The semantics of akisemem: A response to Michael Herzfeld
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Expanding visual practices—Destabilizing ethnographic knowledge
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Expanded visions and beyond
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Iconizing ikona: A response to Quincy Amoah’s Karimojong rebus
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Ethical pedagogies and/of relationality
In the introduction to this special section, I discuss the way in which a focus on pedagogy in ethical practice can provide insights regarding the multifaceted nature of subjectivity, as well as the tendency of ethical learning, broadly understood, to …
Spotlight on the liminal dividend
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Tantsa: Intuition as authoritative know-how in the Roman Catholic Philippines
This article examines ritual nailing on the cross as a conduit for a process of ethical self-making among Roman Catholics in Pampanga, the Philippines. I emphasize the intersubjective and pedagogical components of this process by discussing the impleme…
The way of the prophets: History, structure, imagination: The Lévi-Strauss Lecture 2021
I follow here three different prophetic movements in Africa with which I have been closely engaged. I highlight the singularity of the prophet vis-à-vis the group, as well as the difficulties built into the ethnographic method to combine the study of s…
Less virtuous than it seems: The motivations behind priestly vocations in Catholic Sri Lanka
The formation of Catholic seminarians in Sri Lanka is dependent on rigorous prayer and study routines that are designed to shape a seminarian’s disposition towards religious life. These mechanisms are geared towards transforming youthful desires into v…
“Do not adjust your mind—there is a fault in reality”: Simulation games and development education
From the late 1960s onwards simulation games were adopted by development education programs as an ethical and pedagogical tool to create awareness of the “true” nature of reality. This article explores both the limits and ongoing effects of simulation …
Performing piety in public: Ethnic politics and interreligious harmony in Indonesia
In this article, I focus on the reentry of Chinese Indonesians into both politics and public religious life in Indonesia in the post-Suharto era. I argue that while entry into local politics has led to new forms of interethnic and interreligious compet…
In correspondence with an ever-expanding heaven: Subject formation and spiritual labor among the Syrian-Catholic nuns of Kerala
This article illustrates the religious formation and subjectivation of a nun through her everyday life inside the convent. It explains how her experience of calling, structured through institutional subject formation, leads to the fashioning of an ethi…
Gendering morality and providing a feminized ethics of care: Welfare, crises, and tình cảm in contemporary Vietnam
Focusing on welfare challenges and crises encountered by women in contemporary Vietnam, this article examines the gendering of morality and the ways in which a feminized ethics of care is entangled with women’s practice of the social capacity tình cảm …
Ordering being, divining time: Nilotic sacrifice as iconic poiesis
The Karimojong prophet Apaokere was called by Divinity in a dream to sacrifice. In this vision, Divinity instructed him to kill a prized dark ox for the women of his household to avoid the onset of “nothingness.” This two-part essay (the first part pub…
Moral custodianship between friends: Girlhood, class, and Islamic education in Indonesia
Peer monitoring is a common feature of homosocialization among girls in Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. This article examines the important ethical work that takes place in moments of sociability between peers in and beyond school grounds. Student…
Water thieves
The use of tropes is a defining feature of resource regulation and is fundamental to both the way legal theories have evolved and to the practical, localized interpretations and implementations of law. This article offers a discursive study of the “wat…
Big infrastructure and/as systemic flexibility: The Sites Reservoir story
If constructed as planned, the Sites Reservoir Project will add roughly 1.85 billion m3 (1.5 million acre-feet) of storage capacity to California’s water system. Per project proponents, however, the reservoir complex should be understood as infrastruct…
Striking for public power: Workers, energy and the nationalization of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, 1933-1941
This article examines the role of working people in the energy transition that played out in Puerto Rico in the 1930s and 1940s – from a private, fossil fuel-based regime to a public, hydroelectric system. It argues that by withholding their labo…
Silent violence to the core: Environmental suffering and suffocating uncertainties in the Colombian Caribbean coal industry
For many, the coal industry in Colombia has been synonymous with progress, economic growth and access to education and housing opportunities on the Caribbean mining frontier. However, little has been said about the slow, dosed and silent violence that …
Evoking Eternity: Orthodox Co-presence in Post-Yugoslav Central Serbia
Cultural Anthropology
The Massacre and Martyr(dom)s of Oak Creek: On the Problem of Diaspora, the Economy of Agonism, and the Extimacy of Relation-Making
Cultural Anthropology
Sustaining Containability: Zero Waste and White Space
Cultural Anthropology
Deciphering a Non-meal: Pantawid-Gutom and the Everyday Negotiation of Hunger in the Philippines
Cultural Anthropology
Desnacionalización, regímenes visuales y resistencia: Gitanos Americanos en Ciudad de México
Cultural Anthropology
The Slow Reading Ethnography Experiment
While much has been published in anthropological discourse and teaching forums about the skills, practices and positionality of ethnographic writing, very little attention has been paid to the practices and experiences of ethnographic reading. Our proj…