{"title":"Leapfrogging the Grid","authors":"Tom Neumark","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300209","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000Around a third of Tanzanians light their homes with solar electricity. Foreign companies are building on the popularity and availability of solar to ‘leapfrog’ the classic state led mains electricity grid infrastructure by attempting to create new off-grid infrastructural pathways. Central to such ambitions is the fostering of individual ownership of these off-grid infrastructures that builds on the idea of self-reliant energy long known to Tanzanians. Yet, such individual ownership, enacted through the hire-purchase device, is precarious, leading to an infrastructure that not only grows but contracts. As it does so, off -grid infrastructures illuminate the dependencies and tensions, including temporal ones, of other techno-social grids. These grids include both emerging digital financial infrastructures and other forms of kinship-based social organisation and property relations.French Abstract:\u0000Aujourd’hui, environ un tiers des Tanzaniens éclairent leur maison à l’électricité solaire. Des entreprises étrangères profitent de la popularité de l’énergie solaire pour « sauter » au-delà du réseau, une infrastructure classique gérée par l’État, et construire de nouvelles infrastructures électriques hors réseau. Ces entreprises visent à encourager la propriété individuelle de ces infrastructures hors réseau, et s’appuient sur l’idée d’une énergie autonome connue depuis longtemps par les Tanzaniens. Cependant, cette propriété individuelle, mise en œuvre par le biais du système de location-vente, est précaire et conduit à une infrastructure hors réseau qui non seulement s’étend mais se contracte. Ce faisant, elle sape d’autres formes de relations de propriété, tout en liant les gens à des infrastructures financières en réseau souvent indésirables.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129113873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Policy as Experimentation","authors":"U. Rao","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300206","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000The article starts with puzzlement about the optimism of a new generation of (Indian) policy-makers who believe that investing in digitally managed publicly funded health insurance (PFHI) schemes can dramatically improve health security in India, provide poor people with seamless access to high-quality hospital care and contribute significantly towards achieving universal health coverage. In view of persistent high social inequality and dissatisfaction with the chronically underfunded medical system, this optimistic vision appears as a curious utopia, not least because it survives multiple failures and heavy critique. Fine-grained ethnography shows that in practice the ambitious transformation of health finance, via the operation of national health insurances projects, was slow to be established and plagued by myriad technical and administrative frictions, and its impact on wellbeing and sustainability has been heavily contested. By zooming into the nitty-gritty of the laborious roll-out of a project with dramatically new features, this article illustrates that hope for transformation emerges less from successful implementation than from the determination to keep trying – seeking improvement through tweaking the system and reforming policy. Welfare in this iteration is an experimental engagement with future-making. As such, it does not promise effective management \u0000per se; rather, it demands investment in an uncertain journey, cobbled together by tinkering, adjusting, reforming and re-regulating.French Abstract:\u0000Cet article commence par une certaine perplexité face à l’optimisme d’une nouvelle génération de décideurs politiques qui pensent qu’investir dans des régimes d’assurance maladie à fimancement public (PFHI) gérés numériquement peut améliorer considérablement la sécurité sanitaire en Inde, peut offrir aux pauvres un accès transparent à des soins hospitaliers de qualité, et peut contribuer de manière significative à la réalisation de la couverture sanitaire universelle (CSU). Comptetenu de la persistance de fortes inégalités sociales et du mécontentement à l’égard du système médical chroniquement sous-financé, cette vision optimiste apparaît comme une curieuse utopie, notamment parce qu’elle survit à de multiples échecs et à de lourdes critiques. Une ethnographie fine montre que, dans la pratique, la transformation ambitieuse du financement de la santé a été lente à se mettre en place, qu’elle a été en proie à une myriade de frictions techniques et que son impact sur le bien-être et la durabilité a été fortement contesté. En s’attardant sur les détails du déploiement laborieux d’un projet aux caractéristiques radicalement nouvelles, l’article montre que l’espoir d’une transformation naît moins d’une mise en œuvre réussie que de la détermination à continuer d’essayer – en cherchant à améliorer le système et à réformer la politique. L’aide sociale, dans cette itération, est un engagement expérimental dans la construction de ","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125913089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When Food Waste Goes to Work","authors":"K. Alexander","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.050401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.050401","url":null,"abstract":"Food waste is embroiled in a wide array of social efforts and actions in the contemporary EU. This article considers one site in the EU’s capital where surplus supermarket food that is no longer sellable but is still edible is being used to fuel a job training programme. It argues that, rather than understanding the state’s role in this process as a purely neoliberal tactic or as a capitalist profit-driven action, the repurposing of discarded food in order to create job opportunities and feed new populations has moral contours and enables specific forms of care.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128462945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Curious Utopias","authors":"R. Prince, Tom Neumark","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300202","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue focuses on a trend that appears to run counter to the recent fascination with scaled-down solutions to world problems. From the predictive powers of Big Data in Kenya to market-driven humanitarian attempts to tackle the world’s ills, dreams of massive biometric identification in India and visions of health care ‘for all’, we are seeing a return to ostensibly, sometimes self-avowedly, ‘utopian’ imaginations and schemes of economic, political and societal transformation. These evoke a ‘universal’ scale, a politics of amelioration and ideas of social justice, routinely draw on a language of the collective, the public and the commons, while relying heavily on market logics and the privatisation of public goods. Such contradictory utopianism, and its inevitable failures, easily invites dismissal. Avoiding the comfort of this kind of critique, the contributors to this special issue draw on the idea of curiosity in its two senses. On the one hand, these utopias are themselves curious in the sense of being peculiar. Being reformative rather than radical, they seem to offer pared-down visions of social change, which remain within the status quo. On the other hand, a proper appreciation of their peculiarity requires curiosity. Grounded in ethnographic and historical research, the special issue explores the varied ambitions, relations and temporalities that inhabit newforms of utopianism, including their limitations and possibilities, hopes and failures, their engagements with policies and social movements, publics, markets and states, as well as the other political forms and social collectives that they support, subvert or ignite.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130014206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shacktopia","authors":"Peter Redfield","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300203","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000How modest can a utopia be? I approach this question with reference to the iShack, a solar electrification project in South Africa designed as an incremental upgrade for shack dwellers in informal settlements. Designed to provide basic energy for lighting and charging, the system also promises health and safety benefits by reducing the use of kerosene. Its promoters envision it as a bridge solution while people wait for better housing or municipal services. By offering an imperfect, stopgap form of enhancement, the venture exposes utopian expectations about progress, provoking critical anxieties about attenuated and unequal futures. At the same time, it bares the ecological limits of conventional infrastructure, the continuing inadequacies of state provision and the complex techno-politics of hope.French Abstract:\u0000Jusqu’à quel point une utopie peut-elle être modeste? J’aborde cette question en me référant à l’iShack, un projet d’électrifi cation solaire en Afrique du Sud conçu comme une mise à niveau progressive pour les habitants des cabanes dans les quartiers informels. Conçu pour fournir une énergie de base pour l’éclairage et la recharge, le système promet également des avantages en matière de santé et de sécurité en réduisant l’utilisation du kérosène. Ses promoteurs l’envisagent comme une solution de transition en attendant que les personnes concernées obtiennent un meilleur logement ou l’accès à des services municipaux. En offrant une forme imparfaite et provisoire d’amélioration, l’entreprise met à nu les attentes utopiques en matière de progrès, provoquant des angoisses critiques quant à des avenirs atténués et inégaux. En même temps, elle révèle les limites écologiques des infrastructures conventionnelles, les insuffi sances persistantes des services publics et la technopolitique complexe de l’espoir.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"17 20","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113943053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unhinged","authors":"S. Palmié","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300106","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000Can we talk about what we cannot conceive of? How far can the ethnographic gesture guide us into worlds that call into question what Collingwood described as our own (historically mutable) ‘absolute presuppositions’ from which we must spin our ethnographic propositions? ‘Witches, as the Azande conceive them, cannot exist’, wrote Evans-Pritchard at the start of a monograph aiming to prove the eminent rationality of Zande witchcraft beliefs. Taking as cases in point Evans-Pritchard’s famous equivocations on the issue of coming to inhabit worlds of thought and action that the ethnographer takes to be based on mistaken premises as well as an example from my own ethnography, I argue that what Wittgenstein called ‘hinge propositions’ – on which doubt can turn, but which can never fall into doubt themselves – have long, and all invocations of ‘radical alterity’ to the contrary, both enabled and plagued the ethnographic enterprise.French Abstract:\u0000Peut-on parler de ce que l’on ne peut pas concevoir ? Dans quelle mesure le geste ethnographique peut-il nous guider vers des mondes qui remettent en question ce que Collingwood a décrit comme des « présuppositions absolues » qui sont historiquement mutables et à partir desquelles nous devons élaborer nos propres propositions ethnographiques ? Evans-Pritchard écrit au début d’une monographie visant à prouver l’éminente rationalité des croyances sorcières des Zande : « Les sorcières, telles que les Azande les conçoivent, ne peuvent exister ». En prenant pour exemple les fameuses équivoques d’E.P. sur la question d’habiter des mondes de pensée et d’action que l’ethnographe considère comme étant basés sur des prémisses erronées, ainsi qu’un exemple de ma propre ethnographie, je soutiens que ce que Wittgenstein appelait les « propositions charnières » – sur lesquelles le doute peut tourner, mais qui ne peuvent jamais être mises en doute elles-mêmes – ont longtemps (et toutes les invocations de « l’altérité radicale » au contraire) à la fois permis et entravé l’entreprise ethnographique.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124808758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Anthropology Comes In When Translation Fails","authors":"Anne Taylor","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300107","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000Instead of focusing directly on the epistemological problems facing the anthropologist, this paper aims to reverse the ethnographic lens and reflect first on what the ethnographic situation does for the ‘ethnographed’: what kind of work do the subjects of an inquiry engage in when they consent to an ethnographic relation? What affordances does it offer them? Briefly put, my answer to this question would be that it allows them to experiment novel ways of giving shape to and translating forms of reflexivity that are always historically\u0000and politically situated. If this is the case, it follows that the ethnographer is involved in translating a process of translation he or she has elicited, indeed co-produced with the subjects of the inquiry. What might be the consequences of viewing ethnography as the translation of a translation – as opposed to the translation of ‘a culture’?French Abstract:\u0000Au lieu de se concentrer directement sur les problèmes épistémologiques auxquels l’anthropologue est confronté, cet article vise à inverser la lentille ethnographique et à réfléchir d’abord à ce que la situation ethnographique fait pour les « ethnographiés » : quel type de travail les sujets d’une enquête engagent-ils lorsqu’ils consentent à une relation ethnographique ? Quelles sont les possibilités que cette relation leur off re ? En bref, ma réponse à cette question serait qu’elle leur permet d’expérimenter de nouvelles façons de donner forme et de traduire des formes de réflexivité qui sont toujours historiquement et politiquement situées. Si tel est le cas, l’ethnographe est donc impliqué dans la traduction d’une procédure de traduction qu’il ou elle a instiguée/suscitée (voire coproduite) avec les sujets de l’enquête. Quelles pourraient être les conséquences d’une vision de l’ethnographie comme la traduction d’une traduction – par opposition à la traduction d’une « culture » ?","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114223440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vignerons and the Vines","authors":"Mark Anthony Arceño","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300103","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000Amid ongoing social and ecological transformations, vignerons (winegrowers) and the vines in their care are responding to the impacts of climatic and other forms of change. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the eastern French winegrowing region of Alsace, I turn to the sensorium as the site where changing landscapes are forcing people to rethink the meaning of terroir, a key term in which winegrowing is articulated as a practice. I go beyond typical renderings of this French concept, often defined in terms of interactions among its various components (e.g. soil, wind and human know-how), to bring attention to the sensory relationships that connect them. Through walking and semi-directed interviews, as well as participant observations, with informants who represent thirteen different winegrowing sites, I generated data that explicate what is changing, how changes are being addressed and what this means for understanding the very place(s) in which place-based wine producers and their products are embedded. By attending to the senses, I contend that the goût du terroir or ‘taste of place’ is not merely reflected through the wines being produced by Alsatian winegrowers but is also a story of sensory relationships contributed by the vines themselves.French Abstract:\u0000Au milieu des transformations sociales et écologiques en cours, les vignerons et les vignes dont ils ont la charge réagissent aux changements climatiques et autres. En s’appuyant sur un travail ethnographique de terrain dans la région vitivinicole d’Alsace, dans l’est de la France, je me tourne vers le sensorium comme site où les paysages changeants forcent les gens à repenser la signification du terroir, un terme clé dans lequel la vitiviniculture est articulée comme une pratique. Je vais au-delà des représentations typiques de ce concept français souvent défini en termes d’interactions entre ses différentes composantes (par exemple le sol, le vent et le savoir-faire humain) pour attirer l’attention sur les relations sensorielles qui les relient. Par le biais d’entretiens à pied et semi-dirigés, ainsi que d’observations participantes, avec des informateurs représentant treize sites vitivinicoles différents, j’ai généré des données qui expliquent ce qui change, comment les changements sont abordés, et ce que cela signifie pour la compréhension des lieux dans lesquels les producteurs de vin et leurs produits sont intégrés. En prêtant attention aux sens, je soutiens que le « goût du terroir » (ou ‘taste of place’) ne se reflète pas seulement dans les vins produits par les vignerons alsaciens, mais qu’il s’agit également d’une histoire de relations sensorielles apportées par les vignes elles-mêmes.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"2008 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129087388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cracks in the System and Anthropology","authors":"Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, R. Blanes","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300111","url":null,"abstract":"We begin by thanking our colleague Eldar Bråten for taking the time to read and comment on our article with such thoroughness. We continue right away with a response. A key aspect of Bråten’s critique is his claim that it is difficult to understand how we reason and, therefore, ‘how to discern substantial arguments in texts that overflow with evocative and metaphoric prose?’ In order to reply to such a concern, we choose to, first, take a step back and provide a backdrop to our anthropological thinking (and, therefore, reasoning and ‘prose’) and how it is situated within a longer trajectory of thought. Thereafter, we turn to his specific concerns with our approach to utopia.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121079323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Debate’s Conjuncture","authors":"J. Pina-Cabral","doi":"10.3167/saas.2022.300105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2022.300105","url":null,"abstract":"English Abstract:\u0000The present collection of papers reflects a forum debate entitled ‘Doubt and Determination’ that took place at the Lisbon EASA2020 conference. The original question that set off our debate concerned the nature of the ethnographic gesture – that is, the decision to engage intensively with a particular form of life in order to situate it within a more common world. We distinguished two analytical moments in the ethnographic gesture (‘going out there’ and ‘returning’) and how they combined two contradictory dispositions: (i) the indeterminacy and underdetermination of the actual events one experiences and (ii) the need to measure some things by relation to other things in order to determine a ‘field’ and write an ethnography. Of course, there will never be a seamless fit between the ambiguity of uncertainty and the disambiguation of determination. Therefore, by its very character as a practice situated historically, ethnography will ever remain incomplete.French Abstract:\u0000La sélection d’articles présentée ici représente un forum de discussion intitulé « Doute et Détermination » qui a eu lieu lors de la conférence EASA2020 à Lisbonne. La question initiale qui a déclenché notre débat concernait la nature du geste ethnographique – c’est-à-dire la décision de s’engager intensivement dans une forme de vie particulière afin de la situer dans un monde plus commun. Nous avons distingué deux moments analytiques dans le geste ethnographique (aller et revenir) et comment ils combinaient deux dispositions contradictoires : i) l’indétermination et la sous-détermination des événements réels que l’on vit ; ii) le besoin de mesurer certaines choses par rapport à d’autres, afin de déterminer un « champ » et d’écrire une ethnographie. Bien entendu, il n’y aura jamais de correspondance parfaite entre l’ambiguïté de l’incertitude et la désambiguïsation de la détermination. En conséquence, à travers son caractère de pratique située historiquement, l’ethnographie restera toujours incomplète.","PeriodicalId":261790,"journal":{"name":"Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127631598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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