaking those rules makes you a cheat. If caught, you are eliminated. The other doping-spoiled disciplines in modern

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society don’t have such rules. For instance, it’s hard to imagine a college student undergoing a doping test before taking a written exam, even though if he has doped, he would have gained an unfair advantage over his peers. Top scores achieved in exams have an impact on future career opportunities of the students; similarly, winning sports competitions influences the future of top athletes. DRUG DISCOVERY: HOPE FOR PATIENTS, BURDEN FOR ATHLETES The role of scientists is to identify new molecular targets for existing pathologies, and to provide novel pharmacological solutions. However, such noble work can be misused for cheating purposes since the same drug therapy, used to treat diseases, can also have a performance-enhancing effect when used by healthy individuals. For example, gene therapy that effectively alleviates symptoms of patients with muscular dystrophy could also be used as gene doping for increasing the muscle strength of athletes. But, it is not the concern of scientists involved in the drug discovery process whether the athletes will abuse their findings. Research work must remain disease-oriented, and nothing should inhibit the time needed for a drug to reach the patients. FROM DRUG DISCOVERY TO DOPING On the other side, within the so-called doping society, one can only follow latest research developments and try to implement them before the anti-doping scientific community identify the risk and develop appropriate analytical methods to detect performance-enhancing compounds. By doing this, they remain undetected while training and competing in an enhanced state. This is the most crucial time window for doped athletes. As an example, erythropoietin

To try to bypass this time window, all collected samples are currently being stored for the period of 10 years, and can be re-tested later upon the discovery of new performance-enhancing compounds, or upon advances of analytical approaches. Why is anti-doping one step behind the doping society? It can be speculated that information leaks out of pharmaceutical industry laboratories as early as drugs enter into pre-clinical testing. But even this is not necessarily true, since many ideas can be found using patent searching, reading research posters during scientific conferences, reading scientific papers, or by browsing through on-going worldwide clinical trials which are freely accessible online (at clinicaltrials.gov). It can be hypothesized, as shown by Figure 2, that the numbers of potential dopers increase as the clinical studies

advance into Phase II or Phase III. It is worth noticing that during the Phase III, tested drugs are sent to many clinical institutes worldwide. Tracking the drugs is difficult, and the potential abuse of athletes easier. Medical knowledge within the doping society is the key factor that enables athletic enhancement; thus, of course, considerable human resources are needed to run this efficiently. History has taught us that top-level athletes using performance-enhancing drugs usually have a strong interdisciplinary team around them, consisting of different professionals, such as medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses, endurance physiologists, coaches, team managers, and many others.

LOVRO ZIBERNA

(EPO) was first introduced to the market in 1989, but the first analytical method appeared only as late as in the year 2000. An even more dramatic story is related to recombinant human growth hormone (hGH), which was developed in 1981, but its detection was introduced in 2004. However, further analytical improvements were needed, thus the first completed case involving an analytical finding for hGH happened only in 2010. Similarly, certain performance-enhancing compounds are currently either in clinical testing or on the market, but without proper analytical tests developed to detect them.

WHAT CAN ANTI-DOPING SOCIETY DO: IF YOU CANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T BEAT THEM, JOIN THEM? There are many approaches that can be employed in improving the fight against doping. The most obvious is to improve the analytical methods: faster analysis, higher sensitivity and stronger proof. In the same manner, tight collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry can help scientists develop early detection methods for drugs with performance-enhancing potential in sports. This has recently been put into practice as the drug company GlaxoSmithKline has signed a deal with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in July 2011. The company agreed to supply confidential information about medicines in early stages of development that may be abused by athletes once licensed. We

Figure 1. Scheme showing the parties involved in the drug discovery process. From the doping perspective, there are two options: a) Therapeutic pathway â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from bench to bedside; b) Doping pathway â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from bench to sport side.

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PARALLEL ESSAYS

can expect that WADA will try to sign similar deals with other big companies. In addition, we must create a strong scientific team, as part of WADA’s department or even as an independent non-governmental organization, that would screen all the latest research in the pre-clinical and clinical spheres – similarly to how doping society is screening for new ideas. This approach – scientific guard watching – can identify so-called “hot spots”. Any new drugs found to have performance-enhancing potential would then be highlighted to WADA, which could coordinate the research activities of anti-doping research groups. Even more, such a scientific team could speculate on molecular mechanisms involved in athletic enhancement before the actual drug discovery – this could be a revolutionary transformation from “one step behind” to “one step ahead”. Furthermore, intelligence gathered from everyone involved in sports, and elsewhere, can help anti-doping authorities to target drug testing of the athletes. It is important to get stateof-the-art knowledge from banned athletes, and others involved in the doping business. Similar approaches have been successfully employed in drug trafficking, as well as in gathering intelligence used by the military.

Lastly, much more emphasis must be put on education of young athletes. Many recently started educational programs have successfully raised doping awareness by highlighting negative health consequences, the cheating aspect, and the possibility of getting caught. CONCLUSION Nowadays, athletes believe that medically supervised doping is protecting them against serious adverse/toxic effects of drugs. But there is a catch: not all toxic effects appear acutely, and many serious ones must be considered in the mid- and long-term. Furthermore, participation of medical doctors in doping is against the basic principles of medicine, morally and legally. Pharmacology should be used to treat patients, and not to transform athletic competition into a competition between research teams, pharmaceutical companies, or even medical doctors. uf

Figure 2. This hypothetical diagram shows the appearance of a novel compound, with performance-enhancing properties, from a drug discovery process into sports. Please note that this figure represents the author’s personal predictions, and therefore does not reflect the actual situation, since there is no data available for the exact evaluation.

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A RESPONSE TO ‘DR UG (RE) DISCOVERY: FROM BENCH TO SPORT SIDE’

BEN EPSTEIN

DR UGS ‘R’ US BY BEN EPSTEIN

hen it said that over a third of the world’s population has little or no access to essential drugs one must wonder what role the debate concerning a relatively small population (consisting of professional athletes) and the global trend towards the commodification of drugs, drug-using identities and subjectivities might be. I think if we start to question what kind of autonomous self is imagined for the athletes using performance-enhancing drugs in Ziberna’s article, and the ways in which these nascent drug-borne identities intersect, or are a confluence of, drug discovery and drug marketing, we might usefully profit from an anthropological and ethnographic take on the problem of doping in sports. I argue that the institutionalization, management and hierarchization of information flows surrounding the moral panic of doping and pharmacology may also carry unwanted side effects. In the paper we are told that drugs, whatever we may think about their moral qualities, make our lives different. People today, presumably in the developed world, live longer and healthier lives thanks to the almost unimaginable capabilities of drugs to affect almost every aspect of our now extended lives. Everyone from law students to professionals can enjoy the benefits of ‘enhanced’ mind-bodies. Only athletes are coopted by team managers and sponsors to break the rules and cheat. By enhancing their so-called ‘normal’ physiology they can remain competitive and stay on top of their game. Non-athletes too, it would seem, are provided with the means necessary to not only be healthy, but better than well. However, it is not just the health risk of doping that is at issue; it is the morally hazardous body of the doped athlete that I think is also at stake in Ziberna’s paper.

Participation of doctors in doping is both morally and legally against the basic principles of medicine, certainly, but the role of the pharmaceutical industry in directing what drugs should be prescribed in clinical settings means that the kind of doping which is occurring in nonathletes is perhaps not always fair (as in cases involving doping students during exams using drugs usually marketed at people suffering from ADHD1 or narcolepsy). The legality of changing people’s chemistry so that they might function at their ‘fullest capacity’ is not questioned either, particularly in countries where over the counter medications are of an increased magnitude in strength, or when patients can easily obtain such powerful medications over the Internet. The difference between drugs as specific molecules and drugs as heavily commercialised items is also lacking in the discussion Ziberna proposes. Off-label applications of certain drugs can often single-handedly drive sales, and the extent to which drug-companies are aware of this is still controversial. Pharmaceutical companies now market not only drugs, but also disorders2. For drugs developed as treatments to target specific conditions, there may be times when the side effects far outweigh the benefits, but side effects are not always so easily identified as such, and may even at times be a desirable property of a drug. What’s more, it’s not that most drugs may cause side effects, but rather that they all interact with a wide variety of body systems. The anti-psychotics for example may be used as anxiolytics, antipsychotics, antidepressants, antipruritic agents, antihypertensives or antiemetics. As noted psychiatrist David Healy says: ‘the The Unfamiliar

PARALLEL ESSAYS

marketing by modern drug companies, however, actively attempts to obscure this state of affairs’.3 Drugs may also be ‘discovered’ long before any application for them has been found. The examples of hypertension and Viagra are cases in point. Ziberna claims that in sports the risks of doping far outweigh the benefits, but the same is true for many other areas where drugs are applied as magic bullets to deal with a staggering variety of conditions, not always visible as pathologies. Anti-depressants, for example, as Stefan Ecks claims in India, ‘more than other medicines, […] hold the promise of a quick and effective demarginalization’ from poverty and that such medicines promote the ‘message that seems to be: “Take this medicine and you will not only be happy, but married with children, rich, and live a Western life-style.”’4 Medicines live social lives and this fact is somewhat lacking in Ziberna’s paper where drugs are reified as techno-scientific objects; amoral, apolitical, mere things; whilst the players are seen to be at ‘moral risk’ from unscrupulous sports agents. The drugs in and of themselves apparently have no moral lives to speak of; it is their use and misuse that ultimately becomes the target of the critique. But in what way are drugs themselves complicit in configuring the moral world in which athletes find themselves? How do drugs come to shape the experience of doping for athletes when there are little alternatives to remain competitive? And what degree of choice do they have caught between the ‘bench to sport side’ dyad as they may be? The problem, it would seem, is that drugs intended for therapeutic purposes fall into the hands of the wrong people and eventually trickle down to the nebulous world of professional sports agents, somehow always one step ahead of the anti doping regulations. This, according to Ziberna, is because scientists are not concerned with the potential misapplications of drugs in sports, and such an oversight on the part of the drug companies to properly regulate the kinds of drugs that may have such applications, may

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have terrible consequences for the athletes who consume them. The solution Ziberna proposes seems to fall short of the idea of doping as a health risk and a moral failing. To make a change to this nefarious situation, raising awareness and education about risks associated with such drugs is perceived to be encouraging but insufficient. Nipping the problem in the bud by creating ‘faster analysis, higher sensitivity and stronger proof’ of drugs and their potential application to sports before they have been released for clinical trials or in their early phases seems like a promising but costly solution. However, tackling the problem of situating the athletes themselves as agents who have to keep up with the latest performance enhancing drugs by actively seeking them out is another matter. And the potential profits for drug companies to surreptitiously market performance enhancing drugs at athletes may also usefully bear reflection. What kind of agency and rationality we ascribe to the athlete’s pharmaceutical self has serious implications for the way in which we can depict the interactions they may have with drug discovery. Stereotyping athletes as either criminals/cheaters or addicts seems to downplay what we might call the excessive potentiality of drugs as socially embedded and their ability to engender social consequences. Considering pharmacological compounds as ‘discovered’ is in some sense also slightly naive. Drugs are boundary objects and have ‘different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognisable’.5 Through standards, ‘abstractability and movement across diverse social and cultural situations, [drugs] gain a legibility and functionality in heterogeneous domains.’6 The way drugs are depicted as being bounded but mobile objects flowing in neatly unilateral ways as represented in handy diagrams and typified in translational medicine simplifies what is in fact a very complex and messy arrangement. The athletes’ brain chemistry, individual history, pharmacological action and social dynamics

BEN EPSTEIN

are difficult if not impossible to disaggregate.7 Gene-doping, for example to treat pain, may not immediately be considered as enhancement or therapeutic, but could have unintended enhancing potential when athletes can later submit to more intense pain for longer.8 The availability of drugs and their coalescence in wealthier, more urbane parts of the world compared to the lack of drugs in others, may have a serious impact on top athletes training in less economically prosperous countries. Drugs in one place, may not be the same drugs in another. Their ability to reconfigure our moral worlds, and engender such debates, highlights the importance of continued research in this direction. uf

NOTES 1 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. 2 Jenkins, Pharmaceutical Self, Sar Press. 2009. 3 Healy, Psychiatric Drugs Explained 6th Edition. 2011, 288. 4 Ecks, ‘Pharmaceutical Citizenship: Antidepressant Marketing and the Promise of Demarginalization in India’, Anthropology & Medicine, 12: 3, 239 — 254. 2005, 242 5 Bowker and Star, Sorting things out: classification and its consequences. 1999. 6 Collier and Ong, Global Assemblages, Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Blackwell, Oxford. 2006, 400. 7 Jenkins, Globalization and Psychopharmacology, Paper presented at the annual AAA 2005.

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BOOK REVIEW

THE UNCERTAINTY of AFRICAN REFLECTIONS V. S. NAIPAUL: THE MASQUE OF AFRICA LONDON: PICADOR, 2010 BY JONA FRAS

The Unfamiliar

JONA FRAS

n his brilliant essay on racist imagery in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Chinua Achebe scolds an imagined American youth “unaware that the life of his own tribesmen... is full of odd customs and superstitions and [who], like everybody else in his culture, imagines that he needs a trip to Africa to encounter those things” (Achebe 2010: 2). In a way, this appears to be the motivation of V. S. Naipaul for writing The Masque of Africa, an account of his recent journeys to six African countries: Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Gabon and South Africa. In the light of Achebe’s eloquent criticism of such projects, it is tempting to follow Edward Said (1986: 53) and simply dismiss Naipaul as an insensitive ethnocentrist. But the underlying issues are rather more complicated, and – ultimately – rather more disturbing. His stance towards Africa emerges as more confusing and contradictory – indeed, uncertain. This uncertainty is present on two levels, one explicit, the other more subtle, which I discuss in turn below. V. S. Naipaul is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature – a contemporary literary authority if there ever was one – and his writing skills are certainly not to be questioned. In The Masque of Africa, he provides colorful and often very interesting descriptions of various African rituals and belief systems: burial practices in Uganda, initiation rituals in Gabon, soothsaying in Nigeria. The style is often almost ethnographic in its sensitivity to detail. It is interspersed with Naipaul’s own reflections, experiences, and discussions with educated locals on the problems faced by Africans, including economic development and political issues such as the South African apartheid and the rules of dictators such as Idi Amin in Uganda and Houphouët-Boigny in the Ivory Coast. But Naipaul’s primary focus appears to be religious belief. He seeks what he sees as ‘traditional African religion’: tombs of old kings, shrines, soothsayers and witchdoctors, and ritual practices. He is often puzzled or disappointed when these beliefs and rituals appear much more trivial than he expected, or too ‘mixed’ with monotheistic religious beliefs and practices. But, eventually, he appears to endorse syncretism when it pleases him: a French expatriate’s staging of an initiation ritual in Libreville pleases him much more than the ‘authentic’ version observed in a village in Gabon’s interior: “it used the same local materials, but it added style and finish” (2010: 236). In a way, this quote is indicative of Naipaul’s general position towards Africa and Africans, as it emerges from his writing. He is often impressed by the creativity and depth of African beliefs and rituals – and yet, he eventually always turns out to be disappointed. He is disgusted by the trivia of African life: the mountains of trash, the constant attempts at swindling foreigners, and the fact that he has to pay money for every visit he makes to a local shrine (or palace, or ritual). It is not just African religion, or even culture, but Africa in general that lacks “style and finish”. British botanical gardens are “a gift for later generations”; by contrast, the land outside them is “choked with vegetation”, and the landscape a “disappointment” (2010: 168). But a sacred grove can also be described as “beautiful” (2010: 137). Therein lies the first level of uncertainty: his image of Africa is an endless vacillation between admiration and disgust, between a respect for local beliefs and modes of life and a continuous arrogant denial of their ultimate worth or validity. One of Naipaul’s foremost concerns is animal welfare – especially the deplorable way most Africans treat cats. A symbolic reading of this latter emphasis would only serve to reinforce an impression of ethnocentrism, but this is probably not Naipaul’s primary concern here. His repugnance at African attitudes to animals should, rather, be read literally. And in a literal reading, this trifling disgust at the welfare of felines – at one point, he even judges the worth of an entire country by the cruel method they allegedly use to kill cats – emerges as rather comical, rather ironic. Especially so in the face of the overwhelming, tragic realities of the continent.

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BOOK REVIEW

This leads to the second axis of uncertainty on which Naipaul’s book oscillates. If his opinions vacillate between disgust and admiration, their articulation vacillates between irony and seriousness. Is his disgust meant completely literally? In other words, is he aware of the irony that his writing produces? Given his utter lack of reflexivity regarding his opinions, there is no possible way we could tell. At the very least, Naipaul is sincere in expressing his opinions. And disgust at the practices of the people one studies or writes about is certainly not an emotion alien to allegedly more sensitive authors, such as anthropologists. Saba Mahmood writes of the “repugnance” that she often felt at the practices of the pious women she researched in Egypt (2005: 37). Anthropologists usually try to resolve this with a twofold movement: one, trying to suspend judgment in order to understand the practices of the other; and two, articulating the tension they may feel between their liberal values and scholarly motives, by working through these issues reflexively in their own writing. But Naipaul does neither. Is his ultimate impression of Africa positive or negative? Does disgust defeat admiration? Or does he remain as confused as we all do with social and cultural experiences that go beyond the comfort zones of our everyday lives? I do not agree with Said’s assessment that Naipaul is essentially a third-world writer in denial of his origins (1986: 53). Despite his impeccable post-colonial credentials (Naipaul was born into the South Asian community in Trinidad), his ultimate identity emerges as firmly first-world, English, indeed rather parochial. And this is, finally, where a critical reading of The Masque of Africa becomes profoundly discomforting. Naipaul’s Africa emerges as a foil for his Western experience: it seems rather comforting that there is an abode of civilization where cats are treated fairly, where guides and taxi drivers do not attempt to cheat you at every turn, where activating one’s links in the local political hierarchy is not necessary for a hotel to provide you with a habitable room. If he is aware of this issue – and he may well be – it certainly does not show through in his writing. But would a more reflexive engagement be sufficient? Is it even possible to write about Africa from a ‘first-worlder’s’ perspective without echoes of arrogance, of ethnocentrism, of patronizing? A third level of uncertainty reveals itself: our own uncertainty whether we are even able to minimize, or at least to problematize, the relationships of power underlying any engagement of a nonAfrican writer with Africa. Naipaul is definitely quite far from making any such attempt. But his writing – so easy to criticize, and yet so difficult to fully renounce – brings the issues involved into sharp relief. Ideally, it should serve as an inspiration to write a counter-account: aimed at a similar, non-academic audience, but shot through with an anthropological sensibility, a cultural relativism constantly anxious about its own inadequacy (Viveiros de Castro 2009). Such accounts may, perhaps, succeed in raising sensitivity and respect for cultural and social forms different from one’s own. But the effort remains precarious, forever marred by the inherent uncertainty of our African reflections. uf

The Unfamiliar

JONA FRAS

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 Achebe, C. (2010 [1977]). An image of Africa. London: Penguin . 2 Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 3 Naipaul, V. S. (2010). The masque of Africa. London: Picador. 4 Said, E. (1986). ‘Intellectuals in the post-colonial world.’ Salmagundi 70-71: 44-64. 5 Viveiros de Castro, E. (2009). ‘The Nazis and the Amazonians, but then again, Zeno.’ Unpublished manuscript.

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CONTRIBUTORS N. LUCY BULL Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh n.l.bull@sms.ed.ac.uk

PANOS KOMPATSIARIS Visual Culture Edinburgh College of Art University of Edinburgh p.kompatsiaris@sms.ed.ac.uk

EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh E.Chrysagis@sms.ed.ac.uk

LUCY LOWE Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh l.j.lowe@sms.ed.ac.uk

CLAIRE CROFTON Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh clairecrofton@hotmail.co.uk

COLLEEN MORGAN Archaeology Department of Anthropology University of California, Berkeley http://www.middlesavagery.com

BENJAMIN EPSTEIN Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh B.Epstein@sms.ed.ac.uk

ANASTASIOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS Social Anthropology CRIA-Universidade Nova de Lisboa anasta4@hotmail.com

NINA FOUSHEE Social Anthropology Stanford University nfoushee@stanford.edu

TRISTAN PARTRIDGE Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh t.h.partridge@sms.ed.ac.uk

JONA FRAS Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies University of Edinburgh J.J.Fras@sms.ed.ac.uk

CELINE SMITH Freelance Photographer hello@celinesmith.com www.celinesmith.com

P. JOSHUA GRIFFIN Department of Anthropology University of Washington; Seattle, USA pjgriff@uw.edu

GRIT WESSER Social Anthropology School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh G.Wesser@sms.ed.ac.uk

MICHAEL T. HENEISE Centre for South Asian Studies School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh M.T.Heneise@sms.ed.ac.uk

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LOVRO ZIBERNA Department of Life Sciences University of Trieste lziberna@units.it

UNCERTAINTY

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