Economic anthropologists now carry out fieldwork in settings for which the ethnographic method was never designed, amongst powerful financial actors who are notoriously difficult to access, and in contexts which transcend geographical boundaries. This has engendered a re‐orientation of anthropology, to consider not only the economic lives of people but also the social life of devices and concepts. Drawing on ethnographic readings of corporate documents as well as fieldwork with various fee‐earning intermediaries, this article looks at two concepts, ‘emerging markets’ and ‘human capital’, that are directed towards the making of investability in financial imaginaries and thus play a critical role in the production of financialization. Although often portrayed as neutral forms of knowledge, such concepts of economy, it is argued, are implicated in processes of racialization and that financialization is enacted through and produces racial forms. Responding to recent calls to attend to the legacy of empire and colonialism in financial capitalism, and inspired by the Black Radical Tradition, this article shows how colonial ideas of racial ordering are incorporated into these economic concepts. Thus, the invocation of these concepts, which play a vital role in creating legitimacy for intermediaries and their interventions, entrenches racializing dynamics of financialized capitalism.
{"title":"Conceptual colour: race, economic knowledge, and the anthropology of financialization","authors":"Kimberly Chong","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70082","url":null,"abstract":"Economic anthropologists now carry out fieldwork in settings for which the ethnographic method was never designed, amongst powerful financial actors who are notoriously difficult to access, and in contexts which transcend geographical boundaries. This has engendered a re‐orientation of anthropology, to consider not only the economic lives of people but also the social life of devices and concepts. Drawing on ethnographic readings of corporate documents as well as fieldwork with various fee‐earning intermediaries, this article looks at two concepts, ‘emerging markets’ and ‘human capital’, that are directed towards the making of investability in financial imaginaries and thus play a critical role in the production of financialization. Although often portrayed as neutral forms of knowledge, such concepts of economy, it is argued, are implicated in processes of racialization and that financialization is enacted through and produces racial forms. Responding to recent calls to attend to the legacy of empire and colonialism in financial capitalism, and inspired by the Black Radical Tradition, this article shows how colonial ideas of racial ordering are incorporated into these economic concepts. Thus, the invocation of these concepts, which play a vital role in creating legitimacy for intermediaries and their interventions, entrenches racializing dynamics of financialized capitalism.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147506658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Attentive to the ways that inertia can take hold of life, Catholic monks recognize despondency as a potential not only within the monastery, but in contemporary society more widely. Such experiences are regularly mapped onto an understanding of what early Christian monks termed ‘acedia’ (a Greek term that can be translated as ‘lack of care’). Taking as my ethnographic starting point the ways in which monks of an English Benedictine monastery understood and narrated the struggle with acedia, I note how this insight has been shared as a matter of public significance: most proximately during the boredom and constraint of the lockdown in response to COVID, but also more generally as something embedded, unrecognized, in modern life. What, then, does it mean to consider acedia as an analytical category? I argue that identifying acedia not only centres despondency as an active presence in life, but refuses to privatize it and strip it of its social dimensions. This fundamental sociality is both in the interaction with the demon of acedia, moving across the boundaries of a porous mind; and also in the means to resist acedia through the stability of shared time and space.
{"title":"Boredom, despondency, and the scourge that lays waste at noon: an anthropology of acedia","authors":"Richard D.G. Irvine","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70088","url":null,"abstract":"Attentive to the ways that inertia can take hold of life, Catholic monks recognize despondency as a potential not only within the monastery, but in contemporary society more widely. Such experiences are regularly mapped onto an understanding of what early Christian monks termed ‘acedia’ (a Greek term that can be translated as ‘lack of care’). Taking as my ethnographic starting point the ways in which monks of an English Benedictine monastery understood and narrated the struggle with acedia, I note how this insight has been shared as a matter of public significance: most proximately during the boredom and constraint of the lockdown in response to COVID, but also more generally as something embedded, unrecognized, in modern life. What, then, does it mean to consider acedia as an analytical category? I argue that identifying acedia not only centres despondency as an active presence in life, but refuses to privatize it and strip it of its social dimensions. This fundamental sociality is both in the interaction with the demon of acedia, moving across the boundaries of a porous mind; and also in the means to resist acedia through the stability of shared time and space.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147506653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates companionate processes of self‐making in a religious community of Catholic nuns in eastern Indonesia. I argue that the sociality of the convent establishes a unique context for understanding the effects of one's company on processes of self‐becoming. Through two years of participating in convent life, and set against majority‐Muslim Indonesia's religious and ethnic diversity, I offer an experience‐near account of the complex ways that nuns negotiate self in the midst of others, each on her own journey of personal transformation. Inspired by concepts of community, intersubjectivity, and empathy, I propose company as a mid‐level analytic for anthropological investigations into self and sociality. By attending closely to the dynamics of ever‐shifting social groupings, company promises a better understanding of the transformational relationship between self and community.
{"title":"The company you keep: becoming one(self) in an Indonesian convent","authors":"Meghan Rose Donnelly","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70086","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates companionate processes of self‐making in a religious community of Catholic nuns in eastern Indonesia. I argue that the sociality of the convent establishes a unique context for understanding the effects of one's company on processes of self‐becoming. Through two years of participating in convent life, and set against majority‐Muslim Indonesia's religious and ethnic diversity, I offer an experience‐near account of the complex ways that nuns negotiate self in the midst of others, each on her own journey of personal transformation. Inspired by concepts of community, intersubjectivity, and empathy, I propose company as a mid‐level analytic for anthropological investigations into self and sociality. By attending closely to the dynamics of ever‐shifting social groupings, company promises a better understanding of the transformational relationship between self and community.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147495353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
On visiting Sufi saint shrines in India, one encounters terminologies reminiscent of legal courts where protocols facilitate active engagement of pilgrims in their own healing. With practices that induce participation in the social world of dargahs, pilgrims not only seek the miracles of saints for material, spiritual, and bodily transformation, but pro‐actively ‘work’ to materialize blessings. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at three shrines in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, I argue that the exhausting work of singing to the ‘listening’ saint, is illustrative of ‘devotional labour’. Through a sung bayan , or witness statement, I show how people deploy devotional labour to achieve the desired restoration of health. The muakkil ’s ability to confer with possessing spirits, based on his former experience of possession, facilitates interpretation and legal clarification like that provided by solicitors, hence the demand for his expertise by the afflicted. Finally, that possession can be traced to the malicious intent of close relatives raises questions about dargahs as spaces for healing, and the internal and external transformations sought by shrinegoers estranged from familial and social environments. Centred on the category of healers at shrines, termed muakkils, this article seeks to advance ongoing discussions in the anthropology of healing in the subcontinental context.
{"title":"Singing to the saint: labour of healing at Jaunpur dargahs","authors":"Smita Tewari Jassal","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70084","url":null,"abstract":"On visiting Sufi saint shrines in India, one encounters terminologies reminiscent of legal courts where protocols facilitate active engagement of pilgrims in their own healing. With practices that induce participation in the social world of dargahs, pilgrims not only seek the miracles of saints for material, spiritual, and bodily transformation, but pro‐actively ‘work’ to materialize blessings. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at three shrines in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, I argue that the exhausting work of singing to the ‘listening’ saint, is illustrative of ‘devotional labour’. Through a sung <jats:italic>bayan</jats:italic> , or witness statement, I show how people deploy devotional labour to achieve the desired restoration of health. The <jats:italic>muakkil</jats:italic> ’s ability to confer with possessing spirits, based on his former experience of possession, facilitates interpretation and legal clarification like that provided by solicitors, hence the demand for his expertise by the afflicted. Finally, that possession can be traced to the malicious intent of close relatives raises questions about <jats:italic>dargahs</jats:italic> as spaces for healing, and the internal and external transformations sought by shrinegoers estranged from familial and social environments. Centred on the category of healers at shrines, termed muakkils, this article seeks to advance ongoing discussions in the anthropology of healing in the subcontinental context.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"273 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147477974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In June 2023, the Laje River, located in the traditional territory of the Wari’ Indigenous people in Rondônia, Brazil, was declared a legal entity, an earth being , with rights, following the co‐ordinated action of an indigenous councillor and non‐indigenous activists. This made the Laje the first river in Brazilian Amazonia to attain such a legal status. In this article, I explore the different conceptions of earth being that characterize, on one hand, the indigenous perspective, and, on the other, the perspective of the non‐indigenous actors involved in the legislative process. Similar cases in South America and New Zealand are compared, seeking a broader understanding of the equivocations that arise in the encounter between societies that accept instability and the possibility of an alternation between ontologies as positive factors and those societies more oriented towards dogmatism and a unity of perspectives.
{"title":"The birth of an earth being: ‘Rights of nature’ in Brazilian Amazonia and elsewhere","authors":"Aparecida Vilaça","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70087","url":null,"abstract":"In June 2023, the Laje River, located in the traditional territory of the Wari’ Indigenous people in Rondônia, Brazil, was declared a legal entity, an <jats:italic>earth being</jats:italic> , with rights, following the co‐ordinated action of an indigenous councillor and non‐indigenous activists. This made the Laje the first river in Brazilian Amazonia to attain such a legal status. In this article, I explore the different conceptions of <jats:italic>earth being</jats:italic> that characterize, on one hand, the indigenous perspective, and, on the other, the perspective of the non‐indigenous actors involved in the legislative process. Similar cases in South America and New Zealand are compared, seeking a broader understanding of the equivocations that arise in the encounter between societies that accept instability and the possibility of an alternation between ontologies as positive factors and those societies more oriented towards dogmatism and a unity of perspectives.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147477973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent decades, solid waste has proliferated worldwide, becoming a pressing global issue. This article explores the role of Indigenous people dwelling within and upon emerging waste scenarios, with a specific focus on involved forms of sociality and ontological contestation. Drawing on the case of a municipal landfill sited on a Guarani community in Bolivia, it seeks to understand the social relations with humans and other‐than‐humans that are generated and through which its world‐making takes place. It introduces questions of alterity, dependency, and autonomy into the anthropological field of discard studies, shedding light on how waste may act as a generative force for Indigenous life projects amid dependencies, inequalities, and ontological differences. The article shows how living with the landfill involved the community in a complicated relation with the municipality. Despite the environmental degradation it caused, the landfill became a paradigmatic place of abundance that supported community well‐being through the creation of wealth. Moreover, it allowed the community to re‐create desired forms of relatedness and exert some degree of control over powerful Others (municipal authorities). Unfolding within the context of consumer disposal, the community's engagement with the landfill is part of a subordinating integration of Indigenous people into the global economy.
{"title":"Amidst (waste) abundance: world‐making and struggles in hosting a municipal landfill in the Bolivian lowlands","authors":"Vanesa Martín Galán","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70080","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, solid waste has proliferated worldwide, becoming a pressing global issue. This article explores the role of Indigenous people dwelling within and upon emerging waste scenarios, with a specific focus on involved forms of sociality and ontological contestation. Drawing on the case of a municipal landfill sited on a Guarani community in Bolivia, it seeks to understand the social relations with humans and other‐than‐humans that are generated and through which its world‐making takes place. It introduces questions of alterity, dependency, and autonomy into the anthropological field of discard studies, shedding light on how waste may act as a generative force for Indigenous life projects amid dependencies, inequalities, and ontological differences. The article shows how living with the landfill involved the community in a complicated relation with the municipality. Despite the environmental degradation it caused, the landfill became a paradigmatic place of abundance that supported community well‐being through the creation of wealth. Moreover, it allowed the community to re‐create desired forms of relatedness and exert some degree of control over powerful Others (municipal authorities). Unfolding within the context of consumer disposal, the community's engagement with the landfill is part of a subordinating integration of Indigenous people into the global economy.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147447421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Why do some women choose to submit to their husbands in marriage? In anthropology, the paradox of ‘chosen submission’ has famously been explored by Saba Mahmood. Her work amongst Egyptian women donning the veil in the Islamic da'wa movement spotlights the notion of ‘piety’ to explore how devotion to God can act as a powerful motivator of human behaviour. This article pushes this line of argument further by seeking to make God a more central figure in anthropological analysis, following recent efforts in the field to create both ‘ethnographies of God’, as well as anthropologies that are ‘theologically engaged’. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst Nigerian Pentecostal women, this article illustrates the ways that marital submission is understood by these Christians as a spiritual state that connects them to God – a theological relation , in other words – as well as a social relation between them and their husbands. By analysing their theologies of freedom and submission, this article shows how theological thinking more generally can shape how power is conceived and wielded by religious subjects.
{"title":"The choice to submit: freedom, gender, and the figure of God in Pentecostal Nigeria","authors":"Naomi Richman","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70081","url":null,"abstract":"Why do some women choose to submit to their husbands in marriage? In anthropology, the paradox of ‘chosen submission’ has famously been explored by Saba Mahmood. Her work amongst Egyptian women donning the veil in the Islamic <jats:italic>da'wa</jats:italic> movement spotlights the notion of ‘piety’ to explore how devotion to God can act as a powerful motivator of human behaviour. This article pushes this line of argument further by seeking to make God a more central figure in anthropological analysis, following recent efforts in the field to create both ‘ethnographies of God’, as well as anthropologies that are ‘theologically engaged’. Drawing on ethnographic research amongst Nigerian Pentecostal women, this article illustrates the ways that marital submission is understood by these Christians as a spiritual state that connects them to God – a <jats:italic>theological relation</jats:italic> , in other words – as well as a social relation between them and their husbands. By analysing their theologies of freedom and submission, this article shows how theological thinking more generally can shape how power is conceived and wielded by religious subjects.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147447424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This short introduction contextualizes the three articles assembled for this special feature on Cuban anthropology by placing them against the backdrop of the precarious political and economic position in which Cuba finds itself at present. This raises questions as to how far and in what ways the kinds of phenomena and analyses put forward in the three articles in this section may serve as the basis for understanding the radical shifts in Cuban society that may lie ahead. The introduction ends with some reflections on the present and future prospects of anthropological institutions within Cuba itself.
{"title":"Cuban anthropology at a conjuncture: Introduction to a special theme section","authors":"Martin Holbraad","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70075","url":null,"abstract":"This short introduction contextualizes the three articles assembled for this special feature on Cuban anthropology by placing them against the backdrop of the precarious political and economic position in which Cuba finds itself at present. This raises questions as to how far and in what ways the kinds of phenomena and analyses put forward in the three articles in this section may serve as the basis for understanding the radical shifts in Cuban society that may lie ahead. The introduction ends with some reflections on the present and future prospects of anthropological institutions within Cuba itself.","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147447425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Comment on ‘On the problem of continuity: a theory of culture beyond invention’ by Paolo Heywood and Thomas Yarrow
评论保罗·海伍德和托马斯·亚罗的《论连续性问题：超越发明的文化理论
{"title":"Comment by Andrew Shryock","authors":"Andrew Shryock","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70074","url":null,"abstract":"Comment on ‘On the problem of continuity: a theory of culture beyond invention’ by Paolo Heywood and Thomas Yarrow","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147380724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Comment on ‘On the problem of continuity: a theory of culture beyond invention’ by Paolo Heywood and Thomas Yarrow
评论保罗·海伍德和托马斯·亚罗的《论连续性问题：超越发明的文化理论
{"title":"Comment by Sarah Green","authors":"Sarah Green","doi":"10.1111/1467-9655.70076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.70076","url":null,"abstract":"Comment on ‘On the problem of continuity: a theory of culture beyond invention’ by Paolo Heywood and Thomas Yarrow","PeriodicalId":47904,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147380789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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