John Borneman

Biographic Data

ID3596437
NAMEJohn Borneman
GIVEN NAMESJohn
FAMILY NAMEBorneman
SIGNATUREBORNEMAN J
AFFILIATIONSPrinceton University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS69
TOTAL CITATIONS525
AUTHOR COUNT65
EDITOR COUNT4
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1986
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2023
H-INDEX12

  • Accountability, affect, and the political unconscious: A dialogue

    Open AccessJohn Borneman, Richard Ashby WilsonARTICLEPoLAR Political and Legal…2023References: 28

    This dialogue between John Borneman and Richard Ashby Wilson examines several of the key questions for law and politics that have come to the fore since the end of the Cold War. Beginning with Borneman's contributions over the last three decades, in which he elaborates the concepts of accountability, care, and affect, both authors then engage with how these issues emerge in their own research in different locales. They argue for the global releva…

  • Death of the Father: An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority

    John BornemanBOOKDeath of the Father: An…2022Cited by: 20

    The death of authority figures like fathers or leaders can be experienced as either liberation or loss. In the twentieth century, the authority of the father and of the leader became closely intertwined; constraints and affective attachments intensified in ways that had major effects on the organization of regimes of authority. This comparative volume examines the resulting crisis in symbolic identification, the national traumas that had crystall…

  • Digesting Difference: Migrant Incorporation and Mutual Belonging in Europe

    Open AccessKelly Mckowen, John BornemanBOOKDigesting Difference2020

  • Der deutsche Wohlfahrtsstaat als haltende Umgebung für Geflüchtete. Eine Fallstudie zur Inkorporation

    John BornemanARTICLEZfk - Zeitschrift für Kulturwissens…2020

    Article Der deutsche Wohlfahrtsstaat als haltende Umgebung für Geflüchtete. Eine Fallstudie zur Inkorporation was published on November 1, 2020 in the journal Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften (volume 14, issue 2)

  • Ethics, morality, and moralizing in anthropological research

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLEHau Journal of Ethnographic Theory2020Cited by: 2References: 2

    In response to papers by Langlitz on the position of the devil's advocate and Van Dinther on morality and advocacy, I try to parse ethics, morality, and moralizing in light of my two recent studies: of the rehabilitation of child sex molesters, and of the incorporation of Syrian refugees in Germany. I argue against any automatic politicizing or moralizing of our research objects, though this is not a categorical opposition. There are times when t…

  • World peace in the Cold War: Anthropological contributions

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLEHau Journal of Ethnographic Theory2020Cited by: 1References: 2

  • Home: Ethnographic Encounters

    Johannes Lenhard, Farhan Samanani et al.BOOKHome2019

    How is home made and negotiated by the anthropologist? Secondly, how does the researcher relate to, fight against or play with notions of home which informants bring forward? Unlike theoretically – or philosophically-oriented studies that seek to define notions of home, this collection focuses instead on how people both researcher and informant themselves act and therefore define, alter, and recreate home in everyday life. Contributions are wide-…

  • Reconciliation after ethnic cleansing: Witnessing, retribution and domestic reform

    Open AccessJohn BornemanCHAPTERPotentials of disorder2018

    This chapter addresses reconciliation in light of specific ethnic cleansings and 'ethnicisations', with a focus on the most examples in Bosnia. The precondition of reconciliation is a desire for non-repetition and an appreciation of the inter-subjectivity of the present. Such reconciliation is improbable if not impossible without domestic reform, without a new and more inclusive politics of the domestic group. The chapter addresses two separate b…

  • Afterword: Further Questions about the Global Care Chain

    John BornemanARTICLEEthics and Social Welfare2017References: 2

    From five geographic locations and perspectives, the authors take up a question first put forth by Arlie Hochschild about the impact of globalization on care. Globalization, she argues, has resulte

  • Do Germans smell like a rose? Phagia, philia, phobia

    Open AccessJohn Borneman, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi et al.ARTICLEHau Journal of Ethnographic Theory2017Cited by: 2

    Response to comments on Borneman, John, and Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi. 2017. "The concept of Stimmung: From indifference to xenophobia in Germany's refugee crisis." Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (3): 105-135

  • The concept of Stimmung: From indifference to xenophobia in Germany's refugee crisis

    Open AccessJohn Borneman, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi et al.ARTICLEHau Journal of Ethnographic Theory2017Cited by: 31References: 24

    This article deals with the German concept of Stimmung, which does not allow a translation into the English notion of "affective mood," but rather is simultaneously an internal and external state, subjective (involving the "I") and objective (involving attunement [einstimmen] to others), enveloping both content and form. To understand the essential imbrication of individual and collective moods summoned by the term, we examine three empirical cas…

  • State: Anthropological Aspects

    Open AccessJohn BornemanCHAPTERInternational Encyclopedia of the…2015

  • Regimes of ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge

    John Borneman, Carlo Caduff et al.BOOKRegimes of ignorance2015

    Introduction: Regimes of Ignorance: An Introduction Thomas G. Kirsch and Roy Dilley Chapter 1. Mind the Gap: On the Other Side of Knowing Carlo Caduff Chapter 2. Ignoring Native Ignorance: Epidemiological Enclosures of Not-Knowing Plague in Inner Asia Christos Lynteris Chapter 3. Managing Pleasurable Pursuits: Utopic Horizons and the Arts of Ignoring and 'Not Knowing' among Fine Woodworkers Trevor H. J. Marchand Chapter 4. Ignorant Bodies and the…

  • Anthropology and the Security State

    Open AccessJohn Borneman, Joseph MascoARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2015Cited by: 22References: 13

  • Containment in interlocution-based fieldwork encounters: Thought, theory, and transformative thinking

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLEAnthropological Theory2014Cited by: 8References: 17

    This article theorizes a single dimension of interlocution-based fieldwork: that of serving as a 'container' for the emotions of our interlocutors. I focus on the dynamic of 'containment' of messages in fieldwork interactions that arrest the ethnographer in the task of thinking. This arrest draws attention to the need to connect emotion to thought in order to learn from experience. That connection contributes essentially to the goal of 'transform…

  • Incest, the Child, and the Despotic Father

    John BornemanARTICLECurrent Anthropology2012Cited by: 6References: 35

    Based on ethnographic research in Berlin, this paper examines two paradigmatic cases in which real incest is brought into the penumbra of law and subsumed into an imaginary complex superimposed on sexual abuse. It uses them to theorize at a higher level of abstraction about the deployment of myth by the unconscious, the relation between taboo and law, male and female attachments to the child, gender conflict, and changes in the position of the fa…

  • Oedipal Roots of Revolt in the Middle East

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLEAnthropology News2011

    knowledge exchange, middle east, revolution, conflict and war

  • Daydreaming, intimacy, and the intersubjective third in fieldwork encounters in Syria

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLEAmerican Ethnologist2011Cited by: 15References: 31

    In this article, I analyze three episodes of daydreaming and reverie by young Syrian men that were occasioned, in part, by the presence of the anthropologist in ethnographic encounters. Such daydreaming calls forth an "intersubjective third," which privileges the experience of the interlocutor but is powerfully defined by the relationship of the roles of anthropologist and interlocutor. This construction opens a space in which both unconscious an…

  • European rituals of initiation and the production of men: European Rituals of Initiation

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLESocial Anthropology2010

    This article examines how male rites of initiation in Europe have been replaced by adjustments to lifecourse events located within the enlarged sphere of entertainment. These adjustments foster new forms of attachment and separation. Based on an interpretation of European films and informed by ethnographic fieldwork, it argues that contemporary European masculinity no longer relies on violent, transformative, collective rituals. This violence sti…

  • Being There: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth

    John Borneman, Abdellah HammoudiBOOKBeing There2009

    Challenges to ethnographic authority and to the ethics of representation have led many contemporary anthropologists to abandon fieldwork in favor of strategies of theoretical puppeteering, textual analysis, and surrogate ethnography. In Being There, John Borneman and Abdellah Hammoudi argue that ethnographies based on these strategies elide important insights. To demonstrate the power and knowledge attained through the fieldwork experience, they …

  • The Fieldwork Encounter, Experience, and the Making of Truth: An Introduction

    John Borneman, Abdellah HammoudiCHAPTERBeing There2009

    American anthropology has been engaged in a soul-searching movement to assess critically its object, its principal method, and the most current form of the write-up of research results. This chapter looks at the effects of various critiques on the practices of anthropology. It demonstrates what in anthropology does or can do in and through experience-based fieldwork. Furthermore, it queries the nature of encounters, experience, experiments, refle…

  • Being there: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth

    John Borneman, Abdellah HammoudiBOOKBeing There2009

  • Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki

    Open AccessJohn BornemanARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2008

  • Syrian Episodes: Sons, Fathers, and an Anthropologist in Aleppo

    John BornemanBOOKSyrian Episodes2007

    When Princeton anthropologist John Borneman arrived in Syria's second-largest city in 2004 as a visiting Fulbright professor, he took up residence in what many consider a "rogue state" on the frontline of a "clash of civilizations" between the Orient and the West. Hoping to understand intimate interactions of religious, political, and familial authority in this secular republic, Borneman spent much time among different men, observing and becoming…

  • Public Apologies as Performative Redress

    John BornemanARTICLEThe SAIS review of international…2005Cited by: 6References: 4

    The newfound inclination of states to issue apologies to both individuals and other states attests to the growing power of victim groups, evinces a novel willingness of states or state representatives to admit wrong, and reveals an emergent global public that is eager to hear such admissions. Such symbolic actions can play an important role in diffusing conflict and preparing the groundwork for a new political order