{"title":"How war came home: From 9/11 to the storming of the U.S. Capitol","authors":"Jeffrey S. Bennett","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2022.2058662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2022.2058662","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article reviews three recent books, each of which help establish connections between the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021. The review highlights the ways the 9/11 attacks amplified latent nativist and xenophobic currents in U.S. society. It also shows how the prosecution of the Global War on Terror militarized new sectors of American society while simultaneously undermining trust in government as economic convulsions, protracted overseas wars, and the Covid-19 pandemic adversely affected ordinary Americans. In the course of developing these arguments the review helps explain Donald Trump’s popular appeal and it shows how and why America may now be on the brink of a new civil war.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"51 1","pages":"47 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59028274","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 dawn of everything: A new history?","authors":"B. Fagan, N. Durrani","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2022.2026612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2022.2026612","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This 526-page discourse is a reasoned argument for rejecting the notion of steady progress in the human past that challenges our assumptions about the origins of many aspects of modern human behavior, including farming, property, cities, democracy, and slavery. The authors take an anarchic position. They conclude that since we have organized ourselves in many ways in the past, so there are other ways of organizing ourselves beyond the current dominant model of hierarchical states. The authors draw from/reinterpret archaeological data to emphasize (politically anarchic) examples of freedom, play, and social equality. This bold, controversial book will provoke intense discussion.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"80 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41653188","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":"Editor’s introduction","authors":"M. Harkin","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2022.2031661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2022.2031661","url":null,"abstract":"Jennifer Huberman has produced a thoughtful, nuanced essay on digital capitalism. As she insists, we cannot view this phenomenon through a single lens or narrative. Indeed, it is not clear that we can think of “digital capitalism” as a “thing” in the way that we think of, say, kinship or identity. Even without reading contemporary ethnography, sticking only to our own experience and media reports (and the ubiquitous social media), we see a wide range of “things” come down the pike: from cryptocurrency to virtual workplaces and everything else brought on by the confluence of more sophisticated communications technology, the demands of capitalism for new markets and cheaper labor sources, and of course Covid. As many pundits have declared, things will never get back to “normal,” even after Covid, if there is such a time. Those of us who have the option of working from afar will never give that up completely. Technologies and delivery systems that began as Covid workarounds will become permanent. We can screen new movies at home rather than go to the cinema. This accelerates trends that were already in place: simultaneous social isolation and immersion in social media, the replacement of face-to-face social relations with a highly curated performance of self via social media, and so forth. We have created our own Matrix. What I have just written is, I think, true, as far as it goes, but it leaves out one small detail: the vast divide within the United States and also globally between those of us who are “knowledge workers” and those whose physical labor in the material world cannot be done virtually. This largely parallels the “digital divide” between households that have adequate hardware and connectivity to allow children to attend school from home via Zoom, and those who must, say, drive to a McDonalds to get free Wifi. In this way we see technology playing a role it has always played in capitalism: changing the rules of the game in a way that benefits some (in our case, not just the capitalists but the professional classes) at the expense of the workers. Just as the shift in the textile industry from piecework to industrial production took power away from workers in 19th-century England, so the new shifts are further disempowering workers, who are nonetheless told that they are “essential.” Amazon workers, for instance, truly are","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"57 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46622690","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":"A single narrative will not do: Capitalism in the digital age","authors":"Jenny Huberman","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2021.2006889","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2021.2006889","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years, scholars working across a range of disciplines have become increasingly interested in exploring the contours and machinations of digital capitalism. Celebrants extoll the way digital technologies are enhancing processes of capital accumulation, rendering employment more flexible, democractizing innovation, and making new forms of economic co-operation possible. By contrast, skeptics warn that digital technologies are being used to exacerbate inequality, further capitalist domination and extraction, and automate human beings into a future where there is no escape from the ubiquitous surveillance technologies that are used to forward the interests of a powerful techno-elite. The four books I review in this essay all offer critical perspectives on capitalism in the digital age. However, when read collectively, these books also demonstrate that if we are going to enhance our understanding of digital capitalism, then a single narrative will not do. By exploring the different ways digital capitalism is produced, lived, and even resisted by those who are differentially positioned within its ambit, these books make a powerful case for the role anthropology can play in illuminating the complexities, and the transformative possibilities, of our current economic moment.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"60 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48642742","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":"Race and rage: Mourning loss in right-wing populism and ethnonationalism","authors":"J. Eller","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2021.1962035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2021.1962035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Four recent books—two edited volumes and two monographs—applying anthropological and ethnographic methods to contemporary right-wing populism and illiberalism, around the world but with a special interest in the United States, are reviewed. While the authors discover great diversity in conservative, populist, and ethnonationalist movements and agendas based on local circumstances (for instance, European Union membership) and national history and culture, all identify anger and identity (racial and/or ethnic) as central to the current global wave of populist mobilization. The review concludes with an analysis of cultural loss and the appeal of illiberal democracy as a winning strategy.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"5 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45863786","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":"Curators, objects and the indigenous agency","authors":"M. Křížová","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2021.1962036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2021.1962036","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article deals with specific field within the history of science: the institutional as well as biographical history of anthropological and archaeological museums. Through several case studies, more general questions are explored, those that inquire into the role of museums in delineating the agenda of anthropology and archaeology; the role of leading personalities of this discipline in envisioning and operating the museum institutions; the relationships between museums and governing institutions in national and (post)colonial contexts, and the interaction of museum with the general public, and specifically with the indigenous groups – that is, the very groups archaeology and anthropology are aiming to study.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"22 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46338027","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":"Editor’s introduction","authors":"M. Harkin","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2022.2031660","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2022.2031660","url":null,"abstract":"The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (2012) reminds us that the word “rage” opens the Western literary tradition. The first sentence of the Illiad reads “Of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, sing Goddess.” Understanding rage is of the moment, as it was a decade ago when Sloterdijk published his essay on it. Drawing on the tradition of Homeric psychology put forth by Bruno Snell (1982) and others, Sloterdijk posits that the characters in the Illiad are merely “media” of the gods, who channel their rage. These characters lack self-awareness and the capacity for strategic thinking. By contrast, in the Odyssey, we see a fully-developed modern psychology in the character of Odysseus. He is self-aware and cunning, can plan ahead and use deceit to get his way. (Of course, when he finally reaches Ithaca, he reverts to a rage-driven mode, as he indiscriminately kills the suitors and household servants of Penelope. I think of this distinction when reflecting on the events of January 6, 2021. Many of those participating in the attempted coup said, after the fact, that they were simply doing what Trump wanted them to do, channeling their leader’s rage. Drawing on Plato’s concept of a thymotic psychology, Sloterdijk argues that the typical modern psychology, what he, after Nietzsche, calls an “erotic” psychology, based on desires and wishes, is inadequate to understanding economy and politics. The need to be acknowledged is the deepest aspect of thymotic psychology; to feel that one is not is the source of rage. Hillary Clinton’s disparaging of a certain type of American as fitting into a “basket of deplorables” was such a slight. The national Founders imagined a politics only based on erotic psychology. Government would distribute benefits that individuals and parties would compete for. Politics was essentially a marketplace, in which those with the most power, however defined, would receive the most goods. But as we see in the anecdote about “the line” that Hochschild relates, it is not really the fact that they did not receive a full measure of whatever people were lining up for—the erotics—but that outgroups were cutting ahead of them. Robert Kagan (2008) defines thymos politically as “a spiritedness and ferocity in defence of clan, tribe, city, or state.” That is the motivation for the politics of right-wing populism.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"1 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44627890","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":"Editor’s introduction","authors":"M. Harkin","doi":"10.1080/00938157.2022.2031652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2022.2031652","url":null,"abstract":"Raymond Scupin reviews an ethnography of Madagascar by Denis Regnier based on fieldwork conducted there in the aughts. His focus is on the relations between two groups: those descended from slaves and those descended from freemen. The former are essentialized and coded as “unclean,” while the latter are “clean.” Scupin draws on a broad body of literature that critiques essentialist discourse, equating it with racism, which is, of course, its most obvious manifestation in multi-ethnic societies. Indeed, in a very different place such as Romania, where I have conducted fieldwork, the distinction between Roma (previously known as Gypsy) and Romanian was similarly essentialized, along similar lines of clean and unclean. Interestingly, for the Roma themselves, this is also the logic, with they being the pure bloodline with outsiders as potentially polluting. Of course even in extreme cases such as Romania, there is in fact pragmatic interaction among groups, even including marriage. This is most definitely the case in Madagascar, where, despite essentializing discourse, it was acknowledged that descendants of slaves and freemen did in fact marry. This could occur for many reasons, including the fact that some of the “unclean” families were, by local standards, relatively prosperous. Moreover, many slave descendants who were freed by the king, prior to French colonization, were thought to have been purified in that act, while those freed by the Napoleonic decree, were thought not to have been. In other words, the categories were not exactly congruent, making the structural opposition itself less meaningful. This is a thought-provoking essay. One of the issues to consider is the oscillation between perspectives that social actors engage in. It is perfectly possible for one to hold essentializing views of a group while making “exceptions” for individuals with whom one has pragmatic interactions. My research with white men in rural Wyoming, most of whom were Trump supporters, illustrates this dynamic. They may well hold such views of outgroups, especially Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people, but were willing to have friendly conversations with such people. However, as a group, especially when gathered for a political demonstration (especially the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020), they were seen as threatening and alien.","PeriodicalId":43734,"journal":{"name":"Reviews in Anthropology","volume":"49 1","pages":"61 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48468778","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}