Category: English

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

This article examines the flux and reflux of commitment to jihad among immigrants to Syria. Contrary to a linear and often teleological view of commitment to jihad—radical individuals joining the most radical contemporary organization—migration to Syri…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

Seeing landscapes change seems to be an inevitable and ubiquitous experience in times of global warming. Yet, landscape change is often underestimated, depending on how that change is perceived, experienced, and articulated over time. Like other agricu…

This article investigates the affective vitality of the technical in Japanese android-making through the creation of the android Alter and its artistic performance in the “android opera” Scary Beauty. By following the technical processes invested in Al…

Standard Euro-American ideas of sincerity revolve around an idea of the transparent alignment of one’s outer acts with the inner self, such that the audience can clearly deduce the latter from the former. The development and spread of such ideas has be…

Although some Kakataibo women say that their elders did not know romantic love and that they learned it only recently by going to the city, that romantic love is actually having a hard time taking root in Indigenous Amazonia. This article explores some…

This photographic essay presents material and findings from a documentation project on the gugu (slit drum) carried out in Western Equatoria State of South Sudan between 2021 and 2023. These wooden drums, which can stand up to five feet high, are often…

In Western Equatoria, South Sudan, witchcraft accusations enable a narrativization of the material processes of predation that undergird the state, in a sphere adjacent to that of formal politics. These accusations critique the political economy of the…

Mangu, what Evans-Pritchard translated into English as “witchcraft” and around which he built his landmark ethnography, has disappeared among the South Sudanese Azande. But other kinds of witchcraft and magic (ngua) arise continuously. Drawing on anthr…

Benge, the famous chicken poison oracle that Evans-Pritchard vividly described in his classic ethnography, subsequently disappeared from Zande lore. While contemporary Azande still talk about the vanished benge sorrowfully, the society turned to a neig…

This article unpacks the different trajectories of a once-unified Zande people through a focus on their respective positions in the nation-states of South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). While the Zande people live at the margins of their…

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

Colonial rule in Sudan altered kingship and ended the kingdom among the Azande and neighboring groups. Yet the ruling clan, the Avongara, and the lineage of the precolonial Azande kings and chiefs continued. A century elapsed before a new institution, …

Rereading Evans-Prichard’s classic fifty-five years later turned out to be a confusing experience. On the one hand, it confirmed the admiration I always had for the author’s clarity and the quality of his ethnography. On the other, there seemed to be a…

This introduction to a special section, “Revisiting the Azande,” summarizes the historical context and theoretical insights of the classic ethnography Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande, by E. E. Evans-Pritchard. It describes developments …

This article presents the findings of a 2022 doctoral study that examines the government’s communication for social cohesion in the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipal Area, also known as the city of Durban, in South Africa. The findings and recommendatio…

This paper explores local partners’ communication strategies in the ExxonMobil Cepu Limited CSR program in Bojonegoro Regency, East Java. The research data comes from in-depth interviews with 25 informants. They consist of representatives of oil and ga…

Ethnonationalism based on religion has had a significant impact in the modern history of India. While celebrating its diversity as a democratic nation, the country has also witnessed numerous ethnic movements, tensions, violence as well as assertion of…

Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. The article explores regulation practices governing access to the central market of Kinshasa. It argues that, contrary to conventional ideas, urban trading places do not escape state regulation, nor are they outside the…

Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. This paper analyses the complexity of regulating the activities of small traders at the Grand Marché in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Markets in Africa are places where small-scale trading takes place par excellence, and t…