On expectations in the aftermath of the ‘refugee crisis’: Ethnographic prospects from a post‐industrial German city

At the height of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe, right‐wing critics challenged refugees’ rights to asylum. One of the ways they did this was by predicting chaotic, doom‐laden futures. In reality, nobody – neither the communities hosting the refugees, nor the refugees themselves – knew what the post‐crisis future would bring. Anthropologists are in a position to consider that future ethnographically. This article discusses the emerging future expectations of one Afghan family in the German post‐industrial city of Bremerhaven. It attends to the local production of representations of the future during the aftermath of the crisis. The author uses this material to literally look ahead with ethnography and to thereby intervene in the broader context of the politics of expectations. He argues that the earlier we anthropologists can provide detailed accounts of how the future is starting to take shape in our fieldsites, the more efficiently we can stop further fearmongering and the deprivation of human rights. These ‘ethnographic prospects’ may allow us to ask different questions and offer different imaginations of the future.     

‘Tomorrow comes when tomorrow comes’: Managing Aboriginal Health within an Ontology of Life‐as‐Contingent

ABSTRACT The authors have worked in Australian Aboriginal communities within the Wiradjuri area of central‐western New South Wales. Examining what appear to be distinctive Aboriginal approaches to time, we argue that these stem not from a different notion of time as such but, rather, from the relationship between the social and the self which places a distinctive value on the use and management of time. One way to access the dynamic between time and self is to realise that life is understood as fluid and contingent rather than predictable. This continually subverts the idea that time is measurable and controllable; that life is lived within domesticated sedentary space; and that planning ahead and self‐discipline are virtues. Yet these are notions central to practices associated with contemporary health care. A majority of health care providers, whether Aboriginal or not, are trained in the Australian mainstream health system and may consequently underestimate the implications of different ways in which a person acts on the temporal/spatial dimensions of her life, and how this influences ways in which she manages time in relation to her health and well‐being. Temporal concepts, such as ‘planning’, ‘discipline’, ‘future’, ‘boredom’, or ‘patience’, as well as that of the ‘long‐term’ with regard to managing illness or money, interact with the ways in which Aboriginal people experience themselves as ill or in need of health care, influencing how they act on medical advice. We argue that the key to understanding the use of time lies not in the concept of time per se but in what is involved in developing a responsive social self when the time/space dimensions of the day to day are informed by a fluid and thus contingent ontology of that day to day.     

Reinventing the firm: from post-war relief to international humanitarian agency

Abstract

This article focuses on the humanitarian non-governmental organization (NGO) CARE, Inc., and its transformation from a temporary non-profit agency working in post-war relief to Europe, to a permanent humanitarian enterprise delivering food aid and technical assistance to the so-called ‘developing world’. It analyses CARE’s shift from its early days as an American voluntary agency delivering food and consumer products (donated by private individuals in America) to individuals in Europe to a large NGO that co-operated closely with the US government in food-aid distribution to the Global South. Its expansion and professionalization was embedded in the development of new forms of public-private co-operation in humanitarian affairs, as well as in the overall setting of an emerging competitive ‘humanitarian charity market’ in the non-profit sector. In order to expand its organization and mission CARE implemented new and innovative business strategies and fostered the increasing ‘managerialization’ of its humanitarian activities. The article stresses the economic dimension of NGO activity as one perspective (among others) that helps us to better understand the complex dynamics of the ‘rise’ of humanitarian non-state players during the twentieth century.     

Dreaming as a critical discourse of national belonging: China Dream,American Dream and world dream

This article explores the normative politics of national belonging through an analysis of the ‘China Dream’ and the ‘American Dream’. It traces how politicians and public intellectuals employ such slogans to highlight how national dreams emerge in times of crisis and involve a combination of aspirations and anxieties. It compares parallel rhetorical strategies – ‘patriotic worrying’ in China and the American Jeremiad in the US – to examine how belonging to these two nations involves a nostalgic longing for the past as a model for the future. Debates about the meaning of these national dreams highlight the tension between freedom and equality in the US, between the individual and the collective in China, and between longing for the true nation, and belonging in the actual nation for both countries. It concludes that while this quest for redemption through past models limits opportunities for critical discourse in China, the American Dream still contains much ‘promise’. The China Dream and the American Dream thus are, at the same time, 1) familiar expressions of nationalism and national belonging, and 2) ongoing self/Other coherence‐producing performances that help us to question received notions of nationalism and national belonging.     

The Threefold Logic of Papua‐Melanesia: Constitution‐writing in the Margins of the Indonesian Nation‐State

Clashes over the status of West Papua and the political future of the territory proliferated markedly following the end of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998. Amid a wide variety of demands for justice and independence, and a series of demonstrations, mass gatherings and prayers, only a few Papuans mused on how Papua could become a state and what would constitute its nature as being distinctly Papuan and/or Melanesian. One exception is the work put into the Constitution for West Papua entitled Basic Guidelines, State of West Papua, a document edited by Don A.L. Flassy, a bureaucrat, writer and thinker, with a preface by late Theys H. Eluay, then chairman of the Papuan Council. In this article I analyse this Constitution to show how a combination of Christianity and local customs, and a mimicry of elements of Indonesian nation building and symbols of the Indonesian nation‐state are reshaped to oppose Indonesian nation‐building agendas. The Constitution shows that when Papuans imagine an independent state, forms of vernacular legality play a central role. ‘The state’ has journeyed to Papua and encouraged faith in ‘the law,’ and Basic Guidelines is partly the effect of this growing vernacular legality. My analysis shows that it is essential to see how legal mobilisations and imaginations of the state articulate with other normative systems and practices – in particular Christianity and custom (adat) – and how they mutually allow for and invite strategies.     

The Macedonian–Albanian political frontier: the re‐articulation of post‐Yugoslav political identities

Abstract. The article examines the re‐articulation of national identity in Macedonia since its independence in 1992. Both ethnic Macedonian and ethnic Albanian political identities have been engaged in a complex process of redefinition. Two ethnic groups had previously been strongly influenced by the Marxist paradigm and its Yugoslav official interpretation. During the 1990s, the elements of the old paradigm were combined with elements of the new – liberal democratic – concepts of nationhood. While some of the concepts developed within the old Yugoslav framework are still in use, the new liberal‐democratic political paradigm finds it difficult to include them into an official discourse on nationhood. At the same time, introduction of the concepts inherent to the liberal‐democratic paradigm has disturbed the fragile balance achieved through the old Yugoslav narrative. In new circumstances, the ethnic Macedonians transformed themselves from the ‘constitutive nation’ to ‘majority’. However, the ethnic Albanians found it more difficult to accept the status of ‘minority’, which was once (in Yugoslav Marxist narrative) considered to be politically incorrect. Thus, they insist on being recognised as a ‘nation’, equal to ethnic Macedonians. In its essence, the conflict in Macedonia is – to a large extent – a conflict between two different concepts of what is Macedonia and who are Macedonians. The questions posed are: is the minority (ethnic Albanians) part of the nation? Could two nations exist peacefully within one state? The article maps out differences between two different discourses on the identity of the new Macedonian state.     

Mapping the nation: street names and Arab‐Palestinian identity: three case studies

The naming of streets is part of the ongoing process of mapping the boundaries of the nation. This article examines three sets of Arab‐Palestinian street names – pre‐1948 Haifa and Jerusalem and post‐1948 Umm el Fahm – as locally constructed ‘texts of identity’ in the historical and political context of their official creation. The investigation aims at charting the ideological orientations represented and the political messages entailed in these three different textual manifestations of Arab‐Palestinian national identity. The analysis focuses on notions of historical and cultural heritage as expressed in the choice of street names. Finally, it offers an interpretative evaluation of this process, placing it within broader ideological and historical contexts.     

Redefining ‘sub‐culture’: a new lens for understanding hybrid cultural identities in East‐Central Europe with a case study from early 20th century L'viv‐Lwów‐Lemberg

This paper proposes a new definition of the term ‘subculture’, as a way of better understanding hybrid identities specific to East‐Central Europe, before applying this definition to a case study from the now‐Ukrainian city of L'viv from around 1900. The first section outlines the theory, arguing that the continued focus on the nation state – either from the ‘top down’, or else the ‘bottom up’ as a source of contestation, by historians and anthropologists, has limited the ability to study groups in the interstices of the national projects that typically remain defined in monolithic ethno‐linguistic terms. It examines the theoretical term ‘subcultures’ to propose a new definition that accounts for such hybridity, by having particular sensitivity to context (historical, social, geographical) and cultural practice, in addition to any prevailing national narratives at a given time. The case study in the second section focuses on linguistic hybridity in the city then known more commonly as Lemberg (German) or Lwów (Polish). It argues that Lemberg/Lwów/L'viv produced an urban dialect that blended Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish and German elements. This dialect should be reassessed as a mixed, hybrid or transitional code, rather than as a linguistic variant of a titular nation. Archival evidence – in particular, court records – is quoted to show that at the lower end of L'viv society, people routinely mixed and transcended linguistic and, thereby, ethnic and religious boundaries. This offers direct evidence of a specific subsection, or subculture, in urban life where people interacted and intermingled intensely. As such, the paper offers new possibilities for investigating ‘hybrid’ identities, as well as proposing a counterpoint to recent research focusing on deliberate indifference or opposition to national segregation for various socio‐political, economic and cultural reasons (Judson 2006: 19–65; King 2002; Zahra 2008).     

Dilemmas of Counter‐Mapping Community Resources in Tanzania

Recent work has celebrated the political potential of ‘counter‐mapping’, that is, mapping against dominant power structures, to further seemingly progressive goals. This article briefly reviews the counter‐mapping literature, and compares four counter‐mapping projects from Maasai areas in Tanzania to explore some potential pitfalls in such efforts. The cases, which involve community‐based initiatives led by a church‐based NGO, ecotourism companies, the Tanzanian National Parks Authority, and grassroots pastoralist rights advocacy groups, illustrate the broad range of activities grouped under the heading of counter‐mapping. They also present a series of political dilemmas that are typical of many counter‐mapping efforts: conflicts inherent in conservation efforts involving territorialization, privatization, integration and indigenization; problems associated with the theory and practice of ‘community‐level’ political engagement; the need to combine mapping efforts with broader legal and political strategies; and critical questions involving the agency of ‘external’ actors such as conservation and development donors, the state and private business interests.     

Emissions Trading,New Enclosures and Eco‐Social Contestation

Abstract: The central operating strategy within the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and most of the advanced capitalist world's environmental policy is to address climate change through the market mechanism known as emissions trading. Based upon government issuance and private trading of emissions reductions credits and offsets, this approach quickly rose to $135 billion in annual trading. But in the wake of the collapse of climate negotiations in Copenhagen and a world financial crisis which undermined market faith in derivative investments, carbon trading has an uncertain future. Linkages between deep‐rooted financial market and emissions market problems are revealing in spatio‐temporal terms, especially in the context of a deeper overaccumulation crisis and investors’ desperate need for new speculative outlets. It is in the nexus of the spatial and temporal aspects of carbon financing amidst resistance to “new enclosures” by adversely affected peoples, that broader‐based lessons for global/local environmental politics and climate policy can be learned.     

Date,Rituals and Socio‐Cultural Identity in the North‐Western Roman Provinces

This article explores issues of socio‐cultural identity in the north‐western Roman provinces, using all the available archaeobotanical evidence of date (Phoenix dactylifera L.). This fruit does not conform to the general social distribution pattern of other Roman exotic food plant imports in this area, but instead indicates a strong ceremonial connection. Through an in‐depth contextual approach the role of date in both domestic and ceremonial sites is investigated to reach beyond the simple ‘date‐Roman‐ritual’ association. The results suggest strong temporal, spatial and contextual patterning and an overall rare occurrence and selective use of the fruit in certain rituals and mystic cults. Date may have been employed not necessarily as a food, and was probably an affordable luxury for some in their ritual pursuits. As such, date can now be regarded as part of specific ceremonial expressions rather than a standard ingredient of a normative ceremonial or ‘Roman’ identity.     

Struggling for food in a time of crisis: Responsibility and paradox

Struggling for food in a time of crisis: responsibility and paradox. Responsibility is a useful lens through which to examine the current state of food poverty in the UK in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, noting that this concept contains several paradoxes. Currently, responsibility involves the voluntary sector, the food industry and the state, a situation which the author has been exploring for the last five years in an ethnographic study of food poverty and food aid in the UK. Food aid organizations, especially food banks, have mushroomed during the period of austerity. This reveals the first paradox: namely, that the existence of food banks conveys the message that ‘something is being done’, but in actuality this is very far from being sufficient to meet the needs of either the ‘old’ or ‘new’ food insecure. The second paradox is that at the onset of the crisis, a government which had been responsible for inflicting austerity on the country for 10 years, dramatically reversed some of its policies. However, predictably, this did not change the situation vis-à-vis food insecurity. The third paradox is that the frequent rhetoric invoking the two world wars has not resulted in lessons being learned – notably, the creation of a ministry to deal with food and rationing, as in the Second World War. The final paradox relates to Brexit and its likely deleterious effects on food security, particularly if no ‘deal’ is achieved with the European Union, as seems likely. The voluntary food aid sector, try as it may, cannot possibly assume responsibility for the long-standing and now hugely increased problems of food insecurity. That belongs to the state.     

Hunger in the land of plenty: The complex humanitarian crisis in Venezuela

Oil-rich Venezuela is being hit by the largest crisis in living memory. Now, more than 4.8 million Venezuelans have fled the country in search of food and safety. News about migration and humanitarian aid dominate. Yet, many Venezuelans stay and seek alternative strategies to cope with scarcity and insecurity. Ad hoc solutions mainly depend on alternative economies in the borderlands that do not always fit within frameworks of human rights and rule of law, but do provide relief and produce opportunities along with new inequalities that (un)willingly sustain the crisis. Amid collapsing state infrastructures, these transborder economies tie into the global trade of basic supplies, narcotics, drugs, natural resources and human trafficking that operate in the interface of the legal and the illegal. The complex humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is as much about poverty and scarcity as it is about wealth and abundance benefiting only a very few. An ‘anthropology of abundance’ allows us to grasp these underlying socio-economic dynamics that turn crisis management into crisis maintenance.     

After the Nicaraguan Non‐Payment Crisis: Alternatives to Microfinance Narcissism

This article argues against ‘microfinance narcissism’ and calls for a re‐politicization of the microfinance paradigm. The dominant verdict on microcredit has undergone a damning transformation, from ‘magic bullet for poverty reduction’ to ‘cause of suicide’. Nowadays, both radical critics and mainstream voices deplore microcredit's negative impact on micro‐entrepreneurs. They argue for a reorientation where credit is targeted at established small and medium‐sized enterprises, particularly in rural areas. The crisis in microfinance worldwide, including burgeoning protests, are viewed as proof of the commercial derailment and/or misplaced faith in microfinance's positive social and economic impact on the poor. This article engages with this debate through a study of the Nicaraguan micro‐finance crisis. It challenges existing analyses that pin the crisis on agricultural over‐indebtedness, lack of due diligence, or Sandinista populist politics. Illustrating the dangers of neglecting the diverse nature of microfinance, it reveals the paradoxical outcomes of the crisis: a refocus on the urban at the expense of agricultural credit for small and medium enterprises and a consolidation of the power of national processing elites. Nicaragua's Non‐Payment Movement is also shown to be both a product of elite manipulation and an expression of legitimate resistance to an industry that turns a blind eye to the manner in which markets and politics constrain clients’ potential.     

Righting the course? Humanitarian intervention,the war on terror and the future of Afghanistan

The US‐led post 9/11 ‘intervention’ in Afghanistan was, by definition, not a humanitarian intervention. The intervention in Afghanistan was defined as an act of self‐defence by the US and it was one of the first steps in the ‘war on terror’ by the US and its allies: it had no intention or clear strategies for long‐term stabilization, state‐building or development. The US‐led international coalition failed to ‘find’ Al‐Qaeda in the short term and new arguments had to be made to justify continued international presence. The initial agenda was quickly blurred by a mismatch of intentions including those of long‐term stabilization and state‐building. The ideas developed through the Bonn Agreement (2001–5) and continued through the Afghanistan Compact (2006–10) have focused on building a centrally governed state (sometimes defined as democratic) that has a monopoly on the use of force. Their shortcomings are already well‐documented: the urgency of the Bonn Conference and of the adoption of the Bonn Agreement ostensibly meant trading expediency and stability for accountability and a clean slate, which is not to say that there were no good intentions at Bonn from stakeholders, but that Afghans and the international community put power‐sharing before progress. The choices made at Bonn may have contributed to the culture of impunity and the entrenched poverty that is gripping Afghanistan today. This article responds to the claims that state‐building and all that goes with it are not the responsibility of the ‘international community’ by addressing the accountability and humanitarian paradoxes. The question remains, however, about who should be responsible for reform and politically accountable in the aftermath of non‐humanitarian (and indeed even humanitarian) interventions?     

Time‐bubbles of nationalism: dynamics of solidarity ritual in lived time

The growth of modern nationalism can be attributed to structural causes, especially the growth of the strong bureaucratic state that penetrates society, creating cultural uniformity and national identity. But structurally based nationalism need not be very intense, or constant; even when institutionalised in periodic formal rituals, it can be routine, low in emotion – even boring. We need to explain sudden upsurges in popular nationalism, but also their persistence and fading in medium‐length periods of time. Nationalist surges are connected with geopolitical rises and falls in the power‐prestige of states: strong and expanding states absorb smaller particularistic identities into a prestigious whole; weaker and defeated states suffer delegitimation of the dominant nationality and fragment in sudden upsurges of localising nationalities. Passing from macro‐patterns to micro‐sociological mechanisms, conflict producing solidarity is a key mechanism: dramatic events focus widespread attention and assemble crowds into spontaneous ‘natural rituals’ – mass‐participation interaction rituals, as distinct from formal rituals. Evidence from public assemblies and the display of national symbols following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11) shows an intense period of three months, then gradual return to normal internal divisions by around six months. Spontaneous rituals of national solidarity are produced not only by external conflict but by internal uprisings, where an emotional upsurge of national identity is used to legitimate insurgent crowds and discredit regimes. Although participants experience momentary feelings of historic shifts, conflict‐mobilised national solidarity lives in a 3–6‐month time‐bubble, and needs to institutionalise its successes rapidly to have long‐term effects.     

North Africa's Spain: peripheral national identities and the nation‐state as neo‐empire

When ethno‐cultural heterogeneity exists and thrives within a nation‐state, social tension and ethno‐nationalist sentiments are not considered surprising. Yet in many nation‐states, various native‐born communities have diverse and potentially contradictory national identities without the desire for self‐determination. In this paper, I explore the circumstances in which ethno‐culturally distinct, peripheral communities may develop variants of the dominant national identity – ensuring that they remain excluded from the national narrative – yet remain part of the nation‐state. To do so, I conduct a comparative analysis of the native‐born Muslim communities in Spain's two North African exclaves. I find that most Muslims are Spanish citizens yet understandings of ‘Spanish‐ness’ appear to vary between the exclaves. I use these findings to propose further steps for refining current conceptualisations of the nation‐state, in an effort to better understand cases in which variations in the dominant national identity exist, but without ethno‐nationalist sentiments.     

The politics of contemporary ethno‐nationalist conflicts

That the 1990s began and ended with wars in the Balkans, often evoking reference to ‘ancient hatreds’, might suggest little has been learned since the fall of the Wall on how to address the recrudescence of violent ethno‐nationalist conflict – and indeed some fatalism as to whether this can be done at all. Yet the rethinking of notions of national sovereignty, the increasing minority‐rights jurisprudence and the development of anti‐essentialist concepts of identity in recent times have begun to indicate new policy instruments which might better allow such conflicts to be managed in the twenty‐first century. As ever, however, policy lags behind intellectual innovations, and the predominant approach of the international community remains for the moment significantly more conservative in character.     

Capitalizing on Desire: Reconfiguring ‘the Social’ and the Government of Poverty in the Philippines

Tracing the contours of ‘the social’ is of critical importance today, since there is a widely shared understanding that ‘the social’ has been undergoing a fundamental mutation under the encroaching influence of globalization and neoliberalism. This mutation means that a population and its risks are increasingly administered and managed through the nurturing of free subjects, productive citizens and active communities. By focusing on conditional cash transfers as a poverty‐alleviation programme in the Philippines, this study examines how the contemporary government of poverty attempts to realize social inclusion through the nurturing of desires, habits and dispositions that are conducive to an ‘investment in human capital’. The study argues that such regimes produce various forms of exclusion and counterclaims by the beneficiaries, and that these counterclaims, which reflect the popular notions of patronage and clientelism, have serious implications for envisioning the alternative configuration of ‘the social’.     

Eastern Europe and ‘legitimacy crisis’

An unexpectedly swift collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe amidst flares of mass dissent raises doubts about the accuracy of explanations of the persistence of these regimes in terms of ‘legitimacy’ and their fall in terms of ‘legitimacy crisis’. Such explanations are criticised and rejected as theoretically inadequate and lacking empirical support. It is argued that East European regimes had never developed mass legitimacy, and that even before the current upheavals they showed clear symptoms of non‐legitimate domination. In order to suggest an alternative interpretation of their persistence and fall, the paper clarifies the meaning of the term ‘legitimacy’, suggests reasons for the popularity of ‘legitimacy interpretations’, and critically assesses the empirical evidence for the alleged legitimacy and ‘legitimacy crises’. The concluding section outlines the bases of (non‐legitimate) communist domination and looks at the problems of (re‐establishing legitimate authority by the post‐communist East European regimes.