B French
Biographic Data
| ID | 13958 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B French |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | French |
| SIGNATURE | FRENCH B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Grinnell College |
| ORCID | 0009-0007-6570-4497 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Memorias mayas del genocidio en Guatemala y el habla de los sobrevivientes kaqchikeles
En el presente estudio analizamos los testimonios de personas kaqchikeles sobrevivientes del genocidio en Guatemala mediante una revisión de las memorias de las víctimas en las comisiones de la verdad y sus perspectivas en los procesos de justicia transicional posconflicto. Examinamos cómo las memorias con las que se cuenta son incompletas por cuestiones de poder y cultura, y revisamos cómo las personas sobrevivientes narraron sus experiencias, c…
Commentary on “Explosiveness”: Transnational retazos and reverberations
particular spaces, allowing us to trace connections" (4) from past forms of violence and their current expressive manifestations after the war is over, but technologies of violence continue.Their ethnographic work on how conservative paramilitary songs circulated in segregated spaces allow for a deeper consideration of how expressive genres, like poetry, song, and performance, do the political work of garnering affective commitments to the indete…
Maledictive Language: Arguments and Conflict
Dangerous forms of language are understood by some social groups and/or institutions to be potentially harmful to specific individuals, communities, and polities; their strategic deployment is a form of charged and conflictual action. Speech act theory and ethnographic investigations of dangerous language show that language ideologies which identify these forms and the circulation of them in a variety of contexts are rich sites of inquiry. Maledi…
Repealing Ireland's Eighth Amendment: Abortion rights and democracy today
In 2018, the Irish public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which since 1983 banned abortion in the country. While this was a watershed moment in Irish history, it was not unconnected to wider discussions now taking place around the world concerning gender, reproductive rights, the future of religion, Church–State relationships, democracy and social movements. With this Forum, we want to prompt some anthropological i…
Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death and Life after Genocide
In this timely and important book, Diane Nelson interrogates the politics of counting in postwar Guatemala. She frames the work by exposing the duplicitous nature of numbers to both humanize and objectify individual and communities’ losses, deaths, disappearances, murders, and threats to well-being in the context of colonialism, genocide, and everyday forms of violence that saturate life for Maya people in Guatemala. She draws on three decades of…
Vigilantism
This entry defines vigilantism, situates its study in a broader field of anthropological inquiry, and discusses how vigilantism is conceptually and politically linked to notions of state formation, law, and violence. It highlights the performative aspects of displaying violent justice on social bodies as an increasingly common practice in the context of globalization
Cartographies of Communicability and the Anthropological Archive
This article traces ideological constructions of communication that enable powerful actors to determine what counts as silences, lies and surpluses in efficacious narratives about violence (Briggs 2007) in order to elucidate occlusions regarding legacies of the Civil War in the Irish Free State. It does so through a precise triangulation of multiple competing and overlapping narratives from unpublished fieldnotes, interviews, published ethnograph…
The politics of Mayan linguistics in Guatemala: Native speakers, expert analysts, and the nation
In this essay I examine the emergence and transformation of linguistic analysis as an authoritative field of knowledge in the context of competing nationalists agendas in Guatemala. I show how various social actors including missionary linguists, North American secular linguists, and Maya linguists are implicated in the struggle for authority in "science of language." I argue that in these intellectual and political struggles, the awareness and p…
Anthropologies in and of Ireland: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Institutional Locations
Ethnography and "Postconflict" Violence in the Irish Free State
Here I offer a reengagement with Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball's (Arensberg 1968[1937]; Arensberg and Kimball 1940) canonical ethnographies of rural western Ireland along with a new consideration of data the ethnographers never analyzed in their publications. I argue that epistemological debates and commitments in U.S. anthropology fueled Arensberg and Kimball's structural-functionalist orientation because of the ways this theory became embl…
The Semiotics of Collective Memories
This review outlines the conceptual foundations of collective memory research from social scientific and semiotic perspectives. It locates collective memories in publicly circulating signs, merging a semiotic orientation with Nora's (1989) notion of memory sites. It elucidates how collective memories are made, remade, and contested through circulation enabled by semiotic processes of entextualization and erasure that produce cartographies of comm…
Mayas in Postwar Guatemala: Harvest of Violence' Revisited . Walter E. Little , Timothy J. Smith
Comment on Trinch’s risky subjects: The limits and possibilities of speaking truth to power
Technologies of Telling: Discourse, Transparency, and Erasure in Guatemalan Truth Commission Testimony
This paper offers a "critical epistemological reflection" on representations of survivor testimony in the Guatemalan truth commissions. As is commonly the case with TRC work, a good deal of effort was dedicated to the recuperation of victims' voices whose experiences of violence and suffering were brutally silenced in official Guatemalan state and public discourse. In this kind of "postconflict" context, the collection of survivor testimony is pr…
Linguistic science and nationalist revolution: Expert knowledge and the making of sameness in pre-independence Ireland
This article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the "revolutionary scholar" and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative …
Guatemala: Essentialisms and Cultural Politics
Maya ethnolinguistic identity: Violence, and cultural rights in bilingual Kaqchikel communities
Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas
Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas. Christine Kovic. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. 238 pp
Partial Truths and Gendered Histories: Ruth Bunzel in American Anthropology
This essay pays tribute to Ruth L. Bunzel, a pioneering woman anthropologist, marginal academician, and prolific ethnographer. It argues for a new appreciation of the multiple links tying early anthropologists to the history of our discipline by exploring these links in relation both to methodological frameworks in the past and theoretical concerns at present. This essay makes the case that the past significance and present pertinence of Bunzel's…
BlowBack: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. Neil DeVotta
Technologies of Telling: Discourse, Transparency, and Erasure in Guatemalan Truth Commission Testimony
This paper offers a "critical epistemological reflection" on representations of survivor testimony in the Guatemalan truth commissions. As is commonly the case with TRC work, a good deal of effort was dedicated to the recuperation of victims' voices whose experiences of violence and suffering were brutally silenced in official Guatemalan state and public discourse. In this kind of "postconflict" context, the collection of survivor testimony is pr…
The politics of Mayan linguistics in Guatemala: Native speakers, expert analysts, and the nation
In this essay I examine the emergence and transformation of linguistic analysis as an authoritative field of knowledge in the context of competing nationalists agendas in Guatemala. I show how various social actors including missionary linguists, North American secular linguists, and Maya linguists are implicated in the struggle for authority in "science of language." I argue that in these intellectual and political struggles, the awareness and p…
Ethnography and "Postconflict" Violence in the Irish Free State
Here I offer a reengagement with Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball's (Arensberg 1968[1937]; Arensberg and Kimball 1940) canonical ethnographies of rural western Ireland along with a new consideration of data the ethnographers never analyzed in their publications. I argue that epistemological debates and commitments in U.S. anthropology fueled Arensberg and Kimball's structural-functionalist orientation because of the ways this theory became embl…
Linguistic science and nationalist revolution: Expert knowledge and the making of sameness in pre-independence Ireland
This article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the "revolutionary scholar" and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative …
Anthropologies in and of Ireland: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Institutional Locations
Partial Truths and Gendered Histories: Ruth Bunzel in American Anthropology
This essay pays tribute to Ruth L. Bunzel, a pioneering woman anthropologist, marginal academician, and prolific ethnographer. It argues for a new appreciation of the multiple links tying early anthropologists to the history of our discipline by exploring these links in relation both to methodological frameworks in the past and theoretical concerns at present. This essay makes the case that the past significance and present pertinence of Bunzel's…
Partial Truths and Gendered Histories: Ruth Bunzel in American Anthropology
This essay pays tribute to Ruth L. Bunzel, a pioneering woman anthropologist, marginal academician, and prolific ethnographer. It argues for a new appreciation of the multiple links tying early anthropologists to the history of our discipline by exploring these links in relation both to methodological frameworks in the past and theoretical concerns at present. This essay makes the case that the past significance and present pertinence of Bunzel's…
BlowBack: Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka. Neil DeVotta
Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas
Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas. Christine Kovic. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. 238 pp
Guatemala: Essentialisms and Cultural Politics
Maya ethnolinguistic identity: Violence, and cultural rights in bilingual Kaqchikel communities
Technologies of Telling: Discourse, Transparency, and Erasure in Guatemalan Truth Commission Testimony
This paper offers a "critical epistemological reflection" on representations of survivor testimony in the Guatemalan truth commissions. As is commonly the case with TRC work, a good deal of effort was dedicated to the recuperation of victims' voices whose experiences of violence and suffering were brutally silenced in official Guatemalan state and public discourse. In this kind of "postconflict" context, the collection of survivor testimony is pr…
Linguistic science and nationalist revolution: Expert knowledge and the making of sameness in pre-independence Ireland
This article examines the linguistic ideological work entailed in the analyses of Irish by the "revolutionary scholar" and cofounder of the Gaelic League, Eoin MacNeill. It does so to discern one central way in which the essentialized link between the Irish language and a unified Irish people became an efficacious political construction during the armed struggle for independence in the early 20th century. It shows how MacNeill used authoritative …
Comment on Trinch’s risky subjects: The limits and possibilities of speaking truth to power
Mayas in Postwar Guatemala: Harvest of Violence' Revisited . Walter E. Little , Timothy J. Smith
The Semiotics of Collective Memories
This review outlines the conceptual foundations of collective memory research from social scientific and semiotic perspectives. It locates collective memories in publicly circulating signs, merging a semiotic orientation with Nora's (1989) notion of memory sites. It elucidates how collective memories are made, remade, and contested through circulation enabled by semiotic processes of entextualization and erasure that produce cartographies of comm…
Ethnography and "Postconflict" Violence in the Irish Free State
Here I offer a reengagement with Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball's (Arensberg 1968[1937]; Arensberg and Kimball 1940) canonical ethnographies of rural western Ireland along with a new consideration of data the ethnographers never analyzed in their publications. I argue that epistemological debates and commitments in U.S. anthropology fueled Arensberg and Kimball's structural-functionalist orientation because of the ways this theory became embl…
Cartographies of Communicability and the Anthropological Archive
This article traces ideological constructions of communication that enable powerful actors to determine what counts as silences, lies and surpluses in efficacious narratives about violence (Briggs 2007) in order to elucidate occlusions regarding legacies of the Civil War in the Irish Free State. It does so through a precise triangulation of multiple competing and overlapping narratives from unpublished fieldnotes, interviews, published ethnograph…
The politics of Mayan linguistics in Guatemala: Native speakers, expert analysts, and the nation
In this essay I examine the emergence and transformation of linguistic analysis as an authoritative field of knowledge in the context of competing nationalists agendas in Guatemala. I show how various social actors including missionary linguists, North American secular linguists, and Maya linguists are implicated in the struggle for authority in "science of language." I argue that in these intellectual and political struggles, the awareness and p…
Anthropologies in and of Ireland: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Institutional Locations
Vigilantism
This entry defines vigilantism, situates its study in a broader field of anthropological inquiry, and discusses how vigilantism is conceptually and politically linked to notions of state formation, law, and violence. It highlights the performative aspects of displaying violent justice on social bodies as an increasingly common practice in the context of globalization
Who Counts? The Mathematics of Death and Life after Genocide
In this timely and important book, Diane Nelson interrogates the politics of counting in postwar Guatemala. She frames the work by exposing the duplicitous nature of numbers to both humanize and objectify individual and communities’ losses, deaths, disappearances, murders, and threats to well-being in the context of colonialism, genocide, and everyday forms of violence that saturate life for Maya people in Guatemala. She draws on three decades of…
Maledictive Language: Arguments and Conflict
Dangerous forms of language are understood by some social groups and/or institutions to be potentially harmful to specific individuals, communities, and polities; their strategic deployment is a form of charged and conflictual action. Speech act theory and ethnographic investigations of dangerous language show that language ideologies which identify these forms and the circulation of them in a variety of contexts are rich sites of inquiry. Maledi…
Repealing Ireland's Eighth Amendment: Abortion rights and democracy today
In 2018, the Irish public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which since 1983 banned abortion in the country. While this was a watershed moment in Irish history, it was not unconnected to wider discussions now taking place around the world concerning gender, reproductive rights, the future of religion, Church–State relationships, democracy and social movements. With this Forum, we want to prompt some anthropological i…
Memorias mayas del genocidio en Guatemala y el habla de los sobrevivientes kaqchikeles
En el presente estudio analizamos los testimonios de personas kaqchikeles sobrevivientes del genocidio en Guatemala mediante una revisión de las memorias de las víctimas en las comisiones de la verdad y sus perspectivas en los procesos de justicia transicional posconflicto. Examinamos cómo las memorias con las que se cuenta son incompletas por cuestiones de poder y cultura, y revisamos cómo las personas sobrevivientes narraron sus experiencias, c…
Commentary on “Explosiveness”: Transnational retazos and reverberations
particular spaces, allowing us to trace connections" (4) from past forms of violence and their current expressive manifestations after the war is over, but technologies of violence continue.Their ethnographic work on how conservative paramilitary songs circulated in segregated spaces allow for a deeper consideration of how expressive genres, like poetry, song, and performance, do the political work of garnering affective commitments to the indete…
Sociology (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · History (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · History (5 works) · Ethnography (4 works)