Author: Nancy Munn

This article examines how a “normal” day passes under a conflicted and authoritarian governmentality in an ethnically diverse city in Turkey. When there is no space or tolerance for different ethnic and religious practices, where oppression against Kur…

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

This article comprises a rethinking of Mauss’s The gift, reciprocity, and exchange theory in anthropology, using theories of chaos and complexity to make sense of the author’s ethnographic data from Papua New Guinea. The article begins with an explanat…

I examine my dual role as artist and ethnographer in the creation of artworks including mixed-media paintings and installations. Drawing from four works that combine art making and anthropological research, I present, from the perspective of anthropolo…

Body painting uses a three-dimensional living canvas. While a widespread activity that can be characterized as a creative cultural scene, it has not yet merited anthropological attention. Even though body painting is closely related to the body, it is …

This article explores a Mesoamerican topology based on the figure of the fold. It argues that the operation of folding represents a crucial concept for understanding indigenous cosmology and ontology. The fold is what allows the separation and articula…

By reexamining the empirical relationship between ethnography and photography, this article explores the phenomenology of photographic experiences in a French banlieue. Photography may be a powerful practice to critically depict social phenomena in the…

“‘By Name and No Other’: The COVID masks portrait project” is a series of images of the photographer’s family made in the early days of the COVID-19 quarantines in Seattle. These portraits document an uncertain moment, creating both a visual archive of…

This article considers issues raised while working at the intersection of anthropology and visual art in Everglades National Park and during the months that followed. Based on a May 2019 residency as an AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) fellow,…

This article focuses on Tibetan thangka and thangka painters in Amdo Rebgong (Qinghai, China), who are caught between a state-fostered tourist market promoting Tibetan thangkas as folk art and an intermediate market where clients pursue the religious a…

This article examines the possible roles of exceptionally preserved clay reliefs and sculptures within a cave in the Mixe (Ayuujk) territory of Oaxaca, Mexico, a region where early researchers proposed that no art existed. Deploying conceptual tools of…

This is an exhibition of fieldwork art adapted to the page. It is set out following the typical stages of an anthropological research project and presents works that were both made through fieldwork and exhibited as art. The strategy is one of “blendin…

Under the current Xi administration, China has marked December 13 as the national public Memorial Day for the Nanjing Massacre’s victims. The reaffirmation of this historical trauma under Xi continues the official narrative of the rejuvenation of a hum…

This article rethinks the politics of fear through the researcher’s ethnography in Hong Kong. Fear is often explored as a tool of manipulation that disempowers people. In contrast, the bodies, subjectivities, and actions of the fearful people are rarel…

In the Maoist period, the Chinese socialist state encouraged the genre of “speaking bitterness” in order to give expression to past sufferings and cultivate a class consciousness. In the post-Mao era, scholars have noted how marginalized figures expres…

This article examines the changing sociological meaning of indifference in urban China after the tragic death of a two-year-old girl in a road accident in 2011. My analysis suggests that, in China where the political state had tried to claim credit for…

This article spotlights the role of affect in paths of “self-development,” focusing on young adults in China who engage in various training programs. Informed by market-driven expertise, individuals configure their feelings as central for their ability…

This article examines the social impacts of urban change among a generation of people for whom it is the norm: youth in Beijing, where decades of redevelopment have led to large-scale demolition of older neighborhoods and a perpetually changing citysca…