{"id":425,"date":"2014-05-07T00:57:21","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T00:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/?page_id=425"},"modified":"2025-01-17T15:26:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T15:26:51","slug":"anthropology-journalism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/anthropology-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalism & Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New Secular Formations<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In July 2010 the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History<\/a><\/em> published a full issue of articles<\/a> on the interlinked concepts of “secularism,” “secularity,” and “the secular.” As one of the contributors<\/a> to that issue, I was asked in April 2024 to comment on a cluster of new articles on these topics and to think about how work on the secular has changed and how it hasn’t. I’ve never thought the secular\/religious dichotomy was very useful. But if we keep having to use these terms it might be best to imagine them not as contrasting or antagonistic phenomena but as different manifestations of fundamentally ambiguous social processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christian Nationalism is Getting Written Out of the Story of January 6<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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As the bipartisan January 6th Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to resume its public hearings in September 2022, its focus will continue to be on the political conspiracy that led to the violence of the Capitol insurrection. But what we witnessed at the “Save America” or “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, DC earlier that day was not an organized mob of dedicated conspirators, but tens of thousands of ordinary Americans gathering to display their concern for democracy and their cultural identity. That identity was shaped by the idea that the United States is fundamentally a Christian society whose values and identity are under threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article for The Conversation<\/em><\/a> reflects on the events and symbols on display that day. Instead of thinking of the day as a manifestation of “extremism,” we suggest that it’s worth recalling that Christian nationalism runs deep in American history, and that it may be best approached through Hannah Arendt’s understandings of the broader cultural foundations of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on American Fascism<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Some of the tens of thousands of participants in the Save America or “Stop the Steal” march on 6 January 2021, just northeast of the Washington Monument.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Society for Cultural Anthropology has published a series of short meditations on the threat of American fascism. Included is one by my colleague Joyce Dalsheim and I, describing some of what we saw at the Save America March in Washington, DC on 6 January 2021. The march itself preceded and perhaps culminated in the sacking of the U.S. Capitol that afternoon by Trump supporters. What we witnessed on the Washington Mall and in the streets of DC that day, though, resembled an enormous tailgate party. The rally and the subsequent violence at the Capitol building, although connected in time and space, highlight both the disparities and continuities between different moods and rhetorics of political action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish Question, Again<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reactions to anti-Semitic violence which frame it as a shocking and inexplicable anachronism reveal “something important about our thinking. We not only denounce such violence as wrong, but we perceive it as belonging rightfully to a past that\u2019s dead and buried.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Part of our shock is that the past seems to have erupted into the present, which is a critical misunderstanding of the hold such violence has, and the ways in which the past, present, and future are intertwined. The ghosts of racism\u2014anti-Semitic and otherwise\u2014are not external to us. They live among us, and within us. Like the rings of a tree, the past inhabits us as a record of what has happened and as a marker for what\u2019s changed. But at the same time, it\u2019s the indispensable core of what is yet to come.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This op-ed<\/a>, written with Joyce Dalsheim<\/a>, was published on 5 December 2018 in Religion Dispatches.<\/a><\/em> It uses ideas from Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida to think about our tendency to believe that we have moved permanently beyond ethnic, religious, and political violence, and to remember the centrality of the historical Jewish Question to the development of the modern world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Symbolic Violence of Choice<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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“Pierre Bourdieu wrote<\/a> that symbolic violence is exercised through the ‘hypnotic power’ of ‘injunctions, suggestions, seduction, threats, reproaches, orders or calls to order’ that emerge within the structures of domination that shape our perception and activity. We help reproduce those structures whenever we speak in their terms, are moved by their claims, and follow the channels they establish. The American Anthropological Association’s discussions of the Academic Boycott of Israel are a good example of how such symbolic violence is accomplished. These discussions have drawn up sides which resist both ethnographic and theoretical illumination. They have chained the possibility of thought to the imperative of duty by deploying the irresistible vocabulary of justice and complicity, loyalty and betrayal, virtue and sin.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article  from the March\/April 2016 issue of Anthropology News<\/a><\/em> examines some of the bad choices emerging from the AAA’s historically clumsy approach to anything having to do with the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuck in the Middle With You<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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This reflection<\/a> on philosopher John Rawls’ idea of overlapping consensus as a key to social tranquility was developed as a commentary on a special group of papers, Religions and Their Publics<\/a>, assembled for The Immanent Frame<\/a> by UNC Charlotte anthropologist Eric Hoenes del Pinal, and James Bielo of Miami University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Orientalism<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"orientalism\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This was my final editorial in the Review of Middle East Studies<\/em> (volume 46, no. 1, Summer 2012, pp. 1-5). It argues that the idea of Orientalism<\/a> has become a stale and reactionary notion in much of Middle East studies, and that honoring Edward Said’s critical spirit requires us to move beyond it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Insult to Injury<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insults are a good example of the social construction of human reality. Sometimes insults are intended but not perceived. Sometimes insults are perceived but not intended. And sometimes insult is a competition in which victim and perpetrator circle each other, monitoring their partner and responding in an escalating contest that might look like anything from a minuet to a knife fight. Purpose and perception, history and stereotype, social stratification and identity, sensitivity and malice, and the immediate and long-term social contexts in which words and images are deployed all shape the way we interpret the actions of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cartoon Violence<\/a> was published in Anthropology News<\/em> in March 2006, in response to the controversy over the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthropological Activism and Skewed Priorities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political Culture and the AAA<\/a> asks questions about the kinds of political activism in which anthropological organizations feel comfortable engaging. It contrasts the American Anthropological Association’s willingness to address labor issues and political\/cultural repression in the Americas, with its reluctance to take similar positions regarding political\/cultural repression, violence, and war in the Middle East, even when the United States has participated in that violence. It was published in Anthropology News<\/em> in February 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthropology and Abu Ghraib<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Abu<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In 2004 some of the first evidence began emerging that U.S. armed forces and intelligence agencies were torturing Afghan and Iraq war detainees at both acknowledged and secret facilities around the world. In the case of Abu Ghraib, photographs of the abuse of prisoners eventually led to the prosecution of some of the soldiers involved, but the officers, politicians, and bureaucrats responsible for developing and approving policies allowing for the torture of U.S. prisoners were never held responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Culture Never Dies<\/a> was published in Anthropology News<\/em> in September 2004, reflecting on accusations that certain longstanding stereotypes about Middle Eastern culture may have informed some of the tactics used in the abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Secular Formations In July 2010 the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History published a full issue of articles on the interlinked concepts of “secularism,” “secularity,” and “the secular.” As one of the contributors to that issue, I was asked in April 2024 to comment on a cluster of new articles on these topics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":558,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-425","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P69uQY-6R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/425\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}