The Familiar Strange

“Doing history ideally is like doing anthropology of people who are gone, except that you don’t have native informants, you only have these written fragmentary sources. But the same hermeneutic struggle goes on: you’re trying to understand somebody from their point of view.”

Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of history & South Asian languages & civilizations at the University of Chicago and Distinguished Dean's Professor at the ANU's School of Culture, History, & Language (College of Asia & the Pacific), talked with our own Ian Pollock about the intersections of history & anthropology, the struggle of scholars from poorer countries to understand their societies own their own terms, & the appeal of western-style academics, plus what it takes to do history right: training, judgment, & how to use theory (and not let theory use you).

Find Dipesh’s bio, including a list of his published works, at https://history.uchicago.edu/directory/dipesh-chakrabarty. His latest book was The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth (2015), from U Chicago Press.

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CITATIONS

Davis, Natalie Z. (2000) Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Descola, Philippe, translated by Janet Lloyd (2013) Beyond Nature and Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. (2016) Geontologies: A Requiem for Late Liberalism. Duke University Press, NC.

QUOTES

“Life is not always enjoyable. You have to make a story out of lived experiences to write history, and that story has to be enjoyable.”

“All disciplines basically work with implicit models. The more formal a discipline is, the more explicit the models are.”

“When you do your thesis and you defend it, you have to defend it in terms of what it contributes to the general understanding of anthropology. And that general understanding of anthropology or history is in the end more Western, even though we think of it as 'general.’ But the ‘general’ is a Western ‘general.’ So what happens is, because of this unevenness of resources, these poorer countries actually have a tough time coming to understand themselves. Because their students get scholarships to go out and immerse themselves, like I did, into these ‘general’ discussions, but the ‘general' discussions are Western. So I actually think sometimes that the West is producing its own intellectuals everywhere in the world.”

“What we are faced with is a predicament where, as humans, we cannot not wish other humans to have the rights that we enjoy. But at the same time, our numbers have grown, and that also has some consequences. And how to combine our thinking about those consequences and our thinking about rights without some kind of optimistic leap of faith, either in technology or just sheer faith in human ingenuity, we don’t know how to combine them.”

"If you looked at the planet without thinking about rights, without thinking about justice -- because in Darwin's book there's no justice -- if you look at the planet through that framework, you have a language for talking about other species. But you can't bring it into the language of rights and things. And therefore it's like the 'truths' of evolution, and the aspirations in political philosophy, they just stare at each other, having nothing to say to each other."

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, & Language and Archaeology & Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

KEYWORDS: History, anthropology, research, academia, ethnography, human rights, colonialism, India

This month, Jodie (00:53) points to what the men didn’t say at the Golden Globes, and the problems of performing allyship. “So if we’re looking at the men at the Golden Globes who appeared to not behave like allies… are you saying we can’t rely on appearances because we can’t see inside to really understand their intentions, or that we should?”

Ian (6:05) asks about using sickness as an ethnographic method, and just how far recreating someone’s physical experience can help you understand their point of view. The topic follows a chat Ian had with friend-of-the-pod Michael Rose, whose research was shaped by the times he got sick in the field: “...he made his body very vulnerable, but he didn’t choose to get sick in those ways. The real question is how much credence we can give to trying to recreate somebody’s physical experience as closely as possible?”

Next Julia (10:55) asks how we should understand the “gaps” in health or life expectancy between groups, and the politics of placing the blame on structural factors versus individual choices. “A lot of my patient participants are very aware of the dangers in various health behaviours that they pursue. However, they enjoy living in a very present-centred way that is also representative of a quality of life that wouldn’t sit comfortably with clinicians.”

Simon finishes us off (16:40) with a paean to slow research and slow thinking, which lets ideas shift and adapt: “I think there really is something to be said about a long stewing in one’s intellectual juices, to think about what it is that we can learn from other societies.”

Complete show notes at https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/01/21/ep-6-golden-globes-allyship/

CITATIONS

Here’s the article that sparked Jodie’s thinking, “What the men didn’t say:" https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/what-the-men-didnt-say/549914/

Mike Rose was inspired by Michael Jackson’s “From Anxiety to Method in Anthropological Fieldwork: An Appraisal of George Devereux’ Enduring Ideas,” which appears in Jackson, Michael (2013) Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Mike has published a couple of articles on affect and anthropological fieldwork, which can be found at his Academia page (https://anu-au.academia.edu/CharlieRose). He also has a piece on The Familiar Strange blog, called Inedia with a Grain of Salt (https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2017/12/28/inedia-with-a-grain-of-salt).

In Ian’s segment, Simon uses the term “qualia.” Here’s one definition: “The 'what it is like' character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc." Chris Eliasmith (2004-05-11). From the online “Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind” (https://sites.google.com/site/minddict/q) [accessed Jan 21 2018].

Here's the book Julia refers to:

Kowal, Emma (2015) Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia. Berghahn Books, New York, 2015. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/KowalTrapped

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Subscribe, rate, and review The Familiar Strange on iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Blubrry, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Show notes by Ian Pollock

Keywords: anthropology, ethnography, health, mental health, golden globes, writing

“...the child operates as a powerful figure in our society, where children can mobilize anything, from anxieties about same sex marriage to fears about children in detention, and all these things that we see in our own society today.”

Dr. Annie McCarthy, who teaches anthropology at the Australian National University, tells our own Jodie-Lee Trembath about the moral pitfalls of aid and development in the slums of Delhi, India, how the poor and the young take power back from NGOs that may inadvertently objectify them, and how “stunting,” a term that should describe low height for age, becomes a shorthand for cultural assumptions about family life. Annie also talks about teaching, what it’s like to research children, and the importance of getting to know “the anthropologist behind the anthropology.”

Find Annie's work on her Academia page, or follow her on Twitter at @anni_mc.

CITATIONS

Ferguson, James. (1990). The anti-politics machine : "development," depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx [accessed 7 Jan 2018]

QUOTES

“We’ve all seen those images of those children with the bloated bellies and the fly-besotted eyes… We’re very familiar with the rendering of that kind of abject state of child poverty and the way it’s used as a kind of lever to get donors to generously part with their money."

“...the word ‘stunted’ was just so much more than a kind of bodily referent, you know, I just felt like, well, you know, you don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what I might do in my life, you don’t know where I might go in my life. You know, maybe I’m going to be a few centimeters shorter than I would have been, but who even knows what I would have been? Who are you to say that my life is somehow less than it could have been?”

“It’s eugenics that enables this population norm to measure people against.”

“It’s like, okay, these kids have survived, but the rest of their lives are kind of called into question by these paradigms, and the life of the nation [India] more broadly.”

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Feature image by Dr Annie McCarthy - A group of girls work together to create a booklet advocating against child marriage as part of an activity for a media NGO that visits their South Delhi slum weekly.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Find these show notes at https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/01/07/ep-5-stunted-thinking-annie-mccarthy/

In this month’s panel discussion, Jodie (1:14) tells us about documents with agency: “Ideas just get up and grow legs, and they run away with themselves.” (Trigger warning: this segment mentions the recent Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. If you want to avoid that part, skip to 3:45.)

Next, Ian (6:00) considers what it’s like to live in an imaginary landscape: “the kind of imaginary landscape that I’m talking about [is] where the one that’s around you, that’s physically substantiated, is the one that isn’t real.”

Simon (11:09) taps into his work in Iran, where people seemed to have a basic expectation that their politicians would tell the truth, to ask why, in democracies, we so often assume our politicians are liars: “they had a greater expectation that people should be telling the truth than we do."

Finally, Julia (15:44) lays bare the emotional danger she faces when the emotions of the people she studies — in her case, schizophrenia patients — percolate through her own body: “I don’t think I would be able to access my participants’ experiences the way I have without putting myself at some kind of emotional risk.”

CITATIONS

Here’s Ian’s post on the Pulse Nightclub massacre and emotions in the field: https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/08/30/when-the-world-invades-the-field/

The Familiar Strange is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Find these show notes at https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2017/12/17/ep-4-killer-docs-imaginary-landscapes-political-lies-and-emotional-risk/

“The flies that go from feces into the water, into the food, don’t look at your bank account…” When a problem cuts across social divisions, “we call this the ‘binding crisis.’ What are the ‘binding crises’ that would generate enough political will and drive amongst a population that’s polarized around caste, class, gender?”

Dr. Assa Doron, associate professor of anthropology at ANU (https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/doron-a), spoke to our own Ian Pollock about India’s waste, both liquid and solid, and the physical and institutional infrastructures that handle it--or fail to. This wide-ranging conversation also touches on the transformative effects of cheap mobile phones on India’s poor, how trash turns back into treasure, how to write anthropology that’s both “appealing and authoritative,” and where to find schnitzel on the Subcontinent. To keep up with Assi’s research, follow him on Twitter @AssaDoron, and like the ANU South Asia Research Institute on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SARIatANU/.

Citations:

Carlebach, E. הודו: יומן דרכים (Hodo: Yoman Drakhim; 1st ed. הוצאת עיינות, Tel Aviv 1956), ספרית מעריב. Tel Aviv-Yafo 1986. (For some reason I couldn’t find an English citation, but the English title is “India: Account of a Voyage.”)

Books of Assi’s mentioned in the show:

Doron, A. (2008) Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of resistance, Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Doron, A. & Jeffrey, R. (2013) The great Indian phone book: how the cheap cell phone changes business, politics, and daily life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Doron, A. & Jeffrey R. (in press, 2018) Waste of a Nation: garbage and growth in India, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

For his other work, check out his page at Academia.edu: http://anu-au.academia.edu/AssaDoron

The Familiar Strange is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Music by Pete Dabro: https://dabro1.bandcamp.com/releases

Subscribe, rate, and review The Familiar Strange on iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Blubrry, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Find these show notes at https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2017/12/03/3-assa-doron-on-waste-in-india/

Quotes:

“Try to write it as a story. Use theory as a treasure trove to illuminate what you’ve learned in the field, what you’ve seen, the stories, the myths, the rituals, the everyday life that you encounter, rather than let the theory dictate how you do so.”

"Part of my role in teaching medical students is to peel back the inculturation that they're in, to be able to relate with patients. Remember before you were a med student, what it actually meant to be the person sitting with your dying grandmother...That's something that, as an anthropologist, that's part of my role is to be able to see where those boundaries are, what it means to be a doctor, and what it means to not be a doctor."

Dr. Tanisha Jowsey, a medical anthropologist at the University of Auckland (https://unidirectory.auckland.ac.nz/people/t-jowsey), spoke to our own Julia Brown about how to analyze a medical emergency, how machines and people communicate in the ER, and how to keep your head when there's blood on the floor.

Citations:

Rapport, Nigel and Joanna Overing (2000) "Social and Cultural Anthropology: the Key Concepts." Routledge: London and New York. This open access PDF is available on www.antropologias.com:

http://www.antropologias.org/files/downloads/2010/08/OVERINGJ.RAPPAPORTN._Social-and-cultural-anthropology-key-concepts.pdf

The Familiar Strange is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Find these show notes at https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2017/11/19/2-tanisha-jowsey-talks-medical-tribes/

Julia, Simon, Jodie, and Ian preview what's coming up on www.thefamiliarstrange.com in the coming month. On today's show, Jodie (1:40) follows up on 2015 fracas at Yale about free speech and Halloween, in response to a discussion on Sam Harris' podcast "Waking Up" (https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/facing-the-crowd); Simon (7:10) takes us to Iran for a look at gender-segregated public transportation, and the ways rules unwind in authoritarian countries, original research he'll present next week (http://sociology.cass.anu.edu.au/events/mundane-governance-conference); Julia (12:25) reflects on conviction and openness in political speech, reacting to the departure of (former) Australian senator Jacqui Lambie; and Ian (17:55) talks about creeps, assholes, and the deeply personal process of social categorization that shapes people's behavior.

The Familiar Strange is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the Australian National University's schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Music by Pete Dabro: http://dabro1.bandcamp.com

Welcome to The Familiar Strange! In this brief introduction, the four hosts of the show introduce themselves, the podcast, and The Familiar Strange blog (https://www.thefamiliarstrange.com).

This is a podcast about doing anthropology. In intimate conversations and open panel discussions, the hosts (four PhD students) and our guests (senior academics and experts) explore the world by taking part and being with, struggling toward knowledge through experience.

Brought to you with support from the Australian Anthropological Society, the schools of Culture, History, and Language and Archaeology and Anthropology at Australian National University, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.

Music by Pete Dabro: https://dabro1.bandcamp.com/releases

Find these show notes at https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2017/11/19/introducing-the-familiar-strange/