Joshua D Rubin
Biographic Data
| ID | 140719 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joshua D Rubin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joshua D |
| FAMILY NAME | Rubin |
| SIGNATURE | RUBIN J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Colby College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1071-8839 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Anthropology and Evocative Significance: Art, Sport, and Aesthetics
“Evocations” are frequently mentioned in anthropological accounts of art and artistic production, but the particular efficacy of the term for anthropological inquiry has not been considered in significant depth. This article argues that a theory of “evocations” has the potential to enrich not just anthropological considerations of art, but examinations of aesthetics and sensory perception as well. It offers a conception of evocations as contextua…
Experience, habit, and flow: Games user research and the forgetting of player identity
No blood on their hands: The structured incoherence of the apartheid state and its violence
The ideological contradictions generated by South Africa’s apartheid regime were neither exceptional nor wholly derivative of structural and physical violence. Instead, these contradictions contain valuable information about the practical operations of the state that produced them. Drawing from state archives and interviews with retired government officials, this article argues that the apartheid state produced incoherent violence in a recognisab…
Flashpoint: How a Little-Known Sporting Event Fueled America’s Anti-Apartheid Movement
Assembling emergence: Making art and selling gas in Bulawayo
This article is an ethnographic investigation of the labours of making art and selling liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It locates these activities within a shared social world, centred on one of Bulawayo's major art galleries, and it demonstrates that artists and LPG dealers use similar strategies to respond to the political conditions of life in the city. This article frames these conditions as unpredictable, insofar as they ch…
Ethnographies of emergence: Everyday politics and their origins across Africa Introduction
The articles that appear in this part issue focus on disparate topics, from rumours of electoral fraud to the production of art, and span the African continent from Guinea and Ghana in the west to Zimbabwe in the south. Despite their evident differences, the contributors see their pieces as united by a common theme: emergence. Elaborating on Simone's influential exploration of the intertwined concepts of emergence and emergency (2004), as well as…
Making Art from Uncertainty: Magic and Its Politics in South African Rugby
This essay examines the intersection of the politics of post-apartheid South Africa and the politics of playing rugby. It traces the sport's history through its manifestations in the apartheid state and the anti-apartheid struggle, but it also shows that South African rugby counts for more than the sum of these histories. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Franz Boas, as well as from the aesthetic theory of Theodor A…
Searching for Certainty: Rugby and Male Identity in a Former Model C School
This essay investigates the significance of rugby in a former “Model C” high school in South Africa. It examines the ideological and practical connections between rugby and disciplinary practices in this school under apartheid, and it traces those connections to the present day. By doing so, it argues that rugby owes much of its contemporary importance in such schools to the fact that parents, teachers, and coaches can watch as boys respond to th…
The Adaptive Dimensions of Leisure
One response to scarcity is to invest more effort in subsistence activities. It is also possible to respond by adjusting the level of effort in nonwork, or leisure, activities. The authors examine the concept of a "Zen road to affluence" using time-allocation data from four closely related Indian communities in central Brazil. Two of the groups live in relatively degraded environments, where yield per unit of work is lower. Total time spent worki…
The Adaptive Dimensions of Leisure
One response to scarcity is to invest more effort in subsistence activities. It is also possible to respond by adjusting the level of effort in nonwork, or leisure, activities. The authors examine the concept of a "Zen road to affluence" using time-allocation data from four closely related Indian communities in central Brazil. Two of the groups live in relatively degraded environments, where yield per unit of work is lower. Total time spent worki…
Making Art from Uncertainty: Magic and Its Politics in South African Rugby
This essay examines the intersection of the politics of post-apartheid South Africa and the politics of playing rugby. It traces the sport's history through its manifestations in the apartheid state and the anti-apartheid struggle, but it also shows that South African rugby counts for more than the sum of these histories. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Franz Boas, as well as from the aesthetic theory of Theodor A…
Ethnographies of emergence: Everyday politics and their origins across Africa Introduction
The articles that appear in this part issue focus on disparate topics, from rumours of electoral fraud to the production of art, and span the African continent from Guinea and Ghana in the west to Zimbabwe in the south. Despite their evident differences, the contributors see their pieces as united by a common theme: emergence. Elaborating on Simone's influential exploration of the intertwined concepts of emergence and emergency (2004), as well as…
Assembling emergence: Making art and selling gas in Bulawayo
This article is an ethnographic investigation of the labours of making art and selling liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It locates these activities within a shared social world, centred on one of Bulawayo's major art galleries, and it demonstrates that artists and LPG dealers use similar strategies to respond to the political conditions of life in the city. This article frames these conditions as unpredictable, insofar as they ch…
The Adaptive Dimensions of Leisure
One response to scarcity is to invest more effort in subsistence activities. It is also possible to respond by adjusting the level of effort in nonwork, or leisure, activities. The authors examine the concept of a "Zen road to affluence" using time-allocation data from four closely related Indian communities in central Brazil. Two of the groups live in relatively degraded environments, where yield per unit of work is lower. Total time spent worki…
Searching for Certainty: Rugby and Male Identity in a Former Model C School
This essay investigates the significance of rugby in a former “Model C” high school in South Africa. It examines the ideological and practical connections between rugby and disciplinary practices in this school under apartheid, and it traces those connections to the present day. By doing so, it argues that rugby owes much of its contemporary importance in such schools to the fact that parents, teachers, and coaches can watch as boys respond to th…
Making Art from Uncertainty: Magic and Its Politics in South African Rugby
This essay examines the intersection of the politics of post-apartheid South Africa and the politics of playing rugby. It traces the sport's history through its manifestations in the apartheid state and the anti-apartheid struggle, but it also shows that South African rugby counts for more than the sum of these histories. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Franz Boas, as well as from the aesthetic theory of Theodor A…
Assembling emergence: Making art and selling gas in Bulawayo
This article is an ethnographic investigation of the labours of making art and selling liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It locates these activities within a shared social world, centred on one of Bulawayo's major art galleries, and it demonstrates that artists and LPG dealers use similar strategies to respond to the political conditions of life in the city. This article frames these conditions as unpredictable, insofar as they ch…
Ethnographies of emergence: Everyday politics and their origins across Africa Introduction
The articles that appear in this part issue focus on disparate topics, from rumours of electoral fraud to the production of art, and span the African continent from Guinea and Ghana in the west to Zimbabwe in the south. Despite their evident differences, the contributors see their pieces as united by a common theme: emergence. Elaborating on Simone's influential exploration of the intertwined concepts of emergence and emergency (2004), as well as…
Flashpoint: How a Little-Known Sporting Event Fueled America’s Anti-Apartheid Movement
Experience, habit, and flow: Games user research and the forgetting of player identity
No blood on their hands: The structured incoherence of the apartheid state and its violence
The ideological contradictions generated by South Africa’s apartheid regime were neither exceptional nor wholly derivative of structural and physical violence. Instead, these contradictions contain valuable information about the practical operations of the state that produced them. Drawing from state archives and interviews with retired government officials, this article argues that the apartheid state produced incoherent violence in a recognisab…
Anthropology and Evocative Significance: Art, Sport, and Aesthetics
“Evocations” are frequently mentioned in anthropological accounts of art and artistic production, but the particular efficacy of the term for anthropological inquiry has not been considered in significant depth. This article argues that a theory of “evocations” has the potential to enrich not just anthropological considerations of art, but examinations of aesthetics and sensory perception as well. It offers a conception of evocations as contextua…
Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Art (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (3 works) · Ethnography (3 works) · Gender Studies (3 works) · Gender Studies (3 works)