Digging up a Concrete Jungle

4) How did the new ‘subjectivity’ of residents like Gerald generate profit?

-for profit model necessitating bureaucratic failure >argues against aid-based institutions being publicly traded companies

>incentives corruption in the form of money mismanagement

(little trickle down to those in need, most capital flows to shareholders)

-direct tension between subjective use value, and objective exchange value >Insurance company undervalues personal, subjective value of home >Harvey’s tyranny of exchange value >use value extremely high for Gerald, but in the context of a for profit market, the value is in his home not being used/repaired. If profits were diverted to repair his home for his use, that would mean less surplus value would be diverted to the aid company's investors/shareholders >a part of market fundamentalism is putting subjective needs of others (such as housing) below wants of others (such as surplus capital). This surplus capital often comes at the cost of what value others put on that need, which ends results in the denial of that need (a paradoxical relationship)

Neoliberalism (refined for this context)- the role of voluntary aid, and the role of forced privatization of local public goods and social services (neoliberalism logic may see a overlap between the two)

Role of “big government” - frequent denial of federal grants to rebuild, awarded to individual citizens , increasing role of big go’vt to achieve profit driven solutions

profit driven solutions- underlying logic that profit motive incentives individuals to act, to do good, and to mobilize resources to where they are needed most (profit over people approach)

market logic- Harvey’s “tyranny of exchange value”, freedom is awarded to those who can afford it

neoliberal capitalism- global in scope, local impacts “Privately organized, publicly funded” “little regulatory oversight”

market driven governance- the smaller the gov’t, the more easily it is co-oped by larger corporations

market fundamentalism- hegemony of market forces and of exchange value

for-profit market- the inefficiencies of profit, pulling resources in other directions but down to where they are most needed

second-order disaster- product of the delayed recovery

business of social suffering- profiting off of human suffering and social assistance, often with federal aid to companies

disaster capitalism- “turning sorrows into opportunities for capital investments”

*recovery industry- “blurring of investment potential with humanitarian need”

foucault neoliberalism- neoliberalism does not mean making new spaces, which are more free of gov’t intervention, it means using government as a tool of organized capitalist forces

*affect economy-  reliance on “specific kind of suffering” to generate new profits , mobilizing low or unpaid volunteers , seeing social safety nights not as right but an “affective choice”

affective surplus- affect being tied to surplus profits, instead of sincere help/pragmatic solidarity

virtuous circle of philanthropic capitalism- “assumed that charitable work can also be profitable”

1) Why are terms such as ‘informal sector’ or ‘informal economy’ not adequate to address the livelihoods the author is describing?

Reiterates that:

- not all people make their living from “productive labor” (88)

-many places have no geographic “comparative advantage” and are “left out of the global production regime” (89-90)

-”Marxian overvaluation of production” and emphasis on skilled laborers of the “formal economy”  (92) On the informal economy:

-”’when most of the economy is ‘informal’ the usefulness of the category becomes questionable’” (93)

-academics have failed to produce an alternative terminology to refer to “informal economy” (93)

- questions legality and formality of the “formal economy” by saying ”even very large corporations evade regulations, laws, and taxes” (93)

-”combination of precariousness and flexibility is not well captured by either the languages of ‘informality’ or that of the ‘lumpen’” (93)

-instead of informality or lumpen, prefers to speak of “improvisation under conditions of adversity” (94)

- puts forth the question: are those on the margins, within the non-formal economy, engaging in  ”’micro enterprises’” or  “‘survivalist enterprises’”?   (94)

Free Market Neoliberalism- political economy of “exclusion” (3), rising sea lifts all boats logic

Social Welfare Programs- “creation and expansion of extensive social welfare programs targeting the poor anchored in schemes that directly transfer small of cash to large numbers of low-income people” (1)

Microcredit- “the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history.” (wikipedia)

Microfinance- “ microfinance is a movement whose object is "a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers."[1] Many of those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty” “In some regions, for example Southern Africa, microfinance is used to describe the supply of financial services to low-income employees, which is closer to the retail finance model prevalent in mainstream banking.” (wikipedia)

The Rise and Rise of Social Protection -social welfare is not always decreasing under neoliberalism, sometimes expanding

Disjuncture- “between certain influential scholarly stories about neoliberalism and concrete developments at the level of social policy” (2)

A New Kind of Welfare State- main example is South Africa (2) “seems almost the opposite of the standard neoliberal model” (5) “just give money to the poor” (2)

South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Plan- came after apartheid, “‘mixed economy’” (4), structural re-adjustment plan for South Africa

Massive Labor Surpluses- b/c of lack of agricultural and mining jobs which country usually relied on, contrast to “new wealth...being generated” (4)

Persistent Mass Unemployment- around 25% unemployment rate

Economic Liberalization- “business friendly, ‘growth-led’ strategy” (4)

Politics of Denunciation- academic strain where political identities are based off denunciation what currently exists, often in the abstract, without forming concrete political opposition, parties, or movements (4)

Social Protection Schemes- grants for elders and children

Living Standards Measures- since the intro. Of social protection schemes, poverty has decreased dramatically

Reparations- grants as a form of reparations (again, opening up the idea of grants to all, even those who do not work)

Liberation in South Africa- “in the context of new economic realities” such as massive unemployment, increasingly took the form of looking to the state as care-taker/provider

Politics of Distribution- generally same beliefs held about distribution across race/class lines, “increasingly decoupled from issues of labor and labor supply” (12)

Super Exploitation- state keeping labor flexible and mobile, so as to destabilize them, industries of care often put onto “already impoverished rural communities...that afflicted not only workers themselves but also their communities and regions of origin” (10)

Other Kinds of Power- political rights (12), new forms of distribution “associated with new kinds of political claim-making and new possibilities for political mobilization” (14)

The Cash Transfer Revolution- increasing global trend,  most have conditions attached, rooted in Latin America

Development Revolution from the Global South- author questions whether this is actually a new phenomena, idea of welfare states nothing new, rooted in Keynesian economics (14)

Weak States- “characterized by feeble fiscal capacity, bureaucratic dysfunction, and widespread corruption” (13)

Just Give Money to the Poor- form of aid that relies on cash transfers, straying away from trying to reform recipients  (2)

Informal Livelihoods- informal economies, social networks of capital (which can lead to economic capital)

Basic Income Grant- “small monthly cash payment to each and every individual citizen” (17)

Dependency- challenges notion that greats will lead to dependency,  (or maybe it does but not necessarily an unhealthy one) Particularly makes elderly and women less dependent on males

Life, Not Idleness- BIG can offer a way out of the stagnation of poverty

Elaborate Ceremonial Gift Institutions- offers kula ring and potlatch as examples

Mutualities of Poverty- “bind southern Africans to both markets and eachother” (25)

Politics of Opposing Neoliberalism- advocates pragmatic politics, focus on policy, strategies, and tactics

Human Capital- “‘reproduction of labor force’” , capitalism now has less need for low-skilled migrant laborers (11), used as justification for BIG by neoliberals (27)

Pro Poor- questions whether results which are “pro poor” can result from neoliberal elements, says “effects are obtained in spite of ‘neoliberal program elements...elements may themselves be put in service of those affects” (28), means that neolib logic is used to argue against social safety nets (which breed dependency) and for BIG, because it makes human capital more productive

Article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/why-we-write/459909/

In his article, “The Enduring Solidarity of Whiteness,” Ta-Nehisi Coates takes aim at Marxist conceptions of race and class as being inadequate and “outmoded” (Winnant 187). It is through this critique that he brings us closer to a critical theory of race. Like Winnant’s critique of past theorizations of race theory, Ta-Nehisi Coates criticizes the Marxist theories of race for treating race solely as “an ideological construct” and “an objective condition.”

As Winnant and Coates point out, the Marxist conception of race often sees race in terms of a ‘false consciousness’ (Winnant 182). Coates gives us a tangible example when he quotes Marxist Cedric Johnson as saying “‘blackness is still derogated but anti-black racism is not the principal determinant of material conditions and economic mobility for many African Americans.’” (Coates) For Johnson, race is primarily a tool to cause divisiveness, a “weapon deployed to advance the interest of a plutocratic minority” (Coates). Johnson argues that people of color need to realize their class consciousness, and forget about their racial consciousness, because class consciousness will essentially render a racial consciousness obsolete. Johnson fails to consider Winnant’s observation that “at the level of experience, of everyday life, race is a relatively impermeable part of our identities.” (Winnant 182) It is not just blackness which Coates theorizes. By theorizing whiteness, Coates brings us closer to a critical theory of race. Coates complicates our notion of race and class by highlighting the dialectical relation in which they interact, or don’t interact, with each other. He writes “white supremacy was a force in and of itself, a vector often intersecting with class, but also operating independent of it” (Coates). Winnant hints at Marxists such as Johnson when she said ”whiteness becomes a matter of anxiety and concern” (187). What Coates and Winnant are exposing, is a strain of white fragility within the Marxist movement. Because those who most identify with class-based oppression may be insulated from racial-based stress, a defensive move which comes eerily close to color-blind racism is usually the response to a critical theorization of race. But Coates suggests that something else might be happening which is not quite white fragility, but still in a similar vein. Johnson sincerely recognizes that racism exists and cares about the issue, which distinguishes him from those afflicted with white fragility. As Coates points out, he makes the mistake of providing class-based solutions to fix problems that have more complex dimensions. Ironically, Coates is lambasted by Johnson for having “liberal” followers, but Johnson shares the same tendency as the neoliberals he criticizes. In setting aside race in favor of class-based solutions, although more radical, Johnson shares the same “color-blind” ideology that liberals favor (Winnant). While it is true that the ”movement of capital and labor has internationalized all nations, all regions,” it is important to understand how that capital moves over different spaces (Winnant 186). As a part of a critical theory of race, it is through understanding how capital moves over different spaces that we come toward an understanding of how capitalism is racially differentiated. A major way in which Coates supports a critical theory of race, is accomplishing one of Winant's main qualifiers for doing so, which is pointing out that the “geography of race is becoming more complex” (186) For example, Coates proves Winnant’s point by showing us that impoverished black people are much more likely to live in concentrated poverty and are much more likely to be incarcerated compared to impoverished white people. Ultimately, Coates criticized Johnson for his failure to critically take account of uneven geographic development for different races, which makes poverty different experienced by different races. Coates writes “concentrated poverty extends out from the wallet out to the surrounding institutions—the schools, the street, the community center, the policing.” This is not to say that Coates is treating race “as an objective condition” (Winnant). Coates is simply saying that race is a real condition, real because it evolved out of unique oppression. Coates is also not falling into the practice of over-categorizing, because he is making the point that, for both black communities and black individuals, poverty is experienced differently than how non black people experience it.

-means by which camp residents were surveyed were often done in a way which didn’t ensure representativeness (127)

-on page 128, implies that committee members are less critical of NGO’s, out of fear of not getting aid

-members of the committee are often too busy to hear out the concerns/needs of their respective camp residents (129)

-leaders of committees often maintained positions of power after aid was gone (131) -pre-existing neighborhood associations not taken into account (137)

-abuses of power/favoritism (140)

-”majority of the population had negative impressions...around ⅓ said they did not have sufficient information to answer the question”  (154-155)

-personal social capital comes into play, such as Max’s, which can sometimes inadvertently who makes up committees, and therefore, who receives aid and who does not (133 and 139)

-”sharing information is sharing power...trickle down imperialism” (144) -”NGOS can leave at will when their contract expires” (158) - “a state of being a spectator, watching instead of acting” (158)

-”culture of dependency” (158)

Intro:

1) How do people in Haiti experience disaster as a two-step process?

-”the first was the earthquake. The second was the multi-billion dollar aid response, which triggered a range of unintended negative consequences” (3)

-second step exacerbates violence and “shock” of the first step

-difference between intention and impact

2) How is Haiti an ‘aid regime’?

-”response to earthquake was one of the largest humanitarian aid responses to date” (4)

-Haiti often called a “Republic of NGO’s” (4)

-International Organization for Migration does census of International Displaced Persons,. Because of political pressures for those in power to gain support and maintain their power, as well as pressure from donors to see results (probably for their own satisfaction) this creates a situation where the aid complex is incentivized to move people out of camps, therefore no longer making these refugees IDP’s, which shows official progress. Sometimes IDP’s are violently removed from camps.  

3) What are the dynamics of ‘Humanitarianism 2.0’?

-”moral economy” (10)

-”transformative agenda” (11) focus on changing local norms and ethics, this essentially means a tendency to turn aid into modernity/neocolonial project

-”underlying capitalist market logic” (12)

-”top-down, NGOized, depoliticized, international”  (12)

4) Why are the stakes much higher than Haiti?

Chapter 4

1) Research the concept of ‘habitus’ online and speculate on the use of the term by the author through his reliance on chingaderes in his research.

-habitus is the dialectic between agency and lack of agency created by an interplay between an individual and larger social structures

-chingaderes is the ‘habitus of the Mexican working class”  (89)

this is essentially a way to cope with life that can sometimes be a “tragic tale” (89)

-chingaderes is an exercise of habitus because it shows that migrants are subject to larger political economic structures, often with misfortune, but also have the agency to interpret their social reality and relationships to other individuals  

2) How do Memo and Lucho embody the migrant experience?

-”both came from working class families” (94)

-”both were determined to get across the border at any cost” (100)

-”male, lack formal education, have crossed the border multiple times, and have been fully incorporated into the US undocumented labor force for years” (106)

3) Does boundary enforcement deter migration?

-no, a “minimal role” if any (101), no “statistically significant effect”

-only when looking at certain locales, but to say it “deters” migration would be misleading because it only funnels it to another locale

4) What is the importance of Juan Bosco for the author’s research?

-potential research subjects are temporarily in a stable location, and not on the move

-safe house, somewhat shielded by mexican authorities and drug cartels

1) What are the effects of transnational migration on families?

-necroviolence particularly extreme for Catholic families (which most immigrant families are) -”ambiguous loss...an eternal state of grief, confusion, and desperation...the pinnacle of human sorrow” (274)

- since “those who make it through the hybrid collectif rarely want to brave it a second time,”or want their families to brave it at all, most who migrate do not see their families again or for years at a time (Marx’s alienation from family)     (270)

2) Do you feel empathy for all parties involved in undocumented migration?  Can you speculate on a policy to address the issues raised in the ethnography?

-Yes, using the theory of the habitus, we know that individuals do not have complete agency over their beliefs and actions. This lack of agency is true even for those with the most power in the system that propels necroviolence and necropolitics, which would likely be the policy makers and upper echelon of para-military corporations.   Although, since there is a hierarchy of agency and privilege with all the parties involved in undocumented immigration, (with undocumented immigrants at the bottom, and mentioned above at the top), this also brings forth a hierarchy of empathy.

Introduction

1) What is ‘prevention through deterrence’?

-”a strategy that largely relies on rugged and desolate terrain to impede the flow of people from the south” (5)

-”placing heightened  security in and around the downtown port of entry in El Paso, would force undocumented migrants to attempt crossings in more rural areas that were easier for law enforcement to monitor...this initial strategy...was soon adopted  as a part of a new federal project.” (31) -”made immigration less visible [to the U.S. public] and created a scenario in which the policing of undoc. people occurred in areas with few witnesses.” likely increased the chances of undoc. migrants being victims of physical violence  by border agents

2) Describe the author’s ‘four-field’ approach and method.

-”ethnography, archeology, forensic science, and linguistics”

-”intended to challenge the preconceived notions about what a holistic anthropology can look like and hot it can be deployed in politically hostile terrain”

wide-scope of methods/feild makes “employment” not only more flexible, and therefore more adept at responding to “political hostility,” but also more sound as research in and of itself.

3) What does the author mean by the phrase ‘modern border industrial complex’?

-network or assemblage of private and government entitites, who work together, to deter immigrants from entering the country

-modern meaning: “this book abruptly starts in 1993, the year that the policy later coined ‘Prevention Through Deterrence’ was first deployed.” (5)

also “everything changed, though, after the passage of...NAFTA in 1994.” (6)

4) Describe the undocumented migrant project.  Why was it created? -started with archeological methods, and then branched out from there, mostly focused on use of technology and the “economic system that undergirds clandestine migration” (11)

-”few scholars or journalists had attempted to write carefully about the physical movement involved in unauthorized migration” (11)

5) How does the author utilize ‘structural violence’ and ‘sideways glances’? [separate post]

Chapter 1

1) How does the author utilize Agamben’s theory of the ‘state of exception’?

-”the process whereby sovereign authorities declare emergencies in order to suspend the legal protections afforded to individuals while simultaneously unleashing the power of the state upon them” (27) -points out a contradiction in the application of state force

-originally applied to concentration camps

-Does being subject to “spaces of exception,” make those people “subaltern” relative to those not in those spaces?

2) How does the author utilize the theoretical notion of ‘bare life’?

-If the definition of “bare life” is “individuals whose deaths are of little consequence,” is it also fitting to describe them as subaltern in a U.S context? If they are usually “do the jobs that most people are unwilling or don;t want to do,” then how disposable are they? Is it the scale of impoverished migrants, mostly informed by a exported, Disneyfied culture of what America beholds for them.  (64)

3) How is the desert considered a ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victimizer’?

-US Dep’t of Homeland Security Pamphlet which was posted inside migrant shelter read “‘The next time you try to cross the border without documents you could end up a victim of the desert’...wording of the pamphlet personified the sert as a perpetrator of violence targeting migrants” (29)

-”providing this federal agency with plausible deniability regarding blame for any victims the desert may claim” (30) - Tucson police chief declaring that “the desert does not discriminate” (43)

Chapter 2

1) How does the author use the theoretical notions of the ‘hybrid colectif’ and ‘actants’?

-”agency is an emergent property  crated by the interaction of many heterogeneous componets known as actants, sources of action that may be human or nonhuman”

-”people or objects don’t act in isolation, but instead have complex relationships at different moments across time and space that sometimes create things or make things happen” (39) -”’agency as performative’” (39)

-cartesian division between Border Patrol, desert/natural environment, and migrants  

2) How does the author describe the ‘Sonoran hybrid collectif’ through the ‘semifictionalized ethnography’ of the migrant journey in this chapter?

-semi ethnofiction defined as “‘restructuring of events occurring within one or more ethnographic investigations into a single narrative” (43-44)

-as a political tool which is used by humans but also acts back upon humans, although it does so politically

3) How does the author ‘contaminate’ prevention through deterrence?

-using semifictionalized ethnography which supports his claim about PTD: “PTD should thus be thought of as a perpetual motion machine started by the Border Patrol and powered by other politically implicated actants” (61)

-showing how Border Patrol has “intentionally set the stage so that other actants can do most of the brutal work” (61)

Chapter 3

1) How does the author use the notion of ‘multispecies ethnography’ to demonstrate the elements of the ‘intimate connection’ he is attempting to describe in the desert?

-multispecies ethnography means focus on animals’ role

-”lives and deaths of humans and nonhumans are closely intertwined and jointly shaped by cultural, economic, and political forces.” (64)

-tries to “complicate the concept of biopolitics”  (64)

-compares the desert to a slaughterhouse, as both are “‘zones of confinement’” which conceal processes of violence (done to both labor and animals)

2) How does the author use Mdembe’s theoretical notion of ‘necropolitics’ and ‘necroviolence’?

-criticizes biopower for being too general -tries to take Foucault’s concept of biopower  and  “account for the specific ways that death and the right to kill (or let live) are exercised in contemporary forms of political power” (66)

-”increasingly, the political is masked as war, security, or the battle against terror” (66)

-necropolitics can be defined as “killing in the name of sovereignty” (66-67) -”’the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in power and the capacity to dictate who may live and die’” (67)

-desert and selective policing of border used as primary tool which results in this necropolitics

-”necroviolence: violence performed and produced through the specific treatment of corpses that is perceived to be offensive,sacrilegious, or inhumane by the perpetrator, the victim (and her or his cultural group), or both.” (69)

-n.v. different from n.p. because n.v. is focused on treatment post-mortem, even though n.v is still a “deeply political act,” which suggests overlap of meanings in the author's’ context  (71)

-during war, nv. is “practically a cultural universal” (69)

-because n.v. often erases the physical body, it often “allows the perpetrators of violence plausible deniability” (71)

-n.v. has a deep history in colonial projects worldwide (69-71)

3) What are the elements of a ‘desert taphonomy’ and the cathartes aura?

-taphonomy defined as “the science of the postmortem process” (72)

-”taphonomy is a social process” (73)

-turkey vultures are cathartes aura (75) -”this constant physical movement and destruction of body parts and personal effects suggest that with enough time, a person left to rot on the ground can disappear completely” (81)

-”the vultures eating flesh and ripping clothes represent the final stage of ‘deterrence’ that emerges from this hybrid collectif” (84)

4) How does the author describe ‘necroviolence’ in relation to the ‘deathscapes’ of the desert?

How does the author of “The Land of Open Graves” utilize ‘structural violence’ and ‘sideways glances’?

- the point of ’sideways glances’ is to try and overcome the  “overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy  with the victims which inexorably function as a lure which prevents us from thinking” (Zizek 2009:4)

-Zizek essentially means being extremely reflexive and not jumping head-on into field sites, especially in contexts of violence. While Zizek takes this approach to an extreme that the author does not; the author still draws heavily upon Zizek’s method so as to give us a alternative to, in the words of Zizek, being “bombarded with mediatic images of violence.” (Zizek 2009:8) In the words of the author of “The Land of Open Graves,” this sideways’ glance is an alternative to the “routinized pain and suffering that accompany [border crossings]” as well as the spectalized representations of such violence in popular media representations and discourse. (17)

-”the only appropriate approach to my [research] subject thus seems to be one which permits variations on violence kept at a distance out of respect towards its victims”  (Zizek 2009:4)

-”now often conservatives [sic] who argue that race is an illusion” (181)

race as an ideological construct:

-understood in the sense of a ‘false consciousness’ (182)

-usually lends itself to color-blind racism as alternative

-ignores “salience a social construct can develop over half a millennium or more of diffusion...as a fundamental principle of social organization and identity formation”” (184)

-”at the level of experience, of everyday life, race is a relatively impermeable part of our identities” (184)

race as an objective condition:

-”sociopoli. circumstances change over historical time, racially defined groups adapt or fail to adapt to these changes, achieving mobility or being mired in poverty” (184)

-fetish to categorize, even after admitting “race is a sociohistorical construct” (185)

-”insufficient appreciation to performative [sic] aspects of race” (185)

-”ignores processual and relational character of racial identity and racial meaning” (185)

-”cannot account fo the way actors, both individual and collective, have to manage incoherent and conflictual racial meanings and identities in everyday life” (185)

toward a critical theory of race:

-”explicitly historicist” (185)

-3 min. conditions

apply to contemporary political relationships

apply to global context

apply across historical time         (185)

contemp. poli. relationships:

-in us, “now possible to perpetuate racial domination without making any explicit reference to race at all” (186)

-”generating new identities, collectives, (imagined) communities that are relatively less permeable to the hegemonic system” (186)

Global context of race:

-“insufficiency of the simple dualism of ‘Europe and its others’” (186)

-”geography of race is becoming more complex” (186)

-”movement of capital and labor has internationalized all nations, all regions” (186)

-”whiteness becomes a matter of anxiety and concern” (187) >white fragility?

The emergence of racial time:

Erving Goffman was a qualitative and symbolic-interactionist sociologist. His most notable theory came to be known as “The Dramaturgical Analysis,” presented in his book “The Presentation of Everyday Life.” (1) Within that analysis is a component called “impression management” defined as “ the control (or lack of control) and communication of information through the performance.” (1) Whether conscious or unconscious, this performance is “shaped by environment and audience, constructed to provide others with "impressions" that are consonant with the desired goals of the actor.” (1)

This theory may be useful to anthropologists because it draws attention to the many characters or proverbial faces which potential research participants can project outward to be observed by the anthropologist. To strengthen the soundness of the research, Goffman’s theories highlight the necessity of not only interacting with many participants of a community, but also engaging in long-term engagement. The purpose would be to try to distinguish between what is performative for the research participants and perhaps what lies beneath, under, or what Goffman referred to as “backstage.”  (2)

In Goffman’s Dramaturgical Analysis, the backstage area “allows [people] to express aspects of themselves that their audience would find unacceptable.” (2) While the anthropologist is an outsider, it is precisely this position that might allow for research participants to feel more comfortable opening up to the anthropologists, especially if sincerity and reflexivity are maintained on the part of the anthropologist.

Goffman went on to apply his conclusions in his Dramaturgical Analysis, to behavior within what he deemed “total institutions.” (3) Typically prisons, mental hospitals, and boarding schools, these total institutions “mould (new) inhabitants and disciplines them to follow the rhythm and rules of the house.” (3) While Goffman took a more micro approach, Gramsci’s  analysis, although similar, was centered more around the context of cultural flows and dominant norms and ethics steeped in eurocentricity and capitalism.

Anthropologist, Antonio Gramsci's theories were essentially a precursor to Goffman’s insights. Gramsci's notion of hegemony meant “establishing an ephemeral unconscious acceptance of existing social institutions.“ (1) This  shared many similarities with Goffman’s Dramaturgical Analysis and ideas of impression management. (1) We can see how Goffman zoomed in on Gramsci’s analysis: where actors act according to their “environment and audience... that are consonant with the desired goals of the actor.” (1) In Gramsci’s formulation of cultural hegemony these “impressions” took on more of a deterministic role, but also occurred on a macro level, in addition to a micro level. In addition, practicing anthropology can be a highly performative practice in and of itself. It is not uncommon for anthropologist to compartmentalize their roles, separating their non-anthropologist self, from their anthropologist self. In an increasingly networked world, some anthropologist point out the problematic engagements which may ensue between research participant and researcher. For example, what does this mean for reciprocity when a research participant can “friend” the researcher on Facebook? (4) In the context of Goffman’s theories, this can be interpreted in one of two ways. One, this allows for an increased reciprocity, with each party seeing what the other presents to their friends, family, and peers. Another interpretation, is that social media is already used in a highly performative way by most users (whether researcher or non).

References: 1. http://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/theory/Presentation%20of%20Self.htm

2. http://sociology.about.com/od/B_Index/g/Frontstage.htm

3. http://www.historyofsocialwork.org/eng/details.php?cps=17

1) What is the premise of Stoller’s argument for ethnographic fieldwork, practice and writing?

The premise of Stoller’s argument is that anthropologists “should incorporate the griot's historically conscientious and respectfully decentered conception and practice of ethnography, a conception and practice of ethnography that reverberates with the tension between the political and the poetic. Such an incorporation requires that ethnographers spend long periods of time apprenticing themselves to elders, long periods of time mastering knowledge. This also impels ethnographers to complement their explorations in social theory with tales of a people that are respectful and poetically evocative.” (354) Essentially, the role of the anthropologist should be expanded far outside of the realm of the mere data-gatherer.” (361)

2) How are ethnographies considered to be ‘griotic tales’?

Stoller notes how  "griots are spokespersons and ambassadors, matrimonial go-betweens, genealogists and historians, advisors and court-jesters.” (354) With the exception of the last descriptor or role (anthropologists are hardly ever comedic, but comedians can be very anthropological in their capacity to be storytellers while simultaneously subverting normative behavior and ethics), anthropologists have been known to fill all the same roles which griots do in Sahelian West Africa. In order to produce an ethnography, constant negotiation over meanings, values, and representations, must take place with their participant/audience, which is also part of the griot’s process. Furthermore, Stoller writes  “Like griots, ethnographers must negotiate and renegotiate their social roles across a maze of cultural boundaries.” (358)

3) What is the foundation of Barthes view on writing in response to poststructural criticism?  What was the impact in anthropology?

Taking a poststructuralist criticism of writing, Barthes’ states that “one does not write in isolation of cultural and historical conditions. Writing is therefore not context free; it is shaped by political and sociological factors.” (355) Although “limited,” citing poststructuralist criticism’s effect on anthropology, Stoller wrote that “[anthropologists] criticized ethnographic realism, in which anthropologists constructed societies as totalities. They delved into the moral implications that colonialist and neocolonialist politics held for the profession of anthropology... they questioned the basis of ethnographic authority.” (356) In essence, anthropology became a more reflexive discipline by accounting for power inequalities laden in history. In addition, anthropology became a more discursive practice. Anthropologists began to try to “take greater responsibility for the social and political ramifications of the words and images conveyed by their disseminated works.” (356) [How did they chose to take greater responsibility? By changing to the “authorless,middle voice?”]

4) What does Stoller take away from his training in sorcery?

From his training in sorcery, Stoller realized first-hand the limitations of text to describe an existential phenomena and ethnographic epiphanies. Furthermore, concerning his participants, Stoller  “felt that such a "representation" of sorcery was a violation of the trust my teachers had placed in [him].” (359) A significant reason why his participants had entrusted him to practice esoteric cultural knowledge, is so that he could “tell their story with dignity and respect.” (359)