Search Results

The anthropology of art and performance is an interdisciplinary research area that emerged from the convergence of social and visual anthropology, sociology of art and performance, visual and museum studies, and cultural studies. Despite its fragmented nature, anthropology of art as a field is marked by theoretical productivity, inherent interdisciplinarity, and empirical depth. Throughout the 20th century, anthropologists have invested significant theoretical effort in grappling with what can be termed the inherent dilemmas of art and anthropology. These dilemmas, stemming from the ambiguous nature of art as an object of inquiry, persistently resist resolution and remain subjects of debate. Essentially, they revolve around three fundamental questions: Is art a universal category? Should anthropology study what art means, or what it does? Can artists be anthropologists, and can anthropologists be artists? While trying to tackle these questions, ethnographers, interested in the materiality of objects defined as “art,” have extensively analyzed their trajectories, moving from the peripheries of the art world(s) toward its center(s) while producing all-encompassing systems of categorization of symbolically and aesthetically meaningful objects. At the same time, criticism of the universal validity of the category of art has been decentered by the ascendance of the global art market and the proliferation of its centers in post-colonial contexts, attracting artists and curators, including those of indigenous origin—adhering to its values. On the global art scene, the categorical boundaries between art, artifact, and commodity have been essentially dissolved, pushing anthropologists and artists to explore each other. These collaborative methodological discussions encompass the limits of multimodal and collaborative ethnographies, as well as curatorial experiments engaging anthropologists, artists, and curators in transversal conversations, moving beyond purely textual representations of anthropological debates. In contrast to these dilemmas that may at times appear scholastic, the early 21st century offers a potential renewal to the field through the intersection of art and political anthropology. This approach explores artistic and performative occurrences beyond the institutionally defined confines of galleries, museums, and art markets. Consideration of the contemporary phenomenon of global political iconoclasm supports this perspective, observable across diverse regions, including the United States, Western Europe, and postcolonial and postsocialist societies. Although this movement did not originate from officially designated art spaces, it revolved around works of art, such as statues, monuments, murals, and museum collections, involving artists and other actors. Here, art serves as a universally perceptible form of political expression, a tool for social mobilization, a witness to political violence, and a device in memory-making and decolonization. Despite its profound impact, there remains a lack of sufficient ethnographic tools to recognize, describe, and theorize the agency of artistic and performative practices occurring within the global political scene, not just within the realm of art.

Policing, perhaps more than any modern institution, has become the subject of intense political contestation. Police killings have sparked clashes in the public sphere and in the streets over the role of policing in society in diverse places such as the United States, Eswatini, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, and Iran. At the same time, policing from the vantage point of policymakers is often taken as a straightforward way of reordering society, of putting law into practice. What, then, could be gained by studying the police anthropologically—by following them in their everyday work, listening to them in their own words, and seeking to understand them in the context of their own environment? The anthropology of police and policing understands its object of study neither as just reflection of society nor pure execution of policy but as a potent force of imagination and action in itself. On the one hand, policing throws into stark relief the wishful thinking of what orderly society would like to be. This dynamic can take the form of people projecting their desires onto the police or the police performatively enacting these expectations and their own visions of power and authority and who they would like to be. On the other hand, policing manifests itself as a means of exclusion, inequality, and violent differentiation. It operates as a key force within societies at odds with the flourishing, and even survival, of many of those who live within it. The anthropology of policing’s unique perspective originates from the subfield’s diverse geographical and institutional scope, encompassing state and nonstate policing practices in places across the globe. It is also a product of the broader discipline’s approach to quotidian practices as always already embedded in multiple layers of context and inflected by broader social institutions. Within this vein, anthropologists have mobilized ethnographic studies to explore how states are given force and effect through mundane bureaucratic practices and how more foundational notions such as sovereignty, legitimacy, and authority are enacted through policing. Other scholars have shown how policing’s seeming ability to materialize these more transcendental aspects of statehood has lent policing to be embraced and animated by religious practice and justification. Crucial within this scholarship is an emphasis on policing as a provisional and emergent form of authority, which is ultimately dependent on spectacular and quotidian forms of performance. As a consequence, policing has become a rich site for the anthropology of policing to explore how contemporary citizenship is taking shape, how structures of exclusion within it are emerging, and how these exclusions are contested at multiple scales. As these contests have taken greater prominence, the subfield itself has been home to debates not simply over how best to do an anthropology of the police but also whether, in this tense political moment, it is worth studying the police ethnographically at all.

The word “magic” refers to a broad range of beliefs and practices that include animism, charm(s), divination, enchantment, fantasy, fetish, glamour, illusion, miracles, the occult, shamanism, sorcery, spells, the supernatural, superstition, taboos, trickery, and witchcraft. Magic―once thought a core feature of “primitive societies,” abandoned by more rational, bureaucratic and progressive beliefs―is, in fact, thriving in contemporary life, and central to practices of capitalism as well as to everyday behaviors. Magic is practiced in fields of finance, government, law, medicine and health, technology, advertising, marketing, sports, the gaming industry, and theatrical performances, among other institutions. When situations allow for the assemblage of a “magician,” “rite,” and “representation” within these complex social networks and when professional skills, ideas, conditions, contexts, media, and meanings align, magic acts as an agent of change. Magic is also practiced in everyday situations in which people need to feel a sense of control in circumstances where it’s lacking, such as performing well under competitive conditions or during times of crisis with indefinite outcomes. Consequently, they rely on magical thinking—in the forms of superstitions, wishful thinking, and taboo avoidance—which is often accompanied by charms, amulets, or acts of faith to guide them through uncertainty. Conjuring terms such as “fate” and “luck” to ward off illness or improve one’s chances at getting a hit in baseball, are, in fact, ways of expressing ambiguities and dealing with conflicts of temporal existence that all humans face in one form or another. Magic structured in institutions and practiced in everyday situations is a prime example of contradiction in contemporary life. Objective knowledge of facts is increasingly understood as contingent rather than permanent, leaving room for uncertainty, mystery, the unknown, and seemingly nonrational alternatives. Scientific evidence becomes as valid as alternative facts. Documenting recent developments, it is suggested that rationality and magic are not mutually exclusive. Rather, rational behaviors and practices are suffused with magic. Magical beliefs and specific rituals complement practical knowledge so as to enhance knowledge as a way to secure success. All of these ways of thinking and social practices have something at stake, in that risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity of outcome are prevalent, and hence call on magical practices to bring about change.

Indigenous peoples worldwide are affected by, and engage with, tourism in a number of ways. On the one hand, tourism may be oriented to facilitate direct interactions between Indigenous peoples and foreign tourists, often referred to as cultural or even “primitivist” tourism. In such cases, Indigenous people may or may not have much agency in how that interaction transpires and how much profit they directly derive. In other cases, such as ecotourism, reserves or other protected areas may be made more or less inaccessible to Indigenous people who may have ancestral claims to it, with infrastructure built to facilitate tourists’ visits and restrict or prohibit Indigenous use. Tourism behaviors may be disrespectful, intentionally or not, of Indigenous sensibilities. Tourist visits may be embraced by Indigenous people as an opportunity for economic development and cultural expression or rejected as an invasion of privacy, denying people dignity and respect by being objects of the “tourist gaze.” Many scholars from anthropology, sociology, human geography, and other related disciplines have sought to address some of the issues and concerns regarding the relationship between tourism and Indigenous peoples, drawing on examples from around the globe in order to illustrate the multitude of ways in which this relationship operates. Ways that Indigenous peoples’ relationship to tourism may be explored include contexts such as tourism to visit ancient monuments and UNESCO-listed world heritage sites, tourism in search of cultural differences, cruise travel and luxury resorts, and ecotourism. A variety of implications and potential tensions that may arise through tourism involving Indigenous peoples are explored.