Laudable aims and problematic consequences,or: The ‘flow’ of knowledge is not neutral

This is a comment on how environments apparently favourable to open-ended and exploratory research, as across disciplines, can turn out to be rather otherwise. Social anthropology is the discipline in question here, and the current rhetoric of interdisciplinarity the source of some (new) problems.     

Hotbed of Radicalization or Something Else?: An Ethnographic Exploration of a Muslim Neighborhood in Ceuta

A series of police raids in Príncipe Alfonso, a Muslim neighborhood located in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, “confirmed” law enforcement officers' worst fears: the barrio, long considered a hotbed of Islamist radicalization, had succumbed to the influence of extremists, making Spain more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. However, the meager results of the raids, as well as delays in the ensuing criminal investigation, raised troubling questions about the alleged terrorist plot and outsiders' perceptions of the Muslim community. Seeking answers to these questions, I conducted ethnographic field work in Príncipe shortly after the raids, interviewing residents, activists, and officials and observing the community at length. The community I experienced did not match the neighborhood I had read about. This article, the first ethnographic study of Ceuta to focus on radicalization, challenges conventional understandings of Príncipe Alfonso and highlights the value of ethnographic field work in terrorism studies.     

Autonomy: A study of social exchange in a carceral setting

Marshaling ethnographic data from a county jail, this study introduces “autonomy”—a novel concept and measurement of the degree to which an actor's exchange initiations are regulated by other exchange relations. This study rearticulates mutual dependence arguments about the social order of penological living in terms of social exchange theory and offers several innovations: 1) the structural forms of exchange relations in a penal housing unit stratify “carceral autonomy” across members of a social order; 2) diminished carceral autonomy contributes to the buildup of “exchange frustration”—the mixture of discontent and sadness experienced when goals cannot be achieved due the structure of an exchange network; 3) deprivations, inefficacies, and imported cultural standards contribute to what is exchanged and with whom in a penological setting; 4) caretaking in penological housing units is as much about maintaining social order through a form of generalized exchange as it is about network members helping each other; and 5) the emotional landscape of penological living can be mapped, in part, by examining the distribution of carceral autonomy and exchange frustration.     

The presentation of self in everyday prison life

Today, Italian prisons are reporting the highest level of overcrowding ever recorded. In reference to this situation, this article proposes an ethnographic study carried out inside the prison of Padua as a voluntary 2 years’ experience. It documents the values and conventions that convicts share in prison and details the ways in which prisoners constantly construct and adapt to an informal conduct’s rule system, the inmate code. It also illustrates the interactions among fellow prisoners as scenes or plays enacted by various teams. The prisoners’ words reveal a complex universe based upon three basic conditions: loyalty, discipline and circumspection. Finally, we argue about the fading of the distinction between the prison front stage and the back stage and we analyse the possible consequences.     

Embracing austerity? An ethnographic perspective on the Latvian public’s acceptance of austerity politics

ABSTRACT

Latvian austerity policy following the 2008 economic crisis has been touted as a success story by some and critiqued as a socially costly experiment by others. It has remained a puzzle, however, how such harsh socio-economy policies were possible without causing sustained popular protests. Drawing on ethnographic research at an unemployment office in Riga in the aftermath of the crisis, this article considers austerity as a political and moral phenomenon. I argue that welfare policies played an important role in disciplining the parts of the population most adversely affected by the crisis by framing post-crisis precarity as a matter of individual responsibility. Furthermore, this disciplining worked because it was underpinned by a particular moral discourse that I call ‘a discourse of freedom.’ Thus, this historically and culturally-shaped moral economy helped not only secure the implementation of post-crisis austerity in a way that yielded little sustained public resistance but also helped legitimate it.     

Redemption and reproach: Religion and carceral control in action among women in prison

Criminologists are increasingly interested in how a variety of justice-adjacent institutions scaffold surveillance and punishment in the U.S. criminal justice system. A relevant but understudied institution within the carceral state is that of religion. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside a U.S. state women's prison, I interrogate how religion—predominately conservative and evangelical Protestantism—served dual purposes in light of carceral control. Religion offered redemptive narratives to counter punitive carceral narratives promulgated by the state. At the same time, this narrative shift from “flawed” to “faithful” prescribed particular forms of embodiment: avoiding fights and rejecting sexual relationships with women. These forms of Protestant embodiment aligned with carceral purposes, such that women who reprimanded others for breaching religious norms were simultaneously enforcing prison rules. Although rhetorically challenging official prison narratives on the meaning of incarceration, Protestant narratives in practice regulated women's emotional and sexual behaviors and fostered a system of informal surveillance among incarcerated women. These findings illuminate how organizational narratives are linked to individual action. More broadly, they suggest how an institution such as religion can undergird state authority within an intractable context of carceral control.     

他者的位置——兼评《作为文化批评的人类学》

本文化与异文化的关系一直是人类学关注的重点。"他者"的地位在人类学发展的不同阶段有不同的位置。本文结合《作为文化批评的人类学》一书,对人类学历史上不同时期"他者"地位的变化进行梳理,借此帮助我们理清19世纪以来人类学学科发展的大致脉络,使我们更好地了解我们身处的这个人类学的实验时代。     

Joining the Gang and Becoming a Broder: The Violence of Ethnography in Contemporary Nicaragua

The fact that anthropologists ‘construct’ the field in which they conduct their ethnographic research has long been recognised, but less considered are the ways in which the field can ‘construct’ both the anthropologist and fieldwork practices. In many ways, this process is a natural corollary of the fact that researchers must always adapt and sensitise themselves to the realities of their field locations, and more importantly, the inherently dialogical nature of ethnographic research. At the same time, this ‘construction’ can potentially have more singular ramifications, particularly when fieldwork is carried out in situations characterised by chronic violence. In such circumstances, the ethnographic process almost inevitably exposes the anthropologist to violence, but can also become intrinsically imbued with violence, to the extent that it can make sense to talk of the ‘violence’ of ethnography. This article illustrates this idea through a consideration of the author’s doctoral fieldwork experiences in Managua, Nicaragua, including his ritual initiation into an urban youth gang, and considers some of the ethical and practical ramifications of this experience.     

Campus officers’ sanctioning of alcohol-involved crime: influences on discretionary decision-making

Universities are a hotbed of alcohol consumption, which is a major contributor to campus crime. In the US, campus police are responsible for handling crimes on campus. Like municipal police, campus officers are afforded the power to make discretionary sanctioning decisions. The question for this paper is what affects those decisions? To explore that topic, data collected during ride-alongs with campus officers are analyzed. Campus officers explained their sanctions as being affected by nine factors. The findings suggest that influences on campus and municipal officers’ sanctioning decisions are largely similar. The paper concludes by discussing implications for future research.     

State of the field: What can political ethnography tell us about anti-politics and democratic disaffection?

This article adopts and reinvents the ethnographic approach to uncover what governing elites do, and how they respond to public disaffection. Although there is significant work on the citizens’ attitudes to the governing elite (the demand side) there is little work on how elites interpret and respond to public disaffection (the supply side). It is argued here that ethnography is the best available research method for collecting data on the supply side. The article tackles longstanding stereotypes in political science about the ethnographic method and what it is good for, and highlights how the innovative and varied practices of contemporary ethnography are ideally suited to shedding light into the ‘black box’ of elite politics. The potential pay-off is demonstrated with reference to important examples of elite ethnography from the margins of political science scholarship. The implications from these rich studies suggest a reorientation of how one understands the drivers of public disaffection and the role that political elites play in exacerbating cynicism and disappointment. The article concludes by pointing to the benefits to the discipline in embracing elite ethnography both to diversify the methodological toolkit in explaining the complex dynamics of disaffection, and to better enable engagement in renewed public debate about the political establishment.