Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Dimitrios Theodossopoulos
(University of Kent)
Joao Pina-Cabral (University of Lisbon)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
The concept of contradiction has carried forward some of the most stimulating versions of social analysis. In this panel we examine what contradictions can do for (and how they influence) Anthropology.
Long Abstract:
Very few concepts have been as productive and inspiring—in generating social analysis—as the notion of contradiction. Central in Gramscian approaches, contradictions have led conjunctural analysis, as apparent in the work of Stuart Hall, whom we celebrate in this conference. Even more central is contradiction in dialectical approaches, from Hegel’s resolution of the Kantian aporias regarding knowledge, to Marxist historical materialism, and all the way to the Frankfurt School, Adorno and his negative dialectics. Dialectical thinking and dialectical anthropology cannot really exist without the formative dynamism of contradictions: they lead to mediation and becoming, identity awareness and consciousness, and trace the limitations of rationality and what is often beyond rational (the local, inarticulate, non-formal worldviews anthropologists find so attractive). In anthropology, contradictions have led paradigms: see, the structural-functionalism contrast between action and thought, the structuralist binaries that organise symbolism, the Marxist opposition of ideology (or culture) to the material world, the post-structuralist tension between agency and structure. The anthropological production of knowledge itself rests on the contradiction of demarcating knowledge in a world of constant change. If we cannot escape from them, maybe it is time to study those contradictions that frame our work, in all their variety and reconstituting complexity. We invite contributions that foreground contradiction, ethnographically and/or theoretically.
Accepted papers:
Paper short abstract:
Determining the field is the first step in ethnographic methodology. What is the field (terrain)? Where and when does it occur?
Paper long abstract:
Determining the field is the first step in ethnographic methodology. Where and when does the field (terrain) occur? The field is both an event and a methodological hypothesis. If we are to go by Gramsci and Stuart Hall's formulations, a field is a space-time conjuncture structured by a set of contradictions. What is the nature of these contradictions and how do they operate to determine a moment of human life? After all, this is not very divergent from Gluckman’s famous theory of society as a castle of cards. Methodologically, when and how do conjunctures emerge? Do they vanish? If so, how does the ethnographer work with them as an historian? This paper explores these issues in terms of the longterm history of the proponent as an ethnographer.
Paper short abstract:
Essence and existence are two sides of the same coin, this paper argues. Drawing upon ethnography with Chinese practitioners of Zen, I argue that anthropology ought to ask what the real is ultimately made of. The answer may be contradictory, but should be embraced as such.
Paper long abstract:
Essence is still with us. Social Constructionism was supposed to have banished essentialism from social science forever. But it seems that essence refuses to go away. The ontological turn was testimony to this. It argued that the cultural relativism arising from the method of social constructionism hid a meta-ontology of mono-naturalism (Abramson & Holbraad 2016). Critics of the ontological turn called for a return, in contrast, ‘from essence back to existence’ (Vigh & Sausdal 2014). Recent calls to go beyond disciplinary ‘nominalism’, on the other hand, raise the possibility of ‘generative commonalities’ which theorists work hard to frame in non-essentialist terms (Bialecki 2012). This paper suggests embracing the contradictions between essence and appearance, essence and existence, rather than denying them by arguing for the legitimacy of one term over the other. Guided by an ethnography of Zen practitioners in Northeast China, I show what accepting the simultaneity of what they call essence (benti) and appearance or happenings (fasheng) can look like. They argue that the true substance (ti) of reality is ‘heart-mind’, the question is simply one of realising (juewu) this and then asking ourselves how we might shape the timeless substance of reality into temporary forms (yong). This is of course to reverse the Western philosophical equation of essence with form, and existence with substance. But it is also to embrace a logic of contradiction rather than its opposite. If essence is the substance of existence, this paper concludes by asking social construction yes, but social construction with what?
Paper short abstract:
An inherent contradiction haunts every successful revolutionary movement: how to stay in power while keeping the revolution alive? This paper examines the complex labour of sustaining a revolution by exploring the work of the Basij Militias in Iran.
Paper long abstract:
An inherent contradiction haunts every successful revolutionary movement: how to stay in power while keeping the revolution alive? This paper examines the complex labour of sustaining a revolution by exploring the work of the Basij—a large, highly significant, yet understudied pro-regime paramilitary organisation in Iran. By delving into the everyday practices, discourses, and aspirations of its members, I analyse how the Basij understand revolution as an ongoing project of personal change and socio-economic transformation, and how this understanding often clashes with the task of maintaining political order. Arguing for a conception of revolution as a “constant force of contestation,” I address a fundamental political paradox: those loyal to a political system may, precisely because of their loyalty, criticise governance and statecraft when they perceive it to fall short of desired standards.
Paper short abstract:
Coincidence is not a typical research focus in anthropology, but ethnographies often trade in stories of coincidence, taking as their tasks the explanation of hidden relationships between contradictory processes. Why is the negation of coincidence so central to anthropological analysis?
Paper long abstract:
Coincidence is not a typical research focus in anthropology. And yet, ethnographies routinely trade in stories of coincidence. Consider how many ethnographies open with a vignette, in which two ostensibly unrelated or mutually-exclusive forces bear down upon an unsuspecting anthropologist. The presence of such coincidences, paradoxes or contradictions, is both analytically and empirically thrilling, seeming to constitute by their sheer existence the possibility of radically different worlds. A narrative hook, to be sure – but how these mutually-exclusive or contradictory forces coincide typically becomes the central analytic maneuver of the text. Across the plurality of its research focuses, ethnographic writing regularly takes as its task the explanation of hidden or surprising relationships between seemingly independent but co-occurring events or processes. Coincidence, we might say, is the central object of anthropological study, but only by its negation. And yet, this seems like yet another seductive paradox demanding resolution: how could coincidence and its negation be central to anthropological analysis? The abstract I’m writing seems to propose that I will contribute an argument to explain how such a paradox could emerge, and why it is actually not so contradictory. Instead, I want to ask: what happens to our ethnographic imaginations if our discipline is so focused upon the eradication of coincidence?
Paper short abstract:
Contradiction, class, and capital, have been key concepts in my work, including on right wing populism in postsocialist East-Central Europe. I studied the region as another incorporation of globalizing capitalism. Right wing populism was one of its consequences. CEE turned out to be the avant-garde.
Paper long abstract:
Contradiction, class, and capital, have been the key concepts of my work, including on right wing populism since 2000. Most of my work on the Right has focused ethnographically on postsocialist East-Central Europe. For me, that was never a self-contained region. I studied it as another spatiotemporal incorporation of globalizing capitalism and I sought to confront its global/local contradictions. And so I ran into the emerging angry populist neo-nationalist Right in the late 1990s, as a popular sensibility and as political articulation and mobilization. Western liberal social science and punditry was inclined to explain this postsocialist surprise first as an effect of non-liberal local histories under fascism and communism. It would disappear as capitalism got consolidated in the region, just like nationalism had dissipated in Western Europe after the war. The liberal assumption – ignoring contradictions, and believing, as Alfred Hirschman once quipped, that under liberal rule all good things naturally come together – was that the region would gradually converge with the West in all sorts of ways. In fact, Eastern Europe’s angry Right turned out to be pointing the way for the Global North as a whole: it had been an avant-garde location, not a backward one, as pervasive Western centric thought judged. Right wing neo-nationalism has overran the liberal system. Capitalist contradictions, unfolding unevenly over global space, rather than mere ‘immigrants’ and ‘xenophobia’, are the explanation. We need a new Marxist global anthropology and elevate the idea of contradiction to the top of our agenda.
Paper short abstract:
The paper develops the Herzfeldian concept of disemia (the ambivalent double nuance in self-representation) beyond its original referents to bring forward its dialectical potential. Unresolved contradictions are seen here not as a limitation but as the inspiration that fuels transformation.
Paper long abstract:
The paper develops the Herzfeldian concept of disemia, designed to accommodate analytically the ambivalence emerging from the co-existence of contradictory ethno-political self-identifications. Disemia was introduced by Herzfeld to address the tensions between official self-representation (in formalistic terms) and the informal, intimate view of the Self, which may be imperfect, imprecise, not officially endorsed. The concept has been also used to capture contradictions emerging between parallel but non-overlapping representational narratives, such as feeling Western-European but not Western enough, or being modern but simultaneously indigenous. The emerging contradictions in their simultaneity defy binarisms and essentialisms, and as such they provide generous analytical inspiration. Drawing from Hegel, Hall and Adorno, I attempt here to develop the concept further by bringing forward its dialectical dimensions: its ability to capture the articulation of contradictory positions in a continuous, fluid and processual manner. Seen as an inherently dialectical concept, disemia can contribute to dynamic theories of change by foregrounding complexity and multi-dimensional identifications. I draw examples from my work in Panama and Greece.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how young men in highland Odisha navigate contradictory social registers in an increasingly anomic context. In doing so they become analysts of contradiction in their own right.
Paper long abstract:
Perhaps everywhere human life involves contradiction between epistemological, organisational and spatiotemporal orders, but these contradictions are particularly marked in situations of rapid generational change. In the forested highlands of Kandhamal, Odisha, the livelihoods of Kutia Kondh families remain rooted in swidden cultivation and few in the older generations have any formal schooling. A generation of Kutia youth, meanwhile, have spent their formative years in state-run educational institutions, their horizons conditioned by much broader frames of the nation and party politics. This paper focuses on the situation of young, educated Kutia men as they navigate contradictions between new aspirations, opposing regimes of value, and historically rooted expectations. The paper focuses on two primary contradictions. The first is the mismatch between new aspirational horizons and the reality of life rooted in local agroecological conditions. The second is local attitudes towards communal buffalo sacrifices, which have a long political history in the region. Increasingly positioned as anachronisms by socially mobile individuals, these ritual sacrifices are also stages for new aesthetics of masculinity. Through the everyday work of navigating contradiction, young Kutia men ultimately become analysts of contradiction in their own right, reflexively engaging juxtaposed social orders in their daily lives.
Paper short abstract:
A series of contradictions underscore ethnographic research in Cuba today. They range from those in everyday life to state mechanisms inspired by Leninist dialectics. This paper seeks to show that to ‘get it right’ lies precisely in understanding the contradictions as grounded in history.
Paper long abstract:
A series of contradictions underscore ethnographic research in Cuba today. Both popular and academic presentations of Cuba either portray it as a victim of dictatorship caught in the past or see it as a socialist utopia that suffers from imperialist sanctions. While the state vows to maintain universal medical care and free education, medicines are constantly out of stock, and teachers and doctors leave their jobs for better incomes. While ordinary people and mass rallies continue to assert solidarity and commitment to the moral principles of socialism, the spectacular always threatens to subsume the political. While official ideology draws heavily on the working class, manufacturing industry and industrial employment were never fully developed as generations of Cuban economists aspired to. This paper gives a review of the contradictions in Cuba as they are manifested in everyday ethnographic encounters, in Cuba’s articulations of nationalist and socialist ideologies, as well as in Cuba’s peculiar history of modernisation that unfolded under the shadows of the Spanish, American, and Soviet imperialisms. It seeks to show the difficulty in understanding these contradictions takes root in both our structural-functionalist ancestry and the liberal origins of the social sciences of the twentieth century. ’Getting it right’ and making the correct ‘anthropological jump’ require us to consider the Leninism-inspired state mechanisms as historically-effected social theories.