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Since September 2011, CA has been building a completely new website. We have finally launched the new site, Cultural Anthropology Online. The site combines the former SCA and CA sites, adding new features and improving on old favorites.
Over the next month we will be migrating content from this site to the new site. Here are some highlights to check out:
* Our First Digital Photo, "Corpus: Mining the Border" by Danny Hoffman
* Fieldsights, our new community blog
* An Improved Browse Article Index
NEW CURATED COLLECTION: ETHNOGRAPIES OF SCIENCE
FROM THE EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION - In a 2001 themed issue of Cultural Anthropology, "Anthropology and/in/of Science," editor Daniel Segal noted a scarcity of ethnographically grounded accounts of the practices of scientists. In this collection we aim to highlight ethnographies of science, with particular attention to those that are concerned with the tools and epistemic objects of the sciences and are grounded by research conducted in and around laboratories and other scientific institutions. Taken together, the five essays collected here provide a platform from which to consider the theory and practice of ethnographic science studies. The articles point to different mechanisms by which the very act of investigation shapes its object, they provide a variety of perspectives on how the ethnographer is positioned with respect to their scientist interlocutors, and they trace how social categories become embedded in the practice and the products of biomedical and life sciences research.
Edited by Anna Zogas (University of Washington) and Nicola Bulled (University of Connecticut), this curated collection features five CA articles, author interviews, commentary by Carlo Caduff, and great teaching resources.
Fingeryeyes: Impressions of Cup Corals
Eva Hayward
Cultural Anthropology, November 2010, Vol. 25, No. 4: 577-599.
Stefan Helmreich
Cultural Anthropology, November 2001, Vol. 16, No. 4: 612-627.
The Genetic Biothreat, or, How We Became Unprepared
Andrew Lakoff
Cultural Anthropology, August 2008, Vol. 23, No. 3: 399-428.
Bioethnic Conscription: Genes, Race, and Mexicana/o Ethnicity in Diabetes Research
Michael J. Montoya
Cultural Anthropology, February 2007, Vol. 22, No. 1: 94-128.
Mette N. Svendsen
Cultural Anthropology, November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 414-447.
Commentary: Science, Power, and the Constraints of Form
Carlo Caduff
NEW CURATED COLLECTION: LITERATURE, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND WRITING
FROM THE EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION - What is the work that stories do? “Literature, Writing, and Anthropology” seeks to address this question by creating a space in which fiction and anthropology converge, collide, and collapse into one another. This collection, a collaboration between Cultural Anthropology and the literary journal American Short Fiction, features articles, interviews, short stories, and a lecture by eleven authors. In assembling these pages, we have been surprised by the affiliations that form across the fiction, ethnography, and criticism.
Edited by Shannon Dugan Iverson (University of Texas, Austin) and Darren Byler (University of Washington), this curated collection features five CA articles, five short stories, author interviews, commentary by Paul Stoller, and incredible teaching resources.
CA ARTICLES
The Postmodern Crisis: Discourse, Parody, Memory
Vincent Crapanzano
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
Death and Memory: From Santa María del Monte to Miami Beach
Ruth Behar
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
Stories and Cosmogonies: Imagining Creativity Beyond “Nature” and “Culture”
Stuart McLean
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
Beyond Writing: Feminist Practice and the Limitations of Ethnography
Elizabeth Enslin
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
Cancer Butch
S. Lochlann Jain
Supplemental Material
AMERICAN SHORT FICTION
Four Calling Birds
Michael Martone
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
Madmen
Lucy Corin
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
Sea of Tranquility
L. Annette Binder
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
The Innocent
Kaitlyn Greenidge
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
The Big Light
Nathan J. Fink
Supplemental Material and Author Interview
AUGUST ISSUE NOW AVAILABLE - WRITING CULTURE @ 25
This is a Special Issue marking the 25th Anniversary of Writing Culture.
Writing Culture at 25: Special Editor's Introduction
ORIN STARN
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 411-416.
Free Article Access
Feeling Historical
JAMES CLIFFORD
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 417-426.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
The Legacies of Writing Culture and the Near Future of the Ethnographic Form: A Sketch
GEORGE MARCUS
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 427-445.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Ethnography in Late Industrialism
KIM FORTUN
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 446-464.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Kinky Empiricism
DANILYN RUTHERFORD
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 465-479.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Ethnography Is, Ethnography Ain't
JOHN L. JACKSON JR.
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 480-497.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Excelente Zona Social
MICHAEL T. TAUSSIG
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 498-517.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Precarity's Forms
KATHLEEN STEWART
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 518-525.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Twenty-Five Years Is a Long Time
HUGH RAFFLES
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 526-534.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Anthropology and Fiction: An Interview with Amitav Ghosh
DAMIEN STANKIEWICZ
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 535-541.
Free Article Access and Supplemental Material
Playlists: Books to Teach With
Cultural Anthropology August 2012, Vol. 27, No. 3: 542-546.
Free Article Access
HOT SPOT FORUM: OCCUPY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE 2011 GLOBAL UPRISINGS
Guest Edited by Jeffrey S. Juris (Northeastern University) and Maple Razsa (Colby College)
From the Introduction -
In assembling this Hot Spot on Occupy we have invited contributions from anthropologists, ethnographers, and activists writing on the above themes: the mass occupation of public spaces, directly democratic practices and forms, the use of social media, the emotions and emerging subjectivities of protest, as well as the underlying political critiques and contradictions that have arisen in the movement. Similarly, in light of the global history we outline above, the range of other social movement responses to the current global economic crisis, as well as the ongoing links between struggles in the US, Europe, Latin America, and North Africa, we have been careful to include contributors conducting research beyond the US in countries such as Greece, Slovenia, Spain, Israel, Argentina, Egypt, and Canada. In so doing, we insist that Occupy must be understood in a global rather than a populist US-centric framework.
This Hot Spot forum includes twenty essays from ethnographers and activists around the world, as well as a digital resource page with additional material.
NEW CURATED COLLECTION: THE DIGITAL FORM
FROM THE INTRODUCTION --
The digital forms explored here cover wide geographic and cultural territory – from “geek” and hacker subcultures to Indonesian student protests and Taiwanese puppetry. Additionally, the collection examines a range of activities, from the production and exchange of source code to the ways in which the remediation of currency and traditional performances shape economic and political futures in the face of hegemonic influences.
Some of the questions that frame this conversation on the digital form are: How do digital technology’s material components (e.g., hardware, software, source code, binary code, network protocols) and properties (e.g., mutability, interactivity, erasability) shape the contours of ethics, politics and sociality today? What are the competing epistemologies and ideologies that undergird digital technology’s production, and how are subjectivities made and remade in relation to them? All of the articles contained herein gesture towards answers to these questions, which lie at the heart of an investigation into the significance of the digital in our contemporary moment.
Guest edited by Lisa Poggiali and Jeremy Trombley, this collection includes six essays and commentary from Chris Kelty, Gabriella Coleman, and Karen Strassler.
ESSAYS
Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
Christopher Kelty
Cultural Anthropology, May 2005, Vol. 20, No. 2: 185-214.
Supplemental materials
Code Is Speech: Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest Among Free and Open Source Software Developers
Gabriella Coleman
Cultural Anthropology, August 2009, Vol. 24, No. 3: 420-454.
Supplemental materials
The Face of Money: Currency, Crisis, and Remediation in Post-Suharto Indonesia
Karen Strassler
Cultural Anthropology, February 2009, Vol. 24, No. 1: 68-103.
Supplemental materials
Remediation and Local Globalizations: How Taiwan's "Digital Video Knights-Errant Puppetry" Writes the History of the New Media in Chinese
Teri Silvio
Cultural Anthropology, May 2007, Vol. 22, No. 2: 285-313.
Supplemental materials
Four Genealogies for a Recombinant Anthropology of Science and Technology
Michael M. J. Fischer
Cultural Anthropology, November 2007, Vol. 22, No. 4: 539-615.
Supplemental materials
Anthropology In/Of Circulation: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies
Christopher M. Kelty, Michael M. J. Fischer, Alex "Rex" Golub, Jason Baird Jackson, Kimberly Christen, Michael F. Brown, Tom Boellstorff
Cultural Anthropology, August 2008, Vol. 23, No. 3: 559-588.
Supplemental materials
[Published July 9, 2012]
HOT SPOT FORUM: Côte d'Ivoire Is Cooling Down? Reflections a Year after the Battle for Abidjan
From the Introduction:
"If the search for lasting peace is to be more than mere “bluff” (Newell 2012)—more than the kind of illusory promise of peace to which Ivoirians have become inured since the coup d’état of 1999—then the parties to the reconciliation process as well as its critics must take stock of the circumstances that led to the conflict and of the dynamics that will help or hinder its resolution. The authors of this collection do just this with regard to a range of aesthetic, economic, gendered, political, religious, and social concerns. The result is a series of meditations on the challenges that Côte d’Ivoire must overcome and the resoures and strategies it must exploit if it is to achieve an unprecedented era of peace, justice, and stability."
Guest edited by Joseph Hellweg (Florida State University), this forum features 17 essays, dozens of images, videos, and multimedia resources.
Image: Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire, October 27, 2010. Photo: Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images.
[Published May 23, 2012]
NEW THEORIZING THE CONTEMPORARY FORUM - "FINANCE"
From the Introduction:
"In anthropology, it seems everyone has something to say about finance these days. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it helps break up some of the blanket generalizations to which we’ve been prone regarding “the economy,” “capitalism” and “neoliberalism.” Talking specifically about finance gets at the hows and whats, the infrastructures and operations, the channels and pathways and the ways-it-gets-done. This allows anthropologists to do what they have always done best: pay attention to the tiny technicalities, the practices and proclivities, the winks and epistemologies of everyday life in broader systems."
Guest edited by Bill Maurer (University of California, Irvine), this forum features 18 essays, on topics such as risk, credit, ethics, infrastructure, and more.
[Published May 4, 2012]
CA's MAY ISSUE NOW AVAILABLE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editors’ Notes
ANNE ALLISON AND CHARLES PIOT
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 191-192.
Access Article
PENTECOSTAL SOVEREIGNTIES
Magic With A Message: The Poetics of Christian Conjuring
GRAHAM JONES
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 193-214.
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Pentecostal Body Logics: Cultivating a Modern Sensorium
JOSH BRAHINSKY
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 215-238.
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Turning the Clock Back or Breaking with the Past?: Charismatic Temporality and Elite Politics in Côte d’Ivoire and the United States
MIKE McGOVERN
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 239-260.
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POLITICAL IMAGINARIES
More Alive than All the Living: Sovereign Bodies and Cosmic Politics in Buddhist Siberia
ANYA BERNSTEIN
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 261-285.
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Afterlives: Humanitarian Histories and Critical Subjects in Mozambique
RAMAH McKAY
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 286-309.
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Scientific Sovereignty: How International Drug Donation Programs Reshape Health, Disease and the State
ARI SAMSKY
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 310-332.
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The Semiotics of Security: Infectious Disease Research and the Biopolitics of Informational Bodies in the United States
CARLO CADUFF
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 333-357.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Expats: Double Binds of Humanitarian Mobility
PETER REDFIELD
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 358-382.
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The Headless Horseman of Central India: Sovereignty at Varying Thresholds of Life
BHRIGUPATI SINGH
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 383-407.
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BOOK REVIEWS
The Landscaping of Metaphor and Cultural Identity: Topographies of a Cornish Pastiche by Patrick Laviolette
Reviewed by TORI L. JENNINGS
Cultural Anthropology May 2012, Vol. 27, No. 2: 408-410.
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[Published April 12, 2012]
HOT SPOT: A CA FORUM
"SELF-IMMOLATION AS PROTEST IN TIBET"
Guest Editors: Carole McGranahan (University of Colorado) and Ralph Litzinger (Duke University)
From the Introduction -
"Tibet has no history of self-immolation as sacrifice, religious offering, or political protest. Yet, in the last year alone, roughly thirty-five Tibetans have set themselves on fire. The overwhelming majority of self-immolators are inside Tibet, in the People’s Republic of China, and almost exclusively in northwestern Sichuan and southeastern Qinghai provinces (corresponding to the Tibetan regions of northern Kham and southern Amdo). In this Cultural Anthropology Hot Spot, we collectively ask why. Why are so many Tibetans resorting to the singular act of setting the body on fire? What combination of cultural, historical, political, and/or religious reasons inspire these acts?"
This Hot Spot features essays, images, videos, maps, and statistics on the self-immolations in Tibet, as well as a compendium of commentary and news articles.
Image: Palden Choetso, self-immolated 3 November 2011.
[Published March 28, 2012]
2011 CULTURE @ LARGE SESSION:
A CONVERSATION WITH DORION SAGAN
In this forum, Sagan offers himself as a vector bringing the new biology to cultural anthropologists. As Earth's population doubled over the last 50 years, we are forced into ecological confrontation with the reality that "we" are more than human. Delving into the thermodynamic facts of ecology and the still too-little known, deep evolutionary drama that got us here, Sagan sketches some road markers for acquiring the biological literacy necessary to understand the ecological realities that are forcing themselves onto human consciousness. Sagan’s talk, “The Human is More Than Human: Interspecies Communities and the New ‘Facts of Life’,” was then followed by discussant commentary from Myra Hird, Stefan Helmreich, Kim TallBear, and Agustin Fuentes.
PANEL PAPERS
The Human is More Than Human: Interspecies Communities and the New "Facts of Life"
Dorion Sagan, Sciencewriters
The Whole is More Than the Sum of the Parts: Extended Mind, Extended Selves
Agustin Fuentes, University of Notre Dame
Homo microbis and the Figure of the Literal
Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Why Interspecies Thinking Needs Indigenous Standpoints
Kim TallBear, UC Berkeley
[Published March 2, 2012]
A NEW CA FORUM: THEORIZING THE CONTEMPORARY
Anne Allison and Charles Piot, Duke University
“Theorizing the Contemporary” features attempts to engage the contemporary through theoretical critique, analytical innovation, paradigm-making or breaking. We aim for interventions that smartly, creatively, radically engage the contemporary moment through theory (including challenges to what constitutes “theory” in the first place). This first Theorizing the Contemporary forum features five commentaries on a recent book by Jean and John Comaroff, Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa, along with a response by the authors.
Introduction
Juan Obarrio, Johns Hopkins University
Coevalness, Recursivity and the Feet of Lionel Messi
Ato Quayson, University of Toronto
Surpassing the North: Can the Antipodean Avantgarde Trump Postcolonial Belatedness?
Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University
Theory from the Comaroffs, or How to Know the World Up, Down, Backwards and Forwards
James Ferguson, Stanford University
Theory from the Antipodes. Notes on John & Jean Comaroff's TFS
Achille Mbembe, University of Witwatersrand
Theory from the South: A Rejoinder
Jean and John Comaroff, University of Chicago
CA's FEBRUARY ISSUE NOW AVAILABLE!
Editors' Notes
Anne Allison and Charles Piot
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 1-2.
FUTURES OF NEOLIBERALISM
Blackouts and Progress: Privatization, Infrastructure, and a Developmentalist State in Jimma, Ethiopia
Daniel Mains
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 3-27.
Free PDF and Supplemental Material
Piracy, Circulatory Legitimacy, and Neoliberal Subjectivity in Brazil
Alexander S. Dent
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 28-49.
Free PDF and Supplemental Material
Witchcraft, Bureaucraft, and the Social Life of (US) Aid in Haiti
Erica Caple James
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 50-75.
Free PDF and Supplemental Material
Before (and After) Neoliberalism: Tacit Knowledge, Secrets of the Trade, and the Public Sector in Egypt
Julia Elyachar
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 76-96.
Free PDF and Supplemental Material
The Global University, Area Studies, and the World Citizen: Neoliberal Geography's Redistribution of the "World"
Tom Looser
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 97-117.
Free PDF and Supplemental Material
IMMUNOLOGY
Introduction
A. David Napier
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 118-121.
Free PDF
Nonself Help: How Immunology Might Reframe the Enlightment
A. David Napier
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 122-137.
Free PDF
Immunology, the Human Self, and the Neoliberal Regime
Paul Clough
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 138-143.
Free PDF
On Metaphor: Reciprocity and Immunity
Michael M.J. Fischer
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 144-152.
Free PDF
Immunology, a Dubious Ally of Anthropology? A Comment David Napier's "Nonself Help: How Immunology Might Reframe the Enlightenment"
Anne Marie Moulin
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 153-161.
Free PDF
The Other Who is Also Oneself: Immunological Risk, Danger, and Recognition
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 162-167.
Free PDF
The Viral Intimacies of Ethnographic Encounters: Prolegomenon to a Thought Experiment in the Play of Metaphors
George E. Marcus
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 168-174.
Free PDF
Immunology and the Between
Paul Stoller
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 175-180.
Free PDF
BOOK REVIEWS
Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India by Anand Pandian
Reviewed by Jonathan Spencer
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 181-184.
Free PDF
Pigeon Trouble: Bestiary Biopolitics in a Deindustrialized America by Hoon Song
Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction by Deborah Bird Rose
Reviewed by Eben S. Kirksey
Cultural Anthropology February 2012, Vol. 27, No. 1: 185-189.
Free PDF
NEW HOT SPOT FORUM -- REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EGYPT
On this first anniversary of the “official” beginning of the Egyptian revolution, we find an ever more complex, and constantly shifting, social and political landscape. The military regime and gerontocracy remains entrenched, cutting deals with the older leadership Muslim Brotherhood, which recently took the lion’s share of seats in Parliament. For many Egyptians, the revolution is not over. As the one-year anniversary demonstrations showed, they have not given up on their clear set of demands to overthrow the broader regime and to regain dignity in their lives. For others, notably Islamists, the revolution brought tangible victories and the ability to speak and congregate freely for the first time in thirty years. In the eyes of some, especially those on the precarious edge of the wage economy, the revolution brought instability and “social chaos” and may not have been worth it. Anthropologists trying to make sense of these complex shifts in society, and to support Egyptians in their struggle, find themselves having to rework the tools of their discipline and what it means to be an anthropologist. These issues, and more, are discussed by the authors of the pieces in this Hot Spot.
NEW CURATED COLLECTION -- SUBALTERN STUDIES 30 YEARS LATER
"In the preface to the inaugural issue of Subaltern Studies, Indian historian Ranajit Guha called for more academic work on subaltern themes and critiques of elitism. Almost 30 years later, his call has been answered in variety of ways...." (Read More)
This collection features five articles, freely available through March 2012, as well as interviews with Gyanendra Pandey and Partha Chatterjee.
Subaltern Struggles and the Politics of Place: Remapping Resistance in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands
Donald S. Moore
Cultural Anthropology, Aug. 1998, Vol. 13, No. 3: 344-381.
Supplemental materials
Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival
Saba Mahmood
Cultural Anthropology, May 2001, Vol. 16, No. 2: 202-236.
Supplemental materials
Activist Research v. Cultural Critique: Indigenous Land Rights and the Contradictions of Politically Engaged Anthropology
Charles R. Hale
Cultural Anthropology, Feb. 2006, Vol. 21, No. 1: 96-120.
Supplemental materials
The Listening Subject of Japanese Modernity and His Auditory Double: Citing, Sighting, and Siting the Modern Japanese Woman
Miyako Inoue
Cultural Anthropology, May 2003, Vol. 18, No. 2: 156-193
Supplemental materials
El Campo: Faciality and Structural Violence in Farm Labor Camp
Peter Benson
Cultural Anthropology, Nov. 2008, Vol. 23, No. 4: 589-629.
Supplemental materials
NEW CURATED COLLECTION ON RITUAL
Edited by Kevin Carrico
"This curated collection presents five cases of ritual for readers’ consideration and reflection. We hope that these examples, which combine careful attention to both the common features and unique social circumstances of each, might encourage a reconsideration of the locus of this “old-fashioned” category of anthropological inquiry within contemporary scholarly work."
Engage with article supplemental material, author commentary, and featured discussion. All five CA articles are freely available through February 1st.
The Songs of the Siren: Engineering National Time on Israeli Radio
Danny Kaplan
Cultural Anthropology, May 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2: 313-345.
Supplemental materials
The Maoist Shaman and the Madman: Ritual Bricolage, Failed Ritual, and Failed Ritual Theory
Emily Chao
Cultural Anthropology, November 1999, Vol. 14, No. 4: 505-534.
Supplemental materials
Discipline and the Arts of Domination: Rituals of Respect in Chimborazo, Ecuador
Barry J. Lyons
Cultural Anthropology, February 2005, Vol. 20, No. 1: 97-127.
Supplemental Materials
The Theft of Carnaval: National Spectacle and Racial Politics in Rio de Janeiro
Robin E. Sheriff
Cultural Anthropology, February 1999, Vol. 14, No. 1: 3-28.
Supplemental materials
Queer Pilgrimage: The San Francisco Homeland and Identity Tourism
Cymene Howe
Cultural Anthropology, February 2001, Vol. 16, No. 1: 35-61.
Supplemental materials
ANNOUNCING SCA's SPRING MEETING: "LIFE AND DEATH: A CONVERSATION"
**Submission deadline January 15, 2012**
Life and death have long played a central role in anthropology’s efforts to define the human. Recent developments in the experience of both, however, suggest reconfigurations in these essential thresholds of being and a corresponding need to reexamine the analytic assumptions brought to bear on them. Alongside the emergence of new forms of biological science, medical technology and expertise, a concern for life pervades both international political discourse and the rhetoric of international moralism. Both individual bodies and figures of mass death feature prominently in political stagecraft, while calculations of risk define and measure life conditions. In addition to recognizing the emergence of humanitarianism, human rights, and ecology as key secular domains central to the construction of valued life, we ask participants to rethink classic topics in politics, ethics, kinship and religion around this concern for being and nonbeing. What phenomena mark an era that rediscovers economy in terms of precariousness, and sanctions state torture in the name of security? What new ghosts might it produce? How have these changes unsettled kinship, generations, and human horizons of the future by reconfiguring relations between the living and the dead or the young and the old?
For more information, visit http://sca.culanth.org/meetings/sca/2012/intro.html
To submit a proposal, visit http://www.aaanet.org/customcf/cfp/sca/
Editors' Statement
Anne Allison and Charlie Piot
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 511-513.
WATER
Lonely Drinking Fountains and Comforting Coolers: Paradoxes of Water Value and Ironies of Water Use
Martha Kaplan
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 514-541.
Supplemental Material
Pressure: The PoliTechnics of Water Supply in Mumbai
Nikhil Anand
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 542-564.
Supplemental Material **With Interview**
Water Flowing North of the Border: Export Agriculture and Water Politics in a Rural Community in Baja California
Christian Zlolniski
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 565-588.
Supplemental Material
Black Goo: Forceful Encounters with Matter in Europe's Muddy Margins
Stuart McLean
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 589-619.
Supplemental Material **With Interview**
SECULARISM
Introduction
Charles Hirschkind and Matthew Scherer
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 620.
Landmarks in the Critical Study of Secularism
Matthew Scherer
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 621-632.
Is There a Secular Body?
Charles Hirschkind
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 633-647.
Some Theses on Secularism
William E. Connolley
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 648-656.
Thinking About the Secular Body, Pain, and Liberal Politics
Talal Asad
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 657-675.
LOVE
For Love or Money
Michael Hardt
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 676-682.
Supplemental Material
A Properly Political Concept of Love: 3 Approaches in Ten Pages
Lauren Berlant
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 683-691.
Supplemental Material
Love and the Little Line
Lawrence Cohen
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 692-696.
Supplemental Material
Cultural Anthropology Playlists
Cultural Anthropology November 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4: 697-706.
NEW HOT SPOTS FORUM
BEYOND THE "GREEK CRISIS": HISTORIES, RHETORICS, POLITICS
This forum focuses on the debt crisis in Greece (the 2010 EU/IMF “bailout” and subsequent austerity measures), as well as the various challenges that have been posed to the violence of neoliberal “adjustment.” The brief articles presented here have been solicited from observer-participants in the debates and protests, but also in the intimacies and banalities, defining everyday life in crisis Greece. The outlines of the crisis are widely known. Indeed, Greek society and its travails have never before been so visible to the global media eye. The aim of this forum is not so much to fill in this familiar outline of crisis with ethnographic detail as to trouble its parameters.
Image Credit: Yiannis Biliris, "Photos from the Riots." via greekriots.com
The Past is Made By Walking: Labor Activism and Historical Production in Postcolonial Guadeloupe
Yarimar Bonilla
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 313-339
Supplemental Material
“Somehow it Happened”: Violence, Culpability, and the Hindu Nationalist Community
Ruchi Chaturvedi
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 340-362
Supplemental Material **With Interview**
The Modernity of Manual Reproduction: Soviet Propaganda and the Creative Life of Ideology
Sonja Luehrmann
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 363-388
Supplemental Material
Motivated Markets: Instruments and Ideologies of Clean Energy in the United Kingdom
Joshua Reno
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 389-413
Supplemental Material
Articulating Potentiality: Notes on the Delineation of the Blank Figure in Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Mette N. Svendsen
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 414-437
Supplemental Material
Making Pigs Local: Discerning the Sensory Character of Place
Brad Weiss
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 438-461
Supplemental Material **With Interview**
Sincerity Versus Self-Expression: Modern Creative Agency and the Materiality of Semiotic Forms
Eitan Wilf
Cultural Anthropology August 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3: 462-484
Supplemental Material
HOT SPOTS
CA Editors: Anne Allison and Charlie Piot
Guest Editor: David Slater
We're starting a new forum on the CA website to report on current "hot spots" in the world from the perspective of anthropologists—and others—on the scene. Our first is Japan in the wake of 3.11—the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactor incident that has devastated the northeast of the country and infected the entire country (and beyond) with the threat of radiation. We invited David Slater, an anthropologist and professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, to be the guest editor and he has assembled short entries (500 – 700 words) along with images, websites, and statistics from fifteen scholars/activists/students directly involved with the crisis. Our next "hot spot" will be on post-revolution Egypt to be posted sometime in August. We are open to suggestions of all kinds for future "hot spots." Please contact us directly (aaa@duke.edu, cpiot@duke.edu) with proposals that should include the name of a guest editor, theme of the hot spot, and a list of possible contributors.
(Above image: Mourners in protective suits, "Sad Homecoming" Japan Today).
Cultural Anthropology has just launched its first virtual issue of 2011: Anthropology and Youth, edited by Amanda Snellinger, Roseann Liu, and Elizabeth Lewis.
The issue, which includes five essays previously published in CA, will be freely available for sixty days through the Wiley-Blackwell website . Each of the five essays is supplemented with a webpage that provides digital material related to the essay. All five authors provide new commentary on their work, as well as the anthropology of youth. The issue is highlighted with commentary by Deborah Durham.
Symptoms of Another Life: Time, Possibility, and Domestic Relations in Chile's Credit Economy
Clara Han
Cultural Anthropology February 2011, Vol. 26, No. 1: 7–32
Supplemental Material
Violence, Just in Time: War and Work in Contemporary West Africa
Daniel Hoffman
Cultural Anthropology February 2011, Vol. 26, No. 1: 34-57
Supplemental Material
On Affective Labor in Post-Fordist Italy
Andrea Muehlebach
Cultural Anthropology February 2011, Vol. 26, No. 1: 59-82
Supplemental Material **WITH AUTHOR INTERVIEW**
Tales From Albarado: The Materiality of Pyramid Schemes in Postsocialist Albania
Smoki Musaraj
Cultural Anthropology February 2011, Vol. 26, No. 1: 84-110
Supplemental Material
Making Time for the Children: Self-Temporalization and the Cultivation of the Antisuicidal Subject in South India
Jocelyn Lim Chua
Cultural Anthropology February 2011, Vol. 26, No. 1: 112-137
Supplemental Material **WITH AUTHOR INTERVIEW**
VIRTUAL ISSUE: COSMOPOLITANISM
Check out our latest virtual issue on cosmopolitanism! Edited by Aalok Khandekar and Tim Murphy, our Cosmopolitanism issue features essays by Marisol de la Cadena, David Novak, Deepa Reddy, Öykü Potuoğlu-Cook, Michael Fischer, and Chris Kelty. Also check out the conversation with the authors, which provides new insights on the essays and thoughts on the importance and relevance of cosmopolitics.
NEW INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS GARCES
Check out Robert Samet's recent interview with Chris Garces, author of "The Cross Politics of Ecuador's Penal State" (August 2010), which covers prison protests, neoliberalism, and sacrifice. Want to read more? Get a free copy of the essay here!
SCA's CULTURAL HORIZON PRIZE AWARDED TO NANCY RIES
Check out SCA's event schedule at the AAA Meetings!
SPECIAL ISSUE ON MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY OUT NOW!
The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography
S. Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich
Cultural Anthropology November 2010, Vol. 25, No. 4: 545-576.
Supplemental Material
Fingeryeyes: Impressions of Cup Corals
Eva Hayward
Cultural Anthropology November 2010, Vol. 25, No. 4: 577-599.
Supplemental Material
Naturalcultural Encounters in Bali: Monkeys, Temples, Tourists, and Ethnoprimatology
Agustin Fuentes
Cultural Anthropology November 2010, Vol. 25, No. 4: 600-624.
Supplemental Material
Viral Clouds: Becoming H5N1 in Indonesia
Celia Lowe
Cultural Anthropology November 2010, Vol. 25, No. 4: 625-649.
Supplemental Material
Ecologies of Empire: On the New Uses of the Honeybee
Jake Kosek
Cultural Anthropology November 2010, Vol. 25, No. 4: 650-678.
Supplemental Material
In Cultural Anthropology's latest Virtual Issue, Ashley Carse brings together essays, author interviews, and commentary from Stefan Helmreich, as well as other supplemental material, to account for the ways in which "cultural anthropologists have engaged water in recent years and to suggest exciting future directions."
THE EMERGENCE OF MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY
Visit the latest section of Cultural Anthropology online! "The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography" features information about the upcoming events at the AAA Meetings, CFPs, and a new video segment with Donna Haraway. Check back periodically for more updates!
Prendas-Ngangas-Enquisos: Turbulence and the Influence of the Dead in Cuban Kongo Material Culture
Todd Ramón Ochoa
Cultural Anthropology August 2010, Vol. 25, No. 3: 387-420
Supplemental Material
"They Come in Peasants and Leave Citizens": Urban Villages and the Making of Shenzhen, China
Jonathan Bach
Cultural Anthropology August 2010, Vol. 25, No. 3: 421-458
Supplemental Material
The Cross Politics of Ecuador's Penal State
Chris Garces
Cultural Anthropology August 2010, Vol. 25, No. 3: 459-496
Supplemental Material
The Rhythmic Beat of the Revolution in Iran
Michael M.J. Fischer
Cultural Anthropology August 2010, Vol. 25, No. 3: 497-543
Supplemental Material
NEW INTERVIEW WITH DAMANI PARTRIDGE
CA intern Susanne Unger interviews Damani Partridge about his research on racial politics, citizenship, and cultural production in Germany. Check out "We Were Dancing in the Club, Not on the Berlin Wall: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation" (2008) and supplemental material for more on Partridge's work.
SUPPLEMENTAL PAGE ON "CYBORG VIOLENCE"
Anne Allison's 2001 essay, "Cyborg Violence: Bursting Borders and Bodies with Queer Machines" now has a supplemental page! Created by Tim Murphy, the page includes a number of videos, questions for class discussion, and an interview with Anne Allison on how "cyborg violence" has changed in the last decade. Not to be missed!
NEW INTERVIEW WITH DOMINIC BOYER AND ALEXEI YURCHAK
Read Jessica Lockrem's interview with Dominc Boyer and Alexei Yurachek on their new essay, "American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal About Contemporary Political Cultural in the West" published in the May 2010 issue of Cultural Anthropology. And check out the essay's supplemental page for videos, links, resources, and more.
American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West
Dominic Boyer and Alexei Yurchak
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2: 179-221
Supplemental Material
The Double Bind of American Indian Need-Based Sovereignty
Jessica Cattelino
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2: 235-263
Supplemental Material
Remains: to be Seen. Third Encounter between State and "Customary" in Northern Mozambique
Juan Obarrio
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2: 263-300
Supplemental Material
The Emergence of Indigeneity: Public Intellectuals and an Indigenous Space in Southwest China
Michael Hathaway
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2: 301-333
Supplemental Material
Indigeneous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond "Politics"
Marisol de la Cadena
Cultural Anthropology May 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2: 334-370
Supplemental Material
VIRTUAL ISSUE: BUSINESS CULTURES
In response to the increasing encounters between global commodities and local markets, the recent economic crisis that has affected millions globally, the collapse of major financial institutions, and the escalating volatility of the corporate landscape, this Virtual Issue brings together five essays published by Cultural Anthropology which critically examine the theme of “business cultures.”
Five essays will be freely available from April 26th thru July 1st. Access the issue here.
ISSUE 25.1 IS NOW AVAILABLE
Branding the Mahatma: The Untimely Provocation of Gandhian Publicity
William Mazzarella
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 1-39
Supplemental Material
Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost of Bollywood
David Novak
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1:40-72
Supplemental Material
Physical Training, Ethical Discipline, and Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery in the Hindu Nationalist Movement
Arafaat A. Valiani
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 73-99
Supplemental Material
Flexible Citizenship in Dubai: Neoliberal Subjectivity in the Emerging 'City-Corporation'
Ahmed Kanna
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 100-129
Supplemental Material
The Antisocial Profile: Deception and Intimacy in Greek Psychiatry
Elizabeth Anne Davis
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 130-164
Supplemental Material
CA Announces its Virtual Issue on Kinships
In response to the often-deafening debates concerning the marriage equality movement in the US, clandestine polygamous marriages in Italy, transnational adoptions, and expanding global access to medicalized reproduction, this Virtual Issue draws together five recent essays to be published by Cultural Anthropology which critically examine the topic of kinships. Through an array of methodological, theoretical, and textual approaches, the essays in this issue focus attention on less familiar, though equally instructive, practices, and imaginaries of kinship. We offer these essays as a challenge to reflect on the perpetual motion of the politics of kinship, as well as an invitiation to explore the rich archive on the topic to be found in Cultural Anthropology.
CA Announces its Virtual Issue on Security
From terrorism to swine flu, to the current economic crisis, issues of security, broadly defined and experienced, seem to be taking front and centre stage in our contemporary moment. In light of this, Cultural Anthropology has decided to focus a special virtual issue on the theme of "security" - http://culanth.org/?q=node/258
The virtual issue spotlights five articles from Cultural Anthropology's contemporary archives that we feel theorize, broaden, and understand "security" through their diverse ethnographic settings and approaches. Moreover, these featured articles illustrate that anthropology as a discipline has always been, at least tangentially, concerned with issues of and relating to security. Taken together, the articles illustrate that "security," as much as it is currently a buzz word, must be unpacked and related to its various applications and articulations in specific contexts and histories. With that in mind, the featured authors in this issue have been asked to share their thoughts and insights into this ever-emerging field of study. Some of their thoughts are shared on this page. We provide a link where their full answers can be found with a forum section for further discussion. We highly encourage you to visit this section and add your own questions and comments - http://culanth.org/?q=node/259
CA Congratulates Michael Fischer for Receiving the 2009 GAD Award
Cultural Anthropology is pleased to announce that Michael Fischer's 2007 essay, “Four Genealogies for a Recombinant Anthropology of Science and Technology” has received the 2009 GAD Award for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship.
The General Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association has long supported innovative scholarship that transcends boundaries between the various fields of anthropology. The GAD Award for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship is awarded annually to peer-reviewed journal article that published in the preceding three years that demonstrates exemplary cross-field scholarship from any theoretical or methodological perspective, including applied research that encompasses two or more subfields of anthropology, or that is interdisciplinary in nature.
The Award will be presented at the beginning of the GAD Business Meeting and Distinguished Lecture at the AAA meetings on Friday from 12:15-1:30 PM. To learn more about the GAD Award, visit: http://www.aaanet.org/sections/gad/GenAnthDivAwards.html
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Table of Contents for the most recent issue of Cultural Anthropology
