Monthly Archives: August 2020

Lindsey Pullam takes the page 99 test

Posted on by

1

The 99th page of my dissertation goes into substantial detail about why military cemeteries exist for Israeli Druze IDF soldiers (when no such cemeteries exist for Druze civilians). Reincarnation is a fundamental tenet of the Druze religion, thus making graves superfluous as the body is unimportant in comparison to the soul. Conversely, Yad Labanim is a nationally sanctioned organization for fallen IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers, where graves have significance for the state and for individual families. With specific branches and museums in Druze villages, photographs and language (Hebrew and Arabic) are used to remediate Druze life and sacrifice to mostly Jewish audiences in ways that bridge two discourses of martyrdom.

I particularly enjoy my point:

In this way, the conservation and safeguarding of the Druze military cemetery serves as a reminder of the ultimate sacrifice Druze soldiers make to the country. One way to justify deviations from death practices set by the Druze religion is to signal religious cooperation and approval. This signal of religious compliance with soldier death practices (and Druze soldierhood more broadly) comes by way of photographs throughout the main sanctuary.

While I actually find the page quite boring in comparison to the ethnographic material presented in other chapters on food and sound, this page highlights the larger point of my dissertation. That is, Druze of Israel, a bilingual ethnoreligious minority, find themselves discursively bound by two national projects (Israeli and Palestinian). However, they constantly play (and perform) between the two using violence in its various sensorial forms as a resource. In the end, Druze performances of belonging showcase their attempts (successful or not) to claim a place in the Israeli nation for themselves.

This page also speaks to my direct participation in local tourism efforts by Druze. Tourism has long been seen in anthropology as a lesser form and site of analysis and yet it proved to be the best way to obtain innovative and substantial forms of data on an otherwise “secret society” within Israel. That being said, this page does well to advocate for the analysis of tourism’s production and consumption as it relates to national projects and the assimilation of marginalized groups to hegemonic discourse of the state.

Pullum, Lindsey. 2020. “Faithful/Traitor: Violence, Nationalism, and Performances of Druze Belonging.” PhD dissertation, Indiana University.

lindsey.pullum

 

Denis Provencher on his book, Queer Maghrebi French

Posted on by

0

Queer Maghrebi French

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781781382790/

Interview by Adeli Block

Adeli Block: Your monograph Queer Maghrebi French (2017) frequently references your first book, Queer French (2007). In what ways do you see your second book as an extension of your first book?

Denis Provencher: I definitely see them as companion volumes, where Queer French (QF) informs Queer Maghrebi French (QMF).  As I point out in the introduction to QMF, the map of “self-erasure in the Marais” drawn by Samir, which I analyze in the conclusion to QF, points me on a path to discover and analyze many untold and invisible stories of queer Maghrebi and queer Maghrebi French men. Moreover, in QF, I question the largely Judeo-Christian narrative in Anglo-American contexts of death and resurrection that undergirds the process widely known as “coming out of out the closet.”  I argue in QF, that French speakers rely more heavily on the post-World-War-II existential narrative of being authentic (living in good faith) and inauthentic (living in bad faith) and the French verb “s’assumer” (assuming one’s role in society) than the French expression “sortir du placard” (come out of the closet).  The queer French Maghrebi speakers in my second book build on this existentialist narrative, along with some transnational reliance on the coming-out narrative, to tell their own authentic stories that include but are not limited to images of “coming out of the harem,” “coming out of haram,” and “dropping the veil.” These are examples of flexible accumulation of language, which I address a bit more below.

Adeli Block: This book transcends nation-state borders (Algeria, France, Morocco, Tunisia), ethnic and geographical categories (Arab, Amazigh, French, North African, Middle Eastern), identity categories (gender, sexuality, race, class) and disciplines (anthropology, linguistics, queer studies, French and francophone studies, literary studies). You also integrate a mixed methods approach (or a queer methodology) of semiotics, visual/film analysis, conversation analysis, and critical discourse analysis. How were you able to achieve a project so multi-faceted and what were the challenges and rewards? Continue reading →

Justine Buck Quijada on her book, Buddhists, Shamans, and Soviets

Posted on by

0

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/buddhists-shamans-and-soviets-9780190916794

Interview by Claudia Lahr

Claudia Lahr: What makes the subject of time – be it linear or recursive – so important in the context of Buryatia as opposed to other places?

Justine Buck Quijada: I think people in Buryatia are very concerned with time because time has had such political importance. On the one hand, they are post-Soviet subjects, and as people in Russia more broadly joke, when the Soviet Union ended, the past became more unstable than the future. Soviet political rhetoric relied on a Marxist linear progression of time. The Soviet state, in many ways, rested its legitimacy on the ability to produce progress, to make people feel like they were working towards a utopian future, and most urban Buryats actually succeeded on this measure. When the goal of a Soviet utopian future dissolved, it threw people’s understanding of the past into disarray. It’s like, when you’re working towards a goal, like a PhD, or tenure, and then, for whatever reason, you change course, it throws all your previous decisions into a new light. The end of the Soviet Union was like that. While this affected everyone in the Soviet Union, Buryats, like other Siberian groups, experienced this disorientation more acutely because they are an indigenous population, and indigenous people are so often put in the role of primitive in order to prove other people’s modernity. When outsiders, be they Soviet cadres or IMF reformers, are trying to make you putatively more modern, and replace your histories with theirs, you become much more self-conscious about the valences of time.

Claudia Lahr: Why did you choose to use Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope in particular as a way of looking at history building in Buryatia? Continue reading →

Shannon Ward takes the page 99 test

Posted on by

0

My dissertation, Learning Language, Transforming Knowledge: Language Socialization in Amdo, Tibet, examines young children’s social and linguistic development in China’s western borderlands. Based on fifteen months of language socialization research with infants and children aged three months to seven years old, Learning Language, Transforming Knowledge demonstrates the persistence of place-based linguistic diversity amidst rapid urbanization and the associated rise of standard language ideologies.

My dissertation “passes” Ford Madox Ford’s test because the ethnographic examples described on page 99 situate my research within broader anthropological discussions about cultural reproduction amidst linguistic change. In Amdo, kinship relationships and spiritual connections to the homeland constitute diverse mother tongues as indexes of place-based belonging. Despite an overt ideological emphasis on language standardization in greater Tibet and western China, Amdo children continue to acquire their family’s mother tongue (Tib. yul skad) as their first language.

Page ninety-nine summarizes place-making practices in young children’s play. These play routines emplace the yul skad in the village homeland and, at the same time, allow children to innovate in the yul skad. From the time they are mobile, children spend their days in groups of related peers, moving throughout the expanded space of the village. Children use movement alongside verbal interaction to embody a form of place-based belonging that is simultaneously social and spiritual. For example, in the peer group, “children invoke skora, or circular movement, in multiple spatial frameworks. Daily play at the mani khang [local temple]…unfolds alongside adults’ circumambulation…While adults perform skora, children mirror their movements through games, including hide and seek (Amdo: bi-ʱtsʰe, [a code-mixed word whose first syllable is borrowed] from the Chinese verb 蔽 [bi, ‘to conceal’])” (Ward 2019: 99). Through games such as bi-ʱtsʰe, children solidify their peer relationships by iconically reproducing spiritual practices linked to the village homeland. At the same time, they use their multilingual verbal repertoires to develop unique ways of speaking among the village peer group. Through this play routine, children therefore reconstitute affective ties between the mother tongue, the kin-based peer group, and the spiritual center of the village homeland.

Shannon Mary Ward. 2019. Learning Language, Transforming Knowledge: Language Socialization in Amdo, Tibet. New York University, Phd.

Roberto J. González on his book, Connected

Posted on by

0

connected-cover

Interview by Patricia G. Lange

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520344211/connected

Patricia G. Lange: According to your book, the people of the remote community of Talea in Oaxaca, Mexico have a saying that “a bad compromise is better than a good fight.” How does this maxim emblematically illuminate what it took to secure their right to be connected to mobile networks and the internet?

Roberto J. González: For almost a decade, villagers dreamed of being the first in northern Oaxaca to have cellular service. They repeatedly petitioned the big telecom firms Telcel and Movistar, and when these companies turned them down, they petitioned state and federal regulators, who weren’t any help either. Eventually, in 2012, villagers decided to work with Rhizomatica, an NGO dedicated to helping indigenous communities get connected, and together they were able to create their own non-commercial DIY cellular network. Like most fledgling technologies, it had glitches and limitations—but it worked.

Now, I suppose when Big Telecom denied them service and government regulators ignored them, Taleans could have occupied the state capital, or kidnapped government officials, or had a protest march or hunger strike. But instead of a fight, they decided to find a compromise, a nonconfrontational kind of direct action—building the community cellular network—which worked well for several years.

By 2014, some people began accusing those operating the network of mismanagement. In this case, in order to avoid a “good fight” that might have politically divided the pueblo, village authorities came up with a bad compromise: to give Movistar another chance to provide cellular service. The company accepted.

Patricia G. Lange: A key cultural characteristic that you focus on is Talean openness to outside ideas. The Taleans’ willingness to experiment with innovation seems to have ironically both spurred support for their community-based, autonomous network—and hastened its “downfall.” Given that Taleans ultimately abandoned their community cell network in favor of a major telecom company, what does it mean to say that they are “ecumenical when it comes to technology”? How was your perspective and analysis influenced by teaching in Silicon Valley?

Continue reading →

Guilherme Fians takes the Page 99 test

Posted on by

0

On page 99 of my dissertation, the reader finds themself in the middle of an ethnographic description of a heated political debate held during the 101st Universal Congress of Esperanto, in Nitra (Slovakia) in 2016. In this debate, members of the World Non-National Esperanto Association were reflecting on the aims of their activism: should this association use Esperanto to create inclusive, internationalist conversation spaces where people from different national and linguistic backgrounds could gather and meet halfway by speaking a non-national, non-ethnic language? Or should they adopt a more combative stance and use Esperanto as an anti-nationalist tool to fight the exclusionary and xenophobic aspects of nationalism?

fian.photo

Entrance of the congress venue, the Slovak University of Agriculture, where the 101st Universal Congress of Esperanto took place. The Esperanto flag between the Slovakian and EU flags helps to convey the internationalist atmosphere at stake in the Esperanto gathering [Photo: Guilherme Fians].

While page 99 brings us to a brief diversion to Slovakia, my doctoral fieldwork – which placed my dissertation as the first extensive ethnographic study of Esperanto speakers and activists – was carried out mostly in France.

Constructed in the late nineteenth century as an attempt to promote mutual understanding between peoples through language comprehension, Esperanto has been historically associated with internationalism, gathering a community of speakers and activists that strategically connect this language with diverse global political platforms. If, in France, Esperanto used to be particularly prominent among anarchists, communists and pacifists, what is this language’s current political relevance? What impacts have new communication technologies such as social media had on the organization of this community and language movement? Through participant observation – in French and Esperanto – and archival research concentrated in Paris, I mapped out how Esperanto activists use this language in online and face-to-face debates to question the post-political consensus about the use of national languages (such as English and French) for international communication.

Approaching a moment of significant changes in the way people communicate and mobilize politically, I found that Esperanto frequently works as a gateway for people to engage with other political causes, such as movements for open-source software and against neoliberal globalization (like the Gilets jaunes in France). Within these frameworks, Esperanto activists depart from the fight against linguistic discrimination and a preference for participatory over mass communication to re-politicize acts of communication and contribute to radical politics.

Reaching back to Nitra, where both this blog post and my fieldwork began, the outcome of that debate was that any form of internationalist or anti-nationalist stance can prove productive, as long as it fosters more egalitarian and inclusive communicative exchanges through the international circulation and co-production of information, ideas and knowledge.

 

Fians, Guilherme. 2019. Of revolutionaries and geeks: Mediation, space and time among Esperanto speakers. University of Manchester, PhD dissertation.