AnthropologicaPub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65220232673
Andrea Flores, Susan Helen Ellison
{"title":"Money Lightens: Global Regimes of Racialized Class Mobility and Local Visions of the Good Life","authors":"Andrea Flores, Susan Helen Ellison","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65220232673","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65220232673","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"56 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139837853","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65220232620
S. Ellison
{"title":"We Move Up Levels Together: Dignity, Transformative Marketing, and the Repurposing of Racial Capitalism","authors":"S. Ellison","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65220232620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65220232620","url":null,"abstract":"Indigenous Bolivians, especially women, are climbing the ranks of global multilevel marketing (MLM) companies like Herbalife, Omnilife, and Hinode, seeking to join Bolivia’s purportedly rising Indigenous middle class. Through MLMs, Indigenous direct sales distributors pursue a dignified life materialized in better homes, smart dressing, international travel, and the respect they receive at recruitment events. In their recruitment and sales pitches to potential buyers and downline vendors, Indigenous distributors fashion testimonials about their successes that explicitly critique existing avenues of class mobility and their racialization in two ways. First, these testimonials counter the skepticism that multilevel marketing companies face by citing a litany of false promises offered by higher education, salaried employment, and public sector jobs—avenues long heralded as the stepping stones to entwined racial and class mobility in Bolivia. They further voice their frustrations with perceived status hierarchies and organizational barriers among Indigenous merchants, highlighting their own sense of alienation from the connections and protections that have enabled the financial success of other Indigenous entrepreneurs. Second, while lodging these critiques, distributors repurpose racialization toward their own recruitment ends. As MLM distributors pursue their visions of the good life, the testimonials that Indigenous MLM recruiters craft to enable their ascent expose, rely on, and rework the bounds of racial capitalism. Ultimately, their critiques reveal how the racial partitioning that enables capitalist extraction operates through the work of direct sales.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"8 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139838336","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65220232624
Maureen Kihika
{"title":"Contradictory Mobilities and Cultural Projects of Afropolitanism African Immigrant Nurses in Vancouver, Canada","authors":"Maureen Kihika","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65220232624","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65220232624","url":null,"abstract":"I explore the relationship between social class and race, through an examination of how Black nurses enact Afropolitan cultural practices to negotiate contradictory class mobilities in Vancouver. While this paper reflexively draws from my family’s lived experiences to begin thinking through the nuances of Afropolitanism, I hone the discussion in contextual reference to the class-making practices of African-born nurses. The nurses channel Afropolitan class-making projects, through which they develop a flexibility and openness of mind that enables them to reject taking on the role of victim in their contradictory mobilities. Afropolitanism refers to “an expansive politics of inclusion that seeks to position actors as part of a transnational community of Africans of the world” (Adjepong 2021, 1), to “imbue Africanness with value” (137). Merging the literature on anti-Black racism in nursing with scholarship examining relationships between social class, race, and culture, this paper draws out the promises and pitfalls of Afropolitanism through an exploration of how African immigrant nurses—part of a growing Black Canadian middle class—grapple with contradictory mobility in Canada’s racialized terrain. It contributes to discussions of the Black middle class, in the context of a “relative newness of Black middle classes” (Rollock et al. 2012, 253).","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"536 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139839029","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65220232650
Chloé Le Mouel
{"title":"Je veux que les Inuit soient libres de nouveau. Autobiographie (1914-1993) ᐃᓄᓐᓂᒃ ᐃᓱᒣᓐᓇᕿᖁᔨᒋᐊᓪᓚᐳᖓ ᐃᓅᓯᕐᒥᓂᒃ ᐊᓪᓚᑐᕕᓂᖅ (1914-ᒥᑦ 1993-ᒧᑦ), par Taamusi Qumaq","authors":"Chloé Le Mouel","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65220232650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65220232650","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"54 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139777909","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65120232597
Giovanna Parmigiani
{"title":"“Separation, but not Division”: A Southern Italian Perspective on “Lived Conspirituality”","authors":"Giovanna Parmigiani","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65120232597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120232597","url":null,"abstract":"Conspirituality—that is, the connection between conspiracy theories and spirituality—has recently gained popularity in academic and non-academic circles. Often associated with populist and irrational beliefs, it has been linked to right-wing politics, faulty thinking, and disruptive and potentially violent behaviour (Greenwood 2022; Russell 2022). While these connections have been proven to be true in some cases, in this paper, rooted in my long-standing ethnographic research, I offer a contribution that illuminates other aspects of conspirituality—in line with recent attempts to honour the complexity and internal variability of the phenomenon (for example, Greenwood 2022; Ong 2021). In particular, differently from the overwhelming majority of current approaches in the study of conspirituality, I propose to frame the study of conspirituality not only by focusing on ideas and beliefs, but in conversation with the study of “lived religion” (see, for example, Ammerman 2021; Hall 2001; McGuire 2008) in a way that distinguishes the actual experience of persons from normative beliefs and practices. Similarly to what the study of “lived religion” does to the study of religion, I claim that the study of “lived conspirituality” could offer insights into the phenomenon of conspiracism, today (Ong 2020). By analyzing discourses and practices of conspiritualists that I observed on the field, I will challenge mainstream interpretations of the role of the individual and of marginality in New Age conspirituality.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135344490","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65120231066
Mirjana Uzelac
{"title":"Using the Pandemic for Their Own Gain: The Experiences of COVID in Serbia","authors":"Mirjana Uzelac","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65120231066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120231066","url":null,"abstract":"The paper analyzes the experiences of older adults (65 years of age and older) with the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Serbian government declared a national state of emergency, which included a strict curfew in which older adults were forbidden to leave their homes under any circumstances. After 52 days, the state of emergency was lifted, which was soon followed by a rapid loosening of coronavirus measures. During this time, Serbia held parliamentary elections that were rife with irregularities. The government was accused of using the pandemic for political gains, including fabricating the numbers of COVID-19 deaths. The interlocutors in the study mapped their experiences with these measures and recounted how their lives had changed since the early days of the pandemic and into 2022. All interlocutors chose to frame their experiences through their criticism of the government and how it mishandled the pandemic. Rather than making excuses for a weaker government, the criticism is based on interlocutors’ expectations of a capable statecraft that can take care of its people, and the inability of the existing government to fulfill these expectations. Through the experiences of the pandemic, the study examines the tensions between the government and people in Serbia’s post-socialist context, and how these tensions are heightened during the time of crisis.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135344681","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65120232610
Mathieu Lamontagne-Cumiford, Hannah Lillis
{"title":"The Container Thinks It’s Upside Down, and Other Stories of Automation","authors":"Mathieu Lamontagne-Cumiford, Hannah Lillis","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65120232610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120232610","url":null,"abstract":"A container cannot speak, but thanks to digitization and automation, it can now complain. The COVID pandemic and the pressures leveraged by its consequences on the global economy have brought sudden attention to the supply chain and the transport industry which powers it. While shortages and delays drew attention, industry players accelerated the digitization and automation of the industry. From the staging grounds of rail yards to warehouse floors, from the decks of massive container ships to the cubicles of office buildings, a concerted push for the automation of work is underway. Drawing on industry experience and interlocutors from a wide breadth of the logistics industry, we discuss the pressures and motivating factors that underpin this effort.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135344487","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65120232601
Manéli Farahmand, Mischa Piraud, Sybille Rouiller
{"title":"« QAnon pastel » ou la surprenante convergence entre conspirationnisme politique et spiritualités New Age : Cyber-ethnographie d’activistes francophones","authors":"Manéli Farahmand, Mischa Piraud, Sybille Rouiller","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65120232601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120232601","url":null,"abstract":"Les discours de QAnon et les spiritualités New Age font l’objet d’articulations renouvelées. Une recherche qualitative débutée en 2020 par le Centre intercantonal d’information sur les croyances (CIC) à Genève (Suisse) propose, à travers une « cyber-ethnographie », une analyse systématique de plus de 60 vidéos en ligne et d’espaces interactifs relayant des discours QAnon, entre 2020 et 2023. L’étude soulève les spécificités de la réception suisse des thèses de QAnon en contexte pandémique (COVID-19), ainsi que les formes d’hybridation qui en émanent. S’appuyant sur la notion de conspiritualité, l’article montre que dans le contexte de la crise de COVID-19, les théories de QAnon, initialement cantonnées à la sphère politique américaine, ont amplifié leur audience bien au-delà du public initial. On observe ainsi une politisation de certains acteurs et actrices proches du milieu holistique, et inversement, à une édulcoration des thèses QAnon au sein d’une narration millénariste de type New Age. Cette rencontre a priori inattendue entre QAnon et le milieu holistico-spirituel suisse est finalement discutée à travers trois axes: 1) le lien historique entre les religiosités parallèles et la droite radicale ; 2) le tournant individualiste radical au sein des réseaux New Age actuels; et 3) l’idéologie naturaliste propre au milieu holistique.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135344493","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65120232166
Thomas Mcllwraith, Elizabeth Finnis, Sarah Jones
{"title":"Artificial Intelligence, Academic Misconduct, and the Borg: Why GPT-3 Text Generation in the Higher Education Classroom is Becoming Scary","authors":"Thomas Mcllwraith, Elizabeth Finnis, Sarah Jones","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65120232166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120232166","url":null,"abstract":"We explore playfully the capacity of an artificial intelligence text generation engine called GPT-3 to produce credible academic texts. Departing from a concern raised by colleagues about the possibility of using GPT-3 to cheat in academia, particularly at the undergraduate level, we interact with the GPT-3 interface as nerdy novices to learn what it could produce. The outputs from the GPT-3 text generation engine are incredible, at times surprising, and often terrible. We point to ways in which GPT-3 might be used by students to produce written work and reasons why most instructors, most of the time, could see through what GPT-3 has produced (at least for now). In our experiments, we learn that GPT-3 can be a productive collaborator in paper design but wonder if this is ethical. In short, while fun and somewhat addictive to experiment with, we must pay attention to the potential ways that AI text generation may begin to appear in the anthropology classroom.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135344660","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}
AnthropologicaPub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.18357/anthropologica65120232599
Paul Gareau, Jeanine LeBlanc
{"title":"Our Spiritual Relations: Challenging Settler Colonial Possessiveness of Indigenous Spirituality/Religion","authors":"Paul Gareau, Jeanine LeBlanc","doi":"10.18357/anthropologica65120232599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica65120232599","url":null,"abstract":"Indigenous spirituality is often appropriated and deployed in support of white settler values that possess and dispossess Indigenous knowledges, materiality, and socio-political relations. As Kim TallBear explains, this settler property regime maintains a colonial exceptionalism that justifies settler naturalization to Indigenous territories. Indigenous spirituality/religion represents situated knowledges and socio-political relations that cannot be abstracted from collective and co-constitutive relations. LeBlanc and Gareau turn to their respective communities to articulate how relations are central to understanding Indigenous spirituality/religion. LeBlanc employs Savage (Tracy) Bear’s eroticanalysis to see Mi’kmaq women’s spiritual/religious relations in the settler archives as well as situate herself in these relations through photographic self-portraiture. Gareau unpacks the spiritual/religious relations of the Métis fiddle in Maria Campbell’s Road Allowance story of “La Beau Sha Shoo” where a Métis fiddler dies and goes to heaven to drink and visit with Jesus. Throughout, spirituality/religion represents the self- determination of separate but related collective and co-constitutive nations/ peoples.","PeriodicalId":35455,"journal":{"name":"Anthropologica","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135344679","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}