Ethnologia Polona

ON THE CHALLENGES OF ENGAGEMENT AND DOING ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN CONFLICT ZONES

2023-02-16T12:10:19+00:00

Catherine Wanner invited several anthropologists to come together to discuss the challenges of conducting fieldwork in a region ravaged by war. The group consisted of four anthropologists, two who conduct research in Serbia and two in Ukraine. The group discussed the ethical complications that arise for anthropologists whose field site is or was the site of war as well as the responsibilities war creates for anthropologists who respond to the outbreak of armed combat by writing about state-sponsored violence and the process of enduring violence. Sandra King-Savic moderated this conversation, which took place on 7 July 2022 at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland before a live audience. The transcript of this two-hour conversation was shortened to fit this article and edited for clarity.

SERIOUS LAUGHTER

2023-10-04T15:08:07+00:00

ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELDWORK AND “HAVING AN IDEOLOGY”

2023-03-09T12:38:53+00:00

In European anthropological circles there was a burst of interest in the topic of ideology in the 1970s in the wake of the riots of May 1968 in Paris and consequent intense interpretative conflict about theory among French intellectuals. The ideas then discussed in the wider context of the Cold War still have pertinence to the present day when ideology seems to clothe, if not inspire, armed confrontations and authoritarian forms of government. This article reviews the intellectual formation then current among Western anthropologists, points to its deficiencies, and notes that even though the issues then debated about ideology still have some interest they were proper to their time. Since then, not only has anthropology moved on, but the world and the very purchase of “political ideology” has fundamentally changed. In this light I re-visited my fieldnotes from research in Siberia in the 1990s and 2000s and I attempt with hindsight to reflect on my ethnographic experience and its relevance for today. Finally, I introduce some remarks about the relevance of all this to the contemporary situation in Russia.

MINERVA’S OWL FLEES FROM GUNFIRE:

2023-04-22T14:38:09+00:00

Anthropologists who do research in regions in which armed conflict breaks out between ethnic or religious-heritage communities are often called upon to give opinions on the events there. When such a conflict becomes the subject of international moral discourses, the pressure on scholars to conform to dominant positions is acute, and can lead to analyses that are not well grounded in what can be reasonably understood as facts on the ground, but that adhere to moralizing discourses that not only favour one side over another, but that depict as illegitimate, and often immoral, discussions that do anything more than condemn the other side. In the 1990s, the wars in ex-Yugoslavia led to conflicts between scholars that were too often phrased as ad hominem moral disqualifications of those taking unpopular positions, even when the latter’s views were well grounded in what could be learned about the conflict. This article is a reflection by a veteran of such ad hominem attacks by scholars whose concerns were not with the accuracy of the writings they attacked, but rather with whether the positions assailed were supposedly in conflict with moral(ising) stances. The issues are not new, or unique to the conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia, so perhaps this personal account can be of some relevance to others who may face similar issues.

OLD-NEW COLONIAL TENDENCIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY:

2023-03-10T23:20:33+00:00

Taking autoethnographic and reflexive approaches as a background, this article reflects on the tendency of a number of Western Anglophone academic writings to impose a patronising perspective on, and indeed try to silence, commentary on Ukraine concerning the ongoing Russian invasion. This line of argumentation has become known as “westplaining”, and it seems to have taken the place of the old “orientalism”. Such interventions neglect or elide the variety of regional perspectives and their entangled histories, embodied experiences and emotional contexts that are all too germane to those of us who have been doing fieldwork in Ukraine for years now. Such a regrettable imposition of ill-equipped “westplaining” thinking results in a presentation of a distanced, patronising, sometimes partisan and too-commonly facile view of the complexity of current events. Through ostensibly disinterested and compassionate appeals to listen to the “western” perspective first, the local insiders’ voices are effectively silenced. In contrast, I discuss the importance of emotional testimonies and active empathy in social anthropology as responses to collective evil and violence, and as one possible way to overcome the borders that intellectual colonialism creates within the academic community.

REVISITING POSITIONALITY IN CRITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY:

2023-04-17T10:29:08+00:00

Within the field of critical anthropology, the scope of the reflection goes beyond one’s own society, encompassing a thorough exploration of anthropologists themselves as complex products of their socio-cultural environments. This aspect is becoming increasingly important in today’s critical analysis of the status of anthropology. Drawing on the insights of radical anthropologists, this article explores the
economic and political context that shapes anthropological practice. While radical critics of the 1970s were confronted with well-defined sources of authority, the rise of neoliberalism disperses power and complicates the pursuit of critical anthropology. The question remains: Can critical anthropology maintain its potency amidst the influences it seeks to challenge? This question resonates as a central introspective point for contemporary critical anthropologists, inviting them to navigate the complex web of power, subjectivity, and socio-political context in their pursuit of transformative scholarship.

CRUEL SPEECH:

2023-04-29T12:04:34+00:00

This paper interrogates the official purveyance of exterminist rhetoric in Russia’s war on Ukraine, with a particular focus on state media discourse. Over decades, the Putin regime has constructed an overarching system of intertwined narratives about Ukraine, centred on historical and geopolitical fables and exhortations to violence, and conveyed via repetitive tropes and tones of speech. These are ritualistic semi-scripted televised discussions (“agitainment”) featuring state officials, hack journalists, and prowar scholars. This elaborate discursive spectacle models a sadistic affect and seems designed to crush empathy towards Ukrainian civilians and among Russia’s own citizens. Anthropological and critical discursive approaches to the circulation of utterance suggest avenues for analysing the impacts, obvious and subtle, of these rhetorical and aesthetic devices in the context of terror directed both internationally and domestically.

AN ENGAGED STUDY OF RELIGION:

2023-03-22T22:34:00+00:00

The activist approach remains a neglected area in the study of religion(s). By activist, we mean a socially engaged yet non-confessional stance that focuses on the scholar dealing with the relationship between religion and the public sphere. While other disciplines are incorporating the socio-political and socially transformative potential of academic knowledge production into their curricula, the field of the study of religion(s) is lagging behind. The (dis)engagement and rejection of activist approaches in the study of religion seems to be determined by paradigms of knowledge production, the dominance of understanding and explanatory approaches, the programmatic socio-political neutrality of the religious studies scholar imposed by the discipline, and claims to the specificity and uniqueness of the object of study. However, as we attempt to show, several modes of engagement can be identified that lie between the scholar’s attitudes of engagement and programmatic neutrality in the study of religion(s), namely translating, deconstructing, meditating and transforming. We propose that these modes should be included in the spectrum of approaches that straddle the critical and activist study of religion. We argue for the radical mode of engagement as a further step in developing the link between research and activism in the study of religion. In doing so, we focus on the scholar(s) of religion as an authority figure, an agent of power distribution, capable of proposing reformulations, accompanying negotiations, and supporting processes of reordering the contemporary post-secular public sphere. This article is an invitation to discuss the activist approach within the scientific study of religion. We also hope to stimulate debate on more radical forms of the activist approach, which we would call “the radical study of religion(s)”.

INTRODUCTION:

2023-11-15T17:37:30+00:00

THE BIEBRZA HYDROSOCIAL LANDSCAPE

2023-08-28T14:40:29+00:00

The author analyses narratives about the environment in the largest national park in Poland. She attempts to present the socio-cultural aspect of water in Podlasie, based on the concept of the hydrosocial cycle as interpreted by Jamie Linton and Jessica Budds (2013), but extending it to the non-human world. In the Biebrza Valley there are many different environmental discourses, as well as conflicts
related to the different approaches to the relationship between nature and humans. Two of them are dominant: the discourse of the employees and experts of the Biebrza National Park (“institutional”) and that of the dissatisfied inhabitants (“agricultural”). The author moves away from the relativistic understanding of knowledge, typical of ethnography.