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- Convenors:
-
Anthony Howarth
(University of Oxford)
Freya Hope (University of Oxford)
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- Discussant:
-
Kath Weston
(University of Edinburgh and University of Virginia)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The marginalised are often denied a place in the futurist visions of late-liberal political economies. Extending a nascent ‘counterfactual ethnography’ we explore the might yet be/maybe not visions the marginalised employ and defy in order to survive, as well as how these are broken and re-routed.
Long Abstract:
Groups traditionally studied by anthropologists such as indigenous and mobile peoples, and others marginalised by states, are often denied a place in the futurist visions of late-liberal political economies. Although it is evident from their endurance that the temporal exclusion of these groups is counterfactual they still face attacks from state and society, as well as cultural erasure. Extending a nascent ‘counterfactual ethnography’ (Weston 2021), this panel invites papers that explore the might yet be/maybe not visions and conceptulations marginalised people employ and defy in order to survive, as well as the ways broader political-economic environments foreclose, re-route, or shatter these visions. Our aim is, then, to examine the indeterminant space of speculation where hopes, desires, and dreams are shaped amidst everyday life struggles, as a window onto what we call the (no)future elsewhether; the practice of bringing the counterfactual forward into the world.
Questions may include but are not limited to: What speculative visions of the future/no-future might these groups hold and how are these produced? In what ways do such visions open up spaces of imaginative action between the real and the make-believe? How do imaginaries and denials; the might yet to be/or the maybe not, shape paths to the future for the marginalised and their states/host societies alike? In what ways are traditions future-focused and counterfactualised? How does the broader political-economic environment foreclose, re-route, or shatter the visions of the marginalised? In what ways do speculation and counterfactualising shape cosmological choices and what are their consequences?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Karvileena Deka (Anthropour)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the 'counterfactual concept' of a community traditionally studied by the researcher presented through the photo elicitation method. It explores the deciding factor of the community whether they are assigned or not with a reserved caste category.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the 'counterfactual concept' of a community traditionally studied by the researcher which will be presented through the photo elicitation method. The researcher will narrate the story through the said methodology to depict the fieldwork experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The studied population is the 'Netua' community found in the rural areas of Bihar located in the eastern side of India. According to the Bhiku Ramji Idate Commission report, the Netua community has been placed in the list 2A under the 'NONE' category meaning they do not belong to any caste category. The community dwells at the borders of certain villages and are still victims of the practice of untouchability (Abolition Of Untouchability Article 17, 1950 under the Indian Constitution). The paper explores the deciding factor of the community, that is, what if they are assigned to their caste reservation, will they be able to cope up with the rest of the reserved castes? How different will their lives be from today? On the contrary, if no status is assigned to them, will they lead the same stagnant lives as they have been for the last few decades? It should be taken into consideration that there is a limit to how much we can predict the impact of the reservation system on this mentioned community whose conditions have been undocumented for a long time. Owing to these unpredictable circumstances, this paper will thereby not provide an exact conclusion to the future of the Netua community.
Anthony Howarth (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
As with life itself, fieldwork and subsequent ethnography are each in their own way processes of imposing order on chaos. But what role does counterfactuality play in patterning chaos? This paper explores the counterfactuality of Irish Travellers as a means for them to pattern social relationships.
Paper long abstract:
As with life itself, fieldwork and subsequent ethnography are each in their own way processes of imposing order on chaos. But what if this order is reversed? If chaos is the void out of which order springs, then does it follow that anthropology and life itself must begin with chaos? And what role does counterfactuality play in patterning chaos? This paper tentatively explores the counterfactual narratives of Irish Travellers as a means for them to connect with and pattern relationships within their life-worlds.
More broadly, the paper suggests the legacy of structuralism, functionalism, and other allied paradigms continue to haunt anthropological conventions and ethnographic accounts, despite the turn to indeterminacy, uncertainty, and contingency. As an experiment in speculative ethnography and counterfactuality, the paper takes the chaotic messiness and inconsistency of life seriously suggesting that the connecting patterns of life are as rife with might yet be/maybe not visions as they are with order and instrumental action.
Freya Hope (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
New Travellers, a UK mobile alternative community, are a counterfactual group both as an ‘embodied counterfactual’ (Gedeon Archi 2020) and because in anthropological terms they may not actually exist. Due to this, exploring their lives may elicit what it takes to 'live differently’ (Weston 2021).
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on New Travellers, a group borne out of the 1960s/70s UK counterculture, who became an enduring mobile alternative community that have now sociobiologically reproduced over three plus generations. In response to their own speculative future predictions, which included imminent climate catastrophe and the fall of global capitalism, building on Gedeon Achi’s (2020) conceptualisation of groups in development random control trials, I suggest New Travellers intentionally became an ‘embodied counterfactual’ ‘parallel reality’ to the rest of UK society.
Not only are New Travellers counterfactual in the above terms, but also perhaps in the terms of anthropology itself. For example, they perceive themselves as living as anarchists but do not fulfil the criteria for groups living in anarchy prescribed by classical anthropologists. They also adhere to what they consider cultural beliefs, values, and practices of indigenous and ancient peoples, that would be considered lay and romanticised understandings of such within the discipline. In this sense, it could be a counterfactual proposition to say New Travellers exist at all in the way they understand themselves to. However, these ‘romanticised’ ideas and ideals have been central to the alternative sociocultural and material world which they have made, and which I will demonstrate has led to novel modes of kinship, ontologies, and human and posthuman connectivities. Consequently, engaging with Kath Weston’s (2021) notion of counterfactual ethnographies as ‘tools to imagine the future’ I will explore how the lives of New Travellers may help a consideration of ‘what it takes to live differently.’