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- Convenor:
-
Virginia Dominguez
(University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
- Discussant:
-
Gustavo Lins Ribeiro
(University of Brasilia)
- Location:
- Convention Hall B
- Start time:
- 15 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Very little fieldwork on the U.S. has been done so far by anthropologists outside the U.S. Is this an accident, a coincidence, or a pattern worth explaining and even changing? The panel will explore the phenomenon as a problem and offer examples of the benefits of such engagement.
Long Abstract:
Little fieldwork has been done so far by anthropologists outside the U.S. on the U.S. Is this an accident, a coincidence, or a pattern worth explaining and even changing? Serious engagement with the issue demands discussions of the phenomenon as a problem and examples of the benefits of such engagement. This panel addresses a phenomenon that often remains unnoticed, and yet entails analytical/theoretical, ethical, and practical concerns. These include discussions of what is right or wrong about anthropology being or remaining (1) a field that studies 'Others,' (2) a field that mostly studies 'down,' (3) a field unsure of its role in studying metropoles, power, and perceived centers; and (4) a field of training that largely excludes the intensive and field-based study of the U.S.A.
Exceptions exist but they are surprisingly few. Is there a continued pattern that best fits what Michel-Rolph Trouillot called 'the savage slot' and that might explain why outsiders rarely do fieldwork in the U.S.? Or does a post-Said and postcolonial era of avoiding the study of 'Others' in the world produce a privileging of 'anthropology at home' that explains why outsiders rarely do fieldwork in the U.S.?
This panel welcomes presentations by anthropologists who have done extensive fieldwork in the U.S. and anthropologists who analyze the politics, history, sociology, and anthropology of knowledge and might shed light on the avoidance of the U.S. as a field site (by anthropologists outside the U.S.A.)
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
While few foreign anthropologists conduct fieldwork in the United States, some specialists on the United States, located in 'American Studies,' are beginning to include fieldwork in their range of methodologies. How can these two groups interact?
Paper long abstract:
Few foreign anthropologists conduct fieldwork in the United States, but some specialists on the United States located in the interdisciplinary Ph. D.-granting field of 'American Studies' (and increasingly trained and practicing in the United States) are beginning to include fieldwork in their range of methodologies. Drawing on extensive data analysis about the current U.S. faculty in American Studies, this paper examines the growth of this segment of the interdisciplinary field of 'American Studies' in the United States and asks what the future of a collaborative relationship between domestic and foreign fieldworkers might look like from a domestic U.S. academic perspective.
Within the United States the field of 'American Studies' has, since the 1930s, developed as an academic specialty combining historical and literary study. In the last 20 years or so, influenced by British Cultural Studies and its sociological bases, the study of audiences, practices, and social formations has attracted new interest in the conduct of fieldwork. This has resulted in important fieldwork-based studies by non-anthropologists, working in venues as disparate as the Wall Street trading floor and the popular music industry. This paper analyses the possible relationships between these scholars and foreign anthropologists.
Paper short abstract:
This study attempts to overcome the awkward relationship between American Studies and Anthropology, as it exists in Japan, by proposing new ways to formulate the concept of culture, the positioning of 'the observer' and 'the observed,' and the notion of what constitutes 'America.'
Paper long abstract:
In their seminal article(1996), Dominguez and Desmond urged us to develop 'critical internationalism,' including collaboration with scholars outside the US deemed important in eradicating a 'disciplinary unconsciousness' and bringing out critical disciplinary reformulations. Anthropologists located outside the US seem to be the best partners in such efforts. Yet, the U.S. does not attract much ethnographic interest among 'foreign' anthropologists, and Japan is no exception.
In much of Japanese academic discourse, 'America' remains a cultureless monolithic Giant. In the field of American Studies in Japan, however, the US is studied. Yet there the central issue has become the diversity of experience in the US, and the subject of study has tended to be specific and local. Studies of sameness or cultural coherence have tended to be discredited, and this leads Japanese anthropologists to find themselves trapped in the these contradictory views.
Drawing on my experience of engaging in American Studies as a Japanese anthropologist, in this paper I ask how we can overcome the awkward relationship that exists between American Studies and Anthropology. I will examine the concept of culture, the positioning of 'the observer' and 'the observed,' and the notion of what constitutes 'America.' I will also propose a new formulation of the concept of culture, one that will force us to deconstruct the prevalent notion of 'America' as a monolithic entity while simultaneously allowing us to engage in critical discussions of the 'Americanness' of American culture.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, which is based on ethnographic research conducted in the US, I discuss the range of activities that Jewish peace activists have been engaged in as well as the vulnerabilities they experience and express.
Paper long abstract:
While Jewish diasporic identity and belonging in the US has been the topic of many popular titles -- among sociologists and political scientists at least -- until quite recently the topic has received little ethnographic attention. Even less attention has been paid to the role of Jewish diasporic activists engaged in peace and human rights activism and the Israel-Palestine conflict. In this paper, which is based on ethnographic research conducted in the US in the period known as the Oslo Peace period (for the agreement signed by Israel and the Palestine Authority) as well as in the period after the September 2001 attacks on the US, I discuss the range of activities that Jewish activists have been engaged in as well as the vulnerabilities they experience and express.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I analyze the problem of biosecurity in the US to highlight the double bind that emerges when one sees science and the US as both global and noncultural. I focus especially on research into the H5N1 ('bird flu') virus, and reconstruct this perceptual framing in two ways.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I analyze the problem of biosecurity in the US to highlight the double bind that emerges when one sees science and the US as both global and noncultural. I focus especially on research into the H5N1 ('bird flu') virus, and reconstruct this perceptual framing in two ways.
First, I show how the disconnect between science and security reflects the scientific practice of externalizing 'the social' from the bounded domain of scientific interest and responsibility. Thus, although anthropological literature has focused on how science has become more accountable and auditable to society, and how the scientific mode of knowledge production internalizes, or even reinvents, 'the social' to better justify the knowledge it produces, I show that in a particular U.S. case of biosecurity this shift appears only temporarily and discursively. In action, the case I consider expresses a process of externalization of security (and society) from science and scientific responsibility. Second, although this research is based in and on the US, I show that the scientists and other subjects involved in the issue do not refer to themselves as engaging with a local problem but, rather, with a manifestation of a global problem. Only when international actors respond to US actions (as in the case of H5N1) is the US discourse on the problem understood as but one possible perspective.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork among think tanks in Washington DC, this paper addresses the discomforts of doing ethnography 'close to home' and in circles of power, the challenges involved, the failures encountered, but also the opening of possibilities for engagement.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages with the challenges of doing ethnographic research in and among think tanks in Washington DC. Think tanks are often perceived to be centers of power, places where knowledge is crafted, political ideas polished, and networks of influence cultivated. The dense social network of 'policy intellectuals' - think tank experts, policy makers, politicians, multilateral experts, and corporate leaders - works like 'an economy of connections,' in which an ethnographer lacking relevant US-based credentials may find him- or herself at a disadvantage. There is as well a deceptive familiarity to the social worlds of think tanks, in that think-tank professionals share the academic's preoccupation with seeking knowledge, debating perspectives and diffusing ideas, yet operate based on distinctly different rationales.
In many ways, doing fieldwork among think tanks in the US brings into focus the challenges of 'studying up' and the hazards of accessing networks of influence. It also evokes the discomforts of working in a cultural environment that is 'close to home,' entailing a degree of 'cultural intimacy,' yet only deceptively similar. The paper addresses the challenges involved, the failures encountered, but also the opening of possibilities for engagement. On this basis, the paper invites discussion on the broader question of the US as a field site that ethnographers are either attracted to or tend to avoid.