Pub Date : 2023-01-07DOI: 10.1177/14634996221139900
Bruno Vindrola-Padrós
Much of the debate in archaeological theory throughout the last decades has revolved around challenging problematic humanist principles that have shaped our discipline, particularly the idea that humans are masters over nature. Postprocessualists sought, among other things, to emancipate the human condition from this essentialist claim in part by exposing the historical and cultural situatedness of this humanist principle – an epistemological endeavour. In comparison, posthumanists have animated the material world (albeit in different ways) to decentre human beings in relation to long-forsaken nonhumans – an ontological agenda. While posthumanists accuse postprocessualists of practicing anthropocentrism and the latter accuse the former of occupying an ahumanist and anti-epistemological position, there are powerful commonalities in their critique of late humanist doctrines. The aim of this paper is to introduce a theory that exposes the illusory humanist claim of human control over nature and to recognise other forces with momentum besides human will, while at the same time giving prominence to questions about human knowledge and practice. Therefore, a connection is formed between postprocessualism and posthumanism and, as an ironic result, a theory of breakage is formulated. When we consider human participation with breakage, defined as those continuous and uncontrollable phenomena involving the unbinding of object form, we come to terms with a different form of anthropological understanding termed ‘the social knowledge of breakage’. This constitutes an embodied form of knowledge, which is acquired and expressed practically from a young age about how objects break and how one must respond to these situations. This knowledge is exposed in both mundane and ceremonial practices, in linguistic and non-linguistic forms, shaping social practices in uncertain ways, and can be analysed according to three different strands. In this way, we become aware of the creative ways in which broken materials inadvertently affect our practices.
{"title":"Outline of a theory of breakage","authors":"Bruno Vindrola-Padrós","doi":"10.1177/14634996221139900","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221139900","url":null,"abstract":"Much of the debate in archaeological theory throughout the last decades has revolved around challenging problematic humanist principles that have shaped our discipline, particularly the idea that humans are masters over nature. Postprocessualists sought, among other things, to emancipate the human condition from this essentialist claim in part by exposing the historical and cultural situatedness of this humanist principle – an epistemological endeavour. In comparison, posthumanists have animated the material world (albeit in different ways) to decentre human beings in relation to long-forsaken nonhumans – an ontological agenda. While posthumanists accuse postprocessualists of practicing anthropocentrism and the latter accuse the former of occupying an ahumanist and anti-epistemological position, there are powerful commonalities in their critique of late humanist doctrines. The aim of this paper is to introduce a theory that exposes the illusory humanist claim of human control over nature and to recognise other forces with momentum besides human will, while at the same time giving prominence to questions about human knowledge and practice. Therefore, a connection is formed between postprocessualism and posthumanism and, as an ironic result, a theory of breakage is formulated. When we consider human participation with breakage, defined as those continuous and uncontrollable phenomena involving the unbinding of object form, we come to terms with a different form of anthropological understanding termed ‘the social knowledge of breakage’. This constitutes an embodied form of knowledge, which is acquired and expressed practically from a young age about how objects break and how one must respond to these situations. This knowledge is exposed in both mundane and ceremonial practices, in linguistic and non-linguistic forms, shaping social practices in uncertain ways, and can be analysed according to three different strands. In this way, we become aware of the creative ways in which broken materials inadvertently affect our practices.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"255 - 291"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42919839","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}
Pub Date : 2022-12-08DOI: 10.1177/14634996221130834
Francesco Della Costa
The effectiveness of ritual is a major anthropological question. In this paper, I challenge some of the explanations anthropologists have provided to such a question and I attempt to formulate an original theorization of ritual as metaphor. The proposed hypothesis is grounded in two inspiring concepts: Ernesto De Martino's idea of “dehistorification” as the main technique of the ritual and Bruce Kapferer's “virtuality” as its proper dynamic dimension. Drawing on these theoretical foundations and a direct ethnographic experience and conceiving of ritual as a practice rather than as a symbol, I propose to regard it as a particular practice of metaphorization that is not representative of reality but effective on it.
{"title":"Ritual as metaphor","authors":"Francesco Della Costa","doi":"10.1177/14634996221130834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221130834","url":null,"abstract":"The effectiveness of ritual is a major anthropological question. In this paper, I challenge some of the explanations anthropologists have provided to such a question and I attempt to formulate an original theorization of ritual as metaphor. The proposed hypothesis is grounded in two inspiring concepts: Ernesto De Martino's idea of “dehistorification” as the main technique of the ritual and Bruce Kapferer's “virtuality” as its proper dynamic dimension. Drawing on these theoretical foundations and a direct ethnographic experience and conceiving of ritual as a practice rather than as a symbol, I propose to regard it as a particular practice of metaphorization that is not representative of reality but effective on it.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"3 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44664280","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}
Pub Date : 2022-12-06DOI: 10.1177/14634996221133870
D. Sutton
What might we learn by considering the social and literary forms that makeup neoliberalism, and their relationship to the figurations of anthropological thought and writing? Inspired by tropological work in literary criticism and anthropology, this article considers how two terms introduced into the analytic literature by Karl and Michael Polanyi—embeddedness and tacit knowledge respectively—can give us new insights into important aspects of neoliberal practice. In considering the interrelation of these tropes, we can begin to parse out the relationship among several key aspects of the practice of neoliberalism: marketization, audit culture, and quantification; and how these are intertwined in their opposition to embeddedness and tacit knowledge. This article considers what different forms afford for analytic thinking about our present moment, as well as for formulating various protests and oppositions to neoliberalism.
{"title":"Tacit and embedded as forms: A tropological approach to neoliberalism","authors":"D. Sutton","doi":"10.1177/14634996221133870","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221133870","url":null,"abstract":"What might we learn by considering the social and literary forms that makeup neoliberalism, and their relationship to the figurations of anthropological thought and writing? Inspired by tropological work in literary criticism and anthropology, this article considers how two terms introduced into the analytic literature by Karl and Michael Polanyi—embeddedness and tacit knowledge respectively—can give us new insights into important aspects of neoliberal practice. In considering the interrelation of these tropes, we can begin to parse out the relationship among several key aspects of the practice of neoliberalism: marketization, audit culture, and quantification; and how these are intertwined in their opposition to embeddedness and tacit knowledge. This article considers what different forms afford for analytic thinking about our present moment, as well as for formulating various protests and oppositions to neoliberalism.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47643302","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}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/14634996221133872
Jonatan Kurzwelly, Malin S. Wilckens
Essentialist assumptions about human beings persist in scientific practice, despite their erroneous logic. This article examines essentialism related to research on, and handling of, academic collections of human remains. Historically human remains, and skulls in particular, have served to produce various forms of scientific racialization and racism, confining people to fixed notions of identities and legitimizing violent systems of exploitation and oppression. Contemporary handling of these human remains aims to account for the problematic and violent past, examining the provenance of particular human remains, often leading to their restitution. Despite the different political and ideological motivations of contemporary practice, it too often relies on essentialist categorization and inaccurate or erroneous assumptions. This text exposes the problematic logic of social essentialism and challenges its prevalence in scientific practice.
{"title":"Calcified identities: Persisting essentialism in academic collections of human remains","authors":"Jonatan Kurzwelly, Malin S. Wilckens","doi":"10.1177/14634996221133872","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221133872","url":null,"abstract":"Essentialist assumptions about human beings persist in scientific practice, despite their erroneous logic. This article examines essentialism related to research on, and handling of, academic collections of human remains. Historically human remains, and skulls in particular, have served to produce various forms of scientific racialization and racism, confining people to fixed notions of identities and legitimizing violent systems of exploitation and oppression. Contemporary handling of these human remains aims to account for the problematic and violent past, examining the provenance of particular human remains, often leading to their restitution. Despite the different political and ideological motivations of contemporary practice, it too often relies on essentialist categorization and inaccurate or erroneous assumptions. This text exposes the problematic logic of social essentialism and challenges its prevalence in scientific practice.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"100 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47776271","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}
Pub Date : 2022-11-20DOI: 10.1177/14634996221130555
Carter E. Timon
Throughout life, one may witness grand views, scenes accompanied by intense affect and a sense of awe or wonder. The awe-inspiring things in these experiences vary considerably from suns in sunsets to glowing visages in holy visions to juices in simple tangerines. For different people, different views along the broad spectrum of these affectively intensive grand-view experiences can produce meaning in life, the influential facet of wellbeing identified by positive psychologists but poorly differentiated from meaning-making in other senses. This paper lays out a theory of semiotic vista to organize such disparate signification events and their use of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs. Using the examples of accounts of mountain hiking experiences, mindfulness meditation experiences, and supernatural encounters, I describe semiotic vista as a transitional mode of semiotic viewing in which agents re-interpret multiple signifiers of ordinary phenomena (objects) as valorized components of novel contexts, typically in association with intense affective experience. The vista mode is heavily facilitated by the (re)generation of at least two primary types of first-order indexical interpretants which occur in these contexts and of their attendant second-order indexicality which (semi)permanently re-contextualizes the objects originally referenced in the same view. I also briefly touch on how this process relates to storytelling and audience reactions. This analysis has implications for wellbeing, positive affect generation, and ideological enregisterment.
{"title":"Semiotic vista","authors":"Carter E. Timon","doi":"10.1177/14634996221130555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221130555","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout life, one may witness grand views, scenes accompanied by intense affect and a sense of awe or wonder. The awe-inspiring things in these experiences vary considerably from suns in sunsets to glowing visages in holy visions to juices in simple tangerines. For different people, different views along the broad spectrum of these affectively intensive grand-view experiences can produce meaning in life, the influential facet of wellbeing identified by positive psychologists but poorly differentiated from meaning-making in other senses. This paper lays out a theory of semiotic vista to organize such disparate signification events and their use of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs. Using the examples of accounts of mountain hiking experiences, mindfulness meditation experiences, and supernatural encounters, I describe semiotic vista as a transitional mode of semiotic viewing in which agents re-interpret multiple signifiers of ordinary phenomena (objects) as valorized components of novel contexts, typically in association with intense affective experience. The vista mode is heavily facilitated by the (re)generation of at least two primary types of first-order indexical interpretants which occur in these contexts and of their attendant second-order indexicality which (semi)permanently re-contextualizes the objects originally referenced in the same view. I also briefly touch on how this process relates to storytelling and audience reactions. This analysis has implications for wellbeing, positive affect generation, and ideological enregisterment.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"56 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45945660","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}
Pub Date : 2022-11-13DOI: 10.1177/14634996221129117
Ingo Rohrer, Michelle Thompson
The term imagination and its derivatives often serve as points of departures, yet a concise understanding of imagination in anthropology is lacking. In this paper, we argue for a contextualized anthropological approach to imagination; a complex notion which has been used to describe the human capacity to mentally (re)create that what is not materially present; the creative process of imagining; and the individual and social products of such a process. We address terminological particularities, conceptual differences, and related concepts in addition to discussing the importance of methods and the poetic imagination. In doing so, we consolidate and elaborate on previous analytical and conceptual works to provide a more explicit middle-range theory of imagination from an anthropological perspective. While we propose understanding imagination as a guiding action in situations of uncertainty or ignorance and emphasize focusing on everyday processes and practices, our discussions provide a framework to discuss and compare empirically grounded findings regarding imagination.
{"title":"Imagination theory: Anthropological perspectives","authors":"Ingo Rohrer, Michelle Thompson","doi":"10.1177/14634996221129117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221129117","url":null,"abstract":"The term imagination and its derivatives often serve as points of departures, yet a concise understanding of imagination in anthropology is lacking. In this paper, we argue for a contextualized anthropological approach to imagination; a complex notion which has been used to describe the human capacity to mentally (re)create that what is not materially present; the creative process of imagining; and the individual and social products of such a process. We address terminological particularities, conceptual differences, and related concepts in addition to discussing the importance of methods and the poetic imagination. In doing so, we consolidate and elaborate on previous analytical and conceptual works to provide a more explicit middle-range theory of imagination from an anthropological perspective. While we propose understanding imagination as a guiding action in situations of uncertainty or ignorance and emphasize focusing on everyday processes and practices, our discussions provide a framework to discuss and compare empirically grounded findings regarding imagination.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"186 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47007273","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}
Pub Date : 2022-11-10DOI: 10.1177/14634996221138338
Noah Walker-Crawford
This article follows a groundbreaking climate justice lawsuit between a Peruvian farmer and major energy company in a German court, a strategic political intervention addressing the inequities of global warming. The claim posits that the two are neighbors, meaning the company should take responsibility for contributing to climate change impacts in the Andes. Using this legal conception as a starting point to engage with academic discussions about sociality and moral responsibility, I establish neighborliness as an analytical framework for examining the moral stakes of social relations. Addressing the methodological and theoretical challenges of studying a phenomenon that draws connections across the planet, this approach allows for an ethnographically grounded understanding of global warming. Climate change expands the scope of social relations and raises the question of how we should live together on our planet. A focus on neighborliness foregrounds the normative claims through which people make sense of globalizing phenomena.
{"title":"Climate change in the courtroom: An anthropology of neighborly relations","authors":"Noah Walker-Crawford","doi":"10.1177/14634996221138338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221138338","url":null,"abstract":"This article follows a groundbreaking climate justice lawsuit between a Peruvian farmer and major energy company in a German court, a strategic political intervention addressing the inequities of global warming. The claim posits that the two are neighbors, meaning the company should take responsibility for contributing to climate change impacts in the Andes. Using this legal conception as a starting point to engage with academic discussions about sociality and moral responsibility, I establish neighborliness as an analytical framework for examining the moral stakes of social relations. Addressing the methodological and theoretical challenges of studying a phenomenon that draws connections across the planet, this approach allows for an ethnographically grounded understanding of global warming. Climate change expands the scope of social relations and raises the question of how we should live together on our planet. A focus on neighborliness foregrounds the normative claims through which people make sense of globalizing phenomena.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"76 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47707323","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-17DOI: 10.1177/14634996221128079
Ricardo Santos Alexandre
The present article develops a theoretical and philosophical critique of the subjectivist paradigm that grounds a good part of present-day anthropological discourse. The main thesis is that by placing the individual and its subjective experiences at the beginning and end of the anthropological discourse, one never thoroughly acknowledges and accepts our non-subjective and finite modes of being, thereby replicating a distorted and shallow picture of what we are as humans. The article explores, first, how that subjectivist paradigm came about, as well as some of its problems; secondly, it considers ethics and morality as the domain where one can better grasp the limits of subjectivist orientations; and concludes by turning to Heidegger's perspective on the ontological finitude of Dasein in order to emphasize the need for contemporary anthropology to build its reflections from within human finitude, that is, the frailties and the practical, analytic and moral limits of human existence.
{"title":"Over the ruins of subjects: A critique of subjectivism in anthropological discourse","authors":"Ricardo Santos Alexandre","doi":"10.1177/14634996221128079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221128079","url":null,"abstract":"The present article develops a theoretical and philosophical critique of the subjectivist paradigm that grounds a good part of present-day anthropological discourse. The main thesis is that by placing the individual and its subjective experiences at the beginning and end of the anthropological discourse, one never thoroughly acknowledges and accepts our non-subjective and finite modes of being, thereby replicating a distorted and shallow picture of what we are as humans. The article explores, first, how that subjectivist paradigm came about, as well as some of its problems; secondly, it considers ethics and morality as the domain where one can better grasp the limits of subjectivist orientations; and concludes by turning to Heidegger's perspective on the ontological finitude of Dasein in order to emphasize the need for contemporary anthropology to build its reflections from within human finitude, that is, the frailties and the practical, analytic and moral limits of human existence.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"292 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46033552","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-06DOI: 10.1177/14634996221128104
A. Corso
What smell does border death leave to the inhabitants of borderlands? Is the encounter with the dead bodies of the migrants who perished in the Mediterranean Sea telling in how we articulate discussions around (necro)politics at the external borders of Europe? Based on one-year of fieldwork on the island of Lampedusa (Southern Italy), Door to Europe, and frontier for irregular border crossing, I argue that border death has consequences for both the migrants and the inhabitants of borderlands. The paper will trace such consequences through the testimony of Vincenzo, the old cemetery gatekeeper of Lampedusa, the witness and bearer of knowledge around the nameless bodies buried in Lampedusa's cemetery since 1996. This approach will help considering the extent to which the encounter with migrants’ dead bodies – bare life in death – allows ethnographers to speak of the inherently violent system that scholars referred to as necropolitics or thanatopolitics, and the otherwise irreducible force of life, which manifests itself beyond any possible attempt to reduce it or silence it.
{"title":"The smell of bare death: Encountering life at the graveyard of Lampedusa","authors":"A. Corso","doi":"10.1177/14634996221128104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221128104","url":null,"abstract":"What smell does border death leave to the inhabitants of borderlands? Is the encounter with the dead bodies of the migrants who perished in the Mediterranean Sea telling in how we articulate discussions around (necro)politics at the external borders of Europe? Based on one-year of fieldwork on the island of Lampedusa (Southern Italy), Door to Europe, and frontier for irregular border crossing, I argue that border death has consequences for both the migrants and the inhabitants of borderlands. The paper will trace such consequences through the testimony of Vincenzo, the old cemetery gatekeeper of Lampedusa, the witness and bearer of knowledge around the nameless bodies buried in Lampedusa's cemetery since 1996. This approach will help considering the extent to which the encounter with migrants’ dead bodies – bare life in death – allows ethnographers to speak of the inherently violent system that scholars referred to as necropolitics or thanatopolitics, and the otherwise irreducible force of life, which manifests itself beyond any possible attempt to reduce it or silence it.","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"332 - 352"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43941996","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}
Pub Date : 2022-08-22DOI: 10.1177/14634996221117318
Olli Pyyhtinen, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based commodity frontiers’, reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift to new domains but also to critically interrogate them, identify their limitations and explore what dumpster diving can teach us about the gift. In particular, the analysis foregrounds the heterogeneity of gift practices. Arguing against universal notions of the gift, the article proposes that waste assumes four main forms of gifts and relations among dumpster divers: givenness (parasitic relation); solidarity-based giving (relation of reciprocity); free giving (asymmetrical relation); and non-giving, as a withdrawal from returning the discards to nature conceived as an Other (the relation of non-relation).
{"title":"The gift of waste: The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers","authors":"Olli Pyyhtinen, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen","doi":"10.1177/14634996221117318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996221117318","url":null,"abstract":"While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based commodity frontiers’, reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift to new domains but also to critically interrogate them, identify their limitations and explore what dumpster diving can teach us about the gift. In particular, the analysis foregrounds the heterogeneity of gift practices. Arguing against universal notions of the gift, the article proposes that waste assumes four main forms of gifts and relations among dumpster divers: givenness (parasitic relation); solidarity-based giving (relation of reciprocity); free giving (asymmetrical relation); and non-giving, as a withdrawal from returning the discards to nature conceived as an Other (the relation of non-relation).","PeriodicalId":51554,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Theory","volume":"23 1","pages":"209 - 231"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41465393","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：