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- Convenors:
-
Peter Lockwood
(University of Manchester)
Gil Hizi (Goethe University Frankfurt)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
Short Abstract:
Amid a contemporary 'polycrisis', this workshop explores ethnographic reflections on the challenge of complicity – contexts where our interlocutors experience an unwanted ‘commonality’ with forces that fundamentally constrain or undermine their capacity to live and (re)produce the ‘commons’ itself.
Long Abstract:
In the contemporary moment of political, economic, and ecological crisis, this workshop explores ethnographic reflections on the challenge of complicity – contexts where our interlocutors find themselves in an unwanted ‘commonality’ with forces that are fundamentally constraining or undermining of their capacity to live good lives and the (re)production of the ‘commons’ itself. Against the backdrop of felt complicity, we invite ethnographic investigations and novel theorisations of the subjectivities and affects this complicity produces including (but not limited to) cynicism, irony, and jadedness. As anthropologists who have confronted our interlocutors’ common recognition of the inequalities of contemporary economic and political orders, we aim to foster further development of an anthropological theory of 'living with complicity'. Inspired by anthropological approaches to subjectivity and self inspired by the discipline’s recent ‘ethical turn’ and political writing that frames distanciated, knowing cynicism as a condition of post-modern subjecthood (Zizek and Eagleton), we aim to ask: What are the material and ideologies conditions that produce cynical subjectivities? To what extent do people recognise their complicity in hegemonic orders? To what extent are criticisms of contemporary crises muted by cynicism and a resigned knowledge of complicity? How do people experience the tension between critique and complicity?
By asking these questions, we aim to respond to the conference’s focus on ‘crises of the post-colonial world order and the effects of an increasingly destructive capitalism’ by examining ambiguous and troubled relations with these forms, defined not by resistance or ignorance, oblivion or entitlement, but by knowing complicity.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
This paper investigates how a group of agents on the ground of the Chinese Party-state engages ideology work. I argue that they form a "community of complicity", grounded in a communal ethics of not taking work seriously, and in so doing turn political rituals into something intimate and playful.
Contribution long abstract:
In this paper, I explore an ethics of not taking ideology work seriously in the everyday life of a group of community workers—employed by the Party-state to work at the bottom-level governance institution known as community (shequ)—in an eastern Chinese city. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2023 and 2024, I start with the examination of the keyword hu (糊) and an uncommon analogy, “Community work is like papering the wall with rice paste”, as repeatedly articulated by my interlocuters. I propose that this emic expression nicely encapsulates a shared understanding among my interlocuters: Like papering the wall, community work entails repetitive and mundane labor aimed at covering something up, and as the usage of rice paste suggests, it is done in a somewhat careless and makeshift manner. I further illustrate, with two ethnographic examples, how this shared understanding translates into everyday practice and informs decision-making. I argue that it is not due to inertia or negligence that they did not take ideology work seriously; rather, it involved ethical judgement of what is good for themselves and the communality, and through the formation of a "community of complicity" they redescribe official stipulations, imbuing them with new meanings and reassimilating them into something communal, intimate and playful. I propose that for complicity to have potentials, it does not have to be associated with a weaponized imaginary of actual and potential resistance; here, complicity itself can be read as a critique of ideology.
Contribution short abstract:
In this paper, I show how migration and diasporic life involve negotiating and moving between complicities. Drawing from research on the experiences of Russian war emigrants in Central Asia, I argue to challenge the assumption of an overly stable link between complicity and cynicism.
Contribution long abstract:
My research in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, two former Soviet republics in Central Asia, focuses on the experiences of Russians who left their country after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They left Russia either to avoid being drafted into the army, to escape political persecution, or to keep their jobs with foreign companies affected by international sanctions. While these people seek to avoid complicity with the Putin regime in Russia, life in Central Asia quickly confronts them with another kind of complicity. As relatively affluent and well-educated Russian emigrants, they partly reproduce the history of colonial power asymmetries in the region. Negotiating complicity thus becomes an inherent feature of everyday life in the diaspora. The emigrants struggle to position themselves in relation to their host society as well as Russia, while attempting to create meaningful communities and organise everyday life abroad. This gives rise to complex and sometimes contradictory affective dynamics, including cynicism and resignation as well as empathy and compassion, even hope. Assuming an overly stable link between complicity and cynicism may not be helpful in understanding how people negotiate complicity in diasporic life. I argue that a perspective on how multiple complicities affect people differently contributes to pluralising our understanding of living with complicity.
Contribution short abstract:
This talk offers a perspective on how critique of the state can end up in being more than complicit. Following the rise of a charity in Hungary, I demonstrate how critique can become an integral part of statecraft. I locate the sign for hope in the undetermined nature of political atmospheres.
Contribution long abstract:
In this talk, I offer a perspective on how a critical stance towards the state can end up in being even more than complicit. Based on my longterm ethnographic engagement in the region, I follow the rise of a Roman Catholic charity in post-socialist countries. The organization started with a critique of gaps in state care for the most marginalized. However, this critique faded when the organization more and more merged in activities and norms with the nation state in Hungary. This merging is the result of unforeseen and maybe unwanted overlapping norms and ideals. In these emerging forms the NGO plays a pivotal role through intervention in local tensions, which also reshapes the contours of the state by providing care. Meanwhile their former critique of the state has transformed to become an integral part of statecraft. Describing this development has two aims. First, since civil rights approaches largely failed to improve the situation of the most marginalized sections of the population, new patron client relations sometimes can be the only option. This presents a situation in which both, local residents but also researchers, might feel stucked, practically and theoretically. Avoiding an all too simple logic and totalizing interpretation, I therefore secondly offer an analysis of the changing role of critique of the state in this process. The sign of hope, I have to offer is to demonstrate that these situations are always fluid and open.
Contribution short abstract:
Namibia still struggles with racial division and inequality, partly due to German colonialism and genocide. Now that both the German and Namibian governments are trying to right past wrongs, white German Namibians experience both complicity in inequality and cynicism regarding government actions.
Contribution long abstract:
As a country, Namibia continues to struggle with racial division and inequality, resulting from a history of systemic racism under South African-imposed Apartheid and the violence of earlier German colonialism. Currently, efforts are being made towards colonial reconciliation together with the German government: however, these have been heavily critiqued, not least by the marginalized Herero and Nama groups they claim to represent. So far, studies of reparations movements tend to focus on those who have historically been displaced and dispossessed, less has been said populations who have historically held power and who risk losing because of reparative justice. Therefore, my ongoing fieldwork research for my anthropology master's thesis focuses on white German Namibians, who have historically benefitted from colonialism and Apartheid, and who still own large amounts of land in contemporary Namibia despite being a minority group; which can be perceived as complicity with racial inequality. Simultaneously, white German Namibians have a cynical perception of and distrust towards the Namibian, as well as German, governments' efforts to balance the scales, limiting their political discussions to their own circles because of this. Given that German colonial forces committed the Herero Nama genocide over 100 years ago, questions of who is responsible for the current continued inequality in Namibia, who should pay the price of righting past wrongs, and who is construed as a "perpetrator" or a "victim" are important. I will investigate how these feelings of cynicism, complicity, and disillusionment surrounding reparations combine and interact within the white German Namibian community.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines ethnographic work conducted with activists in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo amidst the construction of the touristic Mayan Train. I ask how activists are interpreting advancing urbanization in what used to be pristine tropical rainforest under a form of cynical disbelief.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper examines ethnographic work conducted with activists in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo amidst the construction of the touristic Mayan Train. Reviewing the reactions to sensationalizing images of socio-ecological catastrophe—such as run-over jaguars, a tapir walking on train tracks, and rusting iron pillars underwater—my work asks how activists are interpreting advancing urbanization in what used to be pristine tropical rainforest as the unravelling of business as usual. Because activists are no longer shocked by what the Mexican state is capable of doing, their understanding of illegal deforestation, land grabs, and death threats does not show their surprise vis-à-vis what they consider condemnable conduct. Rather, their reaction portrays a cynical reading of what development is capable of doing. Even as people walked the tracks of the Mayan Train, stopped construction machines, launched drones to take aerial photographs, and went underwater to document cement contamination, their reactions never expressed surprise that the Mexican state could do something like this. Their linkages with international media outlets such as the New York Times, the BBC, and National Geographic Magazine centered on publicizing the loss of things that were considered of inestimable value—such as Mayan temples from the post-Classical period, jaguars and ocelots, and underground cave systems that are hundreds of miles long. This loss, however, was not something that they considered unavoidable. My work sees these activists as participating in a form of cynical disbelief in which “progress” is conceived teleologically as that which will inevitably come.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines post-idealism complicity, where people abandon moral idealism and return to less idealized ways of life. It explores how former participants of a grassroots Confucian movement make sense of their post-idealism complicity, informing the aftermath of activism in China and beyond.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper ethnographically examines the post-idealism situation of complicity, defined as the condition in which individuals who were once deeply committed to a morally idealistic mission abandon it and return, complicity, to less idealized ways of living that the mission initially opposed. The analysis draws on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork on dujing, a grassroots Confucian movement and the author’s extended experience in other forms of activism in China.
The dujing movement, or “reading classics,” promotes the intensive, repetitive aloud reading of Confucian and other classical texts by students. Driven by a moral idealism to restore Confucian values for humanity, dujing teachers often inspire parents to pull their children out of legally mandated and socially recognized mainstream education to enroll in full-time dujing schools. However, over time, many participants abandon dujing and return to mainstream modes of education and living due to a range of factors, including internal family conflicts, factionalism within the movement, disillusionment, and external pressures such as the 2023 governmental crackdown on dujing. Although dujing may not align with the archetype of a resistant social movement, it shares with other forms of activism traits such as strong moral idealism, external pressures, internal friction, and post-idealism situations.
This paper examines the post-movement social lives of former dujing participants, focusing on how they make sense of their current complicity after high-stakes investment in the movement. I identify patterns that resonate with other activism in China and beyond, including strong moralization, individual lessonism, and continuous derailment.
Contribution short abstract:
In light of the 'polycrisis' in the Sahel region, this paper studies vigilantism in Burkina Faso as a cynical project of un/commoning by exploring the hegemonic and intersubjective complicities it creates in violent situations.
Contribution long abstract:
Koglweogo vigilante groups in urban Burkina Faso create multiple complicities for themselves and others. For the crime victims, it is morally delicate to summon the groups and expose the culprit to their punishments, especially if that person is a family member, a friend, or a business partner. At the same time, many are tired of being robbed and betrayed by kith and kin and feel left with no other choice. For the vigilantes, operating as yet another harmful force in their neighbourhoods, where people live in conditions of poverty, inequality, and political exclusion, creates its own controversial commonalities. They navigate this position with caution and sometimes use humour and laughter to play down the violent situations they create. For the anthropologist, participating in violent but also intimate situations of conflict and bitterness raises complicated questions on co-responsibility and the politics of ethnographic research. This paper draws on the notion of "living with complicity" to explore the troubled subjectivities and lived experiences of constraint surrounding vigilante politics while reflecting the researcher's complicity in the eyes of those concerned. By taking an in-depth look at the Koglweogo's interventions and contextualizing them in the post-colonial 'polycrisis' of the Sahel region, it will investigate how intersubjective and hegemonic dimensions of complicity shape and change violent situations and the emotions they produce. In doing so, the paper moves beyond a state-centred analysis of vigilantism and studies the phenomenon as a cynical project of un/commoning.
Contribution short abstract:
The paper addresses questions of complicity, participation and responsibility in ethnographic research on the (white) far right: how is the researcher implicated in the perpetuation of nationalist and white supremacist projects based on systematic oppression and racism?
Contribution long abstract:
This paper focuses on emotional challenges and questions of positionality in ethnographic research on the far right. Inspired by the literature on critical whiteness, this paper is interested in the unspoken or absent presences in this field: racial privilege, whiteness and white supremacy. I want to reflect on my own experiences in the field of far-right politics, with the ethnographic research I have been doing in Eastern Germany since 2018, with different agents and organisations of the near and far right. In this paper, I will provide a close reading of my ethnographic material of interactions between me and my far-right informants, who presented themselves as polite, considerate and nice – which I found unwanted, unsolicited and generally irritating due to my own expectations that I brought into the field. Analytically, I focus on 1) how whiteness remains absent but manifests itself in the form of discomfort, 2) what this discomfort does and how whiteness and white privilege operate, and 3) how the researcher functions as an ‘implicated subject’ (Rothberg 2019) in the study of the (white) far right and the study of racism, racist activism and white supremacy. This paper thus aims to address questions of complicity, participation and responsibility: how is the researcher – how am I – implicated in the perpetuation of nationalist and white supremacist projects based on systematic oppression and racism?