{"title":"Polyphonic readings of a Luso-Brazilian sobrado","authors":"Roberta Burchardt","doi":"10.1111/aman.13959","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13959","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"321-325"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140427238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Putting anthropologists of design in conversation with Black studies, this article demonstrates how a group of repentant education entrepreneurs in post-Katrina New Orleans mobilized racialized affective and narrative surplus within an information economy based on design rituals and protocols. I examine how this splinter group of education reformers established design communities through ritualized “pitches” and show how the egalitarian aspirations of designers rely on forms of empathetic erasure rooted in narratives of spectacular violence and universalist assumptions about the motivations, behaviors, and capacities of so-called users and so-called designers. While it is easy to laud the “empathy principles” of design thinking for taking seriously the agency and intellectual capacity of its racialized “users,” this article shares anti-Blackness theorists’ skepticism of liberal humanization projects and is concerned with the burdens that the relationship between designers and users entails. What is the human at the center of design? Humanity here is not a shared essence, nor an egalitarian relation, but in this instance marks a process through which surplus affect and the spectacle of Blackness is instrumentalized and transmuted into racial capital.
{"title":"Pitch Black: How design entrepreneurs are rethinking race in post-Katrina schools","authors":"Christien Tompkins","doi":"10.1111/aman.13960","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13960","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Putting anthropologists of design in conversation with Black studies, this article demonstrates how a group of repentant education entrepreneurs in post-Katrina New Orleans mobilized racialized affective and narrative surplus within an information economy based on design rituals and protocols. I examine how this splinter group of education reformers established design communities through ritualized “pitches” and show how the egalitarian aspirations of designers rely on forms of empathetic erasure rooted in narratives of spectacular violence and universalist assumptions about the motivations, behaviors, and capacities of so-called users and so-called designers. While it is easy to laud the “empathy principles” of design thinking for taking seriously the agency and intellectual capacity of its racialized “users,” this article shares anti-Blackness theorists’ skepticism of liberal humanization projects and is concerned with the burdens that the relationship between designers and users entails. What is the human at the center of design? Humanity here is not a shared essence, nor an egalitarian relation, but in this instance marks a process through which surplus affect and the spectacle of Blackness is instrumentalized and transmuted into racial capital.</p>","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"204-215"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13960","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140430985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marisa Lazzari, Peter Bille Larsen, Francesco Orlandi
<p>More than ever, heritage narratives, policies, and objects are being questioned because of the colonial legacies that still permeate public spaces (e.g., Knudsen et al., <span>2022</span>). From the eruption of protests and claims to heritage objects, places, and monuments in former colonial powers, to the emergence of Indigenous peoples’ heritage curatorship of land, and resources activism, new efforts are challenging racialized social orders and persistent exclusionary regimes. Protests echo long-running questions about social structure, voice, and ability to shape lives and the future, linking heritage to broader questions of rights, resources, and redistribution. Both academic scholarship and grassroots politics prompt us to interrogate the entrenched politics of representation, socio-material interactions, and the unfinished business of decolonizing heritage institutions and practices.</p><p>This conversation started within the framework of a networking seed grant project promoted by the University of Geneva and the University of Exeter.1 The project aimed to broaden the conversation on the intersections of cultural heritage, identity, and landscape sustainability by bringing together scholars addressing different configurations of heritage regimes, discourses, and practices from various regions of the world (Figure 1). Focusing on the connections, as well as contradictions, that characterize social spaces caught up between local and global policies and practices, this led to a powerful interdisciplinary and comparative outlook on the complexities of decoloniality. The anthropologically informed multiregional focus enabled us to explore the entanglements between place-based research, long-term practices of inhabiting and remembering, and the transnational valuations and expectations underpinning official heritage management (see Dominguez, <span>2017</span>). The complexity of “authorized heritage discourse,” as originally defined by Smith (<span>2006</span>), is arguably augmented in contemporary frictional spaces of developmentalism, from the widening of global extractive frontiers on natural, cultural, and intellectual materials, to the spaces into which Indigenous peoples and ethnic or rural minorities are pressured to conform to international organizations’ and state-sponsored development models (e.g., Coombe and Baird, <span>2016</span>; Larsen et al., <span>2022</span>). The collective effort, as this dossier reveals, led to the identification of unexpected commonalities as well as new horizons for collaboration across disciplines, areas of practice, and diverse perspectives.</p><p>The exchanges on heritage and decoloniality taking place across several meetings revealed a common aspiration to unpack heritage politics through their multiple historical, juridical, emotional, and spatial dimensions. Colonial heritage matters are not merely historical events and material remains of the past that can simply be acknowledged or rejected.
{"title":"Introduction - The heritage and decoloniality nexus: Global exchanges and unresolved questions in sedimented landscapes of injustice","authors":"Marisa Lazzari, Peter Bille Larsen, Francesco Orlandi","doi":"10.1111/aman.13951","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13951","url":null,"abstract":"<p>More than ever, heritage narratives, policies, and objects are being questioned because of the colonial legacies that still permeate public spaces (e.g., Knudsen et al., <span>2022</span>). From the eruption of protests and claims to heritage objects, places, and monuments in former colonial powers, to the emergence of Indigenous peoples’ heritage curatorship of land, and resources activism, new efforts are challenging racialized social orders and persistent exclusionary regimes. Protests echo long-running questions about social structure, voice, and ability to shape lives and the future, linking heritage to broader questions of rights, resources, and redistribution. Both academic scholarship and grassroots politics prompt us to interrogate the entrenched politics of representation, socio-material interactions, and the unfinished business of decolonizing heritage institutions and practices.</p><p>This conversation started within the framework of a networking seed grant project promoted by the University of Geneva and the University of Exeter.1 The project aimed to broaden the conversation on the intersections of cultural heritage, identity, and landscape sustainability by bringing together scholars addressing different configurations of heritage regimes, discourses, and practices from various regions of the world (Figure 1). Focusing on the connections, as well as contradictions, that characterize social spaces caught up between local and global policies and practices, this led to a powerful interdisciplinary and comparative outlook on the complexities of decoloniality. The anthropologically informed multiregional focus enabled us to explore the entanglements between place-based research, long-term practices of inhabiting and remembering, and the transnational valuations and expectations underpinning official heritage management (see Dominguez, <span>2017</span>). The complexity of “authorized heritage discourse,” as originally defined by Smith (<span>2006</span>), is arguably augmented in contemporary frictional spaces of developmentalism, from the widening of global extractive frontiers on natural, cultural, and intellectual materials, to the spaces into which Indigenous peoples and ethnic or rural minorities are pressured to conform to international organizations’ and state-sponsored development models (e.g., Coombe and Baird, <span>2016</span>; Larsen et al., <span>2022</span>). The collective effort, as this dossier reveals, led to the identification of unexpected commonalities as well as new horizons for collaboration across disciplines, areas of practice, and diverse perspectives.</p><p>The exchanges on heritage and decoloniality taking place across several meetings revealed a common aspiration to unpack heritage politics through their multiple historical, juridical, emotional, and spatial dimensions. Colonial heritage matters are not merely historical events and material remains of the past that can simply be acknowledged or rejected. ","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"311-316"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13951","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140429499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>We see from other contributions to this collection how issues of colonialism and decoloniality in different societies and regions of the world shape and reshape heritage meanings and the role that is played by differing levels of knowledge and authority—local, communal, institutional, legal, and national—in directing and redirecting perceptions of heritage. Many of the contributions share the backdrop of settler colonialism in the Americas and find solidarity at the intersection of heritage, land rights, and (dis)possession. In South Asia, it is external, or exogenous, colonialism; the exploitation of local people; and extraction of resources by an outside power for the wealth and privilege of the colonizers (Tuck and Yang, <span>2012</span>) that characterize society and heritage. Here we deal specifically with Sri Lanka, an island with a long, rich, and multifaceted history that has in the last half-century experienced a brutal civil war and now lives in an uneasy and unresolved peace.</p><p>Taking inspiration from conversations that emerged during the meeting in Geneva, we have here recorded a three-way conversation that developed its own trajectories as we explored our own places in the heritage-coloniality dynamic of Sri Lanka and then the places where we found the contentions of heritage-coloniality impinging on the state of the island and its communities today. It is interesting that our conversation also alighted on the perception of a new Chinese colonialism, unknowingly picking up threads from the contribution of Florence Graezer Bideau and Pascale Bugnon in this special section. To retain the spontaneity and authenticity of our conversation in December 2022, the text is largely unedited. For anyone familiar with Sri Lanka today, the conversation as an event is as valuable as what is being said, and we hope this opens doors to more cross-community conversations.</p><p>Hasini Haputhanthri: best known as a development professional and arts manager, Hasini collaborates with a global network of researchers and practitioners on peace-building, arts, and heritage management in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Lebanon, and many other places. Her current focus is on reinventing museums as sites of representation, innovative pedagogy, and civic engagement.</p><p>Gill Juleff: Gill has worked in Sri Lanka and South Asia for almost 40 years. Her primary research has been in the archaeology of iron- and steel-making, and her work on the first-millennium wind-powered furnaces of Samanalawewa put Sri Lanka on the international stage. More recently, Gill has developed interests in the historical and postwar archaeology of the Jaffna Peninsula.</p><p>Thamotharampillai Sanathanan: born in Jaffna, Sanathanan's art practice traces loss, memory, home, and the self. His work involves various disciplines, research, documentation, and oral history that explore complex issues related to Sri Lanka's civil war. His works such as <i>The Incomplete Thombu</i> (Shanaatha
{"title":"Heritage and decoloniality: Reflections from Sri Lanka—A conversation","authors":"Hasini Haputhanthri, Gill Juleff, Thamotharampillai Sanathanan","doi":"10.1111/aman.13949","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13949","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We see from other contributions to this collection how issues of colonialism and decoloniality in different societies and regions of the world shape and reshape heritage meanings and the role that is played by differing levels of knowledge and authority—local, communal, institutional, legal, and national—in directing and redirecting perceptions of heritage. Many of the contributions share the backdrop of settler colonialism in the Americas and find solidarity at the intersection of heritage, land rights, and (dis)possession. In South Asia, it is external, or exogenous, colonialism; the exploitation of local people; and extraction of resources by an outside power for the wealth and privilege of the colonizers (Tuck and Yang, <span>2012</span>) that characterize society and heritage. Here we deal specifically with Sri Lanka, an island with a long, rich, and multifaceted history that has in the last half-century experienced a brutal civil war and now lives in an uneasy and unresolved peace.</p><p>Taking inspiration from conversations that emerged during the meeting in Geneva, we have here recorded a three-way conversation that developed its own trajectories as we explored our own places in the heritage-coloniality dynamic of Sri Lanka and then the places where we found the contentions of heritage-coloniality impinging on the state of the island and its communities today. It is interesting that our conversation also alighted on the perception of a new Chinese colonialism, unknowingly picking up threads from the contribution of Florence Graezer Bideau and Pascale Bugnon in this special section. To retain the spontaneity and authenticity of our conversation in December 2022, the text is largely unedited. For anyone familiar with Sri Lanka today, the conversation as an event is as valuable as what is being said, and we hope this opens doors to more cross-community conversations.</p><p>Hasini Haputhanthri: best known as a development professional and arts manager, Hasini collaborates with a global network of researchers and practitioners on peace-building, arts, and heritage management in Sri Lanka, South Africa, Lebanon, and many other places. Her current focus is on reinventing museums as sites of representation, innovative pedagogy, and civic engagement.</p><p>Gill Juleff: Gill has worked in Sri Lanka and South Asia for almost 40 years. Her primary research has been in the archaeology of iron- and steel-making, and her work on the first-millennium wind-powered furnaces of Samanalawewa put Sri Lanka on the international stage. More recently, Gill has developed interests in the historical and postwar archaeology of the Jaffna Peninsula.</p><p>Thamotharampillai Sanathanan: born in Jaffna, Sanathanan's art practice traces loss, memory, home, and the self. His work involves various disciplines, research, documentation, and oral history that explore complex issues related to Sri Lanka's civil war. His works such as <i>The Incomplete Thombu</i> (Shanaatha","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"349-354"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13949","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140437610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The festive celebration known as FandangObon is made possible by workshops and satellite performances that artivistas (art activists) stage throughout the year in a variety of community venues. The event transforms the annual Japanese American Buddhist Obon ceremony honoring ancestors into an antiracist polycultural performance. Through improvisation and invention, colorfully adorned participants blend the dances, songs, and costumes of the Japanese bon odori circle with Mexican son jarocho fandango practices and West African ballet and egungun drum and dance circles. Each of the groups represented in FandangObon brings to the mix its own form of circle dancing, collective singing, and instrument playing, yet bon odori, fandango, and egungun do not fuse together seamlessly in these gatherings. Instead they coalesce as a conversation among equals in which each tradition remains faithful to itself in the process of making changes through engagement with others The concepts of amplification, counterpublics, and fugitive spaces of belonging serve in this article as central interpretive frames of a cultural critique of the historical and cultural conditions for the celebration's emergence, articulation, and implementation (Marcus and Fischer 1986).
{"title":"FandangObon: Amplification, counter-publics, and fugitive spaces of belonging in Los Angeles","authors":"George Lipsitz","doi":"10.1111/aman.13961","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13961","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The festive celebration known as FandangObon is made possible by workshops and satellite performances that artivistas (art activists) stage throughout the year in a variety of community venues. The event transforms the annual Japanese American Buddhist Obon ceremony honoring ancestors into an antiracist polycultural performance. Through improvisation and invention, colorfully adorned participants blend the dances, songs, and costumes of the Japanese bon odori circle with Mexican son jarocho fandango practices and West African ballet and egungun drum and dance circles. Each of the groups represented in FandangObon brings to the mix its own form of circle dancing, collective singing, and instrument playing, yet bon odori, fandango, and egungun do not fuse together seamlessly in these gatherings. Instead they coalesce as a conversation among equals in which each tradition remains faithful to itself in the process of making changes through engagement with others The concepts of amplification, counterpublics, and fugitive spaces of belonging serve in this article as central interpretive frames of a cultural critique of the historical and cultural conditions for the celebration's emergence, articulation, and implementation (Marcus and Fischer 1986).</p>","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"260-270"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140435930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Heritage is power. To realize the potential of heritage in decolonization, it is necessary to first decolonize and broaden the concept of heritage to enable meaningful, action-based connections between past, present, and future that further anticolonial efforts.</p><p>Heritage is powerful because it is used as a way to define and identify. It is about who we as humans think we are, based upon where we believe we have come from and where we intend to go. It is what is maintained from the past, by the present, for the next generation to inherit (in-heritage): from objects, buildings, land, resources, status, power, values, ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies, environments, and ecosystems. Current conceptions of heritage are imbued with human agency, as a “discursive construction” (Smith, <span>2006</span>, 13) with “material consequences” (Harvey, <span>2008</span>, 19) that is “constituted and constructed (and at the same time, constitutive and constructing)” (Wu and Hou, <span>2015</span>, 39). As such, heritage has the potential for reworlding and refuturing (Haraway, <span>2016</span>; Harrison, <span>2020</span>; Holtorf and Högberg, <span>2020</span>; Onciul, <span>2015</span>; Smith, <span>2006, 2022</span>; Tlostanova, <span>2022</span>). It can highlight the brief duration in planetary or species time of colonialism and capitalism, while illustrating its failing prospects—evidenced by increasing global inequalities and the accelerating inhabitability of the Earth. This future-orientated power places heritage at the center of efforts to enact and affirm Indigenous rights and address colonial legacies and responsibilities in the ancestral territories now collectively known as Canada.</p><p>In 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission report announced “Calls to Action” to address Canada's difficult heritage. In response, the province of British Columbia became the first in Canada to enshrine the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law in November 2019 through the Declaration Act. This established UNDRIP as the foundational framework for reconciliation in British Columbia, placing Indigenous cultural heritage rights at the center, via Articles 11, 12, 13, and 31.</p><p>Moving these calls to action into practice is not straightforward. In British Columbia, there are over 200 distinct First Nations recognized by the government, and many unrecognized, with over 30 different First Nations languages and around 60 dialects spoken in the province. This means that efforts to decolonize heritage must work with local Indigenous community priorities, cultural protocols, languages, and governance structures. Nations are prioritizing different aspects of reclaiming culture, stewarding heritage, and affirming their rights at different times depending upon their local circumstances. For example, some Nations are prioritizing building Big Houses to support the renewal of previously banned cultural pr
{"title":"Heritages of (de)colonialism: Reflections from the Pacific Northwest Coast, Canada","authors":"Bryony Onciul","doi":"10.1111/aman.13957","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13957","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Heritage is power. To realize the potential of heritage in decolonization, it is necessary to first decolonize and broaden the concept of heritage to enable meaningful, action-based connections between past, present, and future that further anticolonial efforts.</p><p>Heritage is powerful because it is used as a way to define and identify. It is about who we as humans think we are, based upon where we believe we have come from and where we intend to go. It is what is maintained from the past, by the present, for the next generation to inherit (in-heritage): from objects, buildings, land, resources, status, power, values, ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies, environments, and ecosystems. Current conceptions of heritage are imbued with human agency, as a “discursive construction” (Smith, <span>2006</span>, 13) with “material consequences” (Harvey, <span>2008</span>, 19) that is “constituted and constructed (and at the same time, constitutive and constructing)” (Wu and Hou, <span>2015</span>, 39). As such, heritage has the potential for reworlding and refuturing (Haraway, <span>2016</span>; Harrison, <span>2020</span>; Holtorf and Högberg, <span>2020</span>; Onciul, <span>2015</span>; Smith, <span>2006, 2022</span>; Tlostanova, <span>2022</span>). It can highlight the brief duration in planetary or species time of colonialism and capitalism, while illustrating its failing prospects—evidenced by increasing global inequalities and the accelerating inhabitability of the Earth. This future-orientated power places heritage at the center of efforts to enact and affirm Indigenous rights and address colonial legacies and responsibilities in the ancestral territories now collectively known as Canada.</p><p>In 2015, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission report announced “Calls to Action” to address Canada's difficult heritage. In response, the province of British Columbia became the first in Canada to enshrine the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law in November 2019 through the Declaration Act. This established UNDRIP as the foundational framework for reconciliation in British Columbia, placing Indigenous cultural heritage rights at the center, via Articles 11, 12, 13, and 31.</p><p>Moving these calls to action into practice is not straightforward. In British Columbia, there are over 200 distinct First Nations recognized by the government, and many unrecognized, with over 30 different First Nations languages and around 60 dialects spoken in the province. This means that efforts to decolonize heritage must work with local Indigenous community priorities, cultural protocols, languages, and governance structures. Nations are prioritizing different aspects of reclaiming culture, stewarding heritage, and affirming their rights at different times depending upon their local circumstances. For example, some Nations are prioritizing building Big Houses to support the renewal of previously banned cultural pr","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"337-343"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13957","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140442988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Laughter is one of the “weapons of the weak,” a means of degrading those in a position of power. Seeing laughter as such, however, only offers a view into what the performance does to its target, by belittling it, without saying much about what it does to the performer within a given power relation. This article investigates the potential of mockery and laughter to become expressions of expertise when they establish the performer as a knowing subject in relation to their target. Based on fieldwork conducted at a public clinic in Duque de Caxias, Brazil, this article analyzes how locally resident staff, through their extended work and dwelling in a neighborhood where shootings are frequent, mocked their superiors who did not know how to appropriately assess and react to the sound of shooting. By establishing the performer as the knowing subject in relation to those being mocked, laughter in this setting had the potential to unsettle classed hierarchies of knowledge.
{"title":"Mockery amid shooting: Laughter as an expression of expertise at a public clinic in Greater Rio de Janeiro, Brazil","authors":"Pedro Silva Rocha Lima","doi":"10.1111/aman.13967","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13967","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Laughter is one of the “weapons of the weak,” a means of degrading those in a position of power. Seeing laughter as such, however, only offers a view into what the performance does to its target, by belittling it, without saying much about what it does to the performer within a given power relation. This article investigates the potential of mockery and laughter to become expressions of expertise when they establish the performer as a knowing subject in relation to their target. Based on fieldwork conducted at a public clinic in Duque de Caxias, Brazil, this article analyzes how locally resident staff, through their extended work and dwelling in a neighborhood where shootings are frequent, mocked their superiors who did not know how to appropriately assess and react to the sound of shooting. By establishing the performer as the knowing subject in relation to those being mocked, laughter in this setting had the potential to unsettle classed hierarchies of knowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"216-226"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140442200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Webber Ndoro was the director general of International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), an international organization based in Rome, from 2017 to 2023. Before joining ICCROM in January 2018, Webber Ndoro was the director of the African World Heritage Fund, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also associate professor at the University of Cape Town. He worked at the University of Zimbabwe as a senior lecturer in heritage management and conservation. He has worked on several heritage management projects in Africa and also worked at Great Zimbabwe as the site manager. His most recent books and edited collections include <i>Great Zimbabwe: Your Monument Our Shrine</i>, <i>Cultural Heritage and the Law: Protecting Immovable Heritage in Sub-Saharan Africa</i>, <i>The Archaeological Heritage of Africa</i>, and <i>Managing Heritage in Africa: Who Cares?</i> The interview took place on April 19, 2023.</p><p><b>Peter Bille Larsen (PL)</b>: You were a great participant in our earlier exchanges, so we really wanted to make sure that we benefit from your insights and reflections for this conversation looking at decoloniality and heritage. You have a long career in the heritage field, and currently work as the director general of ICCROM, a global heritage institution advising governments. Could you share with us some insights about how you have experienced coloniality in the heritage field over the years?</p><p><b>Webber Ndoro (WN)</b>: Well, I think we have to realize that the whole idea of heritage today comes from a Western perspective. This influences the way we think, the way we define heritage. Take the example of archaeological sites. This was a passion or an interest from Western scholars, probably other scientists as well, but they were looking at it from their perspective. So, when you then go to places like Africa, you have to realize that they are looking for certain things, and that defines what heritage is. For example, if you think of Stone Age material, most Africans may not necessarily look at it as heritage, but from an archaeological, scientific point of view, they will define it as heritage. And then you also have to think in terms of how colonization happened. It was, if you like, a civilizing mission in some ways, Therefore the people had to be told what's good for them, what is science, what is heritage, how you define it.</p><p>So now I think the challenge is with the development of science itself, trying to accommodate other interpretations, other perspectives. Now, how do we incorporate that? And how do we make sure that the heritage reflects the world in some way? I think another good example is the whole concept of World Heritage. If you think of it, again looking at Africa, you will find that probably 60 percent to 70 percent of sites are either archaeological sites or colonial buildings. It's not that it's deliberate, but this is how these things were defined. And the
{"title":"“Heritage is about today, it's not about what happened in the past”: A conversation with Webber Ndoro, Director General of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property","authors":"Webber Ndoro, Peter Bille Larsen","doi":"10.1111/aman.13955","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13955","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Webber Ndoro was the director general of International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), an international organization based in Rome, from 2017 to 2023. Before joining ICCROM in January 2018, Webber Ndoro was the director of the African World Heritage Fund, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also associate professor at the University of Cape Town. He worked at the University of Zimbabwe as a senior lecturer in heritage management and conservation. He has worked on several heritage management projects in Africa and also worked at Great Zimbabwe as the site manager. His most recent books and edited collections include <i>Great Zimbabwe: Your Monument Our Shrine</i>, <i>Cultural Heritage and the Law: Protecting Immovable Heritage in Sub-Saharan Africa</i>, <i>The Archaeological Heritage of Africa</i>, and <i>Managing Heritage in Africa: Who Cares?</i> The interview took place on April 19, 2023.</p><p><b>Peter Bille Larsen (PL)</b>: You were a great participant in our earlier exchanges, so we really wanted to make sure that we benefit from your insights and reflections for this conversation looking at decoloniality and heritage. You have a long career in the heritage field, and currently work as the director general of ICCROM, a global heritage institution advising governments. Could you share with us some insights about how you have experienced coloniality in the heritage field over the years?</p><p><b>Webber Ndoro (WN)</b>: Well, I think we have to realize that the whole idea of heritage today comes from a Western perspective. This influences the way we think, the way we define heritage. Take the example of archaeological sites. This was a passion or an interest from Western scholars, probably other scientists as well, but they were looking at it from their perspective. So, when you then go to places like Africa, you have to realize that they are looking for certain things, and that defines what heritage is. For example, if you think of Stone Age material, most Africans may not necessarily look at it as heritage, but from an archaeological, scientific point of view, they will define it as heritage. And then you also have to think in terms of how colonization happened. It was, if you like, a civilizing mission in some ways, Therefore the people had to be told what's good for them, what is science, what is heritage, how you define it.</p><p>So now I think the challenge is with the development of science itself, trying to accommodate other interpretations, other perspectives. Now, how do we incorporate that? And how do we make sure that the heritage reflects the world in some way? I think another good example is the whole concept of World Heritage. If you think of it, again looking at Africa, you will find that probably 60 percent to 70 percent of sites are either archaeological sites or colonial buildings. It's not that it's deliberate, but this is how these things were defined. And the","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"362-364"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13955","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139959293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Carine Ayélé Durand holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, UK (2010). Over the past 20 years, she has worked in various capacities as a curator and researcher in the field of cultural heritage in France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Spain. She has curated several public exhibitions on contemporary indigenous arts and political movements. Carine was chief curator at the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva (MEG) from 2015 to 2022 and has been director since July 2022. The interview was conducted in Geneva on March 22, 2023.</p><p><b>Peter Bille Larsen (PL)</b>: You have recently become the director of the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva, an institution dating back to 1901, with more than 75,000 objects and a recent strategic emphasis on decolonization. Could you share with us the main highlights of your approach, activities, and opportunities that come with a decolonial perspective?</p><p><b>Carine Ayélé Durand (CD)</b>: I will start from one word, or two words. In French, we call it <i>co-construction</i>. Ιt's like building together or being assembled: the way that we see decoloniality is putting together as many perspectives as possible on a subject, on an issue. So putting together would be, for example, in the case of an exhibition: the descendants of who made the objects that we take care of in the museum, and then adding their perspective to our perspectives as professionals, or art historians, or anthropologists. Then there is another layer of co-construction with the audience, with the public, too. It's a huge assemblage, I would say, assembling people and things together, things from the past and things from the present, and from this trying to get a broader perspective on historical facts and on what we do and how we shape the museum today and for the future. Co-creating is basically about enabling dialogues and then creating together the museum of today and tomorrow possibly. These are the main key steps, I would say.</p><p>We do it through three distinct perspectives. The first is being around the collections, doing provenance research on the way all the items came to be in the museum. It is about trying to follow the biography of things: How did they get there? What happened when they were collected? What was the historical time? When did it happen? Trying to put all these dots together. For example, a very conflictual example, we do have items coming from Namibia from 1905. Instead of just labeling 1905 objects coming from Namibia, from a person coming here from that region, we now stop and ask, “Ok, wait a minute, what happened in 1905 in Namibia?” There was a genocide happening at the time, so it is about trying to bring this information forward and doing as much as possible. It is not always possible, but as much as possible, with our partners in the very countries we talk about. So this is the first, concretely, looking at the history of the collections and how these objects came here. The second i
{"title":"Decolonializing a museum of ethnography? A conversation with Carine Ayélé Durand, director of the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva","authors":"Carine Ayélé Durand, Peter Bille Larsen","doi":"10.1111/aman.13954","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13954","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Carine Ayélé Durand holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, UK (2010). Over the past 20 years, she has worked in various capacities as a curator and researcher in the field of cultural heritage in France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Spain. She has curated several public exhibitions on contemporary indigenous arts and political movements. Carine was chief curator at the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva (MEG) from 2015 to 2022 and has been director since July 2022. The interview was conducted in Geneva on March 22, 2023.</p><p><b>Peter Bille Larsen (PL)</b>: You have recently become the director of the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva, an institution dating back to 1901, with more than 75,000 objects and a recent strategic emphasis on decolonization. Could you share with us the main highlights of your approach, activities, and opportunities that come with a decolonial perspective?</p><p><b>Carine Ayélé Durand (CD)</b>: I will start from one word, or two words. In French, we call it <i>co-construction</i>. Ιt's like building together or being assembled: the way that we see decoloniality is putting together as many perspectives as possible on a subject, on an issue. So putting together would be, for example, in the case of an exhibition: the descendants of who made the objects that we take care of in the museum, and then adding their perspective to our perspectives as professionals, or art historians, or anthropologists. Then there is another layer of co-construction with the audience, with the public, too. It's a huge assemblage, I would say, assembling people and things together, things from the past and things from the present, and from this trying to get a broader perspective on historical facts and on what we do and how we shape the museum today and for the future. Co-creating is basically about enabling dialogues and then creating together the museum of today and tomorrow possibly. These are the main key steps, I would say.</p><p>We do it through three distinct perspectives. The first is being around the collections, doing provenance research on the way all the items came to be in the museum. It is about trying to follow the biography of things: How did they get there? What happened when they were collected? What was the historical time? When did it happen? Trying to put all these dots together. For example, a very conflictual example, we do have items coming from Namibia from 1905. Instead of just labeling 1905 objects coming from Namibia, from a person coming here from that region, we now stop and ask, “Ok, wait a minute, what happened in 1905 in Namibia?” There was a genocide happening at the time, so it is about trying to bring this information forward and doing as much as possible. It is not always possible, but as much as possible, with our partners in the very countries we talk about. So this is the first, concretely, looking at the history of the collections and how these objects came here. The second i","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"355-357"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13954","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139959372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Brennen Ferguson is a citizen of the Tuscarora Nation—one of the six nations comprising the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. He sits on the Council of Chiefs and Clan Mothers in Tuscarora on behalf of the Turtle Clan family. He is also a member of the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee (HERC). The HERC is mandated by the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee. Part of the mandate is to maintain and develop international relations with nation-states as well as with other Indigenous Nations. The interview took place on April 18, 2023</p><p><b>Peter Larsen (PL)</b>: You've recently been involved in a process of restitution with the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva. Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a bit of your experience with that restitution.</p><p><b>Brennen Ferguson (BF)</b>: My name is Brennen Ferguson, and I'm from the Tuscarora Nation—one of the six nations as part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. I also sit on the Council of Chiefs and Clan Mothers here in Tuscarora. That is the governing structure of our territory. So back in July 2022, I was part of a delegation of the Haudenosaunee to the United Nations. It was myself, Kenneth Deer, Carissa John, and there were a couple of others. We had an Indigenous Peoples Caucus meeting hosted by the MEG—the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva—and after the meeting, Carine (the museum's director) invited us all to view the permanent exhibit. It's a very impressive museum, and we came across a section that had Haudenosaunee items. We saw some moccasins, some bags, and then down toward the interior of the exhibit, in the glass cases, we saw one or two of our sacred items. We have different words for them, but we just refer to them as a medicine mask, and they're usually accompanied by a turtle rattle. They kind of work together. So, we recognized it right away, of course, and it's kind of troubling to see these things. It's nothing new. There are still hundreds of them in museums here in the United States, even. We've gotten hundreds of them back. There's still more out there. But it was kind of shocking to see one all the way over in Switzerland. So, then Carine invited us for lunch afterward, just Kenneth and me. And at lunch I brought it up. I said, you know, “I saw one of our sacred items in your display case,” and I described it. She said, “Yes, yes, we've had that for a while.” And I just asked that they take it off of public display for now. And she said, “Of course, no problem.” So, I think while we were still eating lunch, she sent somebody down there to take it out. And then it was still kind of nagging on my mind, like, “What's going to happen now?” So, then I just asked, “What would we have to do to get it returned to us?” And the response was, “I don't know. We've never really done anything like that before,” she said. “You could send a letter and see what happens.” So that's what we did. We went back, came back home. We brought it to the committee, and the recommendation was t
{"title":"“It comes down to dealing with people”: A conversation with Brennen Ferguson, Haudenosaunee Confederacy","authors":"Brennen Ferguson, Peter Bille Larsen","doi":"10.1111/aman.13953","DOIUrl":"10.1111/aman.13953","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Brennen Ferguson is a citizen of the Tuscarora Nation—one of the six nations comprising the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. He sits on the Council of Chiefs and Clan Mothers in Tuscarora on behalf of the Turtle Clan family. He is also a member of the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee (HERC). The HERC is mandated by the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee. Part of the mandate is to maintain and develop international relations with nation-states as well as with other Indigenous Nations. The interview took place on April 18, 2023</p><p><b>Peter Larsen (PL)</b>: You've recently been involved in a process of restitution with the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva. Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a bit of your experience with that restitution.</p><p><b>Brennen Ferguson (BF)</b>: My name is Brennen Ferguson, and I'm from the Tuscarora Nation—one of the six nations as part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. I also sit on the Council of Chiefs and Clan Mothers here in Tuscarora. That is the governing structure of our territory. So back in July 2022, I was part of a delegation of the Haudenosaunee to the United Nations. It was myself, Kenneth Deer, Carissa John, and there were a couple of others. We had an Indigenous Peoples Caucus meeting hosted by the MEG—the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva—and after the meeting, Carine (the museum's director) invited us all to view the permanent exhibit. It's a very impressive museum, and we came across a section that had Haudenosaunee items. We saw some moccasins, some bags, and then down toward the interior of the exhibit, in the glass cases, we saw one or two of our sacred items. We have different words for them, but we just refer to them as a medicine mask, and they're usually accompanied by a turtle rattle. They kind of work together. So, we recognized it right away, of course, and it's kind of troubling to see these things. It's nothing new. There are still hundreds of them in museums here in the United States, even. We've gotten hundreds of them back. There's still more out there. But it was kind of shocking to see one all the way over in Switzerland. So, then Carine invited us for lunch afterward, just Kenneth and me. And at lunch I brought it up. I said, you know, “I saw one of our sacred items in your display case,” and I described it. She said, “Yes, yes, we've had that for a while.” And I just asked that they take it off of public display for now. And she said, “Of course, no problem.” So, I think while we were still eating lunch, she sent somebody down there to take it out. And then it was still kind of nagging on my mind, like, “What's going to happen now?” So, then I just asked, “What would we have to do to get it returned to us?” And the response was, “I don't know. We've never really done anything like that before,” she said. “You could send a letter and see what happens.” So that's what we did. We went back, came back home. We brought it to the committee, and the recommendation was t","PeriodicalId":7697,"journal":{"name":"American Anthropologist","volume":"126 2","pages":"358-361"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aman.13953","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139959054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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