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- Convenors:
-
Tom Neumark
(University of Oslo)
James Wintrup (University of Oslo)
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- Stream:
- Evidence
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
In recent years, academic critique recently has been put under scrutiny. Our panel joins this on-going debate by asking, what are our responsibilities, as anthropologists, to provide critical evidence on objects that we support, find desirable, and wish to see existing in the world?
Long Abstract:
How should we engage in critique when we are studying objects that we support and wish to see existing in the world? What responsibilities do we have when we engage in this kind of supportive or sympathetic critique? What new responsibilities emerge when we critique things that we support and even “love”? (de Laet and Moll 2000). As anthropologists working on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) – the ambitious proposal to ensure that all citizens on the globe have access to quality healthcare – we are concerned with what critical evidence might look like in relation to such desirable ambitions. Scholars have argued that, in the current climate, academic critique can run the risk of being irresponsible. Critique can end up undermining the authority of scientific knowledge (Latour 2004) or reinforcing a “politics of the anti” (Ferguson 2010) in which scholars spend time opposing what they dislike, without offering any viable political solutions. For some scholars, the irresponsibility of providing this sort of evidence provokes them to move beyond critique altogether. But if critique can be irresponsible, then how might we instead engage in a more responsible form of critique? In this panel, we consider what this kind of critique might look like when we are studying things that we approve of and wish to see in the world. These objects could be moral values, political proposals, technologies or something else. We welcome contributions from those wishing to reflect on their experience of studying things that they similarly have a positive attitude towards.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 April, 2021, -Tom Neumark (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
This paper uses off-grid solar power in Tanzania as a route into considering anthropologists' own forms of hope and disappointment towards ostensibly good things. It considers ways we might learn from our interlocutor's own way of living with these things that does not lead to detached critiques.
Paper long abstract:
Almost half of rural Tanzanians use small household solar panels, rather than plug into a fossil-fuelled mains grid, for their electricity. This is considered by some commentators as an example, like the mobile phone, of Africa "leapfrogging" the rest of the world. Critical social scientists challenge such grandiose claims. They point out that what are not bypassed are the existing, largely capitalist, global political and economic relationships that harm people and the environment, for example, in the supply chains that result in photovoltaic components. Consequently, technologies like solar electricity become, despite their popular appeal, difficult for social scientists to like, much less, love.
Drawing from on-going discussions about the idea of loving objects, this paper suggests that a more common social scientific disposition is to hope for them. It explores how hope, however, often leads to detached, even denunciatory, forms of critique. These become akin to what Donna Haraway (2016) has described as the poles of utopian hope and dystopian despair. The paper considers possible strategies to avoid attaching to these poles that involve learning from our interlocutors; not only about their way of life but how they live with their way of life.
Ben Eyre (University of East Anglia)
Paper short abstract:
Based on long-term fieldwork focussed on Gates-funded dairy development in Tanzania, I argue for ‘taking seriously’ the perspectives of different actors connected by philanthropy as a meaningful critique. Rather than ‘loving’ philanthropy per se, I propose an anthropology for the love of humanity.
Paper long abstract:
Philanthropy connotes ‘love of humanity,’ etymologically at least. In common with other social scientists (McGoey and Thiel 2018), anthropologists working on contemporary philanthropy have largely deconstructed such notions, and claims by exponents such as Bill Gates to update them (Benthall 2017), or ignored them in favour of a focus on philanthropy as an exercise of power (Erikson 2016). This paper does not propose ‘loving’ philanthropy per se, but rejects anthropological contempt for philanthropists. Instead, I explore an anthropology for the love of humanity.
This requires greater attention to two aspects of philanthropy:
1) Technical: shows the variety of philanthropic practice through detailed engagement with mundane operations. To take an obvious example, engaging with differences between Bill Gates and Donald Trump.
2) Moral: engages with the moral reasoning of philanthropists and their pursuit of freedom through philanthropy (Laidlaw 2002; Bornstein 2009).
Gilbert and Sklair (2018) recently identified a tension between ethnographic and critical approaches to elite practices, including philanthropy. I do ‘treat seriously’ the perspectives of philanthropic actors. But retain critical capacity by following a ‘vertical slice’ (Nader 1980). My long-term fieldwork focussed on investment in the dairy value-chain in Tanzania incorporated the Gates Foundation, Heifer International, and smallholder farmers as interlocutors. An original critique emerges by treating each of them (and their conjuncture) seriously: a neglected problem of philanthropy is an absence of power not its surfeit. This is a more meaningful critique for my interlocutors than showing how philanthropy 'renders technical': anthropological theory for the love of humanity.
Frances Williams (Queercircle.org)
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes a visit to Maggie’s Centre by the Critical Arts in Health Network. Maggie’s was chosen as object of critique because of its ‘exemplary’ status. I discuss our visit as ‘undercover fieldwork’ (Calvey, 2018) and the questions of responsibility, ethics and critique it threw-up.
Paper long abstract:
This paper charts various affects - discomfort, guilt and pleasure - gained through accessing the new Maggie’s Centre in Manchester in order to critique this ‘exemplary’ institution. This task was self-set by the group, The Critical Arts and Health Network (CAHN). I begin by setting out our reasoning for the choice - an under-developed capacity for critique within the field of ‘arts in health’ which can privilege advocacy in the quest for evidencing beneficial clinical outcomes (McNaughton et al 2012). I then chart our navigation of the textures of Maggie’s, its soothing furnishings and informal spaces.
Discussions we entered into at this site drew on the work of Joan Tronto. In her paper, Creating Caring Institutions: Politics, Plurality, and Purpose, she probes the basis of ‘caring institutions’ (Tronto, 2010). One person in the CAHN group asked: ‘When we are being critical, what place and position are we able to do that from? Are we doing it from an assumed utopian space that we don't quite know we are occupying? Where do you stand when you are doing the critical thing?' I pull out these questions as part of a final discussion on the usefulness and benefit of this example of covert critique, especially those pertaining to institutions. 'To develop a “non-dialectical” concept of resistance and critique, one seeking above all to establish a different conceptualisation of contradiction, negation and reaction’ (Raunig, 2009).