Raminder Kaur’s “Atomic Mumbai: Living with the Radiance of a Thousand Suns” in The New Cross Review of Books.

My review of Raminder Kaur’s new book Atomic Mumbai

The Authority of Style – Social Analysis No 21, 1987

a text from 25 years ago – my first published piece on anthropology, metaphor, writing, fakery, rhetoric and circularity, and a bit about Morocco, names, and Rabinow.

Authority of Style

Advices for response.

I am honoured you’ve asked me to comment, but really, it is up to you to work out your own style for public engagement – polemic, polote, polite but sly, ruthless criticism of everything that exists, and any other number of performative routines.

Whatever the case, late night advice may need a spoonful of salt if you really want it to be taken seriously…

Anyway, I reckon that maybe there are several different ways to tackle this.

Probably good is to say something like:

What I found most interesting about x’s presentation is the way they have reworked concepts of xx to show that x = b.

this gives you a chance to reorder what they have done so as to talk about what you want to talk about, but while still seeming to summarize their key points.

Then say something like:

Of course some people might disagree for the following reasons – a, b and c…list them, in detail…  which basically allows you to smash their case, without seeming to have taken sides (good skill to develop I suppose, but sometimes a bit mealy-mouthed when outright hostility is more honest – ah well). Actually, no, that is mean. What you should endeavor to do is to pick apart the argument and material, then stick it back together and return it to the speaker as a reinvigorated project. Saying something like, the implications here are x, y an z – and this was alwyas implicit in x’s presentation.

Then you should leave the audience in no doubt how the something not discussed, or implications not drawn, or assumptions made are, in fact, they key issue at stake – ie, what you are interested in, not what was ostensibly the topic, and it is this which should be the focus of the subsequent discussion.

Then you should come back to the speaker and compliment them for raising such pressing issues, and hope that the discussion of these, as you have set them out, is fruitful.

Or you could just talk generally on what you found interesting. That can meander, but so long as you have a planned start and a distinct end – rather than wittering on more speckled hen warbling than decisive conclusion – and make sure you end. Don’t end with an empty phrase. Just say, …and I think I’ll stop there.

If there are no questions, you then pull out your most popular assertion and ask that as first question,

Sometimes people are too smashed to talk much and it will feel like a damp squib. But when it works, and people feel able to raise questions and join in, well then, viva criticism self-criticism.

good luck

Alpa Shah talk at LSE 17.5.2012

The Malinowski Memorial Lecture this year is by Goldsmiths own Alpa Shah.

Title: ‘The Muck of the Past’: Revolution, Social Transformation and the Maoists in India

Date: Thursday 17 May 2012, 6.00-7.00pm

Venue: Old Theatre, LSE

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

Dr Alpa Shah teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of ‘In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India’ and co-editor of ‘Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal.’

For more information please see:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/events/events.aspx

Avatar Trinkets

For those of you who like your anthropologists in cryo, in an incubator (online ethnography anyone), or fighting off the mining industry – as already oft-mentioned on this blog (more links below), this little cherub should set you off with oohs and ahhs. As soon as you look closely at the picture though, it will be ahhhg and owwww. Very strange (thanks Rachel).

The description, by Sean O’neal, is stunningly good: not only is Avatar sex fucked up – ‘having magical ponytail-sex’ – but now the baby is too, as he points out its head-turning facility that will accompany you through those forlorn sleepless incubator nights.

I’d add that I guess the avatar technology could be adopted here too as it solves the problem of birth defects – just keep the kid in an incubator for life, and play with the avatar. In a rainforest enhanced with fairy lights, since no rainforest was rainforest enough.. etc etc..

There is still much to be said on that movie, but I dunno if saying nothing isn’t better.

No mention of Krisna’s baby blue either.

.

We should pay tribute to the film’s consultant anthropologist Nancy Lutkehaus for her expertise. Deserved and oscar, even as a ‘curator’. This from her own pen:

Cameron is like a collector of fine art who sees himself as a connoisseur, and my function was less that of a dealer who brings rare objects to the collector, but rather that of a curator whose expertise provides the imprimatur of authenticity.

The lush primal world of Pandora and the exotic culture of the Na’vi revealed in the film include many of the basic elements of what used to be called “primitive” societies — animism, a coming-of-age ceremony and test of manhood, a religion based on a supreme (maternal) tree spirit. It is truly a 21st-century elegy to a lost world — as well as Cameron’s warning to our own.

Nancy Lutkehaus is professor of anthropology, gender studies and political science, and chair-elect for the Department of Anthropology at USC College.

.

Bougainville material:

http://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/avatar-anthropology-at-war/

Avatar and Bougainville: A Parallel History? « Tubuans.

http://www.criticaltimes.com.au/news/international/avatars-secret-history-lesson-on-our-doorstep/

http://www.face21cn.cn/renleixue/anthropology/article-Avatar-pop-culture-anthropology-ethic.html

http://savageminds.org/2009/12/24/avatar/

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/23/james-cameron-the-oscars-and-the-real-life-avatar/

Red Tape discussion on Culture for RCA design students

Red Tape #2 Local/ Global from deshna mehta on Vimeo.

my bit is from 20:10 mins to 41:00, then the discussion. The Red Tape site is here: http://redtape.rca.ac.uk/2012_02.html All thanks to Deshna Mehta and the fine people that make up the Red Tape gang.

Taussig 27.1.12

Michael Taussig 27.1.2012

Excelente Zona Social

Anthropologist Michael Taussig talks about the relationship between writing, culture and time.

“I began began doing fieldwork in 1969. I have returned every year” says Mick Taussig. His writing has spanned a wide range of issues ranging from the commercialization of peasant agriculture to a study of exciting substance loaded with seduction and evil, gold and cocaine, in a montage-ethnography of the Pacific Coast of Colombia. His most recent book ‘I Swear I Saw This’ (University of Chicago Press, 2011) records reflections on the fieldwork notebooks he kept through forty years of travels in Colombia. Taussig considers the fieldwork notebook as a type of modernist literature and the place where writers and other creators first work out the imaginative logic of discovery.

---

Event Information

http://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=5053

Location: LG02, New Academic Building
Cost: Free – all are welcome, no booking required
Website: Part of the Real Time Research project
Department: Sociology
Time: 27 January 2012, 18:00 – 19:30

White Charity

Critique of photogenic poverty catching on – check out this film from Germany:

http://www.whitecharity.de/index_files/Page518.htm

White Charity

Blackness & whiteness on charity ad posters

Billboards of charitable organisations such as ‘Brot für die Welt’, ‘Welthungerhilfe’, ‘Kindernothilfe’ or ‘Care’ are omnipresent in streets, on squares, in train and metro stations in Germany.

They have a large impact on how Black and whiteidentities in Germany are constructed. The documentary analyses the charity aid posters from a postcolonial perspective.

‘white charity’ presents different perspectives: based on the charity ad posters, representatives of charities and scientists discuss about development cooperation, colonial fantasies, racism and power structures.

‘white charity’ is an exemplary analysis of racism in images which has relevance far beyond the horizon of development. It supports a sharper analysis of images in commercials, print and TV.

A film by Carolin Philipp and Timo Kiesel

With:

PD Dr. Aram Ziai, political scientist, Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, Bonn
Danuta Sacher, former head of the department of politics and campaigns, Brot für die Welt
Dr. Grada Kilomba, psychoanalysist and author, Humboldt Universität, Berlin
Prof. em. Dr. Klaus-Peter Köpping, anthropologist, Universität Heidelberg
Peggy Piesche, literary scholar and cultural scientist, Hamilton College New York
Philipp Khabo Köpsell, poet and spoken word artist, Berlin
Sascha Decker, press spokesman, Kindernothilfe

Technical details:

duration: 48 minutes

picture: 16:9

 

New Taussig

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo11637787.html

Anthropologies of Tourism

Issue 2

Anthropologies of Tourism

April 2011

Tourists at Cobá, Quintana Roo, Mexico 2008 – Photo by Ryan Anderson

~ Contents ~

Introduction to this issue 
Ryan Anderson

Tourism: Trinketization and the Manufacture of the Exotic
John Hutnyk

Arrivals, perceived and actual
Sarah Taylor

A San Diego Cultural Narrative 
Conor Muirhead

Tourism Research as “Global Ethnography”
Michael A. Di Giovine

Peripatetic Cultures: When Nomads meet Tourists
Tamas Regi

The Social Conceptualization of Tourists
Sergi Yanes

Visual Anthropology: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
Conor Muirhead

Open Thread: The Tourism Issue

From the 6th floor of New Arts to here.

Dr Peter Phipps, Prof Klaus Peter Koepping and I, in some sort of three amigos mode, discuss the good ol days of trouble-making at the University of Melbourne.

Great Wild Life Documentary from UfSO http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/the-free-free-market-market-3/

Methods and Ethnography

OK, asked for references twice in two days on the same thing, so started thinking what I might reread if I was going to think about methods and ethnography now:

Mitchell Duneier, “Sidewalk” – a thoughtful study of magazine vendors in New York. A bit too worthy and street, but some good stuff on doubt.

James Agee and Walker Evans; “Let us now praise famous men” – if you have not read it, get this first. Simply great. (Try to get the Violette edition, hard back, not the penguin classics ed – though that has an essay by Goldsmiths own Blake Morrison).

Michel Serres; “The Troubadour of Knowledge” – Serres is unique, thinks through parables, does not refernce, says he does not repeat. Makes stuff up, each line a gem. Dunno what its like in French!

Claude Levi-Strauss; “Tristes Tropiques” – speaking of the French – died at 101 last year. This is the classic. Then read part 2 of Derrida’s “Of Grammatology”.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; “Death of A Discipline” – between the lines of a lament for the cold war area experts who have become extinct, a plea for deep language learning that is more than just grammar.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; ‘Righting Wrongs’ from “Other Asias”.

Avital Ronell; “The Test Drive” – Ronell is perhaps the only living American currently possessed by genius, besides Gore Vidal, and she wears great hats.

Michel Foucault; “The Archeology of Knowledge” and “The Order of Things” – never to be forgotten.

Mao Zedong; ‘Report from Hunan’ in “Selected Writings Volume One”. Mao does fieldwork!

Michael Taussig; “My Cocaine Museum” – a latter day arcades for the war torn, drug crazed, exploited and exploiting realm that is now.

Klaus Peter Koepping; “Shattering Frames” – his collected essays on anthropology, a great teacher.

Rao/Hutnyk eds; “Celebrating Transgression” – essays in honour of Klaus Peter Koepping, with my mad musings on William Burroughs included.

Wolff, Kurt; “Surrender and Catch” – not well enough known but worth a look – was Prof at Brandies from 1959 – 1992.

More to come.

Avatar and Bougainville??

Avatar and Bougainville: A Parallel History? « Tubuans.

http://www.criticaltimes.com.au/news/international/avatars-secret-history-lesson-on-our-doorstep/

http://www.face21cn.cn/renleixue/anthropology/article-Avatar-pop-culture-anthropology-ethic.html

http://savageminds.org/2009/12/24/avatar/

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/23/james-cameron-the-oscars-and-the-real-life-avatar/

requiem for ethnography

In the past I have called for a moratorium, but today wanted to list the things I thought were still useful, interesting or important in anthropology and ethnography now, even if contradictory:

- a refusal to simply sit alone and panic at the complexity of the world – often trinketising, but can be more (contextualisation, attention to commodification, critique)

- an anti-racist sentiment that has morphed at last into a recognition that rhetoric and reflexive angst is not enough (and the question of what would it would mean to win is on the agenda)

- a more or less well-intentioned tendency towards political and social intervention, or at least an ethic of this (often wrong, but in any case at least not dead)

- recognition of the co-constitution of self and other, near and far, metropole and colonial, empire and transition. Multi-site ethnography (transnational flows, North South, South South, Centre-Borders, In betweens.)

- project of going to have a look for yourself, to get involved as a means of understanding, constituent power of the knowledge industry may have its problems but not resigned to withdrawal and mere speculation (spectacle)

- critique of institutionalised context of knowledge production, of disciplinary formations, of the commercialization of knowledge, of the teaching factory

- ideology critique, suspicion of appearances, recognition that appearances are also all we have to go on. Representation issues niot just in the claim for visibility mode, but a politics of making visible, mainstraeaming, as step one of something that goes further, demands more.

- collaborative work – ahh, collaboration has its tainted history, but nevertheless, so degree of co-production

- attention to all possible aspects of human life, and a growing awareness that this quite possibly facilitates real subsumption

- widest possible interest, Open principle, even when habits of thought and contextual (political, historical, personal) constraints block this.

Of course there are limits and more failings than successes. The scandals of anthropology are legion. But the project for trying to think through our circumstances and find ways to name what is going on around us is still a worthwhile pursuit – a reason to be alive and productive, even in the most desperate of conditions (global chaos – it can be explained, and is – as Mao said, an opportunity – ‘Everything under heaven is chaos: the situation is excellent’).

Of course there is also no reason to take yourself too seriously all the time. Theory is hard, but not without fun. Gawd, save us from the dire and dull philosophers

Avatar Anthropology (at War)

And there I was thinking a sweet little love story between a couple of blue pixies on the Ewok planet might not be yet another Star Wares space parable of the pervasive militant fascism we cannot ever admit to having here…

Of course not..

David Price makes the salient points:

Fans of Avatar are understandably being moved by the story’s romantic anthropological message favoring the rights of people to not have their culture weaponized against them by would be foreign conquerors, occupiers and betrayers.  It is worth noting some of the obvious the parallels between these elements in this virtual film world, and those found in our world of real bullets and anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 2007, the occupying U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan have deployed Human Terrain Teams (HTT), complete with HTT “social scientists” using anthropological-ish methods and theories to ease the conquest and occupation of these lands. HTT has no avatared-humans; just supposed “social scientists” who embed with battalions working to reduce friction so that the military can get on with its mission without interference from local populations.  For most anthropologists these HTT programs are an outrageous abuse of anthropology, and earlier this month a lengthy report by a commission of the American Anthropological Association…

From his text in CounterPunch here.

December 2009 in Kolkata

I am lucky enough to have been invited to go to Kolkata in December for a symposium on the “Cultural Politics of Preservation”, organised by Gayatri Spivak. Was asked today what I would present on. Gulp. I have no idea yet. How about this:

To work among the masses – co-research, institutionalization or vanguard intervention?

I am interested in the ways intellectual work, debates around method, and the ethical position of both the academic researcher and the vanguard political intersect with questions of preservation and globality.

Inspired by, and critical of, several examples in relation to this, I have three themes: a) I want to talk about the Co-Research or Class Recomposition Studies approach that emerges from Autonomist Marxism in Italy in the 1970s and which has been discussed a great deal by European activists in recent years (eg Kolinko group); b) my second ‘case study’ is the traditional project of ‘Anthropology’ as an institutionalized way of both ‘going to have a look for yourself’ and of inscribing ‘peoples’ inside a global knowledge apparatus (libraries, textbooks and the like); and c) my third example is the problem of the vanguard party and what, and how, it knows about the ‘masses’ (from Mao’s report on Hunan to the critique of Leninism today).

In this way, a perspective on the critique of cultural preservation might be developed drawing on my previous work on cultural exotica, rumour, writing and activism.

[I am not sure if this will work out, but I think its where I am just now]

There was also a request for some relevant representative work (let’s debate that term, ‘representation’). I sent this lot:

http://hutnyk.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/junglestudies.pdf

http://hutnyk.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/ershybrid280104.pdf

http://hutnyk.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/bataille.pdf

(pic -taken on the train to Kolkata)

“funny how the ‘trickle-down’ is so much more effective when it’s the redistribution of loss” -IT

Eating hot soup in my Taipei room at 5am, aircon and airlines contrived to make this visit feel like a crash landing, but the paper went well – I think, and I’m told – even if Andrew Strathern’s response spun off into the anthropological-inevitable, ritual, Victor Turner, Rene Girard, Gregory Bateson and other similarly bongo bongo themes (I was talking about machines, war and education, but it was at an anthropology conference – I will post a link to the paper soon). Yet there was a good discussion – Andrew’s small aside chastising me for saying indexicality was finally broken by CGI (= Computer Generated Imaging for orthodox anthros who should get out more) was perhaps the most interesting part of the response and generated some hostile comments from the floor. He’d missed the point that I reported this as someone else’s view – but it was fun to argue that indexicality was always broken, always subject to question for its partiality, metaphoricity (see Miller – The Reason of Politics) and that I’d like him (Andrew) to explain to me why translation wasn’t a more relevant word here. Yes, we got that obscure. But I was talking about education, sort of like here, but also something like what is well done by IT here. Examining the cost of fluctuations of the economic cycle upon our practices in the teaching factory/sausage factory is perhaps a good way to find resonant and relevant explanations of what is going on. We can say this to students in ways that might have more ‘purchase’ than abstract News-reporter chatter about bail-outs, bank rates and house-prices. Trickle, Crash and Crisis are in the end quite empty – not indexical – metaphors for the economic ‘downturn’ and the inevitable squeeze on those not resource-able enough to resist the vampire sucking, body-stealing, asset stripping zombie stomp of capital eating its young in order to survive. See the crisis bite next time you are asked by the vice-chancellor to tighten your belt – Ho Chi Minh was told something similar by Mao when he had asked for help from China during the war. Tighten your belts, Mao said. Send us belts, Uncle Ho replied.

The pic is from the WLA – a prize for working out what that has to do with the index.

Bakun and other damn floods

My friends at Suaram have been vigilant where no-one else has. I wrote on Bakun dam, resettlement and anthropological complicity in the journal Left Curve years ago (see link at the end of this post), and I remain interested in the politics of dams in general (from Aswan to Narmada to the Snowy Mountains). That there be opportunist politicians and compromised anthropologists comes as no surprise, but that they think they can pass themselves off as do-gooders (or at best naive) is not something that should pass unremarked. That Bakun and Suaram activists keep working at this juncture no doubt needs more support than this, and of course it would be good to see more than calls for an economic rethink, more than an expose of the schemings of piggy pollies, and surely more than a solidarity blog post like this. But the first step is to be informed, and Dr Kua Kia Soong leads the way.

THE SARAWAK DAMS: MULTIPLE FOLLIES

By Dr Kua Kia Soong, Director of SUARAM, 22 August 2008

The recent announcement that the Sarawak government intends to build 12 more dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakun dam is cause for concern. It is a cause for grave concern. Malaysian tax payers, Malaysian forests and Malaysian indigenous peoples will again be the main victims of this misconceived plan.

The stop starting since the damned project was first proposed in the seventies, the proposal and abandonment of the aluminium smelter, the upsizing and downsizing of the dam, the inclusion or exclusion of the undersea cable project are all symptomatic of a wanton disregard for planning. Let us remind Malaysians of the ludicrous inconsistencies of official policy on this damned project:

On Off On Off On

In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a power generating capacity of 2400 MW even though the projected energy needs for the whole of Sarawak was only 200MW for 1990. The project was thus coupled with the proposal to build the world’s longest (650 km) undersea cable to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An aluminium smelter at Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus energy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because of the economic recession although the then Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir announced just before the UN Conference on Environment & Development at Rio that this was “proof of Malaysia’s commitment to the environment” (NST, 13.6.90)

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian economy, the Government once again announced the revival of the Bakun HEP project. To cushion the expected protests, the Energy Minister Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of a “series of cascading dams” and not one large dam as had been originally proposed. Before long, it was announced that the Bakun dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete face rockfill dam, one of the highest dams of its kind in the world and it would flood an area the size of Singapore Island. The undersea cable was again part of the project. There was also a plan for an aluminium plant, a pulp and paper plant, the world’s biggest steel plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire industry.

Then in 1997, with the onset of the Asian financial crisis the Bakun project was put on hold for the second time. But the scandal was, while the anthropologists in all the Malaysian universities were sound asleep, the Government proceeded to remove 10,000 indigenous peoples made up of fifteen different ethnic groups from their ancestral lands. All this happened while the project was on hold and Malaysians shouted “Malaysia Boleh!”

In 1999, after the economy had recovered, the Government again announced that the project would be resumed albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2400MW scale was once again proposed although the submarine cable had been shelved. Today we read reports about the government and companies still contemplating this hare-brained scheme which is now estimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion! Not only that, we now hear that the 12 more hydroelectric dams will be generating a total capacity of 7000MW by 2020 – an increase of 600 per cent from current capacity!

Who Pays?

Ultimately it will be the Malaysian consumers who pay for this expensive figment of the Chief Minister’s wild imagination. Enough tax payers’ money has been wasted – Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5 billion on the project. The human cost has been immeasurable – 10,000 indigenous peoples have been removed from their ancestral lands in 1998 even while the project had been shelved.

Improve the Efficiency of our Power Stations

If the Prime Minister really wants to know the state of the Malaysian energy industry, he should ask for independent audits on every power station in the country. These should preferably be done by reputable international audit authorities from outside Malaysia. We are told that TNB is now selling off property, power stations are not working at full capacity and that the electricity industry is hugely indebted.

Right now, the country is being fed conflicting reports about energy demand. There is supposed to be a 43% oversupply of electricity capacity in peninsula Malaysia. Experienced Bakun dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and mutually contradictory assertions have been used by the dam proponents to justify every flip flop of this misconceived project.

Show Us the Plan!

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest of the world or for that matter, Indonesia?

Aluminium smelters to take up the bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentioned ever since the conception of the Bakun dam project because they are such a voracious consumer of energy. Even so, has there ever been any proper assessment of the market viability of such a project with the cheaper operating costs in China?

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of the smelters is none other than Cahaya Mata Sarawak (CMS) Bhd Group that is controlled by Chief Minister Taib’s family business interest?

Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak’s tin pot governance do not give confidence to investors. First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto also had second thoughts about investing in Sarawak.

Damn the Dams

Concerned NGOs have all along called for the abandonment of this monstrous Bakun dam project because it is economically ill-conceived, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous. The environmental destruction is evident many miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has been logged by those who have already been paid by Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced indigenous peoples at Sungei Asap resettlement scheme remains the wicked testimony of the Mahathir/Taib era. The empty promises and damned lives of the displaced peoples as forewarned by the Concerned NGOs in 1999 have now been borne out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam project has been in doubt from the beginning and the new scheme to build 12 more dams merely represents multiple follies and a scandalous flaw in planning.

.

This was from Suaram. The money shot is from a blog post a few days back noting that ‘some 2,000 people from 400 families living downstream of the RM6bil Bakun hydro-electric dam project site in Belaga district in central Sarawak had been served eviction notices by the State Land and Survey Department’.

On the Politics of large dams, see Patrick McCully’s book Silenced Rivers, and an old piece of mine on the Bakun scheme from Left Curve #23 1999 ‘Resettling Bakun: Consultancy, Anthropologists and Development’.