Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
This piece is a response to Philip Swift’s article in this issue, where he critiques issues concerning ethnographic theory raised in my book World: An anthropological examination. Inspired by the work of Donald Davidson, I argue that indeterminacy and …
Translation—both multi- and intra-lingual—is vital to anthropological method. Drawing a distinction between two opposing modes of translation (“domesticating” versus “foreignizing”), this paper considers the ontological and ethical consequences of thes…
This essay radicalizes the call for foreignizing translation in anthropology by pushing translation beyond a reference to an anthropological self. What I recognize as “burning translations” responds to the abolitionist call for “letting anthropology bu…
This article considers the problem of translation and radical interpretation from a post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspective, and challenges the notion of concept, language, and difference being mobilized by Philip Swift.
Most ethnographers have little use for models and other formal abstractions, yet even a staunch empiricist such as Franz Boas could appreciate the “aesthetic” advantages of idealization and simplification. These advantages have been largely ignored in …
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
According to Latour, religion and science have nothing in common. The two are successful (or failing) in quite different ways. Religiousness is not aimed at fact-making, but at presence-making, he says. To critically reconsider these ideas, I discuss t…
In this article, I explore the role of religious discourses and practices in the diasporic Kurdish-Turkish conflict and investigate the ways in which presentations of the political conflict has been disseminated and reproduced via Turkish mosques locat…
In this article I discuss the ways in which the Turkish state uses Islam as a weapon to delegitimize and render unnecessary Kurdish distinctiveness and associated rights claims. Drawing on the particular discourse employed by Turkish president Recep Ta…
This article discusses the transformative potential of Turkey’s pro-democracy movement which has emerged out of a long history of Kurdish political struggle. It looks at the development of a two-fold strategy that understands internal transformation as…
The Turkish state strictly bans funerals and other forms of public mourning for Kurdish guerrillas, considering them to be a threat to the sovereign state. Victims of honor crimes are also denied proper burials, as they are accused of “ruining” their f…
In the Quechua community of Coipasi (Bolivia) relations between the living and the dead (almas—souls) swing between excess and containment, remembrance and distancing. The aim of this article is to show that the emotivity of the spirits plays a fundame…
This article revolves around the theoretical and ethnographic experiences of an ongoing anthropological study with contemporary Aymara families about how “education by attention” is produced throughout their cosmopraxis. At the same time, it explores h…
The critique of belief as an analytical tool in anthropology has overshadowed belief as an ethnographic reality. This article short-circuits these debates over the politics of belief by elaborating ethnographically the indigenous use of the concept—lit…
Vdra-ba society in western Sichuan, China, has been represented by evolutionist Chinese scholars as a primitive matrilineal society that was in transition to a patrilineal system, and it has been likened to that of the Na/Moso. This is a misleading cha…
This article, through various ethnographic encounters, highlights the advantages and explores the challenges of fieldwork for a female researcher studying what might be taken to be her own community. Doing a native anthropology in a marginal borderland…
As youngsters in a Pakistani megacity participate in a reading group to discuss the end of time by looking at the eschatological prophecies in Islamic religious sources, they come to relate apparently trivial political actions such as wall-painting, pl…
The emerging movement to decolonize the sciences, social sciences, and humanities has emphasized the differences between Indigenous and Western scientific ways of knowing. Paradoxically, emphasizing the difference between these systems has also been th…
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
Dear Colleagues!
CAES editorial team waits for your contributions for CAES Vol. 8, № 3, that is going to be published in the middle of September 2022.
Editor’s foreword Articles: Dating of the Neolithic site of Toksovo by the comparison of frequencies of ornamental imprints on potsherds Alexander Akulov The Neolithic site of Toksovo was discovered in 1926 but has never been properly dated, however, an assemblage of potsherds was picked on it (the site is located in the southern part of […]
Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. Since the turn of the millennium, the African continent has been extremely active in producing African futures. These are part of the multiple non-western modernities existing simultaneously; modernities of revolution, …
Food media, such as Netflix’s Chef’s Table, presents both an empirical and a normative-aspirational dimension, communicating specific instructions and projecting powerful images of what constitutes a good meal and a culinary authority. This inve…