Suomen Antropologi Volume 33, 3/2008
Articles
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The Kifaya Generation: Politics of change among youth in Egypt
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(4) 2009: 44-64
Abstract
In this paper, I aim to shed light on the lived experiences of young opposition activists in today’s Egypt. I discuss the emergence of youth-based action groups, such as Youth for Change, since the beginning of 2000s and argue that much of their grievances have to do with wider predicaments and uncertainties that Egyptian youth face in their everyday lives. The activists’ main political assets, however, pertain to a simultaneous engagement on the street—as the physical realm for public dissidence—and the internet—as the primary means and compensation for political communication in authoritarian settings. I suggest, although with reservations, that the activists’ collective actions are better viewed as ‘submerged networks’ rather than through the conventional analytical prisms of civil society and social movement. Furthermore, I argue that while the young activists assume a degree of autonomous political action from the various structures of the existing political establishment, they operate on the margins of larger processes of contentious politics and, at the same time, their social interactions continue to be structured by the prevailing social norms.
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Topelia African Studies Seminar Series - Tuulikki Pietilä and Jeremy Gould
Abstract
Topelia is a complex on the University of Helsinki downtown campus that houses most of the ‘non-European’ research areas in the Humanities and Social Sciences faculties. The idea for an African Studies Seminar was hatched in the spring of 2007. The initiative was prompted by the news that a lecturer’s position in African Studies at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, one of the Topelia departments, was to be scrapped. Reflecting on the declining institutional situation against the relatively high number of researchers working on Africa, we felt that there was a need to strengthen the network of Africanists. One step in this direction was to establish a forum where Africanists can meet regularly and discuss their on-going work. The first seminar series was planned and organized by Jeremy Gould (Development Studies) and Tuulikki Pietilä (Social and Cultural Anthropology). The seminar met five times during the spring term of 2008. Each session showcased presentations of their latest work by two researchers, followed by a short commentary by a discussant and open discussion. The meetings were arranged thematically to cover the following topics: The music industry in Africa; Traditional and modern politics; White Africa; People vs. AIDS; and Aid, partnerships and Africa. Combining two presentations in the same session brought out a diversity of results and perspectives, as sometimes researchers with a similar topic had a very divergent theoretical approach to it, while at other times the two presentations complemented and added to each other’s views in unexpected ways. Each seminar attracted a good audience, composed of researchers, students and some journalists. Most sessions ran out of time as the general discussions became quite lively. This will be taken into account in forthcoming seminars, in which more time will be reserved for public discussion—the seminar series continues with monthly meetings to which everyone is warmly welcome. Click here to see the programme.
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“I now go to church, I am not under the chief”: The colonial origins of religion and politics in Ghana
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 6-17
Abstract
Today traditional chieftaincy in Africa has become a topic of public and academic discussions about good governance, democracy, civil society and the like. Chieftaincy is perceived increasingly as a ‘political institution’ and the religious quality of the chiefly offices that the classic ethnographies emphasized has been largely forgotten. The essay seeks to explain this disjuncture by looking at the case of the Asante people of Ghana, claiming that one of the most dramatic changes brought by the colonial rule was the secularization of indigenous leadership, which permanently transformed the ways in which the traditional institutions were conceptualized. The origin of the contemporary ‘political discourse’ about chiefs is traced to the conflicts between Christian missions and chiefs during the early colonial period.
Keywords Asante people of Ghana, Christian missions, colonialism, divine kingship
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“Keeping the Flame Alive”: Commemoration in an ex-Rhodesian diaspora community
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 21-34
Abstract
In 1990 ex-Rhodesians—white former colonials who have emigrated from Zimbabwe after its independence in 1980—organized a commemorative event in South Africa in order to celebrate the Centenary of the founding of Rhodesia. In spite of the fact that Rhodesia no longer exists, it continues to have intrinsic weight in the present lives of former Rhodesians. It is held close by social memory practices, which are fundamental to how the diaspora community comes to understand itself and its place in the world. This article examines social memory practices in the context of the Centenary celebrations. The festivities involved the creation of an imaginary Rhodesianaland in a holiday resort in South Africa. The key event during the festivities was the re-enactment of the arrival of the Pioneer Column in Fort Salisbury (Harare) and the founding of colonial Rhodesia. The main objective of the commemorative event was the creation of a ceremonial site in which people could come together to recall and to reflect upon their shared past by re-telling the community’s origin narrative. However, the article also suggests that the mnemonic power and emotional affectivity of commemoration rests on the fact that culturally meaningful experiences are bodily enacted.
Keywords commemoration, Rhodesia, social memory, whites, Zimbabwe
Book Reviews
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Fuad I. Khuri. An Invitation to Laughter: A Lebanese Anthropologist in the Arab World
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 71
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Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry (eds). The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 72-74
Essays
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Clowns in Anthropology: A review of the literature
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008:39-48
Other Material
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“That’s a great culture. I’ve got to learn that culture.” A conversation with John B. Haviland. Full transcription online.
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 49-56
Abstract
This is an abbreviated transcription of an informal interview held with Professor John Beard Haviland in Helsinki, where he was making one of his sporadic and very welcome lecturing visits at the end of 2007. Haviland is a linguistic anthropologist, previously at Reed College and now Professor of Anthropology at UCSD. His decades of very extensive fieldwork have been conducted principally among Tzotzil-speaking Zinacantecs of Chiapas, Mexico, and at the Hopevale Aboriginal Community near Cooktown in far northern Queensland, and his enthusiasm for, and commitment to, learning from these communities of which he is part, are an inspiring example to young anthropological scholars—indeed, anthropologists at any professional stage. Here we briefly explore Haviland’s approach to working ‘on the ground’, relationships between theory production and empirical data collection, and his current interest in the physical deixis of gesture along with methodological problems in its transcription. As Haviland points out to me, however, entextualising verbal communication—talk— though something almost taken for granted in ethnographic work, also poses intractable problems: “We’re already doing a radical abstraction when we write down speech as a piece of text” (see below). In the light of his comment before I started taping, that in editing oral speech to conform to written standards “all the interesting bits” are lost, we have deliberately left the transcription in a comparatively raw state, though the urge to shape and polish an essentially informal exchange is very hard to resist. I hope Professor Haviland will forgive the liberties I have taken with “smoothing the turn structure” of our interaction, “eliminating processing difficulties” such as “grammatical hitches in the original speech” and slight adjustments made to the “register” and “the referential focus of the emerging narrative” (Haviland 1996: 47). In the interests of readability we have excluded the usual notations which accompany a detailed piece of transcription.
Keywords deixis, fieldwork, gesture, linguistic system
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Ethical Codes and Ethical Control in the Social Sciences
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 57-66
Abstract
This report discusses the colonial heritage and changes in the social position of anthropologists as reflected in the code of ethics of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). It describes changes in the Association’s ethical guidelines since 1948 and interprets them as reflections of changes in the social position of anthropologists. It is the opinion of the author that the early statements and codes describe the ethical anthropologist as an independent champion of truth. Later codes describe the ethical anthropologist as one who complies with legal regulations and fulfilling his or her contractual obligations towards the employer, sponsor, or client. The author suggests that these changes should also be seen against the background of the position of American anthropologists in the labour market. In the 1960s, the great majority of anthropologists were academics. From 1986 onwards, the majority were working outside of academia.
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Ethics, Advocacy and the Truth: A response to Klaus Mäkelä’s “Ethical Codes and Ethical Control in the Social Sciences”
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 33(3) 2008: 67-70