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On epistemic aporias and the coloniality of (my) categories American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-28 Laura A. Meek
This piece interrogates aporias of epistemic certainty by thinking through categories of medicine and uchawi (witchcraft) in Tanzania. I open with an account of how I misrecognized the meaning of a newspaper article about “head‐switching operations” posted on a hospital bulletin board. I then offer a close reading of the colonial/anthropological archive and its epistemic disavowal of uchawi nearly
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The fraudulent family American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-21 Sophia Balakian
In 2012 the US government began requiring DNA testing in its Refugee Family Reunification Program, which was primarily used by refugees from African countries. The policy was established to allay concerns that refugees were committing “family‐composition fraud,” or including people outside their families in their resettlement and reunification cases. In humanitarian contexts “fraud” has often been
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Improperty American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-07 Myles Lennon
The cognates proper and property have a racialized relationship: ownership rights were historically rooted in white supremacist notions of propriety. Thus, Black people's efforts to challenge these rights entail the improper: breaches of rules that render us as property and as propertyless. I ethnographically illustrate this transgression to theorize the intersection of property and the improper, or
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I was wrong when I studied Russian nuclear weapons scientists American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-06 Hugh Gusterson
Having successfully completed fieldwork in a US nuclear weapons community, I went to Russia to interview a handful of the country's nuclear weapons scientists. Epistemologically, I made the mistake of viewing them more as variant weapons designers rather than as Russians. More seriously, I failed to think through in advance the risks to myself and to my human subjects of interviewing important national
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Editors’ note American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2025-01-06 L. L. Wynn, Susanna Trnka, Jesse Hession Grayman
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Reflections on unheroic fieldwork American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-27 Meredith G. Marten
More than a decade ago, at the beginning of my doctoral fieldwork, I was kidnapped and robbed one morning in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As I negotiated the logistical and emotional aftermath of this traumatic event, I took refuge in elite, privileged spaces. In doing so, I grappled with difficult problems: my privilege, my fear and feelings of vulnerability, and my broader moral concerns about Tanzania's
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“What even the cowherds and women know” American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-24 Veena Das
In this commentary I interrogate the implicit picture of anthropological knowledge as vulnerable to errors because its primary scene is taken to be an encounter with an alien society. Using a method of autobiographically inflected ethnographic writing, I ask how the philosophical fantasy of “the logical alien,” which Wittgenstein untangles, finds another version in the anthropologist's imagination
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Cement and displacement American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-24 Kali Rubaii
Displaced people have not escaped war and do not live apart from it. This is evident in the material life of internally displaced Iraqi farmers seeking refuge in a concrete construction site, downstream from a cement‐processing plant in Iraqi Kurdistan. There, one family has repeatedly tried to build a traditional tannour (bread oven) out of unworkable, cement‐infused materials in their environment
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A vicarious scar American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-24 Erin Routon
Difficult challenges are an unavoidable aspect of doing ethnographic fieldwork in sensitive spaces or on sensitive subjects. A less commonly discussed problem, however, is the impact that vicarious or secondary traumas can have on researchers. Here, I discuss my experience of secondary trauma in conducting research with legal advocates in family‐detention facilities in the US. Even in work in which
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I was wrong about theory American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-23 Carole McGranahan
Theory occupies a central, if curious place in contemporary anthropology. It is needed and valuable, enabling the articulation and use of insights from field research. But it is also feared at times as hard, and also used in exclusionary ways. In this commentary, I review how my understanding of and relationship to theory have changed over time, primarily through an understanding of ethnography as
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Disability worlds By FayeGinsburg and RaynaRapp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024. 271 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-04 Timothy Y. Loh
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The composition of worlds: Interviews with Pierre Charbonnier By PhilippeDescola. Cambridge: Polity, 2024. 200 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-03 Laura Rival
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The violence of recognition: Adivasi indigeneity and anti‐Dalitness in India By PinkyHota. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. 230 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-03 Svati Shah
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Passport island: The market for EU citizenship in Cyprus By TheodorosRakopoulos. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023. 262 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-03 Nicole Constable
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Zainab's traffic: Moving saints, selves, and others across borders By EmrahYıldız. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. 191 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-12-03 Sana Chavoshian
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The mother, the politician, and the guerrilla: Women's political imagination in the Kurdish movement By Nazan Üstündağ. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. 272 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-09 Hasret Cetinkaya
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Terror trials: Life and law in Delhi's courts By Mayur R. Suresh. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. 272 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-07 Thomas Blom Hansen
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Nullius: The anthropology of ownership, sovereignty, and the law in India By Kriti Kapila. Chicago: Hau Books, 2022. 207 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 David Singh
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Imagistic care: Growing old in a precarious world Edited by Cheryl Mattingly and Lone Grøn. New York: Fordham University Press, 2022. 272 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Sarah Lamb
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Unsettled borders: The militarized science of surveillance on sacred Indigenous lands By Felicity Amaya Schaeffer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. 207 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Raquel Madrigal
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Religion and transnational citizenship in the African diaspora: Akan London By Mattia Fumanti. London: Routledge, 2023. 195 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Antonio Montañés Jimenez
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Probing arts and emergent forms of life By Michael M. J. Fischer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. 336 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Pamela Karimi
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Hailing the state: Indian democracy between elections By Lisa Mitchell. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. 320 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Zaheer Baber
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Afterlives of revolution: Everyday counterhistories in southern Oman By Alice Wilson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2023. 336 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Matan Kaminer
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Working musicians: Labor and creativity in film and television production By Timothy Taylor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. 264 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Michael L. Siciliano
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Eating besides ourselves: Thresholds of foods and bodies By Heather Paxson and Marianne Elisabeth Lien, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. 248 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Amy Cox Hall
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A tyranny against itself: Intimate partner violence on the margins of Bogotá By John I. B. Bhadra‐Heintz. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 258 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-11-06 Signe Svallfors
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Revolution squared: Tahrir, political possibilities, and counterrevolution in Egypt By Atef Shahat Said. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024. 360 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-27 Dena Qaddumi
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Creating value for objects‐in‐waiting American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-26 Olga Kanzaki Sooudi
In much anthropological reflection on value creation through objects, value is conceptualized as created in circulation. Yet objects’ social lives are punctuated by periods of waiting as much as they are by movement. Waiting can thus be theorized and examined as a critical pause in the circulation of objects, one that enables their value transformation and creation via social actors, institutions,
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Man\power and violence at the thresholds of humanitarian and anthropological reason American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-26 Adia Benton
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Egg providers in eGoli American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-26 Tessa Moll
In South Africa's urban hubs, young women are increasingly participating in the global fertility market by donating their eggs. Egg providers, who supply oocytes for others’ use in fertility treatment, are a key resource in the fertility market, and they are emblematic of new forms of biolabor. Egg markets have tapped into a precariously middle‐class population of young Black women in Johannesburg
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Hypeful worlds American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-26 Tom Neumark
Contemporary technoscience is rife with hype—inflated claims that rapidly propagate in favor of the next “new thing.” While scholars often strive to debunk and dispel hype, Tanzanian technologists working in health care face a different challenge: navigating hype. As these technologists embark on new projects in machine learning and other forms of AI, contending with hype becomes crucial. These actors
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Nuclear ghost: Atomic livelihoods in Fukushima's gray zone By Ryo Morimoto. Oakland: University California of Press, 2023. 356 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-19 Tomoki Fukui
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Creating a shared moral community: The building of a mosque congregation in London By Judy Shuttleworth. London: Routledge, 2023. 190 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-19 John R. Bowen
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“Magical math hand‐waving” American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Jon Schubert
Political risk forecasting is an industry that provides specialized analysis to a range of clients, including insurance companies, extractive industries, governments, defense ministries, and NGOs. Risk forecasters aim to help their clients mitigate risks by anticipating political developments that could threaten their investments and assets, especially in the “emerging markets” of the Global South
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An imperial meantime American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-17 Vivian Solana
On November 13, 2020, the Sahrawi movement for national liberation, known as the Polisario Front, resumed its armed struggle against Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara. With this decision, the movement put an end to a 29‐year‐long peace process throughout which the implementation of international law had been indefinitely deferred. During this cease‐fire, the Polisario used humanitarian aid to
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Vital decomposition: Soil practitioners + life politics By Kristina M. Lyons. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 218 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Meghan L. Morris
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“Strange” affinities American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-07 Muneeza Rizvi
British Muslim volunteers in Syria have been variously cast as humanitarians, activists, and—under the suspicious gaze of the war on terror—disguised militants. Yet many volunteers frame their efforts as attempts at iṣlāḥ (reform, repair, rectification). What is the ethicopolitical life of iṣlāḥ, a multivalent concept in the Islamic tradition, in a landscape marked by war and international relief efforts
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The movement for reproductive justice: Empowering women of color through social activism By Patricia Zavella. New York: New York University Press, 2020. 299 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-07 Jill Morrison
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If books fail, try beauty: Educated womanhood in the new East Africa By Brooke Schwartz Bocast. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. 205 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Rebecca Warne Peters
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The trauma mantras: A memoir of prose poems By Adrie Kusserow. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024. 176 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Karen Coen Flynn, Donald W. Goodrich
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Peasant politics of the twenty‐first century: Transnational social movements and agrarian change By Marc Edelman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024. 356 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Walter E. Little
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Shopping with Allah: Muslim pilgrimage, gender and consumption in a globalised world By ViolaThimm. London: UCL Press, 2023. 287 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Mirjam Lücking
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A witch's hand: Curing, killing, kinship, and colonialism among the Lujere of New Guinea By William E. Mitchell. Chicago: Hau Books, 2024. 567 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 David Lipset
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The border within: Vietnamese migrants transforming ethnic nationalism in Berlin By Phi Hong Su. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022. 216 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Stan Nadel
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A thousand steps to parliament: Constructing electable women in Mongolia By Manduhai Buyandelger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 288 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Baasanjav Terbish
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The made‐up state: Technology, trans femininity, and citizenship in Indonesia By Benjamin Hegarty. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. 198 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Ferdiansyah Thajib
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Indifference: On the praxis of interspecies being By Naisargi Davé. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. 208 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Susan Haris
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The work of repair: Capacity after colonialism in the timber plantations of South Africa By Thomas Cousins. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. 314 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Agata A. Konczal
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Futures after progress: Hope and doubt in late industrial Baltimore By Chloe Ahmann. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2024. 366 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Joshua O. Reno
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Fighting to breathe: Race, toxicity, and the rise of youth activism in Baltimore By NicoleFabricant. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023. 266 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Joseph O. Baker
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Revolution of things: The Islamism and post‐Islamism of objects in Tehran By Kusha Sefat. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023. 184 pp. American Ethnologist (IF 1.9) Pub Date : 2024-09-06 Alireza Doostdar