Extremism as Immanence and Process: The Trump Transmutation

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Introduction. Liminality: Structure/Anti-structure and Egalitarian Dynamics

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An Introduction to Egalitarian Thought and Dynamics

In this introduction we approach egalitarianism as an upsetting force that in various ways has shaped much of modern, especially Western, human history. We outline philosophical trajectories from the Enlightenment onward; consider the historical realization of an agency of ‘the people’ for the articulation of state, society, and politics; and highlight some issues that arise when the claims to freedom and equality clash against established institutions and values. Stressing the dynamic intertwining of the egalitarian with the hierarchical, we portray egalitarian life forms as modes of relationality that negate, subvert, or take advantage of open potentials in existing systems. Egalitarian life strives toward reconfiguring social orders through rupturing moments of effervescence and liminality while attempting to redefine central categories of life.publishedVersio

Violence and affective states in contemporary Latin America

This special issue brings together scholars interested in the analysis of the social, cultural and affective dimensions of violence. The contributions explore the connections between situated experiences of violence and shifting affective states, relations, sensations and contingencies in contemporary Latin America. The articles consider how violence might constitute a nexus for the production of subjectivities and forms of identification, relationality and community, alterity and belonging, in a range of Latin American contexts including Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico and in the Mexican diaspora in Spain

Earthquake Citizens: Disaster and Aftermath Politics in India and Nepal

Ruptures brings together leading and emerging international anthropologists to explore the concept of ‘rupture’. Understood as radical and often forceful forms of discontinuity, rupture is the active ingredient of the current sense of a world in turmoil, lying at the heart of some of the most defining experiences of our time: the rise of populist politics, the corollary impulse towards protest and even revolutionary change, as well as moves towards violence and terror, and the responses these moves elicit. Rupture is addressed in selected ethnographic and historical contexts: images of the guillotine in the French revolution; reactions to Trump’s election in the USA; the motivations of young Danes who join ISIS in Syria; ‘butterfly effect’ activism among environmental anarchists in northern Europe; the experiences of political trauma and its ‘repair’ through privately sponsored museums of Mao’s revolution in China; people’s experience of the devastating 2001 earthquake in Gujarat; the ‘inner’ rupture of Protestant faith among Danish nationalist theologians; and the attempt to invent ex nihilo an alphabet for use in Christian prophetic movements in Congo and Angola

Planetary conversation : a multidisciplinary discussion about ethnography and the planetary

International audienceIn May 2022, a multidisciplinary, international and intergenerational group ofscholars met for a “Planetary conversation”. The event was organised by the members of the ARIES (Anthropological Research into the Imaginaries and Exploration of Space) project at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology,Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.1 The aim of the workshop was to discuss the potentials that a planetary perspective can open up as well as the challenges that it may pose for anthropology and global politics more broadly

The ethics of Orthodoxy as the aesthetics of the local church

This paper addresses the ritual aesthetics of mundane aspects within the global Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgical practice. By comparing a variety of ‘local practices’ within the liturgical traditions of various Orthodox Christian communities, the paper explores how commonly held ethical commitments are expressed in radically different – and at times exactly opposite – practices of quotidian religion. In this evaluation of ‘little traditions’ within the ‘great tradition’ of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the paper focuses on local practices and their relation within the larger canonically inscribed theology of ‘correct practice’ (orthopraxy). The dogmatic and canonical aspects of orthopraxis, being similar across the Orthodox contexts, link the various communities as each being part of the same ethical project, while their specific aesthetic inventiveness marks each as being uniquely local. Drawing on anthropological and sociological theory of art, aesthetics, and ethical invention, the paper argues that aesthetics is localised ethics in practice

Violent masculinities: Gendered dynamics of policing in Rio de Janeiro

Historically, policing in Rio de Janeiro has been shaped by the equation of racialized violence and masculinity. Attempts to reform the police have paradoxically drawn on forms of male violence that are centered on the rational and professional use of force and on “softer” practices, such as dialogue and collaboration, symbolically coded as feminine. The failure of police reform reflects the cultural salience of understandings of masculinity centered around violence within the police, historical patterns of policing in Rio, and political actors’ strategic cultivation of male violence. Through Rio de Janeiro's failed attempt at police reform, we theorize the relation between racialized state violence, authoritarian political projects, and transgressive forms of male violence, arguing that an important appeal of authoritarianism lies in its promise to carve out a space for performing what we call wild masculinity. [masculinity, race, police, violence, gender, politics, favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]publishedVersio