Radicle: Reed Anthropology Review

Black Narrative in Deep Space

2021-03-24T12:47:07-07:00

For Neil Smith, deep space is multiscalular and immediate; for Katherine McKittrick, deep space is a landscape which repositions black geographies, imaginatively and materially; for Carter, deep space is the only landscape which offers the imaginative and material foundations for black liberation. In an auto-ethnographic journeying through a flawed and undiscerning teaching paradigm, and the September 26th protests at Reed College, I challenge the assertion that history is written only by the victors. Introducing Frantz Fanon’s process of self-recognition to Katherine McKittrick’s mapping of black geographies in deep space, this piece offers a peek into the boundless contours afforded by the re-writing and re-telling of historical narratives in deep space.

Keywords: transparent space, black geography, auto-ethnography, narrative, black liberation, agency

Forgetting War

2021-03-24T12:47:07-07:00

Reflecting on the far-reaching changes the coronavirus has brought about in all spheres of life, this article takes an anthropological and phenomenological perspective on the new ‘normals’ of the pandemic, specifically with regards to bodily and linguistic practices. By placing phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in conversation with anthropologists like Mauss, the article illuminates the ways in which the disruption posed by the pandemic has fundamentally altered our relation to others, our bodies, and ourselves. The article then moves to destabilize the dichotomy of ‘ordinary’ and ‘exception’ by analyzing the militarization of language; in showing its limitations in grappling with a world in pandemic, the article concludes with a call for novel forms of language that de-emphasize adversariality and instead promote the empathy and memory that the pandemic demands.

Keywords: phenomenology, bodies, bodily techniques, space, language, Coronavirus, pandemic

“Hambi Stays!”

2021-03-24T12:47:08-07:00

This photo essay explores the activist occupation of Hambach Forest (Hambi) in western Germany, a forest threatened by the expansion of a massive lignite mine. The extractive relationship to the Hambach landscape of RWE (Rheinisch-Westälisches Elektriziätswerk AG), the utility company responsible for the mine, has drawn strong opposition, most prominently in the form of a community of local and international activists who have occupied the forest and squatted abandoned houses in several of the ghost villages since 2012. An ethic of mutual solidarity holds the Hambi activists together and distinguishes them from what they perceive as a destructive and uncaring outside system. This ever-shifting collective of punks, squatters, tree-climbers, and saboteurs structures everything with the goal of continual obstruction to RWE's plans. Their oppositional yet communal collective activity reveals the political potential of a movement rooted in the imperiled forest landscape. Activists turn "trash" into building materials, use found food for creative cooking, and sustain one another through mutual dependency in their commitment to living with and for Hambach Forest. This photo essay uses ethnographic description, interviews, and photography to offer a window into the world of Hambi.

Keywords: Activism, Forest, Extraction, Capitalism, Anthropocene, Anarchism, Materiality

Performing the Salem Witch Trials

2021-03-24T12:47:09-07:00

This paper approaches the long-embattled notion of ‘authenticity’ in the study of tourism through a deployment of Peircean semiotic analysis to tourist attractions in Salem, Massachusetts. After presenting a sketch of different approaches to authenticity that have persisted in the anthropological study of tourism, the paper lays out the necessary sociohistorical context for understanding the development of Salem’s bustling tourist industry. It then presents the semiotic tools that will be deployed in analyzing the presentations and performances of the selected Salem tourist sites: namely, the distinction between Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness proposed by C.S. Peirce and the semiotic creation of space and time captured by Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope. The paper shifts to a close semiotic analysis of three tourist destinations, each of which embodies a different type of signification in its portrayal of the Trials. Ultimately, this diversity in approaches to generating touristic authenticity demands that anthropologists of tourism pay more heed to the creative aspects of constructing authenticity, rather than evaluating attempts at authenticity by how closely a performance resembles an underlying ‘true’ culture.

Keywords: tourism, authenticity, chronotopes, museum studies, Salem Witchcraft Trials

Thinking the Climate Through Anthropology and the Church

2021-03-24T12:50:44-07:00

The present climate crisis presents a myriad of challenges for anthropologists attempting to analyze and critique the ways in which scientists and the public think about the world, our relationship to it, and how we make descriptive and moral claims about it. This paper outlines the epistemological problems that arise from climate change's status as a hyperobject: Specifically, the necessity to think across scales of space and time, the moral weight associated with claims about the climate, and the need for a single, global account. I compare these problems through three contemporary frameworks: The Western liberal consensus, the work of anthropologists Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, and the Catholic Church's integral ecology. I discuss kin relations and the obligations that come with them, the thread uniting the three frameworks, as a principle for authentically (re)thinking the climate and our relationship to the world at large.

Keywords: anthropology of science; climate; morality; epistemology; hyperobjects; integral ecology; kinship

Conservationist Extractivism

2021-03-24T12:47:10-07:00

For thousands of years the axolotl, a salamander native to the Valley of Mexico, has been an important food source for local populations. Axolotls were included in Aztec mythology, where they play a role in the cycle of life becoming food for other life. Since colonization, the axolotl population has been threatened by a shrinking habitat, pollution, and invasive species. Researchers have proposed the use of chinampas, a complex farming practice used by the Aztecs, to restore the environment to its previous state of health so axolotls may survive as a species. Conservationists have also outlawed the consumption of wild-caught axolotls, due to their status as an endangered species. Here, indigenous relationships to the land are adopted in a piecemeal fashion that uses
indigenous knowledge and cultivation practices but deprives indigenous peoples of their ability to live off the land, while framing axolotl conservation as vital for the maintenance of captive axolotl populations in laboratories worldwide. The use of local knowledge and rejection of local consumption practices makes room for a conservationist extractivism in which axolotl populations are revived only to be taken for biomedical research.

Keywords: Axolotl, Valley of Mexico, Conservation, Standard Environmental Narrative, Consumption