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- Convenors:
-
Karl Swinehart
(University of Louisville)
Elina Hartikainen (University of Oslo)
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- Discussants:
-
Erin Debenport
(University of California, Los Angeles)
Rihan Yeh (University of California, San Diego)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Resistance
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel examines social practices that transgress competing regimes of authority within shared social spaces to illuminate processes involved in the typification of social practices as alternately legal/illegal, obligatory/forbidden, sacred/profane across social boundaries.
Long Abstract:
This panel examines social practices that transgress competing regimes of authority within shared social spaces. Laws are often associated with states, yet communities of practice operating at scales both larger and smaller than state formations operate with their own rules which bring them into varying degrees of evasion, friction, or open conflict with states' legal frameworks. This panel illuminates the processes involved in the contested typifications of social practices as alternately legal / illegal, obligatory / forbidden, sacred / profane across social boundaries. For practices that have been stigmatized by the mark of illegality, how has stigma been contested, embraced, or transformed by practitioners? How have acts of contestation reconfigured transgressive practices themselves? What actors - whether human or non-human - come to mediate across these social boundaries? We are particularly interested in dynamics of religious practice, public performance, and the state, but welcome all papers that examine social practices which bring conflicting regimes of authority into degrees of dialogue and/or conflict across social boundaries.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paja Faudree (Brown University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes “prosthetic authority” in the “discovery” of Salvia divinorum: how key figures are erased from the plant’s history, unfolding alongside politically-charged transgression of boundaries. These widespread processes call for profound rethinking of claims to scientific advancement.
Paper long abstract:
Gordon Wasson - professional banker and amateur ethnobotanist – is widely credited with “discovering” Salvia divinorum. Salvia - a psychoactive variety of mint that Indigenous Mexicans have grown and used for centuries – has relatively recently become a global commodity and the substrate for wide-ranging, promising pharmacological research. However, existing histories of the plant’s scientific knowledge ignore what I call Wasson’s “prosthetic authority.” Wasson’s expertise about salvia was based on harnessing and claiming knowledge of others: women – especially indigenous women - whose skills and contributions were at least if not more exceptional and valuable than those of either Wasson himself of the myriad other men who are lauded for the roles they played in furthering scientific discovery of this unique plant. This process - by which key figures are erased from salvia’s discovery narrative - is linked to myriad politically-charged forms of boundary transgression, above all those in which sacred knowledge becomes relocated in the world of secular science, and collective ownership and interest becomes recast in terms of individually owned, commodifiable property. Such processes are central to Western notions of intellectual property rights, whether those undergirding the patents claimed by pharmaceutical researchers or those licensing the sale of salvia extracts by cyber vendors. In this way, the strategies for constructing authority outlined here are not unique to the case of salvia, and call for a profound rethinking of how we understand histories of scientific knowledge and claims to scientific advancement.
Karl Swinehart (University of Louisville)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on correspondence between Beat poet Allen Ginsburg and the anthropologist Weston La Barre, author of “The Peyote Cult”, this paper examines the stakes involved in anthropology’s role as mediator between Native religious practices and non-Native countercultural psychedelic enthusiasts.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropologists studying the use of peyote among plains Indians and the Native American Church found themselves in a curious situation with the rise of 1960s counterculture. Many anthropologists actively advocated for the legalization of the religious use of peyote for the Native American Church, yet also found themselves forced to position themselves before a growing youth counterculture interested in psychedelics, as well as Native practitioners and the US state. Countercultural non-Native psychedelic enthusiasts presented both a growing audience for ethnological research but also one whose reputation posed potential challenges to the scientific respectability to the field of anthropology. Focusing on correspondence between Beat poet Allen Ginsburg and the anthropologist Weston La Barre, author of “The Peyote Cult”, this paper examines the stakes involved in anthropology’s role as mediator between Native religious practices and non-Native countercultural psychedelic enthusiasts.
Kamala Russell (University of California, Berkeley)
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers exemplary acts of refusal by Muslim women in rural Oman at the intersection of three different regimes of authority: the Omani state, tribal social networks, and the Divine. I argue that their refusal is an attempt to make a third space to develop their relationship with God.
Paper long abstract:
This paper locates the cultivation of boredom as an exemplary act of refusal at the intersection of three different regimes of authority. Drawing on my two years of fieldwork with Muslim speakers of the endangered Śẖerēt language in the Dhofar highlands of Oman, I explore the tendency of women (particularly mature yet unmarried women) to spend large swaths of daylight in withdrawal from familial and interactional responsibilities, most likely through sleeping or pretending to sleep. Though they complain at times about the bored stupor that their schedule produces, and often attract the ire of their family members, they do not act to rearrange their sleeping hours. I argue that the disjuncture between their schedule and activity and that of the rest of the family is not lethargy but instead is a method of making space outside the exposure to hospitality obligations and the gaze of (male) guests that constitutes an Islamic practice. Where this obligation to interact with others supports persistent forms of tribal authority that exist in contestation with Omani Sultanic soveriegnty, it is the tools of dispossession that the state deploys against these tribal networks -- infrastructures for electricity and transit as well as economic and educational developments that change the rhythm of the day -- that enable the women's refusal. However, I argue that their bored withdrawal does not index state authority, but instead is an attempt to carve out a third space within which they can develop their own ethical relationship with God.
Elina Hartikainen (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how the activist phrasing "religious racism" has come to be adopted by public prosecutors and legislators in Brazil. In so doing, it elucidates the processes of "clasping" and "bundling" that characterize the movement of activist concepts into legal arenas.
Paper long abstract:
In Brazil, "religious racism" has entered the agenda of a wide array of legal actions and institutions in the past few years. Public prosecutors' and lawyers' associations alike have positioned it as a concern warranting their members' serious attention. The phrasing "religious racism" refers to attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions performed by Evangelical Christian groups who profess a theology of spiritual warfare against the devil. While these attacks have been steadily increasing in Brazil since the 1990s, in the past few years they have reached alarming numbers in cities like Rio de Janeiro. Until recently, however, the term of choice for legal actors for this phenomenon was "religious intolerance." The phrasing "religious racism" was coined by religious and black movement activists in the mid-2000s who sought to highlight the systemic and racially motivated character of Evangelical Christian attacks on Afro-Brazilian religions. This paper examines how the phrasing "religious racism" has come to be adopted into the parlance of public prosecutors and legislators in Brazil. The broader aim of the paper is to elucidate the semiotic processes of "clasping" and "bundling" that characterize the movement of activist concepts into state speech.
Danse de Bondt (Utrecht University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the ways people cope with rule breaking situations in an area where rules and norms arise from different semi-autonomous social fields. I argue how people use theatrical acts, (technical) language and non-language to justify their actions and convince people of their right.
Paper long abstract:
Legal rules, normative rules, sport rules, eating rules, social labels, work ethics, dress codes, taboo’s and more. In our everyday life we seem to be drowning in the various types of rules that surrounds us. Rules have an important order-making function in social life, each in itself is a way of organizing and maintaining order within its own social field. Following Veena Das and Deborah Poole (2004) I understand rules as important boundary making (and boundary breaking) practices through which claims of legitimacy and authority are made. They understand the margins of the state as sites were law and order are constantly being negotiated and established. Similar to them, I am interested in those areas where rules are challenged and tensions arise between 'different competing regimes of authority' within the same social space.
In this paper, I ethnographically explore the ways that rural Ugandans navigate and negotiate different (in)formal systems for dispute settlement at the village level, ranging from clan councils, local government councils in villages to police mediation and magistrate courts in the district. I understand how the working of such semi-autonomous social fields (Moore 1973) set overlapping as well as conflicting rules for their members. Therefore, in navigating these different fields, breaking a rule is inevitable. In this paper I specifically examine the ways people cope with rule breaking situations. More so, I argue how people use theatrical acts, (technical) language and non-language (de Sousa Santos 1977) to justify their actions and convince others of their right.