Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the implications of three interconnected theoretical critiques of human communication in relation to the interview as a methodological challenge, namely narrative theory, theories of subjectivity, and scalar/spatial theory. The ambition is to develop a more realistic approach to what people say when they are interviewed.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I would like to discuss the implications of three interconnected theoretical critiques of common sense assumptions related to human communication, namely narrative theory, theories of subjectivity, and scalar/spatial theory. What I am particularly interested in is the way in which the interview assumes access to the consciousness of the informant. When informants are asked questions, their answers are treated as coming from them as individuals. This projection of an individual response is then often theoretically generalized in the ensuing analysis, a generalization that makes the response available in terms of a preexisting collective identity, e.g. immigrant, Turk, Muslim, woman, man, etc. However, from a philosophical point of view there is much to suggest that we need to be suspicious not only of the generality of the generalized and collective identities, but also of the way in which the individual is constructed based on the narrative responses given. By addressing these issues through the lens of scalar theory, a more realistic approach to what people say might be offered.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the theme of diversity and mutuality by considering how a medical anthropologist might analyse the interweaving of seemingly conflicting understandings of causation in individuals' accounts of mental disturbance in Khayelitsha, South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Explanations of mental disturbance in Khayelitsha, South Africa, tend to incorporate a diversity of understandings. In a setting of more formal inquiry, detailed classifications are presented of witchcraft or ancestral influence in order to explain the occurrence of such illness. Such typologies in fact vary from person to person; however, even more striking is the fact that the actual illness accounts of individuals usually include a mixture of seemingly conflicting aetiological concepts. Beliefs in the agency of witches and ancestors are adapted, but there is also evidence of ideas assimilated from Christianity, lay psychiatric vocabulary and trauma models popularised by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Seemingly conflicting registers are interwoven as people attempt to draw together a narrative account of their experience of help seeking. The paper will focus on ethnographic material illustrating this particular endeavour to make meaning from inchoate thoughts and often fragmentary, partly incomprehensible, illness experience. It will finally address the question of how best to frame this complex and at times confusing reality in analytical terms.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores scepticism as the basis for ethnographic engagement with the extraordinary claims made by informants. Scepticism, associated negatively with rational subjectivism, might provide the ground for mutuality in the anthropological project unfettered by the constraints of relativism.

Paper long abstract:

Associated with the martial art of Pencak Silat in Indonesia is the development of 'inner power'. Through a series of breathing exercises and bodily postures exponents claim to be able to cultivate their inner power to the degree where it can be channelled to any part of their body. Those in possession of inner power are able to perform seemingly incredible feats, such as striking assailants from afar, sending them hurling through the air without physically contacting them. Or to develop sensitivity to the vibrational frequencies of objects, allowing them to 'see' while blindfolded. Since the beginning of the 1990s schools teaching the development of inner power have blossomed throughout Indonesia and internationally. Yet the practice of inner power is controversial, and many are sceptical of the claims made by practitioners. The paper explores the place of scepticism in ethnographic engagement with informants making public claims to the efficacy of inner power. It argues that often the default, though by no means overt position of anthropological exegesis is sceptical of the truth claims made by informants. While valid and interesting they are often seen to be metaphorical or explained via recourse to sociological argument. When confronted with extraordinary claims, the practice of scepticism provides a more intellectually robust basis for the exegetical framing of ethnographic encounters. An acceptance of scepticism as a legitimate mode of enquiry opens up intriguing possibilities for mutuality in anthropology unburdened by liberal ideals and the desire to treat all forms of knowledge as equally valid.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that concepts like “literalness” are methodological dangers for the “mutuality within the anthropological project”. Research must embrace inchoate, rhetorical, and evocative forms of interaction as constitutive of social life and not dismiss them as deviations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper critically engages with the theme of the panel, in that it argues a different approach for dealing with metaphors and literal speech.

Literalness, not "metaphor" (or evocation, irony), is the problematic mode. To use it or expect it in quotidian contexts is impolite, confusing or naïve; it also lacks elements of play and agon. Literalness (or consistency) is common and appropriate only in limited settings, and is seen here as merely another rhetorical claim. In all speech situations certain "definitions of the situation" are rhetorically negotiated, and people constantly compete and collude in such framing.

To assume literalness as the preferable modality of interaction (as also non-linguistic action is rhetorical), preferable in both a normative and empirical sense, misses out on performative aspects, recently a focal research interest.

While anthropological knowledge does reside in the reflection on the distinction between what people do, say they do, and say they should do, assuming any of these dimensions to be predominantly "literal" blinds us to the element of persuasion inherent in all interaction. Anthropology is strongest where it embraces ways of speaking (or, modes of persuasion, definitions of the situation, meaning-making etc.) in their complexity and ambiguity, and not where it tries to impose consistency where only the inchoate exists.

While every anthropologist has to work it through themselves, patient and empathically, the danger to the "mutuality within the anthropological project" lies thus mainly in methodological preconceptions. The debate is supplemented by examples from research in Southern Ethiopia.

Paper short abstract:

At stake in a sceptical anthropology might be the degrees to which scepticism is either oppositional or reflexive. When anthropologists study people occupying cognate social spaces in the societies from which anthropologists emerge, can they simultaneously apply methodological ‘disbelief’ to anthropologist’s and informant’s explanations and still claim to ‘know’ something?

Paper long abstract:

At stake in a sceptical anthropology might be the degrees to which scepticism can be either an oppositional stance or a reflexive practice. Does the sceptical anthropologist only apply methodological 'disbelief' to informant's/other's statements, explanations, and terms of analysis, or can she hold her own terms and explanations to the same fire and still claim to 'know' something? The question gains sharper relief when anthropologists study 'familiar' informants, ones who occupy cognate social spaces to anthropologists in the societies from which anthropologists emerge.

In this paper I reflect on my experiences studying the ways inhabitants of the Cambridge biocluster use 'networks' and 'networking' as explanations for social, economic and creative phenomena. I reflect on how a seemingly uniform metaphor of 'network' is deployed in fluid and manifold ways, the implications of the direct and indirect anthropological roots (among others) of this metaphor, and the problems posed when informants (who are equally capable of treating the anthropologist sceptically) present seemingly familiar social explanations.

Can the anthropologist be reflexively sceptical without resorting to either broad psychologism or oppositionalism on the one hand, or, on the other, a nihilistic reflexivity in which nothing can be known? This is more than a call for 'reflexive' anthropology or a question of whether anthropology at 'home' is possible. Rather, it is a call for repositioning the anthropologist as always being 'in between' fields and recognizing that 'empathy', as a goal in any site, is not the same as 'agreeing' or 'believing'.

Paper short abstract:

The paper suggests that an appeal to ‘literal meaning’ is not necessarily an appeal to transparent meaning, but a call to slow down the interpretative process, to not assume we know what something means to those involved. I suggest that ethnography can be patient rather than sceptical, and can compel rather than efface hesitation.

Paper long abstract:

Working ethnographically on a major road-building project in Peru, I was party to a conversation between an engineer and a young woman who was interested in ghosts. She asked him if he believed in ghosts. No, he replied, I believe in maths. How might scepticism help me, the ethnographer, work out what is going on in this exchange? Do people believe in maths in the same way as they believe in ghosts? Might we question the belief in maths in the same way as we might question the belief (or lack of belief) in ghosts? Thinking through this example, ethnographically, the paper questions what it means to take something literally. I suggest that an appeal to 'literal meaning' is not necessarily an appeal to transparent meaning, but a call to slow down the interpretative process, to not assume we know what something means to those involved. I suggest that ethnography can be patient without necessarily being sceptical, and that ethnography is our best chance of complicating the data in ways that compel rather than efface the hesitation.

Paper short abstract:

Taking ways of believing in the eternal life as an example the paper makes suggestions to a dynamic interpretation, envisaging smooth concepts, easy to mix in the representation of the colourful cocktails.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in Christian folk churches in Denmark and the Cook Islands, the paper discusses coexistent forms of transcendence in the context of death rituals. By focusing on the everyday theological practice, i.e. the way participants are interpreting ritual cosmology, the paper examines difficulties in understanding and representing the ontological fluidity in the accounts. The play with meaning between symbolic and literal meaning in ritual and beyond is well documented, but when it comes to the details of the differences and transformations, analysis tends to 'get stiff' in binary concepts or 'blurred' in third positions. Taking ways of believing in the eternal life as an example the paper makes suggestions to a dynamic interpretation, envisaging smooth concepts, easy to mix in the representation of the colourful cocktails.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to understand some of the entanglements and conflicts that have occurred in relation to the attempted deification of one particularly enigmatic figure, called Tagaro, in North Pentecost, Vanuatu. For some a local benevolent "God", for others a maniacal axe-wielding foreigner.

Paper long abstract:

The 1960s and 70s was an important period of theological revision for the indigenous Anglican clergy of island Melanesia, many of whom sought to formulate a positive answer to the question "Is Christ a Melanesian?" While throughout the preceding century both indigenous Christians and white missionaries had sought to communicate Christian concepts through the use of local terms and categories, now such projects became intimately combined with the anti-colonial desire to reconstitute Christianity as a distinctly "Melanesian" religion, and thus empower indigenous communities and national independence movements. However, rather than syncretism, such translation usually entailed the one-way extraction and transposition of indigenous categories onto those of the scriptures. This elided the more embedded meanings and cosmological significances of such categories, and thus eclipsed the ambivalent nature of indigenous conceptualisations of sacred power, the complex personalities of culture heroes, and the contested nature of the local histories from which these terms were drawn.

This paper seeks to understand some of the entanglements and conflicts that have occurred in relation to the attempted deification of one particularly enigmatic figure, called Tagaro, in North Pentecost, Vanuatu. For some a local benevolent "God", for others a maniacal axe-wielding foreigner, here the fraught issue of Tagaro's "real" history has become embroiled within ongoing social and political divisions. All the while, contesting knowledge of Tagaro has intensified his (split) personality, and thereby betrayed the ambivalent nature of Christianity's transformative powers, and its ambiguous position as both intimately local and dangerously foreign.

Paper short abstract:

What is a god? How does a piece of worked stone or metal become a god, and how does it stop being one? This paper explores the above through a focus on ritual sculptors and priests and the complex relations they share with the gods they make, sustain, worship and even de-sanctify.

Paper long abstract:

In everyday life Hindus often make a clear separation between persons, things and gods but these can be made one and the same thing through expert processes, and in certain marked spaces and times. This paper draws on fieldwork among Hindu ritual sculptors, priests and worshippers at temples in Tamilnadu, South India.

Ritual sculptors and priests employ their skills and knowledge as well as material and immaterial resources to make immanent in an image a transcendent deity. The stone/metal image then is god and worshipped as such. My own interest in this paper is to explore the opposite of this process - when a god is de-sanctified, returned to being an inert object, again through ritual processes. I ask how different kinds of person -priests, worshippers, sculptors and others engage with these de-sanctified images that they once worshipped and may well continue worshipping. This is an important question because even as people accept the expertise of others and the effects their actions have at one level, at other more affective levels they may be unwilling to 'let go' fully. The image may simultaneously be god and not god. This poses an important challenge to ontological stability that worshippers and others live with, and that anthropologists of Hinduism need to engage with.