Search

Complexity is everywhere. From biology to genomics, from anthropology to public policy, experts are marveling at the complexity of the phenomena they study. Yet in recent years, scholars have warned against taking all of this complexity at face value. In this spirit, this article frames "complexity" as an epistemic artifact traceable through particular histories and traditions of knowledge‐making. Attributions of relative complexity to different societies have a long history in anthropology. Archaeologists, in particular, have defined and redefined, debated and deconstructed complexity, leaving behind a lively textual trail. Examining this trail as a case study, the article investigates some of the different and sometimes conflicting logics behind what gets to count as complex, when, and why, as well as behind the more general expansion of complexity's reach in recent decades. By doing so, it exemplifies a way of approaching complexity as an anthropological problem and as a dominant problematic of our times. [knowledge, complexity, epistemology, archaeology] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue for an ethnographic approach to human rights that recognizes the plural and fragmentary nature of the international rights regime and the ideological promiscuity of rights talk. Instead of determining in advance the social or political character of rights, anthropologists could profitably draw from the insights of early-20th-century ‘legal realists’ and look closely at the underlying assumptions and hidden practices of political and legal processes. Studying the ‘social life of human rights’ would involve focusing on, inter alia, the performative dimensions of human rights, the dynamics of social mobilization, and the attitudinal changes of elite and nonelite social actors towards formulations of ‘rights’ and ‘justice,’ both inside and outside the legal process. I conclude with a review of recent anthropological research on human rights epistemology and evaluate its implications for human rights policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I draw on ethnography in the particular zone of engagement between anthropologists, on the one hand, and human rights lawyers who are skeptical of the human rights regime, on the other hand. I argue that many of the problems anthropologists encounter with the appropriation and marginalization of anthropology's analytical tools can be understood in terms of the legal character of human rights. In particular, discursive engagement between anthropology and human rights is animated by the pervasive instrumentalism of legal knowledge. I contend that both anthropologists who seek to describe the culture of human rights and lawyers who critically engage the human rights regime share a common problem—that of the ‘iron cage’ of legal instrumentalism. I conclude that an ethnographic method reconfigured as a matter of what I term circling back--as opposed to cultural description—offers a respite from the hegemony of legal instrumentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author offers insights into the concept of nationalism and anthropology in response to a related theory presented by social anthropologist Aleksandar Boškovic. Topics discussed include the relationship between nationalism and anthropology according to Boškovic, the role of myth and history in the paradigm of nationalism, and the distinction between ethnology and anthropology.

Through an ethnography of unauthorized migration from El Salvador to the United States, I explore "clandestinity" as a hidden, yet known, dimension of social reality. Unauthorized migrants who are en route to the United States have to make themselves absent from the spaces they occupy. When they become clandestine, such migrants embody illegality; in some cases, they literally "go underground" should they die and be buried en route. Because their presence is prohibited, unauthorized migrants do not fully arrive even when they reach their destinations. There are parallels between the ways that migrants are present in yet absent from nations, and the ways that ethnographers are present in yet absent from the field. This ethnography of migrants en route therefore suggests how anthropological knowledge practices also produce realities that are hidden, yet known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an interview with Margery Wolf, professor emeritus of the Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, and currently secretary of the American Anthropological Association. This interview takes the occasion of Professor Wolf's recent retirement to offer a retrospective on the importance of her work for cultural anthropology. Throughout her career, Wolf maintained a unique approach to writing ethnography. She began as a writer and brought that sensibility into her anthropological work.

Argues that cultural and linguistic anthropologists and other social scientists have overlooked the significance of communal forms of silence in shaping the social and political landscape. Customary silences that constitute cultural censorship which is practiced in absence of explicit coercion or enforcement; Analysis of a case of cultural censorship by examining customary silence surrounding racism in Brazil.

Anthropologists' interest in literature and novelists' interest in cultural criticism converge in J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello (2003) and in these four ‘In Focus’ responses to the book. Recent discussions of ethnographic writing seem to have prepared anthropologists for the generic innovations of the novel, leaving us free to take up the pressing moral problems that Coetzee rehearses. To speak to a broad public about such issues remains a challenge for anthropologists, who would do well to study the ways novelists have found to make their political voices heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fabricated quotations are one of the more disturbing features of researcher Brian Thom's September 2002 book review. Thom states, for example, that in an effort to critique interpretive anthropology and descriptive ethnography seeks to let the facts speak for themselves. Twice, in fact, he quotes that the facts speak for themselves. Nowhere within the Atlas, however, will readers find any such text or sentiment. Thom also attributes another quote that anthropologists mainly pursue their own interests not those of the natives. Once again, readers will find no such quotation or opinion anywhere within the "Atlas."

The article focuses on the author's views on comments made by scholar Micaela Di Leonardo on his work "Exchange Across Difference." The single substantial issue in Leonardo's critique is how this construction might have been related to broader cultural processes in the U.S. academia and society of the time. Di Leonardo finds what I did write to be `very old news` and what I did not write to be greatly lamented. Concerning the former she appears to have missed the point. This was with due respect for our disciplinary ancestors, to shed further light on an ethnographic difference. What really exercised Di Leonardo were my omissions, in particular, a failure to reflexivize my argument in light of historical shifts in anthropology and in the world.