Author: Nancy Munn

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

While the selfie has come to symbolize notions of selfhood in the age of social media, the photograph that has become a visual trope across the Facebook accounts of lower-middle-class young men in the western Indian city of Pune offers a different read…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

Curt Nimuendajú (1883–1945) was a German ethnographer who became a naturalized citizen of Brazil and spent most of his life doing fieldwork among the country’s indigenous people. He gained the attention of the anthropological world when he began produc…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

This article explores the interpretive and divinatory practices and strategies used in the South African street-based lottery game fafi. The game, run by the Chinese community in South Africa and played predominantly by low-income black South Africans,…

The response addresses Lévy-Bruhl’s 1926 essay, “Primitive mentality and games of chance,” focusing on the gambler’s role as an interpreter of the present for the sake of the future. Through a discussion of Lévy-Bruhl’s articulation of the gambler’s me…

In this paper I reflect on two interconnected phenomena associated with Lebanese migration: a high incidence of gambling among immigrants and the experience of migration itself as a form of “gambling with the self.” I show how both these dimensions are…

As a young ethnographer, I was weirdly obsessed with closed doors and what was going on behind them. To some extent I still am. How come? Starting from my own obsession with closed doors and secrets in a fieldwork setting particularly prone to secrecy …

For Lévy-Bruhl, “primitive mentality” can shed light on the “passion” that drives the casino player, gambler, or financial speculator to continue at the risk of losing everything. He draws a parallel between the divinatory practices of “primitive” peop…

In a paper published in 1926, Lévy-Bruhl suggests a close affinity between the mentality of the gambler and the diviner, putting forward the role of the unseen. Such a comparison is made too quickly as gambling and divining are not that similar but sub…

Drawing on fieldwork conducted at a Chinese state-owned enterprise brought to Angola in the postwar reconstruction boom, this article devotes sustained attention to a labor dispute between an Angolan laid-off worker and his former Chinese employers. Ca…

In this article, I analyze the ontology of the African oil palm among indigenous Marind communities in Merauke, West Papua. This introduced cash crop is conceptualized by Marind as tree and person, assailant and victim, and stranger and kin. Its ontolo…

The paper addresses ritual and quotidian aspects of bathing in thermal springs at Bakreswar, a Hindu pilgrimage site in India. Ascetics, priests, pilgrims, and scientists vouch for the mineral content and healing properties of the spring waters. Drawin…

This article aims to extend the current understanding of ethical practice within a dementia context, in which people living with dementia are often taken for granted as mere beneficiaries of care, rather than as co-producers in day-to-day care practice…

This comment on Levy-Bruhl’s essay on gambling has three parts. The first raises some linguistic and analytical questions and identifies some deficiencies in the author’s use of ideal-type analysis with reference to Max Weber’s approach. The second foc…

This article explores the relevance of an ostensibly unpretentious gift exchange of squirrels and eggs in order to illuminate how asymmetric kin ties among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos are realized. Employing the concept of mutual recognition, it wil…