A Benton
Biographic Data
| ID | 23658 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Benton |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Benton |
| SIGNATURE | BENTON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9523-5985 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 227 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Observational research in epidemic settings
Observational studies are critical tools in clinical research and public health response, but challenges arise in ensuring the data produced by these studies are scientifically robust and socially valuable. Resolving these challenges requires careful attention to prioritising the most valuable research questions, ensuring robust study design, strong data management practices, expansive community engagement, and access and benefit sharing of resul…
Man\power and violence at the thresholds of humanitarian and anthropological reason
Intersectionality and syndemics
Covid-19 in Ebola’s Wake
Like other African nations, Sierra Leone seemed to avoid the worst pandemic scenarios. Its previous experience with Ebola may have led to improved preparedness in the health system. But the government has once again reverted to a militarized response, and elites returning from international travel may pose a risk of spreading the coronavirus. The author also reflects on the challenges of tracking the situation from afar, in the midst of a global …
Exceptionalism at the End of Aids
HIV/AIDS exceptionalism promoted compassion, garnered funding, built institutions, and shaped regulatory and research agendas under emergency conditions. Globally, however, HIV/AIDS exceptionalism has further fragmented fragile health service delivery systems in vulnerable, marginalized communities and created perverse incentives to influence seropositive individuals' behaviors. Even where HIV epidemics are viewed as "controlled" or "resolved" (a…
Indirect rule redux
This article explores the relationship between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the political economy of diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone. The authors argue that foreign companies have recycled colonial strategies of indirect rule to facilitate the illicit flow of resources out of Sierra Leone. Drawing on field research conducted during the outbreak and in its aftermath, they show how this 'indirect rule redux' undermines democratic …
Why do we read the classics
Debates on the epistemological, ethical, and historical constitution of the anthropological corpus are one of the reasons why anthropology has always thrived. Whether in terms of the complex relation between the production of anthropological knowledge and the political systems in which it takes place, or the proliferation of the language of "mutual constitution" as a way to bypass questions of causality, the question of the "suffering" vs. the "g…
Ebola at a Distance
Drawing on a year of researching and writing about the West African Ebola epidemic from afar, I use the heuristic of virality to critically examine the collective US anthropology response to Ebola, a viral disease, and the anthropological knowledge networks formed to address the 2013–2015 outbreak. Specifically, I describe how digital media facilitated an entry point to build connections and knowledge around the epidemic in American anthropologis…
Rethinking Public Anthropologies in the Digital Age
Temporality and Positive Living in the Age of HIV/Aids
Drawing on comparative ethnographic fieldwork conducted in urban Mozambique, United States, and Sierra Leone, the article is broadly concerned with the globalization of temporal logics and how specific ideologies of time and temporality accompany health interventions like those for HIV/AIDS. More specifically, we explore how HIV-positive individuals have been increasingly encouraged to pursue healthier and more fulfilling lives through a set of m…
Response to reviews of HIV Exceptionalism
“Even War has Rules”
African expatriates and race in the anthropology of humanitarianism
Anthropological critiques of humanitarianism in Africa emphasize the workings of power, usually along lines of cultural, class, economic, and political difference. While these critiques often mention race, they engage less explicitly with structural racism and white supremacy as intimately woven into humanitarian professional practice. Such an engagement requires looking at how structures of inequality, white supremacy among them, shape the every…
Risky Business
Analyses of humanitarian imagery generally highlight how images are used to mobilize empathy and collective action. Recent critical ethnographic accounts of humanitarianism have either disregarded or underplayed the role of race in the practice of humanitarianism, focusing on risk as crucial to a "humanitarian politics of life." In this article I suggest that combining textual and visual analysis deepens the evidentiary base for claims linking ra…
International Political Economy and the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Democratic Insecurities
James, Erica Caple. — Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti. Berkeley, University of California Press (“California Series in Public Anthropology”), 2010, 384 p., bibl. In January 2010, the world watched as an earthquake destabilized an already fragile Haiti and a cadre of government and international actors mounted an effort to aid the country’s recovery. The aftermath of the earthquake, of course, was not the first…
Neoliberal Frontiers
Enumeration, Identity, and Health
Although the production of national spaces, citizens, and populations through enumerative practices has been well explored in a variety of disciplines, anthropological methods and analysis can help to illuminate the everyday practices of enumeration, their unexpected consequences, and the co-construction of identities through these processes by both the "counted" and the "counters." The authors in this special issue illustrate how enumeration inf…
Exceptional Suffering? Enumeration and Vernacular Accounting in the HIV-Positive Experience
Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I highlight the recursive relationship between Sierra Leone as an exemplary setting and HIV as an exceptional disease. Through this relationship, I examine how HIV-positive individuals rely on both enumerative knowledge (seroprevalence rates) and vernacular accounting (NGO narratives of vulnerability) to communicate the uniqueness of their experience as HIV sufferers and to…
"Find their Level". African American Roots Tourism in Sierra Leone and Ghana
In many "developing" and post-conflict African nations, cultural tourism has been touted as a vital source of foreign exchange revenue for jumpstarting national development. This trend has led to a scramble in Africa by African state officials seeking to "package" their nations in order to attract the patronage of Diasporan "returnees"— descendants of the Middle Passage who travel to Africa in search of cultural and historical "roots". This situ…
Temporality and Positive Living in the Age of HIV/Aids
Drawing on comparative ethnographic fieldwork conducted in urban Mozambique, United States, and Sierra Leone, the article is broadly concerned with the globalization of temporal logics and how specific ideologies of time and temporality accompany health interventions like those for HIV/AIDS. More specifically, we explore how HIV-positive individuals have been increasingly encouraged to pursue healthier and more fulfilling lives through a set of m…
African expatriates and race in the anthropology of humanitarianism
Anthropological critiques of humanitarianism in Africa emphasize the workings of power, usually along lines of cultural, class, economic, and political difference. While these critiques often mention race, they engage less explicitly with structural racism and white supremacy as intimately woven into humanitarian professional practice. Such an engagement requires looking at how structures of inequality, white supremacy among them, shape the every…
International Political Economy and the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Risky Business
Analyses of humanitarian imagery generally highlight how images are used to mobilize empathy and collective action. Recent critical ethnographic accounts of humanitarianism have either disregarded or underplayed the role of race in the practice of humanitarianism, focusing on risk as crucial to a "humanitarian politics of life." In this article I suggest that combining textual and visual analysis deepens the evidentiary base for claims linking ra…
Enumeration, Identity, and Health
Although the production of national spaces, citizens, and populations through enumerative practices has been well explored in a variety of disciplines, anthropological methods and analysis can help to illuminate the everyday practices of enumeration, their unexpected consequences, and the co-construction of identities through these processes by both the "counted" and the "counters." The authors in this special issue illustrate how enumeration inf…
Ebola at a Distance
Drawing on a year of researching and writing about the West African Ebola epidemic from afar, I use the heuristic of virality to critically examine the collective US anthropology response to Ebola, a viral disease, and the anthropological knowledge networks formed to address the 2013–2015 outbreak. Specifically, I describe how digital media facilitated an entry point to build connections and knowledge around the epidemic in American anthropologis…
"Find their Level". African American Roots Tourism in Sierra Leone and Ghana
In many "developing" and post-conflict African nations, cultural tourism has been touted as a vital source of foreign exchange revenue for jumpstarting national development. This trend has led to a scramble in Africa by African state officials seeking to "package" their nations in order to attract the patronage of Diasporan "returnees"— descendants of the Middle Passage who travel to Africa in search of cultural and historical "roots". This situ…
Why do we read the classics
Debates on the epistemological, ethical, and historical constitution of the anthropological corpus are one of the reasons why anthropology has always thrived. Whether in terms of the complex relation between the production of anthropological knowledge and the political systems in which it takes place, or the proliferation of the language of "mutual constitution" as a way to bypass questions of causality, the question of the "suffering" vs. the "g…
Exceptional Suffering? Enumeration and Vernacular Accounting in the HIV-Positive Experience
Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I highlight the recursive relationship between Sierra Leone as an exemplary setting and HIV as an exceptional disease. Through this relationship, I examine how HIV-positive individuals rely on both enumerative knowledge (seroprevalence rates) and vernacular accounting (NGO narratives of vulnerability) to communicate the uniqueness of their experience as HIV sufferers and to…
Rethinking Public Anthropologies in the Digital Age
Indirect rule redux
This article explores the relationship between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the political economy of diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone. The authors argue that foreign companies have recycled colonial strategies of indirect rule to facilitate the illicit flow of resources out of Sierra Leone. Drawing on field research conducted during the outbreak and in its aftermath, they show how this 'indirect rule redux' undermines democratic …
"Find their Level". African American Roots Tourism in Sierra Leone and Ghana
In many "developing" and post-conflict African nations, cultural tourism has been touted as a vital source of foreign exchange revenue for jumpstarting national development. This trend has led to a scramble in Africa by African state officials seeking to "package" their nations in order to attract the patronage of Diasporan "returnees"— descendants of the Middle Passage who travel to Africa in search of cultural and historical "roots". This situ…
Neoliberal Frontiers
Enumeration, Identity, and Health
Although the production of national spaces, citizens, and populations through enumerative practices has been well explored in a variety of disciplines, anthropological methods and analysis can help to illuminate the everyday practices of enumeration, their unexpected consequences, and the co-construction of identities through these processes by both the "counted" and the "counters." The authors in this special issue illustrate how enumeration inf…
Exceptional Suffering? Enumeration and Vernacular Accounting in the HIV-Positive Experience
Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I highlight the recursive relationship between Sierra Leone as an exemplary setting and HIV as an exceptional disease. Through this relationship, I examine how HIV-positive individuals rely on both enumerative knowledge (seroprevalence rates) and vernacular accounting (NGO narratives of vulnerability) to communicate the uniqueness of their experience as HIV sufferers and to…
Democratic Insecurities
James, Erica Caple. — Democratic Insecurities: Violence, Trauma, and Intervention in Haiti. Berkeley, University of California Press (“California Series in Public Anthropology”), 2010, 384 p., bibl. In January 2010, the world watched as an earthquake destabilized an already fragile Haiti and a cadre of government and international actors mounted an effort to aid the country’s recovery. The aftermath of the earthquake, of course, was not the first…
International Political Economy and the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Response to reviews of HIV Exceptionalism
“Even War has Rules”
African expatriates and race in the anthropology of humanitarianism
Anthropological critiques of humanitarianism in Africa emphasize the workings of power, usually along lines of cultural, class, economic, and political difference. While these critiques often mention race, they engage less explicitly with structural racism and white supremacy as intimately woven into humanitarian professional practice. Such an engagement requires looking at how structures of inequality, white supremacy among them, shape the every…
Risky Business
Analyses of humanitarian imagery generally highlight how images are used to mobilize empathy and collective action. Recent critical ethnographic accounts of humanitarianism have either disregarded or underplayed the role of race in the practice of humanitarianism, focusing on risk as crucial to a "humanitarian politics of life." In this article I suggest that combining textual and visual analysis deepens the evidentiary base for claims linking ra…
Why do we read the classics
Debates on the epistemological, ethical, and historical constitution of the anthropological corpus are one of the reasons why anthropology has always thrived. Whether in terms of the complex relation between the production of anthropological knowledge and the political systems in which it takes place, or the proliferation of the language of "mutual constitution" as a way to bypass questions of causality, the question of the "suffering" vs. the "g…
Ebola at a Distance
Drawing on a year of researching and writing about the West African Ebola epidemic from afar, I use the heuristic of virality to critically examine the collective US anthropology response to Ebola, a viral disease, and the anthropological knowledge networks formed to address the 2013–2015 outbreak. Specifically, I describe how digital media facilitated an entry point to build connections and knowledge around the epidemic in American anthropologis…
Rethinking Public Anthropologies in the Digital Age
Temporality and Positive Living in the Age of HIV/Aids
Drawing on comparative ethnographic fieldwork conducted in urban Mozambique, United States, and Sierra Leone, the article is broadly concerned with the globalization of temporal logics and how specific ideologies of time and temporality accompany health interventions like those for HIV/AIDS. More specifically, we explore how HIV-positive individuals have been increasingly encouraged to pursue healthier and more fulfilling lives through a set of m…
Indirect rule redux
This article explores the relationship between the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak and the political economy of diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone. The authors argue that foreign companies have recycled colonial strategies of indirect rule to facilitate the illicit flow of resources out of Sierra Leone. Drawing on field research conducted during the outbreak and in its aftermath, they show how this 'indirect rule redux' undermines democratic …
Covid-19 in Ebola’s Wake
Like other African nations, Sierra Leone seemed to avoid the worst pandemic scenarios. Its previous experience with Ebola may have led to improved preparedness in the health system. But the government has once again reverted to a militarized response, and elites returning from international travel may pose a risk of spreading the coronavirus. The author also reflects on the challenges of tracking the situation from afar, in the midst of a global …
Exceptionalism at the End of Aids
HIV/AIDS exceptionalism promoted compassion, garnered funding, built institutions, and shaped regulatory and research agendas under emergency conditions. Globally, however, HIV/AIDS exceptionalism has further fragmented fragile health service delivery systems in vulnerable, marginalized communities and created perverse incentives to influence seropositive individuals' behaviors. Even where HIV epidemics are viewed as "controlled" or "resolved" (a…
Intersectionality and syndemics
Man\power and violence at the thresholds of humanitarian and anthropological reason
Observational research in epidemic settings
Observational studies are critical tools in clinical research and public health response, but challenges arise in ensuring the data produced by these studies are scientifically robust and socially valuable. Resolving these challenges requires careful attention to prioritising the most valuable research questions, ensuring robust study design, strong data management practices, expansive community engagement, and access and benefit sharing of resul…
Political science (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works)