Social Anthropology

Walking has become a common form of practice in contemporary art. Recent anthropology has been influenced by art walking practices. In this paper, however, I show significant differences between art walking and what we could call ‘Walking anthropology’. The former is more explicitly engaged, in many cases, in the ‘politics of walking’. These politics, on the one hand, could be based on ideas of walking as an everyday prefiguration of a future utopian society. Yet on the other hand, walking art could also be a critique of existing forms of everyday power and mobility as they are inscribed in the landscape and the city. In walking anthropology these concerns with the politics of walking seem less evident. Comparing artistic and anthropological practices and discussions of walking, my final objective is to critically evaluate the concepts of ‘politics’ and ‘utopia’ in art and anthropology.

Lyon, Stephen M. 2019. Political kinship in Pakistan: descent, marriage, and government stability. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 150 pp. Hb.: US$85.00. ISBN: 9781498582179.

In this paper, I propose an anthropological discussion of the correlation of utopia and optimism, in relation with ideas of personal and collective sacrifice. To do so, I will invoke my ethnographic research on political activism in Angola, particularly the so‐called Revolutionary Movement – a group of young activists challenging Angola’s authoritarian regime. During recent Luanda fieldwork, I observed how most of the ‘Revús’ engaged in self‐sacrificial behaviour, exposing themselves to police brutality, imprisonment and social discrimination, in their struggle towards a brighter collective future. This optimistic and somewhat Gandhian stance marks a dramatic departure from the sense of fatalism and ‘culture of fear’ that seems otherwise to prevail in Angola. I will question if and in what terms such stances are ‘utopian’ and configure ‘principles of hope’, as Ernst Bloch would put it. In the process, I will perform a critical interrogation of the correlation of utopia, hope and optimism.

Across the globe, we are seeing a popular shift of appeal from a liberal‐humanitarian imagination of the world, or even a communist‐socialist ideal, to one that is more conservative and often called ‘right‐wing populist’. In the ethnographic context analysed here, a utopian movement for revolutionary social change, led by Marx‐Lenin and Mao‐inspired Naxalite guerrillas, that once had a wide appeal in parts of India, is superseded by a more conservative utopian imagination of Hindutva forces. In exploring the Indian Maoist case, I suggest that dystopia is embedded within utopia. If those engaged in utopian social transformation seek to challenge prevailing ideology to transform people’s actions, it is equally possible for their utopian imagination to retreat into ritual that not only bears little relevance to most people but may also be potentially harmful and pave the way for other ideals to become prevalent. In analysing this Indian case, the paper suggests that we develop an anthropological theory of praxis, one that deals not only with how imaginations to change the world become realised in practice, but also accounts for multiple competing imaginations and how and why some become prevalent over others in daily life, in a dialectical process of reflection and action.

In war, the utopian and the dystopian converge. What could be more dystopian than a world of endless violence, and what more utopian than perpetual peace? Yet, at the same time, utopianism has itself been accused of brutality, and those who are opposed to war charged with perpetuating dystopian bloodshed. This paper examines the relationship between war, peace and utopia, by focusing on the ethical conflicts of opposing violence. It does so through the particular example of humanitarianism. Contemporary humanitarianism seeks to oppose the violence of war, but does so by placing limits on war rather than abolishing it, and is therefore often seen as complicit with violence. For many humanitarians, the response to this complicity has been a widespread sense of ethical crisis. In contrast, this paper examines a particular utopian humanitarian tradition, in the shape of British pacifist ambulance workers in the Second World War. This is a form of humanitarianism that recognises complicity, but also retains a utopian commitment to human perfection. The central argument of this paper is that the ethical conflicts of humanitarianism need to be put back into the diverse visions of the human that have run through humanitarian histories.

In this paper, I explore religious languages for political activism through values commonly given as reasons for becoming a unionist in Argentina. My interlocutors repeatedly emphasised their sense of vocation and service, as well as love, commitment and passion for the cause and for fellow activists or workers. Together, these related values comprise the sacred aspects of political activism, which is informed by a specific history of the blend between Peronism and Catholicism since the mid‐20th century.

Graham, Fabian. 2020. Voices from the underworld: Chinese Hell deity worship in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 259 pp. Hb.: £80.00. ISBN: 978‐1‐5261‐4057‐9.

This paper discusses practices of early marriage in protracted displacement, among Syrian refugees in Jordan, while drawing from ethnographic research with one extended family in Amman. The dominant form of early marriage is often glossed over as a common, traditional practice. The increase of early marriage among Syrians in Jordan is often explained as the result of a search for economic relief by the family. This article adds to this analysis by offering a new in‐depth reading of early marriage practices. It first shows how an emic differentiation is made between ordinary and ethically challenging forms of early marriage. Second, it aims to render visible additional dimensions of early marriage by showing how refugees actively shape their lives in the liminal state between waiting and home‐making. I argue that marriage can act as a normaliser and signify a desire for an ordinary family life that fulfils social and affective needs of home‐making in contexts of forced displacement.

Heritage politics can transform a dish, a cuisine or a meal into the emblem of a nation, a region or a community. A cultural and economic driver, culinary heritage has revealed the opportunities that actors can draw out of cultural essentialism, and the commercial exploitation that this can lead to. However, we know less about the consequences culinary heritage has in the lives of local communities and individuals concerned with it, in particular the most humble or vulnerable, nor the resulting modes of action – whether adoption, appropriation, rejection or indifference – it might provoke within and among these populations. This ethnographic study redresses this imbalance by giving voice to one of the symbols of current food politics in Mexico: indigenous female cooks. Their narratives evidence how practices of heritage deploy (food) cultures – and the people related to them – in programmatic, coercive fashions by building on notions and concepts of prospection, empowerment and audit culture. In villages, culinary heritage not only catalyses contradictions and tensions among women, which manifest in feelings of envy and injustice and decreased social cohesion; it also prompts changed opportunities that lead to resistance, new sociabilities and cooperation.

In this article, I focus on utopian social movements and how their members are increasingly seeking to exit from what I term, after Raymond Williams, a subjunctive grammar of transformation. Analysing a Marxist social movement in Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), and placing my ethnography in dialogue with the conceptual philosophical framework of Henri Bergson, I argue that such movements have a special relationship with utopia, inscribing a contradiction that is characteristic to the mode of willed transformation: the very impossibility of distant objectives becomes the justification for striving ever harder in perpetual struggle; for the MST, programmes of movement massification and the maintenance of a unified front are the inevitable and necessary conditions to create a new society. This teleological impetus is normative and regulatory in character and is resolutely premised on a linear understanding of time. Recognising that the occupation of land is central to MST practice, I question how change might occur through a disaggregation of space and time; how the unexpected and unforeseen might arise despite mechanisms designed to engender continuity; how in each moment, there is the latent potential to inscribe – in a creative gesture – a future as yet uninscribed of meaning and being.

‘Meat is stupid’

Covid‐19 and the co‐development of climate activism

In this contribution I examine the moral roots of the contemporary (in)hospitality of the city of Brussels by exploring one area of observation in particular: the handling of the fight against marriages of convenience for migratory purposes. Based on 2012–2013 ethnographic fieldwork, I reflect on the utopian thinking underlying the work of state agents in charge of implementing this fight. Through the detailed examination of two case studies, we will see how state agents select ‘good’ couples and, in doing so, reproduce social and racial hierarchies by excluding undesirable forms of intimate relationships. The non‐conformity with local moral standards (and particularly the romantic logic), modest ways of self‐presentation or the current ideology of migrants as parasites are at the core of these practices of exclusion.

Bali’s environmental crisis

Between moral ecology and global climate discourse