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- Convenors:
-
Christina Toren
(St. Andrews University)
Deborah James (LSE)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- Wills 3.31
- Start time:
- 20 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 6
Short Abstract:
This session is proposed in celebration of the work of Adam Kuper, who is due to retire in 2007.
Long Abstract:
Adam Kuper has always been intrigued by the history of ideas. From his earliest interest in the history of UK social anthropology, through his exploration of why western scholars invented primitive society, to the history of European close marriages in relation to the development of kinship studies, he has been fascinated by how contexts mould academic concerns and how these concerns in turn shape their contexts. One aspect of his work on this has been to explore how different schools of Anthropology - British, American, etc - have emerged. But his work on these national traditions goes beyond mere academic interest. He has also actively contributed to the founding, and encouraged the further development of, other schools, as well as helping to promote dialogue and debate among and between these. Most notably, for present purposes, is his role as co-founder of EASA itself, but he also played an important part in founding the PAAA (Pan African Anthropological Association). In the midst of all these activities and intellectual interests, Adam has been noted for his plain speaking about cultural sacred cows. His critical perspective on claims of indigenous people, in particular, in his recent paper 'The Return of the Native', has sparked controversy. We invite papers, debates or panel discussions that reflect presenters' own perspectives on the topics below. Rather than including deliberate reference to Adam's own work, we encourage papers and ideas that provide a diversity of insights on these matters, from the writer's own point of view. 'Culture wars': Britain, America, Europe and Africa in changing anthropological trajectories; Trajectories in anthropology: how social and intellectual contexts produce anthropological concerns. Organisationally, the session will include formal paper-based panels as well as panels focused on key papers which then invite broader discussion and debate.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Dimitra Gefou-Madianou (Panteion University)
Paper short abstract:
Being part of a state-dependent university system, Greek anthropology retains a critical stance towards the view of culture-as-civilisation which underlies the nation-building project. Such questioning of positivistic agendas and interpretations defines the development of the discipline in academia.
Paper long abstract:
Over the last decades, the usage of the concept of 'culture' has stirred great controversy among anthropologists, yet it remains one of the central concepts of the discipline. While issues are still debated in the anthropological centres of Europe and America, in the European periphery, where the discipline has been a newcomer, the development of the concept as an analytical tool has run into additional difficulties at the level of both academic and other hegemonic socio-political discourses.
The case of Greece exemplifies this predicament perfectly. Putting anthropology in the academic map, prompts Greek anthropologists to enter into discussion not only with long established and discursively powerful disciplines such archaeology, history and folklore, but also with the state and its cognate hegemonic discourses. In varying degrees, these actors conceive 'culture' positivistically and conflate it with 'civilisation'. In this way, they extend the term's genealogy to the glorious and ever-present ancient Greek past while simultaneously fix the eye to the European Union present of the country. These processes mean that 'Greek anthropology' has to juggle with variant conceptualisations of 'culture', retaining its critical stance as a distinct discipline while simultaneously being part of a state-dependent university system. What appears to be at stake here, are not only issues concerning the meaning of culture, its content and its uses as a concept, but also the development of anthropology itself and its embeddedness into the Greek academia.
Moreover, with Greece becoming a multicultural society, hosting increasing numbers of migrants from former East Europe, Asia and Africa, the discussion over the content and meaning of 'culture' has acquired an urgent character. Seeing a challenge as an opportunity, Greek anthropology positions itself critically in a field of contested definitions of 'culture', both within Greece and the wider academic community, where theoretical deliberations, ethnographic accounts, academic writing and teaching coalesce with strongly rooted hegemonic societal positions and institutional practices. In this quandary Greek anthropology continually resets its agendas and retunes its interpretations.
Andre Gingrich (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
By assessing German and Austrian contributions to the London Africa Institute up until 1939, especially those made by anthropologists like Guenter Wagner and Richard Thurnwald whose loyalty remained with the Nazi regime, this paper honours Kuper’s discussion of the history of social anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses forms of interaction between British anthropologists and those from Austria and Germany before, during, and right after WW II. After an overview of those who came to the UK for political reasons, and of their further careers in the UK and elsewhere (Nadel,Fuerer-Haimendorf, Kirchhof), a special focus will be put upon those whose loyalty remained with the Nazi regime, among them Guenter Wagner and Richard Thurnwald. By assessing German and Austrian contributions to the London Africa institute right until 1939, the paper also will honour Adam Kuper's discussion of the history of social anthhropology.
Grazyna Kubica-Heller (Jagiellonian University)
Paper short abstract:
I trace elements in the Weltanschaung of Polish anthropologists, which represent oppositions to be found throughout Polish cultural history. The individualistic, pluralist stance favoured by the Polish intelligentsia shaped the choices of those landing in England and entering British anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
The paper results from my biographical research on Polish anthropologists. They belonged to two different generations. Malinowski (1884-1942) and Czaplicka (1884-1921) matured even before the Great War, three others (students of Malinowski) in the interwar period.
Their social background was quite similar. They belonged to the main Polish social class, namely intelligentsia. It was not a pro-capitalist 'middle class' as in the West but the post-feudal stratum (gentry deprived of their estates and forced to work in 'intelligent' professions).
I want to find some common elements in their Weltanschaung, which, seems to me, enables anthropological interests and achievements. It would be some individualistic, pluralistic, democratic (and often socialistic) stance as oppose to nationalistic, holistic, hierarchical, exclusive view. This opposition is to be found throughout Polish cultural history and emerges every now and again in new incarnations.
They were all in some opposition to Polish romantic volkskunde, that cultivated the image of folk culture as a reservoir of national values. Landing in England and British anthropology meant choosing a non-nationalistic, scientific project of broad perspectives.
Aleksandar Boskovic (Institute of Archaeology)
Paper short abstract:
The paper outlines the application of different models in explaining the 'Balkan wars' of the 1990s. It is argued that anthropologists are unable to escape evolutionist paradigms, reflected in symbolic dichotomies (like 'culture' vs. 'nature'), but also in less symbolic taking of sides in political conflicts.
Paper long abstract:
Beginning with Kuper's criticism of the contruction of "primitive society," and picking up the points made on the concept of "indigeneity," the paper looks at the application of different models in explaining the "Balkan wars" of 1990s. It is argued that in many cases, anthropologists are unable to escape the evolutionist paradigms, reflected in postulation of symbolic dichotomies (like "culture" vs. "nature"), but also in less symbolic taking of sides in political conflicts.
Benoît de L' Estoile (Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac)
Paper short abstract:
The demise of the Museum of Man and the opening of the Musée du Quai Branly, dedicated to the arts and cultures of the so-called First Peoples, offers a revealing mirror of anthropology’s place in public debates – particularly contemporary ones about cultural pluralism and universalism in France.
Paper long abstract:
A historical perspective is essential to an anthropology of our contemporary world, and to a study of anthropology's role in shaping our self-understandings. In this paper, I want to focus on current changes in the museum world, with the demise of the Museum of Man and the opening in June 2006 of the new Musée du quai Branly, dedicated by the president of the Republic to the arts and cultures of the so called First Peoples (peuples premiers). 'Museums of the Other' offer a distorted, but revealing, mirror of anthropology, and of its place in public debates ; they shed light on contemporary debates about cultural pluralism and universalism in France.
While this debate is often looked at as a conflict between universalism and particularism, it is more fruitful to see it as involving two conflicting definitions of universalism : one that may be called an assimilationist universalism, and the other a differencialist universalism.
Assimilationist universalism, at first closely associated with evolutionist anthropology and Republican ideals of the Mission civilisatrice, both in the metropole and the colonies, is premised on a belief in the universal validity of a set of values and conceptions, that developed first in Europe, but are seen as an ideal to be followed by the rest of the world. By contrast, for differencialist universalism, local ways of being in the world, called 'cultures', are seen as the specific forms taken by a common humanity. This differencialist universalism, which began to emerge between the wars in association with new currents in anthropology, is now embodied in the UNESCO Universal declaration on Cultural Diversity. It is premised not only on the recognition of the diversity of cultures, but on the claim that this pluralism is in itself valuable, and needs protection against the forces of dissolution impinging on it. While the Musée du quai Branly is officially to embody French committment to this differencialist universalism, it is conflicting with the continued use of the language of assimilationist universalism, especially in the field of policies towards minorities.
Vida Savoniakaite (Lithuanian Institute of History)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will explore current issues of cultural contact and conflict in areas of Lithuania where new cultural networks and global capital of EU are penetrating. We will try to compare theoretical discourses about the changing 'culture' and 'society' with local practices and mentalities of people.
Paper long abstract:
The paper will explore current issues of cultural contact and conflict in areas of Lithuania where new cultural networks and global capital of EU are penetrating. Notion of "culture" changes in mentalities, places, spaces, and everyday life of consumer society. On the one hand, Lithuanian government seeks to construct and support national culture in local regions. "Ethnic culture" of small communities is the issue of national cultural identity. What main discourses about local and notional culture are important? On the other hand, the economic policy, funding strategies and social priorities of the EU make a great impact on national governmental policy as well as on contemporary trans-national "culture". New social networks bring new social cultural features. Regional "culture" is assimilating in the processes of de-territorialization. Changes the consumption needs of a community. What are the priorities and consciousness of local people? How does local cultural heritage survive versus global, trans-national mass culture? Finally, what is the opinion of consumer society about current economical, political and social changes? How does time change notions and meanings? We will try to compare theoretical discourses about the current changing "culture" and "society" with local practices and mentalities of the people in Lithuania.
David Gellner (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines debates over democracy and development in Nepal, both before and after the People’s Movement of 1990. Arguably the micro-ethnography of democratic process in Nepal is only now achieving the level of precision of Adam Kuper’s study of Kalahari village politics published in 1970.
Paper long abstract:
The study of democracy and democratization has been re-discovered by anthropologists in recent years. Adam Kuper, who began his anthropological career with a study of a local democracy, can and should serve as an example of the committed, but none the less scholarly, study of democratic ideas in practice. This paper examines the ways in which development and democracy have developed in Nepal both before and after the 'first Andolan (people's movement)' of 1990. Early ideas of democracy focused on village communities and the idea of consensus, and the Panchayat system (1960-1990) imagined the nation as a hierarchical and consensual democracy, a village writ large. Modern ideas of development and democracy focus more on the 'empowerment' of marginal and 'backward' groups. Either way, development in practice is in large part a question of the performance of democracy.
Stephen Gudeman (University of Minnesota Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
Kuper takes on anthropology’s sacred cows. To evoke his controversial themes, I shall explore the dispute that surrounded the book 'I Rigoberta Menchú' in which an ethnographer attacked a sacred cow, but some anthropologists rescued her. Or, did they? Kuper’s themes illuminate this controversy.
Paper long abstract:
From his earliest writings, Adam Kuper has taken on sacred cows (and a few mules) in anthropology, often with a degree of amusement and cynicism but always with intellectual sincerity. Controversy is an important genre if not the stuff of anthropology. Even if many controversies are never resolved, engaging in them clears the brush, raises new issues, creates ideas, and helps us meander forward. To honor this aspect of Kuper's very productive career, I shall reflect - partly in his style - on the controversy that surrounded the book, I Rigoberta Menchú, in which a sacred cow (a Nobel Prize winner) was almost butchered by an ethnographer only to be rescued by a flock of anthropologists. Or did they? Slicing and dicing the controversy suggests that it was peopled by politically correct (and incorrect) animals, was filled with unresolved issues, and revealed many of anthropology's fault lines.
Gillian Evans (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
There is, in Britain, a new policy focus on 'Britishness' instead of multiculturalism, which is said to be either a right-wing agenda or one that dangerously promotes radicalism. What do these policies mean for the white working classes, increasingly preoccupied with defending their own 'culture'?
Paper long abstract:
There is, in Britain, an new and explicit policy focus on 'Britishness' and a movement away from multiculturalism, which is positioned either as an out-of-date right-wing agenda or one that dangerously promotes radicalism. The new focus, then, is on what British people have in common rather than on what differentiates them, which are all the various categories into which kinds of British persons are to be classified and understood. Focusing on the kinds of classifications used in educational statistics this paper explains what categories of Britishness can tell us about white people and, in particular, the white working classes who increasingly rely on an explicit idea of their own 'culture' to defend their interests in Britain's multicultural cities.
Evelyn Plaice (University of New Brunswick)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on Canadian and South African examples, I use Kuper’s discussion of indigeneity to explore anthropological debates on commonality, diversity, social justice and advocacy.
Paper long abstract:
Kuper's discussion of indigeneity raises many pertinent questions about the current focus of anthropology. Is our discipline about commonality, diversity, advocacy or social justice? Can it successfully address all these aspects without losing credibility over the invariable contradictions that arise from lived cultural experiences and expectations? As Sider (2006) has recently pointed out, anthropology is inescapably affected by and influential in policy-making. Here I challenge Sider's bleak assessment of anthropology's limited potential to move beyond the endorsement of colonial legacy, by exploring three cases of land restitution in Canada and South Africa. As is clear in these cases, albeit in revealingly different ways, the management of land restitution is a prime example of how policies affect and influence ethnic identities. Kuper's assessment of indigeneity exposes the reactionary and racist potential in some of anthropology's most honoured and honourable traditions. But it does so in ways that reaffirm anthropology's potential for lively, engaging and powerfully relevant intellectual debate.
John Sharp (University of Pretoria)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropological advice about incorporating black students into the University of Pretoria in the 1940s raises questions about volkekundes’ role in establishing apartheid. Shunning racial integration and domination, the advocated social order bore little relationship to apartheid.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is based on materials in the archives of the University of Pretoria, the main locus of the discipline of Volkekunde in South Africa in the second half of the 20th century. It focuses on several episodes in the late 1940s in which the then newly appointed anthropologists (or volkekundiges) gave the university professional advice about whether or not to incorporate black students. The character of this advice indicates that like many of their fellow Afrikaner academics, the anthropologists were in triumphant mood, convinced that they could refashion the university in accordance with their own convoluted vision of how to avoid both racial integration and white domination. The fact that the university accepted their advice, which they grounded in a principled - if highly selective - reading of international anthropological literature, encouraged them to think that they could apply the same ideas to the restructuring of the wider society.
This turned out to be a much harder task, however, and apartheid practice in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s bore a distinctly tenuous relationship to the anthropologists' idea of instituting a social order that would be 'anthropologically justifiable' by virtue of the fact that it shunned racial domination as well as integration. For a variety of reasons, white South Africans were too wedded to baasskap (white domination) to buy conclusively into a pedantic vision of a just society based on the notion of placing blacks and whites in parallel universes. Apartheid in practice was a never-ending compromise between the Afrikaner anthropologists' vision and the pragmatics of baasskap. In the 1950s and 1960s these anthropologists clung to the belief that they could reform the practice from within, but they lost faith in the 1970s and withdrew from the system entirely in the 1980s. Rather than compromise either of their ideals, they were willing, by then, to render the discipline of Volkekunde marginal to the political debate in the wider society.
These considerations raise questions about the accuracy of past criticisms of the role of Afrikaner anthropologists in the unfolding of apartheid. Their vision was inane, and would certainly have led to unmitigated disaster if it had ever been implemented. But to what extent can one persist in the accusation that that they were willing to serve the Afrikaner Volk, and the practice of apartheid, at any cost?
Alan Barnard (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
This paper ties together three of Adam Kuper’s bugbears: culture, apartheid and the indigenous peoples’ movement. It makes comparisons between the latter two in light of anthropologists’ definitions of ‘culture’ and suggests new directions in the anthropological portrayal of ‘indigenous’ people.
Paper long abstract:
It was easy to attack 'culture' when the notion was used as a synonym for 'race': in the old South Africa a twisted anthropological notion of culture became an excuse for apartheid. It is less easy to denigrate 'culture' when that term is employed by disadvantaged people who call themselves 'indigenous', for lack of any other obvious label, as something signifying an essence in their former lifestyle that they wish to remember or to protect for their children.
Drawing on southern African ethnography, this paper ties together three of Adam Kuper's bugbears: culture, apartheid and the indigenous peoples' movement. It makes comparisons between the latter two in light of anthropologists' definitions of 'culture'. It suggests that a return to early modern understandings of 'culture' might also prove enlightening for the re-interpretation of the boundary between social and cultural traditions in anthropology. And it could be suggestive of new directions in the anthropological portrayal of 'indigenous' people.
Petr Skalník
Paper short abstract:
As anthropology becomes a world concern, emphasis on scientific knowledge conflicts with nationalist-particularist interests, while the increasingly global context renders anthropology hard to define and reveals its Western bias in handling a plurality of paradigms.
Paper long abstract:
Adam Kuper has written on the British school and suggested that its classical period came to a close in the 1970s. He contributed to the critique of what followed in America and Britain since. In the meantime he has explored the meaning of primitive and indigenous today. And he has been interested in what happens when anthropological paradigms get exported to various parts of the world. My contribution to discussion at Bristol will concentrate on the changing perspective of developments within anthropology as it becomes a world concern. On the one hand there is the emphasis on scientific knowledge which however comes into conflict with the nationalist and other particularist interest. On the other hand anthropology has been developing within the context of the changing, globalising world, and in the company of various disciplines, methods of gaining knowledge and fashions of thought. Today's anthropology is perhaps the worst definable among sciences and humanities. Does it comprise too much? Can it be taken seriously by executives and public? What can we do for its emancipation and relevance? Is there Western bias in anthropology and how to handle plurality of paradigms? Is it possible and desirable to work for a non-diffusionist multi-centred anthropology? These and other questions will be tackled in the contribution.
Gérald Gaillard (Université des Sciences et Techniques de Lille)
Paper short abstract:
In many of his works, Kuper’s discursive strategy is often a deconstructivist one, when paradoxically he is no relativist. I unveil Kuper’s political 'weltanschauung' by examining his most general and even naive book, 'The Chosen Primate'.
Paper long abstract:
From at least : "The invention of Primitive Society" to "Culture, the
Anthropological Account", Adam Kuper's litterary production has taken a political stand : The illusion of primitivism, the reactionnary effect of the concept of culture, the critical remarks on the way the
categorie of indigenous people is build and so on, as the last "More return of the Native" (CA, vol.47, feb.2006) offers a new example.
At this point, we must notice that the discursive stategy of Kuper
texts, is often a deconstructivist one, when paradoxally he is not at all a relativist.
I will therefore try to unvelt what could be the political "weltanschauung" of Kuper and doing so through the examination of his most general and even naïve book : the Chosen Primate.
Deborah James (LSE)
Paper short abstract:
The paper employs the concept of the broker to show how 'culture wars' might be mediated; focusing on the processes through which distinct groupings and their cultural expressions are transcended by the actions of individual agents.
Paper long abstract:
It is often assumed that distinct social groupings adhere to fixed and bounded systems of knowledge, belief and practice. Anthropologists critical of this approach point to the historically contextual and fluid nature of culture and show how mistaken it is to reify the concept. But although culture is "dutifully de-constructed and de-essentialized" in anthropology courses, people continue to "slaughter each other" in its name (Scheper Hughes 1995:415).
Writings on popular cultural brokers offer valuable insights. Popular culture has been described as a 'decisive area where social conflicts are experienced and evaluated' and as 'the ground on which … transformations are worked' between the often contradictory interests of diverse social categories and classes. And it is the creative efforts of cultural brokers, usually people occupying a liminal status - or in transition - between more easily-recognized social categories, which traverse the interpretive gap: which interweave the diverse and disparate social threads from which popular culture is made.
Based on some case studies from South Africa, the paper will employ the concept of the broker to show how "culture wars" might be mediated. It focuses on the processes through which distinct groupings and their cultural/ ideological expressions are transcended, and on how individual agents or groups of agents operate to transform knowledge and belief at the point where divergent "cultural" worlds intersect with one another.
Christina Toren (St. Andrews University)
Paper short abstract:
Epistemology is a primary problem for anthropologists, as for other social scientists. This paper looks at the category of culture to show how it might be rendered analytical, that is, how it might be made explanatory - an undertaking that requires that we turn an anthropological gaze on ourselves.
Paper long abstract:
Epistemology is a primary problem for anthropologists, as for other social scientists. This paper looks at the category of culture to show how it might be rendered analytical, that is, how it might be made explanatory - an undertaking that requires that we turn an anthropological gaze on ourselves.
Isak Niehaus (Brunel University)
Paper short abstract:
Focussing on sexual encounters, I discuss the life story of a 38-year-old male resident of Bushbuckridge, South Africa, and argue that life stories offer theoretical advantages over theoretical models in assessing African sexual culture.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses the life story of a thirty-eight year old male resident of Bushbuckridge, South Africa, focusing specifically on his sexual relations and encounters. I suggest that life stories offer several theoretical advantages over theoretical models of African sexual culture. It is more likely to reveal the interplay of different discourses on sexuality. To highlight the impact of institutions such as schools, migrant compounds, and drinking houses on sexual behaviour and distinguish between what people say and what they are constrained to do.