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Power in a minor key: Rethinking anthropological accounts of power alongside London’s community organisers
Critique of Anthropology ( IF 1.788 ) Pub Date : 2021-08-27 , DOI: 10.1177/0308275x211038041
Farhan Samanani 1
Affiliation  

Anthropological accounts of power remain characterized by an enduring tension. Social scientific theories of power allow anthropologists to situate subjects and mediate between contending perspectives. However, in doing so, such theories inevitably also end up displacing the grounded perspective of interlocutors themselves. This tension sustains a contentious debate, which positions attention to power and attention to grounded perspectives in opposition. In this article I draw on ethnography conducted with the UK’s largest community organising body, Citizens UK, to trace an alternative approach to this tension. For Citizens UK organisers this tension becomes a way of driving change by enrolling diverse actors in collective projects and by displacing hegemonic understandings from within. Good theories, for Citizens UK organisers, are characterised by the practical ability to mediate between contending positions and, in doing so, transform them. To make sense of this mode of theorisation I take up queer theorist Jack Halberstam’s notion of ‘low theory’, geographer Cindi Katz’s notion of ‘minor theory’, and I draw on the linguistic anthropology notion of ‘register’. This allows me to unpack how organisers use theory to act, but also to trouble established anthropological understandings of what theory is and what it ought to do.



中文翻译:

小调中的权力:与伦敦社区组织者一起重新思考权力的人类学解释

人类学对权力的描述仍然以持久的紧张为特征。社会科学权力理论允许人类学家定位主体并在相互竞争的观点之间进行调解。然而,这样做时,这些理论也不可避免地最终取代了对话者本身的扎根观点。这种紧张关系维持着一场有争议的辩论,将注意力放在权力上,将注意力放在反对派的扎实观点上。在这篇文章中,我借鉴了与英国最大的社区组织机构 Citizens UK 进行的民族志研究,以寻找解决这种紧张局势的替代方法。对于 Citizens UK 的组织者来说,这种紧张局势通过在集体项目中招募不同的参与者并从内部取代霸权理解,成为一种推动变革的方式。好的理论,对于英国公民组织的组织者来说,其特点是具有在竞争立场之间进行调解的实际能力,并在这样做时改变它们。为了理解这种理论化模式,我采用了酷儿理论家 Jack Halberstam 的“低级理论”概念、地理学家 Cindi Katz 的“次要理论”概念,并借鉴了语言人类学的“语域”概念。这使我能够解开组织者如何使用理论来采取行动,但也使人类学对理论是什么以及它应该做什么的既定理解产生了麻烦。

更新日期:2021-08-27
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