Contemporary trends in social
and cultural anthropology
Lecture for the course
Bi1221 History of Anthropology
Paride Bollettin
05/05/2022
paride_bollettin@msn.com
Image: Diversity concept (source: https://www.dreamstime.com)
1989: the year of miracles*
Berlin wall fall: the end of West-East
opposition (the end of history and
the winning capitalism)
Conferences of Environmental state
of the planet (Paris, London, Hague,
etc.): the end of the unlimited nature
The “emancipation” of human and
the “emancipation” of nature:
against “modernism”!
*Latour, Bruno. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Image: The Berlin wall (source: https://www.internazionale.it/)
Defining “contemporaneity”
From Cambridge University dictionary:
“happening or existing at the same
period of time”*
From bipolarism to multipolarism
From scientific authority to plurality
From natural resources to
environmental crisis
From anthropocentrism to
multinaturalism
… your descriptions?
*https://dictionary.cambridge.org
Image: Lara by Na Chainkua Reindorf, 2021 (source:
http://www.artcapitalghana.com/)
Post? Turn? Multi?Post: based on the idea of
a passage from previous
states/concepts to following
ones
Turn: based on the idea of
an unexpected emergence
of alternative
states/concepts
Multi: based on the idea of
a proliferation of
states/concepts co-existing Image: Anthropology Museum and Museum Anthropology, by Anita Erle,
2016 (source: https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/)
Global dimension
“thousands of anthropologists
[...] over the course of more than
a century, have woven global
webs of influence”*
“to go beyond the dichotomy
between theWest and non-West,
center and periphery, and native
and nonnative and go toward a
global anthropology balanced on
equal footing”**
*Lins Ribeiro, Gustavo. 2014. Brazilian anthropology away from home. World
Anthropology section. American Anthropologist 116(1): 165–169.
**Yamashita, Shinji. 2015. East Asian anthropology: A Japanese perspective.
Comment,World Anthropology section. American Anthropologist 117(2): 376–377.
Image source: https://www.yoair.com/
Diversity and power
“What we have are
traditions born out of
interactions and
exchanges occurring at
various levels between
anthropologies and
anthropologists,
especially following such
processes as imperialism
and globalization”*
*Ntarangwi, Mwenda. 2010. Reversed Gaze: An African
Ethnography of American Anthropology. UrbanaChampaign:
University of Illinois Press.
Image: Digital anthropology by Daniel Miller, 2018 (Source:
https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/).
From the “field” to the “field”
“Field of” and “field in”
anthropology
Fieldwork as the core feature of
socio-cultural anthropology
“Field” as a place and as a
practice
Gathering and writing data
Image: Franz Boas (source:
https://daily.jstor.org/the-life-and-times-of-franz-boas/)
Rethinking paradigms
1969. Hymes, Dell (ed.). Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Vintage
Books.
from studying the powerless to study the powerful
1973. Asad, Talal (ed.). Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. New
York: Humanities Press.
critics to the colonial legacy of anthropological practice
1986. Clifford, James and Marcus, George (eds.). Writing Culture: The
Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
critical reflection on the anthropological representation of “others”
The anthropologist as a writer
“Poetics” and “politics”
Ethnographic authority
Ethnographer-informant
Ethnographer-reader
Attention to:
Partial truths
Literary devices
The “self”
Counter-hegemony Image: Mead and Bateson at Bali (source: http://unifiedtao-it.blogspot.com/
)
Postmodernism, literary turn, multivocality
“who speaks? who writes? when and
where? with or to whom? under what
institutional and historical constrains?”*
Influence from Derrida, Wittgenstein,
etc.
“thick description”*
**Geertz, Clifford. 1975. The interpretation of cultures. London: Hutchinson.
*Clifford, James. 1986. Introduction: partial truth. In Clifford, J. and Marcus,
G.E. (eds.) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Image: Balinese Cockfight 1949 by Alred Palmer
(source: https://anthromamadotcom.wordpress.com)
An example:
Co-producing
knowledge
Kamayura exhibition
Indigenous roundtable
Mebengokré paper
Multiplying knowledge
Indigenous women scholars
Favelas’ scholars Image: Kamayura exhibition at MAE (source:
https://acervo.mae.ufba.br/kamayura/)
Objects as:
function (external purpose) and
functioning (internal operation)*
Objects produce the socialization
of humans**
“Objects” as processes
About words and materialities
*Simondon, Gilbert. 1958. Du Mode d’existence des objets
techniques. Paris: Aubier.
**Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 Outline of a Theory of
Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Image: Brno airport (source: https://www.airport-brno.com/)
Material agency
“Agent” as the producer of an effect
Abduction: inferred intentionality (we
attribute/recognise to objects the
responsibility for an action)
Objects as embedding human
agency*
Reality as composed by “hybrids”
(social and natural) agencies**
*Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An anthropological theory. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
**Latour, Bruno. 1999 Pandora's Hope, An essay on the reality of science
studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Image: MUNI Anthropology Lab (source:
https://www.muni.cz/)
Material engagement
“things mediate, actively
shape, and constitute our
ways of being in the world
and of making sense of the
world. Things also bring
people together and provide
channels of interaction.
Things envelop our minds;
they become us”
*Malafouris, Lambros. 2013. How Things Shape the Mind. A Theory of
Material Engagement. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Image: Posthumanist Criticism by Nasrullah Mambrol, 2018
(source: https://literariness.org)
An example:
Ethnographic Museum and
Department
Digital 3D models
Indigenous perspectives
Expanding the experiencesImage: Karaja doll 3D model (Source: Mikolas Jurda)
Multiplying
realities
Multiplying agents with various
agencies
Variability of the reality
From multiple points of view on
the reality to multiple realities
From “one nature and multiple
culture” to “one culture and
multiple natures”*
*Viveiros de Castro. Eduardo. 2004. Exchanging Perspectives: The
Transformation of Objects into Subjects in Amerindian Ontologies.
Common Knowledge 10: 463-484.
Image: Art orienté objet, byLaval-Jeantet & Mangin,
Félinanthropie, 2007 (source: https://www.multispecies-salon.org/)
Ontological
turn?
From ontological variety to
ontological inquiry*
Reflexivity: questioning
anthropologist ontology
Conceptualization: analysing
anthropologist concepts via the
ethnography
Experimenting: shifting concepts
among ontologies
*Holbraad,Martin and Pedersen, Morten Axel. 2017. The Ontological
Turn: An Anthropological Exposition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Picture: Archambault 2016 (source:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/)
Anthropology as “taking seriously”...
... is not to believe
… is not to take literally
… is to be able to about
them to them*
Ethnography as “caricature”
Image: Aldeia Maracanã, by Elisa Mendes (source:
https://amazonialatitude.com/)
*Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 2013. The Relative Native. 3(3): 473–502.
An example: Toward a science of
intrinsic purposiveness
What about academic
science?
What about Mebengokré
science?
Rethinking culture,
epistemology, ecology, etc.Image: the Mebengokré on the Bacaja river (Source, Paride
Bollettin, 2011)
Anthropology beyond
the human
Image: A cuttlefish swims past a school of small fish by
Whitcomberd (source: https://www.biologicalpurpose.org/)
From seeing things differently to
seeing different things
Other-than-humans in ethnography
Isomorphism between the analysis
and it object
Cyborg: unifies animal with humans
and humans with machines toward
new revolutionary narratives*
Redefining the “human” (antropos) as
relational and not as being
*Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1991. A Cyborg Manifesto:
Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The
Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge
An example: Conde project
Interdisciplinarity
Local engagement
Knowledge dialogues
Environment conservation
Beyond the human
Image: aerial view of Siribinha (source: https://mapio.net/)
Anthropology of science
Image source:
http://www.dipafilo.unimi.it/ecm/home/ricerca/centri-di-ri
cerca/laboratorio-di-sociologia-e-antropologia-della-scie
nza-lasas
Sciences as knowledge practices
Working with science as with other
knowledge practices
Analysis of controversies
Sciences as relations of power
Remember the claim for self reflexivity!
Sciences as epistemic, social, political
and ontological experiences
An example:
IsoArcH Project*
Crating a database of
Isotopes
Some participate other not
Survey of who they are, what
they do, and how the
network affect them
Image from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.07.030
*https://isoarch.eu
Anthropology of the future
Please try to figure out what anthropology can do
in the next 10 years…
...you are going to produce it!