The Peace Wall, Belfast  (Photo by Paul Stoller)

Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I have a confession:  I’m not sleeping well these days.  I used to sleep well, but recently I wake up in the middle of the night feeling anxious.  Objectively speaking, I shouldn’t feel anxious.  I have a nice house, a stable well-paying job that I like, a lovely family, a fine set of supportive friends and colleagues.  I eat well, travel widely and feel appreciated at work and at home.  So why can’t I sleep well?

Some people suggest that it might be an undiagnosed medical condition. Other people say that erratic sleep comes with age.  But when I discuss this seemingly inexplicable problem with my friends and colleagues, who also have good jobs and stable family lives, they, too, have experienced many nights of tossing and turning.  Like me, they have dreams about devastating floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear holocausts.  Like me, their worries about expanding poverty, the open display of racism, ethnic discrimination, Islamophobia and misogyny, the spread of hateful speech and explosion of violence against minorities, have  added a new dimension of stress to their busy lives—resulting in sleepless nights.

I admit that my small circle of friends and family cannot be a representative sample of the current population in America, but are our stories of unrest isolated examples of what seems to be widespread social mania?

I think not.

To be blunt, the chaos of our social and political relations has shaken the American social foundation.  Even in the recent past we took for granted some fundamental, bedrock American principles:

1. We are a good people who help the downtrodden at home and abroad;
2. We value decency and respect for one another and for the rule of law;
3. We value the search for truth and respect the inviolable processes of science, even when scientists uncover inconvenient truths; and
4. We applaud excellence and denigrate ignorance.

There are probably other bedrock principles that I have overlooked, but you get the idea.  We live in world of alternative reality in which expedient lying and unseemly behavior are not only accepted but applauded–in the exercise of brute power.  The speedy denigration of core values, extended through the rapid spread of social media, has ripped apart our social fabric and brought on, for many of us, a succession of sleep disturbed nights.

As an anthropologist who thinks often about the dangers of an unraveling social fabric, I worry about the future.  What kind of life awaits our children and grandchildren?  In the here and now, I lose sleep.  Even so, when I interact with scholars in their 20s and 30s—the next generation of professionals, including, of course, anthropologists—I am filled with hope.  These young scholars lead precarious lives.  Their prospects for academic employment are bleak.  When they do find employment, they are overworked and underpaid.  Senior scholars sometimes disrespect them– privately and publicly. Somehow, they persevere continuing to conduct research and write essays and monographs that convey much-needed engaged anthropological insight in the public sphere.

I have witnessed this impressive talent firsthand in writing workshops I have facilitated during the past four years.  During these workshops, we work on developing an evocative way of writing ethnography, of communicating anthropological insight to the general public, of not shying away from employing anthropological ideas in public discussions about racism, religious intolerance, income inequality, gender bias, political conflict, not to forget the ever-important debate on climate change.  During these workshops, the knowledge, depth, and expressive skill of the participants, most of whom are precariously employed, has overwhelmed me.  When I listen to them sensuously describe the people and places where they have conducted their research, their words and images often take my breath away.

Mural on the Peace Wall, West Belfast (Photo by Paul Stoller)

They are creative.

They are skilled writers and image-makers.

They are persistent.

They are politically engaged.

They have important stories to tell.

They are our future.

Mural Near Falls Road, West Belfast (Photo by Paul Stoller)

In Europe and in North America, we live in crazy times, which means that many of us are not sleeping as well as we might.  Having just concluded one of the aforementioned writing workshops in Belfast, Northern Ireland (a socially and politically troubled city) among an inspirational and resilient group of international scholars, I am finally looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

If we pay attention to the committed and refined scholarship of the next generation, we can be confident of better days ahead.

The Alhambra (Photo by Paul Stoller)

There has been much recent discussion about structural inequalities in the academy—especially in anthropology.  In European and North American anthropology there has long been a center-periphery issue.  There are a set of elite metropolitan institutions the prestige of which has shaped disciplinary discourse—what is considered fundamental and publishable and who is worthy of being hired.  There are also center-periphery issues in publishing.  Publishing an essay in an “important” journal or a monograph with a “prestigious” press has given a work a certain disciplinary pedigree.  Gender, of course, is also at issue.  There is much evidence of gendered pay gaps in the academy and in anthropology.  There are also generational inequities.  Younger anthropologists find themselves with little prospect for academic employment and those who manage to secure a visiting or part time position find themselves in precarious circumstances. In the wake of the Me-Too devolution of HAU, Journal of Anthropological Theory and HAU Publishing, both thoroughly metropolitan entities, and the evolution of the #hautalk, a movement on the academic periphery, there is an increasingly energetic move to decolonize anthropology, a concerted attempt to make the discipline more inclusive and less exclusively the bastion of white male privilege.

The strong articulation of these unsettling themes of entrenched elitism and lingering colonization is a much needed wake-up call. There is, however, another domain of latent colonialism in anthropology—the north-south divide—which is sometimes mentioned, but not often discussed in great depth.  Yes, there are currently spaces in which the notion of “world anthropology” is showcased and debated.  But how much do metropolitan anthropologists like me know about the important anthropological work that our colleagues in the south have long been conducting.  How many of us read the latest research in Spanish or Portuguese language journals or books? How many texts published in the south become part of the anthropological canon?

What do we miss when we pay too little attention to our southern colleagues?

We miss a great deal.

Recently I had the chance to attend academic conferences in Mexico and Spain—two exciting, energetic, innovative and inventive spaces of contemporary anthropological research.  In Mexico I attended Ambulante, a traveling documentary film festival. There I had the chance to talk about the work of Jean Rouch and discuss a rather “thin” ethnographic film about a wide variety of Brazilian religious rituals.  My hosts graciously invited me to present a lecture on public anthropology. In another setting we exchanged ideas on the anthropology of the senses.  My newfound Mexican colleagues deeply impressed me with their commitment to social justice, the breadth of their research interests, the depth of their anthropological knowledge not to forget their enthusiasm for the anthropological future. Many of them seemed to know something about my work, but I shamefully admit that I was ignorant of theirs.  This metropolitan anthropologist hadn’t read about a growing body of cutting-edge research in Mexico that constitutes a very exciting and important program of ethnographic research.

Casa del Tiempo,  Mexico City, a site of important anthropological debate. (Photo by Paul Stoller)

My Mexican hosts shrugged their shoulders—an old story.  On my particular path the road to fluency in Spanish is a slow one, but I will continue to learn and will make a point to read anthropological articles and books published in Spain and Latin America. En este momento soy incapaz de presentar una conferencia en espanol. Talvez el proximo ano?

In Granada Spain I experienced an even fuller exposure to the wonders of anthropology in Spanish. I had the good fortune to attend the Fourth International Congress of Ibero-American Anthropologists (AIBR)  At the Congress there was an opening keynote (Nigel Barley) on the cultural parameters of museum exhibits, a special lecture (Maria Paula Meneses) on anti-colonialism and history in Southern Africa, a special interview event featuring two pioneering anthropological feminists (Teresa del Valle and Monica Tarducci) in the Spanish-speaking world, and a closing keynote on doing slow anthropology in a fast world.

Professor Teresa del Valle anthropologist and feminista extraordinaire in Granada, Spain (Photo by Ayo Cabrera AIBR)

Although those special events attracted large audiences of AIBR delegates, an even more powerful intellectual energy could be sensed in the breakout sessions, all of which were jam-packed with tuned-in anthropologists.  At each session that I attended, I witnessed lively debates that convinced me that AIBR in Grenada had become fertile ground for the refinement of anthropological practices and concepts.  AIBR delegates presented papers on a wide variety of topics (mass migration, political anthropology, the anthropology of youth, the dynamics of the Anthropocene, the condition of sex workers, bio-politics and wellbeing, digital anthropology, medical anthropology, the anthropology of food and nutrition, cultural heritage, and many others which, given the privations of space, are too numerous to mention)  The AIBR Congress also featured workshops on anthropological methods and audio-visual practices (nine distinct subjects) as well as the 26 book launches and eight film showings.

I met fascinating and impressive scholars, some of whom had been activists, some of whom had been jailed during the time of Franco.  Based on my many conversations, it seems to me that Ibero-American anthropologists are profoundly dedicated to applying anthropological insights to the resolution of social problems, especially among immigrants, but also among poor rural migrants who, in search of a better life, have moved to large cities.  At each event there was a sense of celebration—of research, of writing, of the contemporary mission of anthropology.

We miss a lot when we bypass the rich intellectual traditions of our colleagues in the south.

When I look south, I see the future of anthropology.

We live in a world filled with seemingly insoluble problems.  Carbon emissions have increased at such alarming rates that climate experts have had to push forward their dire predictions of ecological devastation.  In the face of climate change denial, feckless politicians, especially in the United States, do nothing to confront the most important issue of our times.  Instead, they roll back previously insufficient environmental regulations.  Our air is getting dirtier.  Our water, which is in increasingly short supply, is less safe to drink.  Droughts and floods disrupt our supply of food, which, given decreased health regulation, is increasingly unsafe to eat.  The future looks even bleaker if you add to this list an ever-expanding income inequality that is in large measure linked to widespread political dysfunction.  From the vantage of the seemingly powerless present, what can we do, if anything, to change a pattern that leads us toward eventual extinction?

If we pay attention to our surroundings, glimmers of hope emerge from the epistemic murk. Although the excessive heat and humidity of August in the Middle Atlantic region of the United States makes many people listless and depressed, I find myself remarkably optimistic about future.  On a afternoon walk yesterday I came upon a yard sign extolling the virtues of American love, immigration and diversity.

A lawn poster in Wilmington, Delaware

Photo by Paul Stoller

The sign was welcome relief from a stredy stream of bad news. Our challenges, however, require much more than placing a sign, however, inspirational, on our lawns.  Maybe my optimism persists because I like to take a long view of things.  The times may appear bleak today, but with patience and forbearance, positive change can occur.  My teacher Adamu Jenitongo, an elder among the Songhay people of Niger and Mali, liked to say that the long path is always worth taking for it usually leads to a better life in a better world.  My professional optimism persists because a younger generation of anthropologists whom I’ve encountered in recent years, has been wonderfully impressive.

Like me, they are fast becoming guerilla anthropologists.  My friend and colleague anthropologist Bruce Kapferer of the University of Bergen, coined the term, “guerilla anthropology,” at the outset of his ongoing cross-cultural project on human inequality. In an interview in the University of Bergen Magazine 2018/2019 Kapferer said:

To me, in a sense, guerilla anthropology is anthropology.  Anthropology stands outside all of disciplines. To put it crudely, most of the disciplines practiced at universities have been born in the Nineteenth Century and in the history of nationalism, which began the modern state…Many unexamined assumptions regarding the nature and possibility of human beings were present that required challenge.  Western philosophy offered a radical critique but it, nonetheless, could not escape the limitation of many assumptions that were culturally and historically embedded it it…But anthropology also took seriously other systems.  These other systems were not necessarily bound by the same principles or frameworks of understanding that our own worlds were.  Anthropology is a guerilla discipline in the sense that it comes from outside a largely Western comprehension of things and challenges ruling assumptions…The critical guerilla anthropological perspective will lead to important reassessments of conceptual and theoretical perspectives that are still dominating discussions on problems associated with inequality.

Most of the guerilla anthropologists I’ve met understand, I think, that the old colonialist way of solving social problems or understanding the world doesn’t work anymore.  Our various systems of politics, economics and scholarship have become ineffectual and counter-productive.  In this context, the guerilla approach to anthropology is perfectly suited to living in, coping with and understanding contemporary social worlds. In my work as public blogger I attempt to present an anthropological perspective on contemporary social and political issues. In that work I often extend the wisdom of the aforementioned Songhay people (an exercise in guerilla anthropology) to the pragmatic analysis of our social, political, and existential issues.

In the work of younger scholars, who will shape our future, there is ample evidence of an emergent guerilla anthropology.  Indeed, their work is filled with passionate expression.  Their guerilla insights, for example, about urban gardeners in Havana, gold miners in Colombia, artist activists in Argentina, or local currency operators in the UK have been revelatory and breathtaking.  This work brings into relief a largely unseen picture of locally-contoured social and political innovation and invention–an ethnographic portrait of a developing future.

During the past three years, I’ve had the opportunity to organize writing workshops for doctoral students most of whom are anthropologists.  At each four-day workshop, I have been profoundly impressed by the participants’ passionate commitment to social and economic justice.  Indeed, their dedication to guerilla anthropology is inspiring–especially in difficult institutional times during which they usually work in precarious circumstances.  Guerilla practices, of course, emerge in the margins of institutional anthropology, which means that guerilla anthropologists also tend to cast a radically critical gaze on ongoing institutional attitudes and behaviors (elitism, Eurocentric privilege, misogyny, colonial assumptions) that are still, as Bruce Kapferer suggests, wedded to outmoded 19^th Century assumptions about the human condition.

The times call for radical change in our politics, our economic practices, and our assumptions about how the world works.  In a world that is increasingly shaped by social media, guerilla anthropology enables us to practice an other-inspired slow scholarship in a digitized fast world.  That is a prescription for increased ground-level awareness.  It is a path to the future of social science.  For me, it is a tonic that infuses me with hope for the future–even on a hot and humid day in August.

I am pleased to feature a guest blog from Jesse Jonkman, a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. In his doctoral research, Jonkman has been examining the organizational activities of gold-producing communities in the Colombian department of Chocó. He is particularly interested in how these activities relate to practices of state governance. He wrote this blog as part of the recent Weaving the World writing workshop at the University of Amsterdam.

Representing Colombian Gold Miners – or: The Perils of Drones and the Perks of Talking

by Jesse Jonkman

Informal gold miners in Colombia work for armed groups. At least, in the popular press they do. Most journalists – both domestic and foreign – don’t even bother to call them informal. “Illegal” seems to be their preferred term. “Criminal” will also do. Assisted by draconic headlines, these mining observes go at great pains to list the various social ills of wildcat gold delving. Child labor,[1] they exclaim. Lawlessness.[2] Prostitution.[3] Armed groups.[4] In effect, in many accounts on alluvial gold extraction – even those penned down by academics – the line between those with guns and those with washing pans is not always easy to discern.

The miners, the journalists tell us, are not only criminal henchmen. They also deforest. To reach their subterranean treasures the gold diggers use their excavators to bring down plants, trees, and woods. Moreover, they ruin rivers. They discard tailings in creek- and riverbeds, which clogs water bodies and interferes in the reproductive cycles of fish. We can also read that the miners poison. They sprinkle mercury in rivers, lands, and the bodies of human and non-human animals. In order for us to understand the fullness of this ecological apocalypse, drones, helicopters, and even satellites provide eye-catching bird’s-eye view pictures of lunar landscapes.[5] Our eyes tear at the sight of such devastation. What else to make of this than an “environmental holocaust?”[6]

Scenes from the gold mines in Colombia. Photos by Jesse Jonkman

But there is more to the story of “illegal” gold mining. Apart from criminals, we learn that there are victims. The victims are the poor tenants owning the lunar-like landscapes and living with the mercury-radiated rivers. They are victims of the outside excavator and dredge operators who wreak havoc on their alleged Edenic lives, livelihoods, and landscapes. Sometimes we are told that the tenants have fallen victim to their own greed and naivety–to the “lack of awareness”[7] that renting out their lands to foreign miners is an unsustainable practice.

While we continue skimming the texts, we read, repeatedly, that the victims are indigenous, black, Afro-descendant, and Afro-Colombian victims. Perhaps the authors think that such incessant usage of ethnic and racial adjectives helps us to understand the hyperbolic dimensions of their victimhood. Here and there, we find some quoted lines, but by and large, the indigenous, black, Afro-descendant, Afro-Colombian victims of the predatory outside miners do not seem to talk much. They need journalists, academic experts, and politicians to talk for them.

This local silence does say something, at least to the criminals and victims that are being silenced. To them, their lack of citations may suggest that the journalists writing about them have hardly touched ground in their lives and gold mines and have looked at their grievances only from afar; through the bird’s-eye view pictures of drones, helicopters, and satellites.

Anthropologists don’t take a lot of bird’s-eye view pictures. They often don’t have money for drones, let alone helicopters or satellites. On the other hand, they do touch ground and do so rather abundantly. What they lack in helicopters, they compensate in time. They have loads and loads of time. And with all this time on their hands, what else to do but talk to people. Such talking often leads to contingent and open-ended stories, that may not find a large newspaper audience but can provide some shades of gray to black-and-white, rush-and-go journalism which presents environmental conflicts as zero-sum games with clearly distinguishable foes and victims.

As an anthropologist, I lived for one year in the department of Chocó – one of Colombia’s principal gold-producing regions. Though I am wary that my words may come across as somewhat shameless self-praise, I believe that this ethnographic immersion has allowed me to understand that the above-described depictions of Colombian small-scale mining rub off uneasily against the way that many chocoano tenants see themselves and the “predatory” outside miners.

Talking with tenants, you notice that few of them recognize themselves in the well-published and well-read trope of victimhood. Talking with tenants, you can hear people extensively lament the destruction of their lands. They certainly don’t like their trees being smashed to the ground and their beloved bocachico fish being filled up with mercury. But, talking with tenants, you find that they are more than their lands. They like to remodel houses, pay for tuition fees, have money for leisure activities, and dream of better futures. With renting out lands to excavator miners, those things come cheap.

So what about artisanal mining? Governors and journalists alike frequently applaud the use of pans, spades, and sticks as a sustainable alternative to excavators, dredges, and motor pumps. Yet talking with chocoano tenants you will likely here that in today’s mined-out landscapes one delves nada without the help of gasoline or diesel. “Na-Da,” as they say in Chocó, dragging the letter “D,” as to emphasize the genuine nothingness of nothing. Alright, then, what about cultivating crops? Well, living in a department that even imports rice, its main dietary staple, people probably tell you that agriculture would be a return to the unprofitable back-breaking past, nothing more nothing less.

In short, for many of the chocoano “victims,” mining is not so much a source of victimhood but a necessary evil. “Bad for their mothers,” Altanacios (a pseudonym) – the most dexterous motor pump miner I know in Chocó – replied, after I confronted him with the “bad” reputation of his mechanized activities among policy and opinion makers. “How many high school graduates are living in Chocó doing nothing? All of these hijos de puta have nothing else to do but mining, mining, and mining.”

Apart from victims, I didn’t see a lot of “criminals” in Chocó. There may be some guerrilleros enjoying the anonymity of the impenetrable forest – if with “criminals” one refers to non-state armed groups. These combatants certainly know how to point a gun and charge taxes on extractive operations. I guess, however, that most know little of mining technology. The same goes for the paramilitaries, who dwell in a number of chocoano villages and whose presence is only discussed in whispers.

However, when staring into the cabins of excavators, you will not see criminals. You’ll see the sun-gleaming, sweat-soaked faces of excavator miners. They are a lot of things, these miners. Some are cheating husbands, others lavish spenders, and almost all are lousy losers at card games. One might also suggest that they are insensitive talkers whose jokes – fueled with foul language and sometimes of a homophobic, racist, or sexist indole – are difficult to laugh at. And, granted, they are the rivals of Chocó’s rich flora and fauna and can be annoyingly indifferent about eating up large swaths of the forest.

Yet while they may be all these things, they are not criminals. They are miners paying extortion money. But what else to do? As they will probably tell you themselves – if only they were talked with more often – it’s paying up or not working at all.
[1] https://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/sur-de-la-florida/article194210829.html

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/world/americas/04colombia.html

[3] https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/the-illegal-gold-rush-and-colombias-new-wild-west/

[4] https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/economia/el-80-de-produccion-de-oro-colombiano-sigue-manos-ilega-articulo-670173

[5] http://www.eltiempo.com/multimedia/especiales/mineria-ilegal-en-colombia-problematica-ambiental-y-economica/16460194/1/index.html

[6] https://www.semana.com/nacion/multimedia/la-guerra-contra-la-mineria-ilegal-criminal-en-colombia/422834-3

[7] http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-16460299

I am pleased to present on the Writing, World and Well Being platform a new guest blog, “The Cow in the Elevator,” from my colleague Tulasi Srinivas. It was originally published online as a contribution to The Immanent Frame: Secularism, religion, and the public sphere, a social media platform of the Social Science Research Council.

Tulasi Srinivas is professor of anthropology and religion at Emerson College, Boston, and a Luce-ACLS Fellow for Religion, Journalism and International Affairs for 2018-19. She is the author of several award-winning books including the recent, The Cow in the Elevator: Explorations in an Anthropology of Wonder (Duke University Press, 2018).

This entry is a wonderfully written blog on the anthropology wonder–very good medicine for troubled times. Please pass on it on to friends and colleagues.

Adamu Jenitongo greeting the spirits at a spirit possession ceremony in Tillaberi, Niger. Photo by Paul Stoller

During my long apprenticeship to Adamu Jenitongo, a great healer among the Songhay people of Niger, my mentor recounted countless stories to convey to me the wisdom of his ancestors. Here’s one story that is germane to current discussions that have emerged in the wake of the implosion of HAU, a prestigious anthropological journal that has also published scholarly books.

At the market of a town on the great River Niger, an old man sold firewood. In a feeble attempt to save quickly disappearing forests, the state forbade the sale of firewood. And yet, week-in and week-out the frail old man, who always wore soiled trousers and a frayed tunic, sold his wares. As the local, do, master of the local waters, no one wanted to confront him. One day a dugout brought to the market a uniformed forest ranger–tall, thick and fearsome. He approached the old man and began to belittle him for selling firewood. A crowd gathered. When the old man protested, the forest ranger slapped him in the face. The crowd gasped. The forest ranger smiled and confiscated the old man’s firewood. Humiliated, the old man staggered away. His mission accomplished, the forest ranger, who knew nothing of the old man’s mastery of the waters, needed to take a dugout back across the river, where he would have his driver take him back to Tillaberi, the town that housed the provincial government.

 No one wanted to take the forest ranger across the river.

 The old man reassured the canoeists that that they’d be fine. “It’s okay,” he told them, “take him across.”

 The dugout slipped out into the River Niger. When it reached midstream, a whirlpool developed.   The water’s force threw the forest ranger overboard. He drowned. The dugout and canoeists returned safely to shore.

Having told the story, Adamu Jenitongo said: “People sometimes surprise you. Who would give that frail old man a second look? But he had powerful river magic. That government man lacked respect. He suffered the consequences. The best course, my son, is to show some respect for everyone–especially elders.”

++++

On June 2 of this year I agreed to serve a new three year term on the Editorial Board (EB) of HAU, which in a few short years had quickly become not only a leading journal of anthropology, but also a publisher of highly esteemed books. During my first three years on the EB, I knew very little about the inner dynamics of HAU as an organization, but was happy to contribute in a small way to its mission to reaffirm the great traditions of anthropological thought.

Roughly two weeks after my acceptance of the EB renewal invitation, I began to read on social media a series of serious allegations about the inner-workings of the journal as well as a wide-ranging set of disturbing allegations about the abusive behavior of its editor-in-chief. Given the scope and depth of the allegations, I resigned from the EB.

For me, the ongoing implosion of HAU is a sad event. I’m a great believer in honoring our academic ancestors and learning from their imperfect traditions. Even so, the speedy unraveling of an institution that perhaps grew too big and too fast is a life lesson for us all. Anthropologists of all persuasions and generations have written thoughtfully about how the implosion of HAU brings into relief all sorts of social and disciplinary cleavages. Beyond the disturbing allegations of misogyny, power-tripping, and questionable dealings, I wonder what the implosion of HAU means for the future of our discipline.   Many commentators have discussed the persistence of anthropology’s colonial edifice, an edifice in which prestige and intellectual power is centered in a few elite institutions. The view from the top, of course, tends to narrow the institutional gaze and to silence marginalized voices on the intellectual periphery. This centralization, in turn, has determined who is hired, what is “in” and what is “out”, and how our work has been—or has not been—valued.

The image and reality of the academic top, of course, is still present and foreboding for those who occupy the lowly margins. In anthropology, as the implosion of HAU has demonstrated, social media have begun to level the playing field. We now discuss open-access journals and advocate for a wide-variety of media to do and represent anthropology. Despite these developments there remain significant structural inequalities, a theme that has bubbled up in the recent debates. Is there a widening divide between senior and junior anthropologists, between securely tenured scholars and precariously employed academics and graduate students? Has this divide precipitated anger, distrust, and lack of mutual respect?

In all of the edifying anthropological debate about structural and gender inequalities, open access publishing, decolonizing the discipline, and abusive behavior in professional settings, we have perhaps paid too little attention to the process through which one academic generation conveys knowledge and insight to the next. The key to successful mentorship, no matter where it is practiced, devolves from an ample dose of mutual respect. We all need mentors. I certainly did and was lucky to have as mentors Adamu Jenitongo and Jean Rouch who, each in their own way, led me on to my scholarly path. They always treated me with affection and respect. They never expected me to do things exactly their way. Instead, they patiently guided me along my path to the future, but encouraged me to find my own way to insight and revelation. They never expected anything in return.

In the wake of the HAU controversy, perhaps we need more of this kind of slow, patient  and respectful mentorship in our departments, in our professional encounters and in our efforts to articulate our knowledge to our colleagues and to the public.

For Songhay elders like Adamu Jenitongo, mastery came slowly after years of patient  learning.  Despite his long and powerful practice of Songhay healing, Adamu Jenitongo always insisted that his greatest obligation was to be a mentor who would pass precious knowledge from his generation to the next.

Is that not a model well worth following on our turbulent anthropological path?

Ground Zero for the Beatles, Liverpool, UK Photo by Paul Stoller

A few days ago as I was traveling through Germany and the Netherlands, I stumbled upon a video of James Corden’s The Late Late Show that chronicled  his recent tour through Liverpool with Sir Paul McCartney.  In the video, Corden and McCartney perform carpool karaoke, travel to Paul McCartney’s house where as a teenager he wrote songs with John Lennon.  Eventually, they end up in a Liverpool pub in which the young Paul McCartney performed.  It was a typical afternoon at the pub except for the presence of Corden behind the bar.  He asks a patron to pick a song on the jukebox. In response to the jukebox selection, a stage curtain opens and a makeshift Liverpool band featuring none other than Paul McCartney begins to perform Beatle’s songs (Hard Day’s Night, Back in the USSR, Love Me Do.  People rush in to see Paul McCartney. The last song is Hey Jude.  For a very special moment the pub audience as well as anyone on social media who clicked on the video link—slipped into a joyous world where they stomped their feet, sang along, and waved their arms as they immersed themselves in a universe in which they celebrated our common humanity.  People in the pub smiled and shed tears of happiness. Waiting at my gate at the Frankfurt Airport I, too, stomped my feet, smiled, shed a few tears and remembered that there is more to social life than our society’s ever-growing record of social and political atrocity.

Social life in America has become perilously surreal. The social fabric has become dangerously frayed.  If you look at commentary on social media, it’s evident that what’s left of our civility is quickly dissipating. The example of our bigoted, ignorant and authoritarian “Dear Leader” has unleashed a flood of hate to justify shamefully inhumane behavior that is shockingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany.  We now rip screaming babies out of the arms of their asylum-seeking parents who, to save their families, have uprooted their kin from unthinkingly violent conditions. Although these parents are asylum seekers, mostly from Central America, they are now erroneously considered criminals and are treated like animals. Following the cruel dictates of the “Dear Leader,” our heartless government has separated these parents from their children and has corralled the innocents into fenced-in locked-down detention centers where they cry in anguish for their mothers and fathers. In a state of utter fear, they try to sleep on caged-in concrete floors. Faced with mounting pressure to reverse this cruel policy, the “Dear Leader” will no longer separate these children from their parents but will indefinitely jail whole families–of non-criminal asylum seekers.

How many of the previously separated innocents will get lost in the system?

How many of them will be needlessly traumatized for life?

Have we no respect for the integrity of the family?

What have we become?

What can academics do slow the inexorable spread of hate in contemporary America?

Scholars have long been the custodians of knowledge who have spoken truth to power. Given our relentless descent into an unimaginatively fetid social swamp, we should redouble our efforts to convey our insights to the public. Beyond participating in protests and voter registration drives, social scientists, including, of course, anthropologists, are well positioned to speak to the social ramifications of the dissolution of the family, the expansion of income inequality, the acceleration of climate change, the tenacity of racism and bigotry and the steadfastness of socially disruptive violence in everyday and political life.

One very good way for anthropologists to speak truth to power is to write ethnographically contoured blogs about the vicissitudes of social life in these perilous times.  Although it is vitally important to engage in a sustained and trenchant cultural critique, it is also important to use the blogosphere to recount stories that demonstrate the ingenuity and social resilience of populations, both foreign and domestic, that mainstream politicians and their legion of followers like to denigrate as murderous animals. In perilous times, it is also important to bring into the public sphere portraits of people and descriptions of events, like the Corden-McCartney journey to Liverpool, that celebrate our collective humanity.

It is very important to bear witness to the grave dysfunction of our social relations and our politics, but it is equally important for anthropologists to saturate the public sphere with uplifting stories of anthropological others who are courageous, resilient, and wise.  Their stories bring light in times of darkness.  They remind us of human decency.

To write anthropology in perilous times is to commit yourself to fight a common enemy— ignorance.  Indeed. much of the pain and suffering that seems to shape contemporary social life devolves from ignorance—ignorance of science, ignorance of the other, ignorance of history, ignorance of poverty and the daily struggle to feed, clothe and house many of our children.  If we write public anthropology in perilous times, we put ourselves on the front lines in the fight against ignorance.

By the same token, are we not also obligated to write blogs that recount the foot-stomping, sing along stories of the inspiring people and remarkable events that constitute the ethnographic record?

In times of rage and divisiveness during which the American state separates immigrant children from their parents and warehouses the ones they haven’t lost on military bases, during which it becomes okay to openly express racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant sentiments, during which unarmed young black man are routinely shot and killed by police, during which daily political chaos has unsettled our social psyche, it is yet again the moment to remember the moral devastation that unbridled hate brings to our social well being. In that spirit, I am re-posting a blog I wrote shortly after the election of Donald J. Trump. The message in that blog is perhaps more relevant today than it was in November 2016.  The blog is in the form of a letter to my students.

Plaques in remembrance of Jews deported from Gross Umstadt Germany in 1941 Photo by Paul Stoller

Dear Students:

I write with some unwelcome news for your immediate future: the plague has returned to America.

The rats have crawled out of their holes and are swarming over our bustling cities and our sprawling suburbs.  They have infested our peaceful small towns, our bucolic farms. They have spoiled our pristine pastures and meadows.  I’m sure that you would prefer to receive better news, but I feel it is my professorial obligation to give you an idea of what to expect from this new round of the plague.

Maybe you feel that I’m being an alarmist or overly dramatic.  But I’ve been around long enough to have seen and experienced the vile nature of the plague. You see, when I was coming up in the 1950s and 1960 the rats came after me—and many, many others.  They taunted us with epithets. On several occasions they physically attacked us just because we were different.

When the plague comes social life is transformed.  Even if you think you are one of the good ones—the good Muslim, the good Asian, the good Latino, the good African American, the good LGBTQ person, the good Jew or the good woman– sooner or later the rats will come after you.  Their appetite for hate is insatiable.

If you don’t believe me, consider what happened one day after the upset election of Donald J. Trump.  In his recent The Verge report, Sean O’Kane listed the following incidents:

• A swastika and the words “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN” were spray painted on a baseball dugout in Wellsville, NY (p. ~5,000). A black baby doll was also found with rope around its neck in an elevator on campus at Canisius College outside Buffalo, NY. — The Buffalo News
• A reporter for CBS North Carolina posted a photo of a wall in Durham, North Carolina where the words “BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER AND NEITHER DOES [sic] YOUR VOTES” were spray painted. — Derrick Lewis, CBS North Carolina
• A swastika and the words “Seig Heil 2016” were spray painted on a storefront in South Philadelphia. The Anti-Defamation League issued an official statement in response to the incident, saying that “while we view this as an isolated incident, we cannot allow this behavior to become routine. Everyone has a role to play in combating bigotry — we must advocate, educate and investigate until hate is no longer welcome in our society.” — Philly.com, The Anti-Defamation League
• Also in South Philadelphia, the words “TRUMP RULES” and “TRUMP BLACK BITCH” were spray painted on an SUV. — Philly.com

According to “Hate Watch,” which is maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “….between Wednesday, November 9, the day after the presidential election, and the morning of Monday, November 14, the Southern Poverty Law Center collected 437 reports of hateful intimidation and harassment.”  The SPLC stated that….

Most of the reports involved anti-immigrant incidents (136), followed by anti-black (89) and anti-LGBT (43). Some reports (8) included multiple categories like anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. The “Trump” category (41) refers to incidents where there was no clear defined target, like the pro-Trump vandalism of a “unity” sign in Connecticut. We also collected 20 reports of anti-Trump intimidation and harassment.”

These ugly incidents, which are likely to increase exponentially during the Trump Administration, are signs of the plague’s return. It is a return baited in large measure by the silences, words, choices, and behavior our President-elect!  Such news dims the bright light of the future.

What can you do to combat the plague?

How can the light of your future be brightened?

When I confronted the plague as a young man I took solace in the wisdom of a great work of literature, The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus.  In this book, Camus described how the bubonic plague changed the lives of the people of Oran in Algeria.  The authorities of Oran were slow to appreciate the gravity of the situation even after thousands of rats had died in the streets and people began to sicken and die.  Only when the death tally reach 30 people per day did the authorities finally recognize the severity of the situation. They quarantined the city.

The townspeople became depressed. Violence spread. Hoodlums looted city shops. People lost their loved-ones.  Babies died.  Oran became utterly chaotic.  Eventually, the rats returned to their holes and the plague retreated.  People could re-unite Families reestablished and reinforced their ties of love.

For Camus, the plague comes and goes but can never be completely eliminated. The plague is, of course, allegorical. Camus wrote his masterpiece in response to rise and fall of Nazi Germany  The recent rise empowerment of hate groups in Europe and the overt bigotry of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign underscores the wisdom of Albert Camus.  Is it any wonder that Trump’s unexpected win unleashed a torrent of hate crimes directed at Muslims, African American, immigrants, and the gay community, and women?

What can you do?

Should you be like the elders of Camus’s Oran try to ignore the presence of plague in our midst?  Should you do nothing and let the plague spread?

Camus’s message is clear.  First you have to recognize the plague when you experience it.  Second, you have to fight it back with all your resources. Third, once it retreats you need to be vigilant because given the right circumstances, it can always come back.

In the end, though, Camus novel celebrates human resilience. Toward the end of th book he writes:  “…once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of the plague was over.”  He goes on to say that love trumps hate for once the plague has been beaten back you know that “…if there is one thing one can always yearn for and sometimes attain, it is human love.”

And so the times are difficult and will become more difficult, but eventually the rats will go back into their holes, the plague will be in full retreat and you will realize fully the power of love to overcome hate.

Your professor

via Trumping Toward the Storm