Author: Nancy Munn

This essay examines Zoë Strother’s efforts to historicize recent debates about the repatriation of cultural heritage while also situating contemporary protest movements, such as “Rhodes Must Fall,” in the long and varied history of iconoclasm on the Af…

This collection of essays seeks to reinvigorate ethnographic investigation of the contemporary global. At a moment afflicted by transnational pandemic, political chauvinism, and disciplinary retrenchment, they offer a model for reengagement with the gl…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

The destruction or loss of objects belonging to African cultural heritage, usually the result of historical antecedents, has had a serious impact on communities and their way of life. Burned, stolen, or destroyed, the images targeted by iconoclasm have…

The present reflections are intended as a contribution to the theme of the colloquium “Iconoclasm, heritage, and restitution.” The wambɲung symbol, which is shown on the emblem of the University Félix Houphouët-Boigny, finds itself at the very heart of…

This article explores the enmeshments and vulnerabilities that emerge in undergraduate courses on gender and sexuality. In these classrooms students don’t just listen and learn, but seek to find the basis upon which they can not only speak about their …

Drawing on debates in southern African anthropology, I suggest that where knowledge claims themselves are in question, comparison, uncertainty, and play may be critical in reframing debates about the relation between anthropology and moral worlds, incl…

What are the current trends in the study of witchcraft in Africa? Twenty years ago, the “modernity of witchcraft” approach was very influential. Although key texts from that framework are still often cited, its heyday seems to have passed. This overvie…

Arguing in favor of anthropology’s humanity-centered research tradition, this article examines how the encounter with human remains on the bedrock of retreating glaciers shapes not only the notion of divinity and power underpinning Andean pilgrimage bu…

Missionary encounters stimulate cultural change, although not always in ways one might expect. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, among missionaries from the Assemblies of God (AG), the world’s largest pentecostal group, encounters with postcolonial…

In two recent themed collections in this publication, numerous contributors have explored the term and concept of “life” in its relationship to ethnographic theory. This article seeks to uncover a historical precedent for this constellation. More preci…

The advent of Malinowski’s ethnographic theory is inscribed in a wider modernist environment, which set the ground for the emergence of new epistemological projects. Viktor Shklovsky’s attempt to inaugurate a scientific study of literature was one of t…

This article maps out the relationship between the academic/intellectual work and political positioning of a Muslim researcher in contemporary India. It is divided into three parts. In the first part, I raise conceptual and methodological questions, es…

In this article I look at the responses of Indians to political events in 2019 regarding the abrogation of Article 370 concerning Kashmir in the Constitution of India and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The critiques of abrogation as well as of th…

In anthropology, antinomy has generally been conceived negatively, metaphorically, and within the limits of epistemology alone. In presenting the ontology of the Sepik people of Awim, which is drawn from their conceptions of and practices related to fo…

This essay looks at Hindu nationalism’s investment in a crisis machine linked closely to digital media networks in India. Media infrastructures have provided right-wing populism with new techniques for performative action and network-driven collective …

While recent amendments to India’s Citizenship Act are designed to exclude Muslims from claims to citizenship in India, this essay seeks to problematize the assumption that Hindu migrants who seek citizenship under the new Act are incorporated seamless…

This article explores the remaking of ideas of the “ordinary citizen” in India in the context of Hindu majoritarian politics and changing relationships between the state and private capital. Focusing on one of India’s largest privately developed townsh…

This article locates the unique discursive contribution of women’s protests against India’s Citizen Amendment Act in 2019–2020 in the history of Muslim identity formation in South Asia. It does this by reviewing the relationship between religious refor…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

The Currents section foregrounds the work of Indian scholars who examine the ramifications of state responses and counterresponses regarding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019. This amendment to the Constitution of India granted citizensh…

The protests against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and a nationwide NRC (National Register of Citizens) have emerged as an important challenge against right-wing majoritarianism in India. These protests frame themselves as part of a struggle to s…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory