Political Ethnography

In a compelling mix of literary narrative and ethnography, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb and writer Philip Graham continue the long journey of cultural engagement with the Beng people of Cote d'Ivoire that they first recounted in their award-winning memoir Parallel Worlds. Their commitment over the span of several decades has lent them a rare insight. Braiding their own stories with those of the villagers of Asagbe and Kosangbe, Gottlieb and Graham take turns recounting a host of unexpected dramas with these West African villages, prompting serious questions about the fraught nature of cultural contact. Through events such as a religious leader's declaration that the authors' six-year-old son, Nathaniel, is the reincarnation of a revered ancestor, or Graham's late father being accepted into the Beng afterlife, or the increasing, sometimes dangerous madness of a villager, the authors are forced to reconcile their anthropological and literary gaze with the deepest parts of their personal lives. Along with these intimate dramas, they follow the Beng from times of peace through the times of tragedy that led to Cote d'Ivoire's recent civil conflicts. From these and many other interweaving narratives - and with the combined strengths of an anthropologist and a literary writer - "Braided Worlds" examines the impact of postcolonialism, race, and global inequity at the same time that it chronicles a living, breathing village community where two very different worlds meet.

Ces dernières années, dans le domaine de la participation citoyenne aux politiques de la ville, bon nombre de chercheurs en philosophie politique et en sciences sociales ont plaidé pour un décentrement du discours et de l’argumentation, pour une communication démocratique plus « inclusive », plus « sensible », davantage en prise sur les environnements, sur les dimensions expérientielle et matérielle des problèmes urbains. Le message semble avoir été reçu. Visites de groupes dans les quartiers, reportages vidéo ou photo, expositions de dessins, jeux de construction, fonds de cartes à recouvrir d’icônes et de gommettes autocollantes, ateliers visant à imaginer « la ville de ses rêves », activités de théâtre-action, jeux de rôle et jeux de plateau, etc., sont en effet devenus des incontournables de la « boîte à outils » des professionnels de la participation. Dans cet article, plutôt que de nous intéresser aux différents « outils » dans leurs spécificités, nous voudrions interroger plus généralement la prolifération des méthodes cadrant les contributions citoyennes dans le domaine de l’image ou de l’imagination, et repliant la parole ordinaire dans ses fonctions d’ostension et de figuration, c’est-à-dire dans ses fonctions « indexiques » et « iconiques » (Charles Sanders Peirce). L’hypothèse qui nous guide est celle-ci : en lieu et place d’un enrichissement des processus de communication, on assisterait plutôt à un véritable « tournant sémiotique » dans les pratiques de démocratie participative ; un tournant à travers lequel l’image profane en viendrait peu à peu à se substituer au discours citoyen et à éluder, avec lui, les prétentions d’articulation, de problématisation, de synthèse et de généralisation chez les « participants ordinaires ».

This path-breaking book argues that practices of the sacred are consti- tutive of modern secular politics. Following a tradition of enquiry in anthropology and political theory, it examines how limit situations shape the political imagination and collective identity. As an experiential and cultural fact, the sacred emerges within, and simultaneously transcends, transgressive dynamics such as revolutions, wars, or globalisation. Rather than conceive the sacred as a religious doctrine or a metaphysical belief, Wydra examines its adaptive functions as origins, truths, and order which are historically contingent across time and transformative of political aspirations. He suggests that the brokenness of political reality is a permanent condition of humanity, which will continue to produce quests for the sacred, and transcendental political frames. Working in the spirit of the genealogical mode of enquiry, this book examines the secular sources of political theologies, the democratic sacred, the communist imagination, European political identity, the sources of human rights, and the relationship of victimhood to new wars.

This is my HD thesis in Polish. Short version of this book in English was published under the title "Social Bonds in the Political Culture in Kyrgyzstan". This pdf file includes: table of contents and summary in English and Russian, additionally  also theoretical & methodological introduction, conclusions, and name index.

Praca powstała dzięki grantowi habilitacyjnemu MNiSW (rozliczany już w NCN). Recenzentami wydawniczymi byli prof. Wojciech Jakubowski (UWM) i prof. Andrzej Wierzbicki (UW), a recenzentami w przewodzie habilitacyjnym: śp. prof. Andrzej Chodubski (UG), prof. Franciszek Gołembski (AON), prof. Alicja Stępień-Kuczyńska (UŁ) i prof. Stanisław Tokarski (PAN).

Abstract: The developmentalist gaze of the Fair Trade movement is on Global South producers. In this article we turn our analytic gaze toward North American fair traders to explore the racialized, neocolonial power relations in which these movement actors are implicated. Section One is a brief historical sketch of Fair Trade certification. We argue that the certification system is a multi-sited, global institution that is shaped by and shapes neocolonial power relations in Fair Trade by exploring the consolidation and more recent splintering of the international certification system. Section Two provides a postcolonial critique of developmentalism, with a focus on the timing of development, in order to lay a foundation for the remaining sections. In Section Three we analyze the spatiality of Fair Trade, with an emphasis on what and who are missing from or erased by the structural and conceptual frameworks of Fair Trade. In Section Four we explore the relationship between Fair Trade, commodity fetishism, and the developmentalist conception of space/time propagated by Fair Trade advocates. Section Five is a critical analysis of the neocolonialist and racist discourse of Fair Trade, with a focus on the “helping” discourse. We contend that as Global North fair traders strive to “help” Global South producers, they re-entrench neocolonial narratives of white supremacy and the desire to develop.

How do authoritarian regimes remain in power? Focusing on the case of Belarus where he lived for more than five years, the author highlights several mechanisms of assent to tyranny, beyond the regime’s ability to control and repress, which should not be underestimated. The book immerses the reader in the depths of the Belarusian countryside, at the heart of this authoritarian regime. The analysis describes sometimes epic characters, their family history, their sufferings and their joys, their secrets and their hopes. It sheds light on the reasons why part of the population supports Lukashenko, and takes a fresh look at the functioning of the last dictatorship in Europe.

Derrière un unanimisme de façade, le moment révolutionnaire est vécu différemment et diverses dynamiques de radicalisation sont à l’œuvre. Si une majorité d’individus s’engagent sans être des opposants encartés, il faut éviter le piège de « l’immaculée contestation ». Pour cela, nous analysons d’une part, l’épreuve que constituent les protestations qui se multiplient depuis 2008 dans la Tunisie de « l’intérieur », et d’autre part, les contre-conduites qui se muent sous certaines conditions en contestation du régime. L’étude diachronique, basée sur des entretiens répétés depuis 2006, identifie les ressorts de ces mobilisations : situations socioprofessionnelles, sociabilités de quartiers et familiales, (en)jeux générationnels, mémoires des luttes passées et expériences de répression. Simultanément l’approche ethnographique révèle la part de contingence de ces implications dans un soulèvement populaire aussi intense que rapide.

Artykuł niniejszy powstał na podbudowie badań własnych przeprowadzonych w 2005 roku w sołectwie leżącym w jednym z północnych powiatów województwa mazowieckiego. Podstawą do analizy są 23 wywiady pogłębione, przeprowadzone ze wszystkimi pełnoletnimi mieszkańcami sołectwa, stanowiącymi pokolenie rodziców
i dzieci.

This chapter reflects on the concept of 'theory' from a practice-theoretical perspective. What kind of practice is "theorizing'? What are the different styles through which practices are theorized? Starting out from a reflection of what it means to think about theory as a practical activity, the chapter sets out to identify different ways of how theory is made. It provides a useful guide for those interested in handling and making theory.

Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globalizing world. As a fundamental human experience, liminality transmits cultural practices, codes, rituals, and meanings in situations
that fall between defined structures and have uncertain outcomes. Based on case studies of some of the most important crises in history, society, and politics, this volume explores the methodological range and applicability of the
concept to a variety of concrete social and political problems.

Versión resumida y en castellano de la Tesis Final del Máster de Antropología y Etnografía de la Universitat de Barcelona, presentada en febrero del 2013 con el título: “Autonomía Guaraní Charagua Iyambae. Una anàlisi etnogràfica dels  processos d'implementació de l'autonomia indígena a l'Estat Plurinacional de Bolívia”

Apenas un año después de la entrada en vigor de la Constitución que “refundó” la República de Bolivia en un Estado Plurinacional (febrero 2009), once municipios rurales de mayoría indígena se embarcaban en inéditos procesos de construcción de sistemas de auto-gobierno indígena siguiendo el nuevo marco constitucional. Se empezaba a dibujar así una nueva institucionalidad diseñada por actores locales, articulada a través de la noción de “autonomía indígena”, que utiliza el lenguaje de la indigeneidad y diversos de lo repertorios jurídicos y conceptuales en circulación en la Bolivia plurinacional.

La presente tesis doctoral plantea una etnografía de uno de estos procesos de construcción autonómica: la Autonomía Guaraní Charagua Iyambae (Departamento de Santa Cruz), la primera autonomía indígena en lograr su plena incorporación en la estructura territorial, legal e institucional del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia. Nuestro recorrido se ubica antes de que produjera su plena institucionalización y reconocimiento oficial: cuando la autonomía era un proyecto de cambio político en construcción, contingente y en pugna: un proyecto político indígena que se afirma desde lo guaraní y sitúa en el centro la cuestión del poder político: su ejercicio, concepción y distribución.

Lejos de una aproximación que reduzca la “autonomía indígena” a sus expresiones institucionales o a la serie de procedimientos legales necesarios para obtener ese estatus, esta investigación indaga en su potencial político, tratando de entender qué tipo de prácticas y aspiraciones se expresan a través de la noción de autonomía indígena y cómo se articulan en un contexto como el de Charagua y la región del Chaco: heterogéneos y profundamente desiguales.

En esta tesis veremos como las luchas y proyectos políticos indígenas por la autodeterminación, el reconocimiento cultural y la redistribución socioeconómica conviven en tensión con luchas por la hegemonía y profundas aspiraciones de inclusión y acceso al estado, intensificadas en el contexto de la Bolivia plurinacional. Dada su vacuidad y polisemia, conceptos como “autonomía” no solo sirven para generar espacios de resistencia y auto-organización colectiva frente al estado, el desarrollo capitalista o la “modernidad” occidental hegemónica, sino también para fortalecer los vínculos con el estado, así como para acceder (y distribuir) lo que se concibe como los beneficios del desarrollo y la modernidad.

Citizens who support populist leaders are often portrayed in negative terms. They are disparaged for their prejudice and naiveté, some even earning the label “basket of deplorables” from Hillary Clinton. Rodrigo Duterte’s supporters were not exempted from such criticism. In the 2016 Philippine presidential race, they were pejoratively labelled Dutertards, which pathologised their fervent and unrelenting support for the controversial candidate. This article interrogates such depictions by examining the logics that underpin Duterte’s strong public support. I argue that part of Duterte’s appeal hinges on “penal populism,” built on two political logics that reinforce each other: the politics of anxiety and the politics of hope. While the former foregrounds the language of crisis, danger and uncertainty, the latter reclaims democratic agency. The article examines the articulations of these logics among Duterte’s supporters based on ethnographic fieldwork in disaster-affected communities where Duterte enjoyed decisive victories.

""This article is an ethnographic study of a 29-kilometer stretch of cross-border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokaster with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics
constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross-border road section as my main ethnographic
point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

[roads, globalization, transnationalism, development, postsocialism, materiality, Albania]""

This essay considers the case of uneven humanitarian aid distribution along the Thai-Myanmar border, where forcibly displaced migrants from Myanmar have been abandoned by the UNHCR and international humanitarian organizations. Based upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork along the Thai-Myanmar border amongst Tai migrants from the Shan State in Myanmar, I attend to the effects of the inequitable distribution of rights and privileges in an international humanitarian system that is predicated on the neoliberal logic of uneven development. After two centuries of British colonial occupation and later Burman authoritarian rule, the ethnic minority groups along the Thai-Myanmar border are now facing another crisis – that of abandonment as NGOs search for new and more pressing humanitarian disasters elsewhere. The essay addresses a concept I call uneven humanitarianism as a neocolonial condition for peoples living in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands by specifically focusing on Tai peoples who are living in unofficial refugee camps that lost foreign funding in 2017. I argue that the ad hoc treatment and eventual abandonment of these vulnerable groups – that are currently in the midst of the world's most protracted civil war and displacement situation – constitutes a failure of the " responsibility to protect " humanitarian project.

Bu çalışma, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi'nde milletvekili adaylarının belirlenmesi sürecinde ortaya çıkan tahakküm ve meşruiyet ilişkileri üzerinedir. CHP'nin, 2007, 2011 ve 2015 seçimlerinde farklı aday belirleme yöntemleri kullanmasına rağmen, çoğunluğu parti profesyoneli olarak nitelendirilebilecek kişilerin sürekli seçildiği ve farklı yöntemlerin aday ve milletvekili kompozisyonunda radikal bir değişiklik yaratmadığı görülmektedir. Bu olgu, parti yayınları ve diğer kaynaklardan yararlanılarak toplanılan Türkiye geneli istatistiklere dayanarak oluşturulmuş olan çoklu mütekabiliyet analizi diyagramlarıyla ve Kırklareli'de yürütülen etnografik saha araştırmasının verileriyle ortaya koyulmaktadır. Örtülü tahakküm mekanizmalarını incelemek üzere Pierre Bourdieu'nün sembolik şiddet teorisi, Marksist "ideoloji" ve "hegemonya" kavramları ile klasik elit teorilerinin değerlendirmeleri ile karşılaştırılarak kullanılmaktadır. Çalışma, sembolik şiddet teorisinden, kavramsal alet kutusunun "ideoloji" ve "hegemonya" kavramlarından farklı bazı özgün açılımlar sağladığı düşüncesiyle faydalanmaktadır. Çalışma aynı zamanda klasik elit teorilerinin genelleyici, işlevsel, özcü varsayımlarından farklı olarak Bourdieu'nün pratik teorisinin tahakküm mekanizmalarını tarihsel ve ilişkisel temelleriyle değerlendirerek araştırma sorunsalını analiz etmeye olanak sağladığını göstermektedir. Bu çerçevede aday belirleme yöntemlerinden merkez yoklamasının "lider oligarşisi"nin, ön seçimlerin de "parti içi demokrasi"nin, göstergesi olduğu yolundaki kanıksanmış düşünceleri eleştirel bir değerlendirmeye tabi tutmaktadır. Her üç seçim döneminde de farklı seçici organlara rağmen (parti genel merkezi, üyeler ve delegeler) parti tarafından aday gösterilen ve milletvekili seçilen kişilerin aynı pozisyonları işgal eden kişiler olduğunu istatistiki ve etnografik verilerle ortaya koymaktadır. Böylelikle hem toplumsal teoriye hem de siyaset bilimi literatürüne milletvekili adaylarının belirlenmesi ve parti içi demokrasi tartışmaları bağlamında teorik ve metodolojik düzeyde katkı sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır.

Adivasis are typically viewed by scholars, activists, and policymakers alike as primitive subjects trapped within modern state imaginaries. Adivasi politics, therefore, is understood vis-a-vis the dramaturgy of postcolonial tragedy. Such an understanding, I argue, denies any meaningful agency to adivasis, and prevents an exploration of the rich, multi-layered performances of resistance through which adivasi subject-formation is successfully negotiated in postcolonial India. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary Jharkhand, this paper probes into the myriad tropes and strategies by which the modes, mechanisms, and meanings of modern state power have been reworked and resisted in two apparently opposed moments of resistance: the "peaceful" Koel-Karo anti-dam movement of the 1980s and the ongoing "violent" Maoist movement. In doing so, I show how the aesthetics of power are tied inextricably, albeit ironically, to the ethics of subaltern resistance, each acting and reacting upon the other to define the potentialities of and proscriptions on political expression in the margins of the postcolony.

Le porte-à-porte a connu un développement important au cours de la dernière décennie, d’abord
aux États-Unis puis en France, ayant été présenté, et légitimé scientifiquement, comme la technique de
mobilisation électorale la plus efficace. À partir d’une étude ethnographique dans deux villes du Nord de la
France, nous avons suivi le travail militant de deux sections socialistes lors de la campagne présidentielle
de 2012. Après avoir souligné les difficultés de la réception locale d’une injonction au démarchage électoral
personnalisé venu de l’appareil socialiste, nous analysons les ressorts de cette situation politique
extraordinaire. Loin de la rationalisation annoncée, les interactions observées se sont avérées le plus souvent
superficielles. Nous dégageons plusieurs types de situations, et interrogeons les conditions sociales
et politiques d’enclenchement de discussions sur les pas-de-porte. À cet égard, la pratique s’avère très
différente quand elle met en situation de coprésence habitants et élus plutôt que de simples militants, le
rappel à l’ordre électoral cédant le pas à une relation clientéliste. Au regard de ces résultats, nous mettons
en doute les effets électoraux jusqu’alors repérés par les recherches expérimentales. Si influence il y a,
elle relève davantage du symbolique que des conséquences directes des interactions observées.

In her book, Gendered Citizenship: Understanding Gendered Violence in Democratic India, Natasha Behl explores the gap between the promise of gender equality enshrined in the Indian Constitution and contemporary patterns of sexual and gendered-based violence and discrimination in democratic India. This essay explores the political ideas, meaning making, and the interplay of state and civilian discourses undergirding forms of gendered violence illuminated by Behl's feminist and interpretive approach. The essay closes by tracing two themes for further inquiry-feminist geographies and political openings/closures-and offers some preliminary engagement.

La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

When a presidential contender makes a joke about lusting over a dead Australian missionary, calls the Pope the son of a whore, and confesses to killing criminals during his tenure as city mayor, one could expect that this candidate would not go very far. But not in the year 2016. Dubbed as 'the year of voting dangerously,' the Philippines rode the tide of global discontent and gave landslide victory to the controversial Rodrigo Duterte. This chapter examines the discursive underpinnings of Duterte's rise to power by focusing on the process in which his supporters made ethical calculations from listening to his official speeches, live performance on television debates, and broader discussions in news and social media during the campaign period. We argue that Duterte's 'crass politics' is a push back to the dominant moral politics perpetuated by institutions associated to the Philippines' liberal democratic elite. While we condemn the Duterte regime's disregard for human rights and due process, especially in the context of his bloody war on drugs, we also advocate a closer look at the ethics of Duterte's responsiveness to deep-seated injuries endured by his constituencies both among marginalised and middle-class communities. Through a careful yet critical unpacking of his 'crass politics of responsiveness' from ethnographic research with Duterte supporters and media analysis of Duterte's public performances, we hope to put forward a precise understanding of the emerging moral politics that underpins this unorthodox regime.

How can ethnography and principles of "slow research" help make sense of fast-moving battles for truth, attention, and control in digital environments? What are emerging crises of representation and intervention that researchers face when retelling narratives of perpetrators, trolls, or other social media "bad actors"? This essay works through these questions by drawing on 3 years of ethnographic research and policy interventions into the political marketing and its affiliated "fake news" industries in the Philippines. I argue that ethnographic approaches can potentially nuance journalists' personality-oriented name-and-shame reporting and develop more systemic critique and locally minded interventions. However, we also need a thoughtful reckoning with the limits and luxuries of slow research.

Roads and Anthropology is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in this book aim to pave the way for that rising field of anthropological research.

This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

Table of Contents
-Dalakoglou D. & P. Harvey. Introduction. Roads and Anthropology: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Time and (Im)Mobility
-Nielsen M. Roadside Inventions: Making Time and Money Work at a Road Construction Site in Mozambique
-Campbell J. Between the Material and the Figural Road: The Incompleteness of Colonial Geographies in Amazonia
-Kernaghan R. Furrows and Walls, or the Legal Topography of a Frontier Road in Peru
-Harvey P. & H. Knox. The Enchantments of Infrastructure
-Klaeger G. Rush and Relax: the Rhythms and Speeds of Touting Perishable Products on a Ghanaian Roadside
-Pedersen M. & M. Bunkenborg Roads that Separate: Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Inner Asian Desert
- Dalakoglou D. ‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post)Socialism in Albania

David Lewis and Willem van Schendel, 'Rethinking the Bangladesh State,' Contributions to Indian Sociology, 54:2 (2020), 306–323.

The study of the Bangladesh state continues to be a path less travelled for scholars of South Asia. The articles in this special issue aim to offer fresh perspectives based on recent ethnographic work on a variety of aspects of the state by new young national and international scholars. Overall, there is a pressing need to pay closer attention to the state and to think about it in new ways, and in this brief concluding article, we offer some thoughts on where we are and some pointers towards where we may need to go. While there are many strengths to the small quantity of literature that exists on this theme, there are also some important limitations.

"In mid-December 2008, a teacher from Athens narrated the following incident: a few days before, her nine-year-old son had come home from school and asked her if she knew how to make a Molotov cocktail. The woman was surprised, but wanted to tease him so she asked him if he knew how. The boy replied that he did and started describing the process with confidence:

“You take a bottle of beer,” the boy explained.

“Why not a bottle for orange juice?” his mother asked.

“No, no! It must be a bottle of beer; you drink the beer first
and then fill the bottle with petrol, you put a piece of cloth on the top and you light up the cloth and throw it."

Focusing on the motivations of ethnic Abkhazians travelling 'to Georgia', this article examines the changing dynamics of enemy relations and state belonging in the contest of contested, de facto statehood. Drawing on ethnographic data collected among ordinary Abkhaz, I argue that while it can be certain limitations of life in a de facto state that motivate people to cross the conflict divide, it is simultaneously their belonging to the Abkhazian state that equips them with the confidence to encounter the 'enemy'. This challenges the assumption that de facto statehood is necessarily detrimental to peacebuilding, instead showing how it can facilitate 'normal' relations.