Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923088
{"title":"Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures and Black Power in Berlin by Damani J. Partridge (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923088","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140522274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923087
AbdouMaliq Simone
ABSTRACT: This essay explores some resonances between the measures taken by the intensely subjugated residents of an urban district in Jayapura, West Papua (Indonesia) and notions of the "technical" examined by multiple strands in philosophies of media/computation, as well as Black thought. It explores some of the collective orientations and practices deployed to address a context of intensive subjugation, emphasizing these practices as modes of technicity applied to sustaining ways of acting in concert in a situation that continually undermines social coherence and intimacy. This exploration aims to further an understanding of a Black urban politics; to encompass the orientations and practices of "resistance" as technical operations to mitigate the experiences of capture and foster a sense of indeterminacy in the dispositions of ongoing colonial rule.
{"title":"An Urban Political from the \"End of the World\": Dock Nine and its Technical Epistles","authors":"AbdouMaliq Simone","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923087","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This essay explores some resonances between the measures taken by the intensely subjugated residents of an urban district in Jayapura, West Papua (Indonesia) and notions of the \"technical\" examined by multiple strands in philosophies of media/computation, as well as Black thought. It explores some of the collective orientations and practices deployed to address a context of intensive subjugation, emphasizing these practices as modes of technicity applied to sustaining ways of acting in concert in a situation that continually undermines social coherence and intimacy. This exploration aims to further an understanding of a Black urban politics; to encompass the orientations and practices of \"resistance\" as technical operations to mitigate the experiences of capture and foster a sense of indeterminacy in the dispositions of ongoing colonial rule.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140525741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923090
{"title":"Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples by David E. Sutton (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923090","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140516037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923083
Leo Couacaud
ABSTRACT: Mauritius is often celebrated as a success story in lay and academic discourse. One version of this discourse highlights Mauritius's success in managing its diversity as a multicultural society. But there are a number of reasons to question this assumption. For instance, some writers have claimed that Mauritius's policy of multiculturalism encourages the promotion of ethnic difference and marginalizes certain minorities (Couacaud 2016, Eisenlohr 2006, Vaughan 2001). In this paper, however, I propose to go further and argue that Mauritius's policy of multiculturalism not only promotes ethnic difference and marginalizes certain minorities. It has also led to what one could describe as the "fetishization of ethnic difference." I propose to demonstrate this by discussing how material religious practices act as signs of ethnic difference in everyday life, using ethnographic observations and visual documentation methods for these purposes. Examples cited in the paper include the material culture of temple architecture, religious street-processions, garden shrines, homes, workplaces, and vehicles.
{"title":"Multiculturalism and the Fetishization of Ethnic Difference in Mauritius","authors":"Leo Couacaud","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923083","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Mauritius is often celebrated as a success story in lay and academic discourse. One version of this discourse highlights Mauritius's success in managing its diversity as a multicultural society. But there are a number of reasons to question this assumption. For instance, some writers have claimed that Mauritius's policy of multiculturalism encourages the promotion of ethnic difference and marginalizes certain minorities (Couacaud 2016, Eisenlohr 2006, Vaughan 2001). In this paper, however, I propose to go further and argue that Mauritius's policy of multiculturalism not only promotes ethnic difference and marginalizes certain minorities. It has also led to what one could describe as the \"fetishization of ethnic difference.\" I propose to demonstrate this by discussing how material religious practices act as signs of ethnic difference in everyday life, using ethnographic observations and visual documentation methods for these purposes. Examples cited in the paper include the material culture of temple architecture, religious street-processions, garden shrines, homes, workplaces, and vehicles.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140521374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923084
Myriam Lamrani
ABSTRACT: On their journey to the United States, Oaxacan migrants often turn to various saints, whom they affectionately refer to as their "images," to seek protection and safe passage on the other side of the border. In this essay, I consider the interplay between figures of devotion and other images to theorize the multifaceted connections between religious and artistic representations of the saints within the context of migration. Through the analysis of two stories—one involving "illegalized" migration, the other "legalized" migrant devotees—where several saints intervene, I examine these images through the concept of transcendence. Here, transcendence encapsulates the saints' remarkable ability to extend beyond their physical images through different media as they move across borders while reshaping temporal and geographical timelines beyond colonial narratives. I argue that, as devotees call upon the saints to creatively redraw manifold connections between faith, migration, and sovereignty through the reconfiguration of affective and historical geographies, these transcendent images also help migrants re-imagine their indigenous identities to ultimately reframe the established imperialist cartographies. RESUMEN: En sus viajes hacia los Estados Unidos, los migrantes oaxaqueños recurren a menudo a varios santos, a quienes cariñosamente se refieren como sus «imágenes», para buscar protección y un paso seguro al otro lado de la frontera. En este ensayo, evalúo la interrelación entre las figuras de devoción y otras imágenes para teorizar las conexiones multifacéticas entre las representaciones religiosas y artísticas de los santos en contexto de migración. A través del análisis de dos historias – una de migración «ilegalizada» y otra que involucra a devotos migrantes «legalizados» – donde intervienen varios santos, investigo estas imágenes a través del concepto de trascendencia. Aquí, la trascendencia encapsula la estupenda capacidad de los santos para extenderse más allá de sus imágenes físicas a través de diferentes medios mientras se desplazan a través de fronteras, reconfigurando líneas temporales y geográficas más allá de las narrativas coloniales. Argumento que, a medida que los devotos invocan a los santos para redescribir creativamente las múltiples conexiones entre la fe, la migración y la soberanía mediante la reconfiguración de geografías afectivas e históricas, estas imágenes trascendentes también ayudan a los migrantes a reimaginar sus identidades indígenas para, en última instancia, replantear las cartografías imperialistas establecidas.
{"title":"Transcendent Images: Saintly Devotion, Art, and Indigenous Sovereignty in Oaxacan Transnational Migration","authors":"Myriam Lamrani","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923084","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: On their journey to the United States, Oaxacan migrants often turn to various saints, whom they affectionately refer to as their \"images,\" to seek protection and safe passage on the other side of the border. In this essay, I consider the interplay between figures of devotion and other images to theorize the multifaceted connections between religious and artistic representations of the saints within the context of migration. Through the analysis of two stories—one involving \"illegalized\" migration, the other \"legalized\" migrant devotees—where several saints intervene, I examine these images through the concept of transcendence. Here, transcendence encapsulates the saints' remarkable ability to extend beyond their physical images through different media as they move across borders while reshaping temporal and geographical timelines beyond colonial narratives. I argue that, as devotees call upon the saints to creatively redraw manifold connections between faith, migration, and sovereignty through the reconfiguration of affective and historical geographies, these transcendent images also help migrants re-imagine their indigenous identities to ultimately reframe the established imperialist cartographies. RESUMEN: En sus viajes hacia los Estados Unidos, los migrantes oaxaqueños recurren a menudo a varios santos, a quienes cariñosamente se refieren como sus «imágenes», para buscar protección y un paso seguro al otro lado de la frontera. En este ensayo, evalúo la interrelación entre las figuras de devoción y otras imágenes para teorizar las conexiones multifacéticas entre las representaciones religiosas y artísticas de los santos en contexto de migración. A través del análisis de dos historias – una de migración «ilegalizada» y otra que involucra a devotos migrantes «legalizados» – donde intervienen varios santos, investigo estas imágenes a través del concepto de trascendencia. Aquí, la trascendencia encapsula la estupenda capacidad de los santos para extenderse más allá de sus imágenes físicas a través de diferentes medios mientras se desplazan a través de fronteras, reconfigurando líneas temporales y geográficas más allá de las narrativas coloniales. Argumento que, a medida que los devotos invocan a los santos para redescribir creativamente las múltiples conexiones entre la fe, la migración y la soberanía mediante la reconfiguración de geografías afectivas e históricas, estas imágenes trascendentes también ayudan a los migrantes a reimaginar sus identidades indígenas para, en última instancia, replantear las cartografías imperialistas establecidas.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140520509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923086
Florence Durney
ABSTRACT: Lamalera is a small coastal community in the Lesser Sunda region of eastern Indonesia whose cosmology and livelihoods are rooted in hunting large marine prey, including toothed whales and large ocean fishes. In the past decade Lamalera's hunting practices have become embroiled in an international authenticity debate about technology, traditional belief, and conservation, fixating on the incorporation of outboard motors in hunts. Combining theories of material religion and the dispossession of indigenous peoples, this article makes two arguments. First it argues that the movement to outboards should be understood as an adaptation in the materiality of a sacred practice rather than the unraveling of tradition or decline of authenticity as has been proposed. Second, the article argues that the discourse of authenticity itself impacts the community in harmful ways, both by requiring Lamalerans to defend themselves, which has internal social costs, and by detrimentally reframing the important work that the community has done to keep their sacred practices alive in the midst of challenging circumstances.
{"title":"The Great Outboard Debate: Negotiating Materiality and Dispossession in a Southeast Asian Marine Hunting Community","authors":"Florence Durney","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923086","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Lamalera is a small coastal community in the Lesser Sunda region of eastern Indonesia whose cosmology and livelihoods are rooted in hunting large marine prey, including toothed whales and large ocean fishes. In the past decade Lamalera's hunting practices have become embroiled in an international authenticity debate about technology, traditional belief, and conservation, fixating on the incorporation of outboard motors in hunts. Combining theories of material religion and the dispossession of indigenous peoples, this article makes two arguments. First it argues that the movement to outboards should be understood as an adaptation in the materiality of a sacred practice rather than the unraveling of tradition or decline of authenticity as has been proposed. Second, the article argues that the discourse of authenticity itself impacts the community in harmful ways, both by requiring Lamalerans to defend themselves, which has internal social costs, and by detrimentally reframing the important work that the community has done to keep their sacred practices alive in the midst of challenging circumstances.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140516637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923082
Alejandro I. Paz
ABSTRACT: This paper brings together two aspects of state formations that are rarely considered in unison, emblems and public secrets, and examines the semiotic processes that relate them. It considers these processes in tours given by a prominent organization, called El-Ad, that works to settle Jewish-Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem, and in particular in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. El-Ad claims that it has returned the Israeli state to Silwan, and seeks to substantiate this through a variety of practices used on tours of the biblical archaeological site known as the City of David. While the City of David site is associated with the biblical narratives of King David and the first Jewish kingdom, I show how El-Ad selectively reveals the secret history of its settlement on tour as well. To do so, I describe the discursive marking of this secret history, and, in particular, I review how the director of El-Ad, David Be'eri, retold to tour guides the organization's foundational narrative in the genre of an intelligence operation. I end by discussing how El-Ad tours of the City of David archaeological site narrate this secret history of settlement, as a means to normalize the occupation. Drawing on theories of the state, secrets and entextualizing practices, I argue that state emblems are key to understanding the masking effects of statecraft.
{"title":"Settling History in Silwan: State Emblems and Public Secrets in Occupied East Jerusalem","authors":"Alejandro I. Paz","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923082","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This paper brings together two aspects of state formations that are rarely considered in unison, emblems and public secrets, and examines the semiotic processes that relate them. It considers these processes in tours given by a prominent organization, called El-Ad, that works to settle Jewish-Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem, and in particular in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. El-Ad claims that it has returned the Israeli state to Silwan, and seeks to substantiate this through a variety of practices used on tours of the biblical archaeological site known as the City of David. While the City of David site is associated with the biblical narratives of King David and the first Jewish kingdom, I show how El-Ad selectively reveals the secret history of its settlement on tour as well. To do so, I describe the discursive marking of this secret history, and, in particular, I review how the director of El-Ad, David Be'eri, retold to tour guides the organization's foundational narrative in the genre of an intelligence operation. I end by discussing how El-Ad tours of the City of David archaeological site narrate this secret history of settlement, as a means to normalize the occupation. Drawing on theories of the state, secrets and entextualizing practices, I argue that state emblems are key to understanding the masking effects of statecraft.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140516868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923085
Elizabeth Challinor
ABSTRACT: Portugal's tolerance towards irregular migration and its relatively extensive citizenship rights, in comparison with other European countries, have contributed towards its reputation as a migrant friendly state. However, when the state turns a blind eye to the irregular status of migrants and when the outsourcing of refugee reception to civil society fails to deliver according to Weberian expectations of an orderly, rational bureaucracy, who has the right to call whom to account? Through an examination of the blurred accountabilities in different sites of service provision in Portugal, the article examines the complex, shifting and incomplete strategies employed by social workers, civil society hosting staff and migrants in struggles over claims and resources. The challenges are like those of a game of cards in which players, searching for clarification regarding the rules of the game and how to apply or even manipulate them, may be partners in one round and adversaries in the next. These sites of struggle extend beyond two-sided confrontations between bureaucrats and their clients to include the wider structural context with its multiple actors, multiple accountabilities, and complex positionalities at play. A common outcome in these struggles for migrants and service providers alike is a transition from hope in state service delivery to hope in their own ability to navigate the system. There are limits to what service providers can achieve due to the structural conditions beyond their control. When they fail to deliver, relations between migrants and service providers sour. Feeling that clients have acted contrary to their expectations of compliant gratitude, service providers employ strategies which range from cutting relationships altogether to providing minimal formal support and questioning their own reactions. Migrants, believing that they have been let down or even tricked by the state, may even feel legitimatized to trick it in return.
{"title":"Navigating through the Cracks of the State System: Shifting Spaces of Hope in the Portuguese Mobility Regime","authors":"Elizabeth Challinor","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923085","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Portugal's tolerance towards irregular migration and its relatively extensive citizenship rights, in comparison with other European countries, have contributed towards its reputation as a migrant friendly state. However, when the state turns a blind eye to the irregular status of migrants and when the outsourcing of refugee reception to civil society fails to deliver according to Weberian expectations of an orderly, rational bureaucracy, who has the right to call whom to account? Through an examination of the blurred accountabilities in different sites of service provision in Portugal, the article examines the complex, shifting and incomplete strategies employed by social workers, civil society hosting staff and migrants in struggles over claims and resources. The challenges are like those of a game of cards in which players, searching for clarification regarding the rules of the game and how to apply or even manipulate them, may be partners in one round and adversaries in the next. These sites of struggle extend beyond two-sided confrontations between bureaucrats and their clients to include the wider structural context with its multiple actors, multiple accountabilities, and complex positionalities at play. A common outcome in these struggles for migrants and service providers alike is a transition from hope in state service delivery to hope in their own ability to navigate the system. There are limits to what service providers can achieve due to the structural conditions beyond their control. When they fail to deliver, relations between migrants and service providers sour. Feeling that clients have acted contrary to their expectations of compliant gratitude, service providers employ strategies which range from cutting relationships altogether to providing minimal formal support and questioning their own reactions. Migrants, believing that they have been let down or even tricked by the state, may even feel legitimatized to trick it in return.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140515833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2024.a923089
{"title":"Burning Matters: Life, Labor, and E-Waste Pyropolitics in Ghana by Peter C. Little (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/anq.2024.a923089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2024.a923089","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140526057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/anq.2023.a915256
Alessandro Jedlowski
ABSTRACT:In this essay, I revisit the history of the emergence and evolution of the Nigerian screen media industry (Nollywood) through the prism of the concept of “infopolitics” to develop an analysis of the interaction between media technology innovation and state control in Africa. After being a key preoccupation during Cold War, the issue of the state’s capacity to control the production and flow of media content and data within its borders has become again the object of controversial debates in recent years, as shown by the multiplication of research on the issue of “digital sovereignty” and “platform capitalism.” By focusing on an African case study to reflect on issues of global relevance, this essay shows how the analysis of African realities can help us in interrogating and complementing theories formulated in relation to western case studies (and generally uncritically applied to other contexts). Combining first-hand ethnographic data to the analysis of the research results of other scholars who have investigated the emergence and growth of Nollywood over the past decades, this essay follows media producers and their relationship to technologies and the state, over a period of forty years, from the introduction of the videotape to the arrival of streaming platforms. In so doing, this research puts into perspective the “presentism” of many recent works, which tend to see the introduction of new digital technologies as the bearer of an unprecedented historical break, and makes an attempt at highlighting the links of continuity and discontinuity between recent transformations and the technological innovations which preceded them.
ABSTRACT:In this essay, I revisit the history of the emergence and evolution of the Nigerian screen media industry (Nollywood) through the prism of the concept of "infopolitics" to develop an analysis between media technology innovation and state control in Africa.国家控制其境内媒体内容和数据的生产与流动的能力问题在冷战时期成为人们关注的焦点之后，近年来再次成为有争议的争论对象，关于 "数字主权 "和 "平台资本主义 "问题的研究层出不穷就说明了这一点。通过聚焦非洲案例研究来反思具有全球意义的问题，本文展示了对非洲现实的分析如何帮助我们质疑和补充针对西方案例研究（通常不加批判地应用于其他背景）所制定的理论。本文结合第一手人种学数据，分析了其他学者在过去几十年中对诺莱坞的出现和发展进行调查的研究成果，从录像带的出现到流媒体平台的到来，对媒体生产者及其与技术和国家的关系进行了长达四十年的跟踪研究。在这一过程中，本研究对许多近期著作中的 "现时主义 "进行了反思，这些著作倾向于将新数字技术的引入视为前所未有的历史性突破的承载者，并试图强调近期变革与此前技术创新之间的连续性和不连续性联系。
{"title":"Screen Media, Technological Innovation and the State in Nigeria","authors":"Alessandro Jedlowski","doi":"10.1353/anq.2023.a915256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2023.a915256","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In this essay, I revisit the history of the emergence and evolution of the Nigerian screen media industry (Nollywood) through the prism of the concept of “infopolitics” to develop an analysis of the interaction between media technology innovation and state control in Africa. After being a key preoccupation during Cold War, the issue of the state’s capacity to control the production and flow of media content and data within its borders has become again the object of controversial debates in recent years, as shown by the multiplication of research on the issue of “digital sovereignty” and “platform capitalism.” By focusing on an African case study to reflect on issues of global relevance, this essay shows how the analysis of African realities can help us in interrogating and complementing theories formulated in relation to western case studies (and generally uncritically applied to other contexts). Combining first-hand ethnographic data to the analysis of the research results of other scholars who have investigated the emergence and growth of Nollywood over the past decades, this essay follows media producers and their relationship to technologies and the state, over a period of forty years, from the introduction of the videotape to the arrival of streaming platforms. In so doing, this research puts into perspective the “presentism” of many recent works, which tend to see the introduction of new digital technologies as the bearer of an unprecedented historical break, and makes an attempt at highlighting the links of continuity and discontinuity between recent transformations and the technological innovations which preceded them.","PeriodicalId":51536,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Quarterly","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139344112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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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