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- Convenors:
-
Leonie Benker
(Freie Universität Berlin)
Jonas Bens (Universität Hamburg)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
Short Abstract:
In this workshop we investigate recent trends towards materiality and affect in political anthropology. We assemble papers that scrutinize political dynamics as affective encounters between material bodies in space and reflect on what this can contribute to ethnography of politics today.
Long Abstract:
For several decades, anthropologists have approached political processes and power dynamics through the dialectics of domination and resistance — often (reductively) referred to as the ‘Foucauldian paradigm’. In recent years, and in the wake of theoretical trends such as New Materialism or Affect Studies, political anthropologists have begun to expand what counts as the field of politics. Beyond the study of political discourses and practices, anthropologists increasingly speak of politics in terms of ‘atmosphere’, ‘material arrangement’, or ‘affective space’. They study the political life of the specific kinds of relationalities between human and non-human bodies in space, and how people subjectively experience these relationalities. The way in which the political practices of ‘commoning’ and ‘uncommoning’ are approached in this year’s GASCA conference is a telling example of this general trend. The ethnographic method, a core practice of political anthropology, is the ideal approach to ask new questions through the lens of politics as affective encounters between material bodies in space: How can we analyse political atmospheres? Can one feel what it means to be political? What does it mean for politics to require people to relate affectively to their material surroundings, to differently racialised and gendered bodies, to one’s fellow political activists, or even to the world as a whole? In this panel, we aim to explore the consequences of these ‘turns’ to materiality and affect for political anthropology today. To this end, we invite papers that empirically explore the affective and material life of politics through an ethnographic lens.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
The restitution of ethnographic collection and human remains to source communities is a political process that involves negotiations between various actors. This paper demonstrates how affect and emotions mediate the political dimension of restitution.
Contribution long abstract:
The restitution of ethnographic collection and human remains to communities of origin is a political process which involves negotiations between various actors. Students of politics assume that the restitution debate – despite its complexities – should be deliberative judgments. I argue that restitution is, at its core, an affective encounter.
I draw on two scenarios I experienced in 2024 that underscore the role of affect and emotions in restitution process. The first concerns a talk with four descendants on the restitution of their ancestors to Tanzania at the Tieranatosches Theater in Berlin. The room was affectively arranged with people and the chairs they sat on, tables, cameras, microphones, notebooks, and laptops. It was also laden with a sacrificial ritual. One of the descendants fed wine from a green bottle to a living plant placed in a white pot. He asked participants to stand up and chanted a few words of grief, asking their ancestors for permission to speak about them. The atmosphere in the space was heavy and bodies, taking mine as a reference, trembled during the discussion.
The second scenario was a commemoration of Mangi Meli and eighteen other chiefs hanged by German colonial troops in Old Moshi, Kilimanjaro. The event began outdoors under the tree on which the chiefs were hanged. The descendants and invited guests placed wreaths and fresh flowers around Meli’s monument. Here, affect and emotions were palpable among participants.
By analyzing these encounters, I demonstrate how affect and emotions mediate the politics of restitution.
Contribution short abstract:
Black-faced Spoonbills and other birds are part of the political atmosphere of the Taiwan Strait. Conservation efforts play into local politics, as well as cross-strait relations. An ethnography of human-bird relationality provides new insights into the affective politics of the Taiwan Strait.
Contribution long abstract:
"Why is it that a few birds that appear out of thin air can affect the whole development of an industrial zone?" Such was the reaction of township officials in 1987, when some 100 Black-faced Spoonbills began feeding at a horseshoe-shaped dike built at Tainan’s Tsengwen River in preparation for industrial construction. When there were only 288 Black-faced Spoonbills in the world, birders launched an environmentalist movement that stopped the industrial park and led to the creation of protected areas. In 2023, Taiwan recorded 4,228 Black-faced Spoonbills, 64% of the global total. The Spoonbill is now a mascot of Tainan, even as their conservation sites are still contested in township politics.
Spoonbills spend their lives flying through human geopolitical hotspots. Some of their most productive breeding spots are in islands of the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula. After fledging, they transit China’s highly-developed Yellow Sea coasts, glide south through the Taiwan Strait and even reach the South China Sea. Ornithological research and conservation were promising areas of collaboration between China and Taiwan until 2020 when China pressed BirdLife International, for political reasons, to kick the Taiwanese partner out of the nest.
Based on fieldwork in Tainan, Kinmen, and the Matsu Islands in 2023-2024, I explore the affective politics of the Taiwan Strait from the perspective of human-bird relations. Where do birds and their habitats fit into the material arrangements of the Taiwan Strait? How might avian denizens of the atmosphere contribute to the affective politics of cross-strait relations?
Contribution short abstract:
Bhasan Char, a sedimentary island hosting displaced Rohingyas, explores the politics of sediments as active agents in governance, ecology, and humanitarianism, examines how materialities of sediments mediates affective relations, shaping life, infrastructures, and power in precarious environments.
Contribution long abstract:
Bhasan Char, a precarious island formed through sedimentation in the Bay of Bengal, has become a contested site of governance, ecological negotiation, and humanitarian intervention. Serving as a resettlement camp for displaced Rohingya refugees, the island is marked by high salinity, unstable landforms, and fragile infrastructures. This paper examines the materiality of sediments as active agents in shaping governance, politics, and ecological processes in this fractious environment. Far from being inert particles, sediments play crucial roles in mediating relations between human and non-human, shaping agricultural possibilities, mangrove growth, and the built environment of the camp. These materialities intersect with the imaginaries and interventions of camp administrators, humanitarian organizations, and refugees, producing complex dynamics of care, control, and contention. The analysis situates sediment within the broader frameworks of political ecology, infrastructure, and affect, exploring how ecological processes and affective engagements co-constitute the lived realities of Bhasan Char. This research asks how sediments mediate relationships between administrators, refugees, and the island’s ecology, and what happens when sediment resists human interventions, opening new possibilities and tensions. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this paper contributes to discussions of politics as affective and material encounters, foregrounding sediments’ agency and its entanglement with political subjectivities and ecological relationalities. By engaging with sediments’ affective and material dimensions, this study illuminates the intricate intersections of power, ecology, and humanitarianism in precarious environments.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper explores the affective dimensions of contemporary Ugandan politics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among youth, it introduces the concept of "poisonous politics", a political atmosphere marked by collectively shared feelings of confusion, insecurity, marginalization and powerlessness.
Contribution long abstract:
Political tensions in contemporary Uganda are rising as young Ugandans in particular become increasingly frustrated with their exclusion from political participation under the long-standing authoritarian Museveni regime. With a national median age of around 16, this widespread youth discontent poses a significant challenge to the regime, which often responds to dissent with excessive and unaccountable violence. This paper examines Uganda's volatile political landscape through an ethnographic lens, focusing on its affective dimensions.
Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022 among Ugandan university and secondary school students, the paper introduces the concept of "poisonous politics" – a toxic political atmosphere characterized by collectively shared feelings of confusion, insecurity, marginalization and powerlessness. I argue that while these feelings are, at least in part, deliberately cultivated by the regime to consolidate its power, in their dynamic interplay they ultimately become uncontrollable and threaten to negatively affect everyone, including their creators.
Using two political events at a Ugandan university as case studies, the paper outlines the dynamics of poisonous politics and illustrates how it arises and unfolds. It also considers potential avenues for disrupting this particular political atmosphere. By centering on the lived experiences of Ugandan youth and their perceptions of politics and the "political feel" of their country, the paper ultimately seeks to illuminate some of the broader implications of affective authoritarian governance in fostering fragile and self-destructive political environments.
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation depicts the Canal of Dignity as an 'affective infrastructure' and explores how the irrigation canal generated hope for a second Haitian revolution across different social groups, leading to the formation of the transnational KPK movement and a renegotiation of foreign politics.
Contribution long abstract:
In September 2023, tensions rose between the Dominican Republic and Haiti over the construction of an irrigation canal on the Río Masacre, their shared border river. Initiated by small-scale farmers in Haiti's Wanament region, the project was a grassroots response to severe drought and escalating food insecurity. Frustrated by decades of unmet government promises for irrigation infrastructure, these farmers took independent action to secure their livelihoods.
The Dominican government opposed the canal, citing violations of a binational treaty. Sanctions included border closures to stop food supplies, and residency permit denials and violent deportations for Haitian citizens living in the Dominican Republic.
In critique of the Dominican government's anti-Haitian politics the canal was named ‘The Canal of Dignity’ symbolizing the human dignity of the Haitian nation. The canal generated a collective political imaginary for a finally truly independent and self-determined Haiti. Supported by the Haitian diaspora the project quickly evolved into a transnational movement called "KPK – Kanal la Pap Kanpe" (The Canal Will Not Stop) and to the astonishment of the international onlookers was completed by June 2023.
In this presentation I draw on ethnographic data to present the Canal of Dignity as an ‘affective infrastructure’ around which people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds mobilized in the movement KPK for the collective idea of a second Haitian Revolution. In the absence of adequate national and international representation, through the construction of the canal, the Haitian civil society renegotiated 'foreign politics from below', asserting its sovereignty and right for self-determination.
Contribution short abstract:
By drawing on various examples from Muslim activists in India to "Die Letzte Generation" in Germany, I'll discuss how actors attempt to sustain their activism online and how this crucially involves coming to terms with digital capitalism's affective ecology and morality.
Contribution long abstract:
In this presentation, I will explore the tensions between political ethics and political agency by drawing on case studies of Muslim activists in India (online star-personas and influencers) and German environmental activists (Die Letzte Generation). The question I will pursue is how certain notions of justice are folded into the affective immediacy of digital capitalist environments. Often, a sentiment to "do justice" may lead to actions that bestow visibility on the political opponent or even endanger activists' lives. Furthermore, there is a temporality to such sentiments of justice that cannot be disentangled from the affective relationality that comes with social networking sites. I will argue that it is often a "deontological"—duty-oriented—modality of practical reasoning that folds moral reasoning into the affective environment of social media. Hence, I will discuss how agency—the conditioned power to act—and ethics—the reflective work on the self—at times point in different directions and continue to produce the kind of antinomies that online activism implies in times of digital capitalism.
Contribution short abstract:
Drawing on the example of the German interfaith group Faith Bridge, this paper explores the role of materiality in the highly affective and conflictual mobilisation processes of spiritual climate activists.
Contribution long abstract:
In September 2024, the German interfaith subgroup of Extinction Rebellion, Faith-Bridge, introduced a new element of mobilisation to the wider movement: Gaia, a three-and-a-half-meter tall, bright blue puppet symbolises the Earth. For the Faith Bridge activists, Gaia embodies manifold meanings ranging from Greek mythology to the Gaia hypothesis, thus merging scientific and spiritual appeal. While for the religiously oriented activists, Gaia is not merely a symbol but has an effectiveness to it that goes beyond mere representation or mobilization, what was first emphasized vis-a-vis the wider secular movement were the figure’s more scientific connotations. At its first use in Berlin, Gaia attracted significant attention and created a vibrant atmosphere reminiscent of XR’s peak days. Some secular activists, however, expressed concerns about the figure’s spiritual dimension that, though not immediately apparent, was still tangibly present as part of the figure’s affective arrangement. As spirituality and religion are generally viewed with suspicion within the predominantly secular XR movement, practices and views that are interpreted as religious are often delegitimized. This creates uncertainty and anxiety, for members of groups such as Faith-Bridge, but it could reflect wider social dynamics, as climate activist groups in general face attempts of delegitimization and fear that the open inclusion of spiritual elements could harm their cause. In this sense, the paper argues, that these highly charged dynamics triggered by Gaia’s material presence are not primarily strategic, but rather affective, reflecting a wider political atmosphere.
Contribution short abstract:
Körperkino explores a collaborative, embodied storytelling methodology situated at the intersection of art and anthropology, it highlights how commoning practices in storytelling can create pluralistic spaces that empower communities to co-create resilient narratives in response to the polycrisis.
Contribution long abstract:
Storytelling is a powerful tool for shaping identity, culture, and values, but it has historically been controlled by those in power to reinforce dominant ideologies, often silencing marginalized voices. Colonialism has long been a driving force behind narrative inequalities, dictating whose stories are told and who gets to tell them. This legacy persists today, particularly in the museum and media industries, where gatekeeping institutions hold the power to shape narratives, often profiting from marginalized voices while denying them agency
As a filmmaker and researcher, I have confronted the ethical question: Who gets to tell stories about whom? I have developed Körperkino, a collaborative, embodied storytelling methodology, as an ethnographic apparatus that explores intergenerational trauma, being liminal (in-between), and creating communities of resilience. The methodology also aligns with the turn toward affective encounters in political anthropology, offering insights into how embodied practices and material arrangements can transform storytelling spaces into political atmospheres of shared agency and relationality particularly those whose stories have historically been spoken about rather than with.
In the paper I’d like to share some insights, for eg., the three storytelling characters: Underdog, Allies and Megaphones, their parameters and how they interact with each other. Furthermore, the paper examines how their diverse perspectives overlap, coexist, and interact, highlighting the plurality of normative orders that shape these interactions. In the workshop, I would like to comment on how art and anthropology can collaboratively build common spaces for pluralistic storytelling, enabling communities to co-create resilient narratives to face today's polycrisis.