{"title":"Seeing, being seen, and the semiotics of perspective","authors":"Constantine V. Nakassis","doi":"10.1111/etho.12386","DOIUrl":"10.1111/etho.12386","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Building upon work in visual studies and art history on symbolic perspective, film studies on structures of looking, and linguistic anthropology on entextualization and ideology, this article explores the semiotics of vision/visibility and perspective. In particular, I focus on ethnographic data from the cinema of Tamil Nadu, India, wherein (being seen) seeing a film image and being seen in a film image emerge as pragmatically problematic for those party to the image. In doing so, the article asks: what does it mean and do to <i>see</i> and <i>be seen by</i>, <i>look away from</i> and be <i>effaced by</i> the film image and, further, <i>see</i> or <i>be seen</i> vis-à-vis the above (seeing someone being seen in a film image, be seen looking away, etc.)?</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74823446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Becoming the mother of a transgender child: Ethical self-formation and moral moods of mothers in transition","authors":"Galia Plotkin Amrami","doi":"10.1111/etho.12382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12382","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Matters of parenting transgender children are ascendant on the cultural landscape. Based on interviews with Israeli mothers of transgender children between the ages of 8–24 I explore how the process of the child's gender affirmation intersects with maternal subjectivities, and how mothers internalize the morally-loaded narratives of good mothering in contemporary Israel. I illustrate that when children undergo gender affirmation, mothers experience their mothering as challenged and transformed. This transformative process can be conceptualized in terms of political becoming and ethical self-formation (Foucault 1997). However, such a conceptualization does not fully encompass the complexity of mothers' daily carework. An anthropological approach, in particular the concept of \"moral moods\" (Throop 2014), can best capture the spontaneity and ambiguity of mothers' moral lives. This concept can be a valuable theoretical tool to grasp the diffused affective states and moral concerns of those who are constantly subjected to the critical gaze.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 2","pages":"198-216"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.12382","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50117876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poetics and panic","authors":"Peter G. Stromberg","doi":"10.1111/etho.12384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12384","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Authors in the pragmatic and phenomenological traditions offer several distinct but overlapping theories of meaning. Drawing on a number of these theories, I analyze the speech of a panic sufferer, as he recounts an attack of panic and as he has one, in order to contrast the enactment of meaning with its paralysis. This material offers an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the construction of self as it arises out of the interaction between a human being and their cultural environment.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 2","pages":"183-197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50117924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bettina Lamm, Wiebke Johanna Schmidt, Melody Ngaidzeyuf Ndzenyuiy, Heidi Keller
{"title":"Growing up in Nso: Changes and continuities in children's relational networks during the first three years of life","authors":"Bettina Lamm, Wiebke Johanna Schmidt, Melody Ngaidzeyuf Ndzenyuiy, Heidi Keller","doi":"10.1111/etho.12376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12376","url":null,"abstract":"<p>It is an undisputed fact among attachment researchers that children need stability and continuity in their caregiving environment for optimal developmental outcomes. However, anthropological studies show that informal and often temporally limited kinship-based foster care, including changes of children's primary caregivers, is widespread in some cultural contexts and considered normative and thus beneficial for children. Based on ethnographic interviews with Nso families in northwestern Cameroon, we analyzed the dynamics of caregiving arrangements and relational networks during infancy and early childhood. Exploring household compositions, caregiving responsibilities, children's preferred caregivers, and foster care arrangements revealed multiple caregiver networks, with the importance of the mother decreasing and the importance of alloparents and peers increasing as the children grow older. Also, families have fluid boundaries, with about one-third of the children changing households in the first three years of life. The Nso children's experiences reflect a relational cultural model of infant care as a cooperative task and a communal conception of attachment. The results are discussed in relation to attachment theory's claims about universal patterns of development.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 1","pages":"27-46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.12376","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50149133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gabriel Scheidecker, Nandita Chaudhary, Heidi Keller, Francesca Mezzenzana, David F. Lancy
{"title":"“Poor brain development” in the global South? Challenging the science of early childhood interventions","authors":"Gabriel Scheidecker, Nandita Chaudhary, Heidi Keller, Francesca Mezzenzana, David F. Lancy","doi":"10.1111/etho.12379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12379","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Global Early Childhood Development (ECD)—an applied field with the aim to improve the “brain structure and function” of future generations in the global South—has moved to the center of international development. Global ECD rests heavily on evidence claims about widespread cognitive, social, and emotional deficits in the global South and the benefits of changing parenting practices in order to optimize early childhood development. We challenge these claims on the grounds that the leading ECD literature excludes research from anthropology, cultural psychology, and related fields that could provide crucial insights about childrearing and children's development in the targeted communities. We encourage anthropologists and other scholars with ethnographic expertise on childhood to critically engage with global ECD. To facilitate such an endeavor, this article sketches the history, scientific claims, and interventions of global ECD, points out the critical potential of ethnographic research, and suggests strategies to make ethnography more relevant.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 1","pages":"3-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.12379","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50149089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Femme populism: Vulnerability and desire in Argentine political aesthetics","authors":"Julia Fierman","doi":"10.1111/etho.12378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12378","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article focuses on the role of vulnerability and desire in populist politics. I examine the political aesthetics of Argentine populism by analyzing media and supporters’ representations of Argentine politician Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The populist leader tends to conjure the image of the strongman who is either an avuncular man of the people or a muscular, industrious worker. In contrast, Kirchner's followers focus on her sexual appeal and her emotional vulnerability. Drawing on Lacanian notions of love and desire, I argue that Cristinistas’ sustained focus on their leader's appearance and emotional state reveals the libidinal dimensions of populist politics. Moreover, the fetishization of Cristina as incomparably beautiful and bereaved indicates a deeply phallocentric conception of sovereignty. While Cristina's supporters tout her femininity as a departure from the political status quo, their focus on her image and persona reinforces phallocentric conceptions of sovereignty.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 2","pages":"166-182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50149064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Feeding, food, and attachment: An underestimated relationship?","authors":"Wiebke Johanna Schmidt, Heidi Keller, Mariano Rosabal-Coto, Karina Fallas Gamboa, Carolina Solís Guillén, Esteban Durán Delgado","doi":"10.1111/etho.12380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12380","url":null,"abstract":"<p>According to attachment theory, feeding, including breastfeeding, plays only a marginal role in relationship formation. However, studies—especially in rural traditional non-Western contexts—repeatedly demonstrate that feeding can be an important attachment mechanism. We interviewed 30 urban, middle-class families with 6-to-19-month-old infants in the surrounding greater metropolitan area of San José, Costa Rica, to investigate if they consider feeding relevant for attachment formation. Qualitative content analysis revealed that breastfeeding is a key factor in specifying whether caregivers believed feeding to be relevant for attachment formation. The study found that breastfeeding families considered feeding relevant for attachment, and bottle-feeding families associated feeding with mainly alimentary and no attachment-related functions. Furthermore, breastfeeding seems to foster exclusive maternal attachment, while multiple feeding seems to foster multiple attachments. Consequently, the feeding network seems to regulate a child's attachment network in urban middle-class families in San José. A triangulation of caregiver interviews, interviews with key informants, and member checking with key informants support the validity of the findings.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 1","pages":"62-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.12380","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50149132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mommy brain in the United States","authors":"Valerie Miller, Marcy Price-Crist","doi":"10.1111/etho.12381","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12381","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Women undergo profound psychological and cognitive shifts throughout their life course, and motherhood entails dramatic mind–body adjustments. Growing maternal responsibilities and evidence from social sciences suggest motherhood enhances cognitive functioning, but mothers typically claim otherwise. This article uses maternal life stories to reveal cultural schemas of mommy brain as told by mothers in the United States. Our findings illustrate what mommy brain is in practice and how cultural narratives promote associations between motherhood and diminished cognitive functioning. We found that interruptions, cognitive overload, and newfound anxieties were fundamental components in mothers’ mommy brain experiences. We believe that these factors, along with social isolation, play a salient role in self-reported deficits in maternal cognition. Understandings of mommy brain must move beyond neurobiology and attention and memory studies and consider how interruptions, overload, and other subjective experiences shape our definitions and what we know about maternal cognition.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 1","pages":"111-129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50136814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tangible pasts: Memory practices among children and adolescents in Germany, an affect-theoretical approach","authors":"Birgitt Röttger-Rössler, Franziska Seise","doi":"10.1111/etho.12377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12377","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article highlights the ontogeny of autobiographical memory and its sociocultural foundations as an important and underrepresented field of research in psychological anthropology. It discusses the results of an explorative photovoice study on the emotional experiences of children and adolescents. Our study discovered that memory practices play a major role in young people's daily lives. Participants often referred to emotionally significant past events, relationships, or life periods by relating them to particular memory objects. We assume that the material dimension of children's memory practices not only facilitates an affective engagement with the past but also makes past experiences communicable to oneself and to others. The memory objects used by our research participants were linked in substantial ways to culturally specific modes of remembering, (auto)biographical narration, and the <i>formation of feeling</i> among adolescents. In discussing broader implications of our results, we draw on insights from developmental psychology, affect and emotion theory, and social anthropological research on memory and materiality. We conclude with a brief comparative look at memory practices in the Indonesian context to hint at a significant field of cross-cultural research that opens at the intersection of studies on material culture, memory practices, (auto)biographical remembering and narrating, and the formation of feeling.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 1","pages":"96-110"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.12377","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50136815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonizing affect: Resonance as an ethnographic technique","authors":"Anna Iskra","doi":"10.1111/etho.12366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12366","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article is a call to decolonize affect theory through deepening its engagement with fieldwork conducted in the global South. It examines the native Chinese concept of <i>ganying</i>, or resonance, as an ethnographic technique by engaging with the author's fieldwork experiences among Body Mind Spirit practitioners in China. Participating in <i>ganying</i> captures the formation of affective atmospheres through the ethnographer's involvement in their co-creation. Where attunement functions as a normative ideal, resonance becomes a technique of embodying responsiveness and cultivating intimacy that supports efforts to narrativize affect. Examining the genealogy of <i>ganying</i> and its ethnographic applications reveals this concept's alignment with influential theorizations that in recent decades have been constructed as “new” and “paradigm shifting” contributions to the affective turn. It cautions against the risks of erasure resulting from such Eurocentric negligence of kindred notions circulated in scholarly and vernacular contexts outside of the global North.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"51 1","pages":"130-145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.12366","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50132394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}