Jon P Mitchell
Biographic Data
| ID | 410325 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jon P Mitchell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jon P |
| FAMILY NAME | Mitchell |
| SIGNATURE | MITCHELL J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0009-0009-6380-910X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 130 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1960 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Belief
This chapter examines the development of the anthropological theorizations of belief. It is oriented around a contrast between “internalist” renderings of belief and “externalist” accounts. The former, characteristic of a Weberian–Geertzian tradition, see belief as a particular state of mind, while the latter, rooted in Durkheimian and Foucauldian ideas, see it as socially or discursively derived, a form of social claim. Several scholars have que…
The Pilgrimonics of Camino
This article examines the economic entanglements of the Camino de Santiago, a network of nominally Catholic walking pilgrimages that start in various parts of Europe and end in the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela, which is home to the shrine of St. James the Great. It focuses on the Camino Francés, which starts in the French Pyrenees and tracks across northern Spain to Santiago. The article explores the paradoxes inherent in the Camino, w…
Pilgrimage Flows
This article focuses on the Birmingham Catholic Archdiocese’s annual pilgrimage to the Marian sanctuary of Lourdes, in Southern France, and the agents that enable this pilgrimage to “flow.” Successful pilgrimage involves engagement or encounter with the limitless grace of Our Lady and the unlimited supply of spring water that has spiritual properties, and in which pilgrims bathe, wash, and which they drink. These practices, in turn, depend on the…
Logan (2017) and the lost object of masculinity, or the trouble with Shane
James film, Logan , offers up a future world in which the X-Men are no more. All that remains are a few old and ravaged mutants, including Logan and Xavier whose worsening dementia is having a catastrophic impact on his psychic abilities that is becoming increasingly dangerous for others. Both of these former X-Men become roped into assisting a group of synthetic mutant children as they run from those who attempt to subdue and destroy them. Princ…
Powers of Good and Evil
A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an increase in beliefs in, and representations of, evil and the devil. These beliefs, it is argued, constitute forms of resistance to, or rejection of, "modernity." This volume builds on these arguments, suggesting …
Ethnographic Practice in the Present
In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, …
Okinawa
In the book, Summoned at Midnight: A Story of Race and the Last Military Executions at Fort Leavenworth (Beacon Press, 2019), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Richard A. Serrano revealed the racial injustices of the US military justice system. Between 1955 and 1961, a number of black and white prisoners were incarcerated on death row at Fort Leavenworth military prison, Kansas, but ultimately all the white prisoners were paroled and only Africa…
Ritual, Performance and the Senses
Ritual has long been a central concept in anthropological theories of religious transmission. Ritual, Performance and the Senses offers a new understanding of how ritual enables religious representations – ideas, beliefs, values – to be shared among participants. Focusing on the body and the experiential nature of ritual, the book brings together insights from three distinct areas of study: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the…
Uncanny Landscapes
Shehas conducted ethnographic research examining the sensory experiences of
How Landscapes Remember
This paper considers the possibility that as subject or agent, the landscape might have the potential to contain, store or transmit memories of their past, which are engaged experientially as uncanny. In a simple sense it asks why there are some landscapes - or landscape features - that are regarded as spiritually animated by different social groups, at different times. The paper focuses on the Neolithic temple site of Borġ-in-Nadur, in Southern …
A Catholic Body? Miracles, Secularity, and the Porous Self in Malta
Religion and Embodiment
While the anthropology of religion has for some time been concerned with the body, it has only relatively recently turned toward the concept of embodiment. Embodiment shifts the focus from cognitive, linguistic, or language‐like phenomena toward forms of bodily practice and performance that are themselves seen as the substance of religion. Embodiment figures the body as both locus and conduit of embodied religion; the subject, rather than object,…
Anthropology of Europe Redux
For good reasons, anthropology some decades ago deconstructed the Mediterraneanist picture of familialist societies in the South. However, this deconstruction unexpectedly had its political twin in Malta’s fight against corruption to meet the conditions for EU-membership in 2004. Drawing on a deeper concept of “territoriality”, introduced by anthropologist Ina-Maria Greverus, the article considers lately observed new variants of nationalist posit…
A Catholic Body?
Josh Brahinsky (2012) has recently argued that Protestant Pentecostals engage in processes of cultivating the body to generate a ‘modern sensorium’. This chapter considers what a modern Catholic sensorium might consist of. The chapter looks at Catholic bodies in Southern Italy and Malta, examining the relationship between bodies of saints and bodies of persons. It focuses on the contexts of health and healing, miracles, and visions/locutions (con…
Sensational Religion
This is a big book, by any measure. With over 700 pages and 37 chapters, it covers an awful lot of ground. It is intellectually weighty, demonstrating the depth of analysis necessary to understand
Afterword
This special issue makes a welcome addition to the burgeoning anthropologically inspired work on Christianity. It takes as its central theme the thorny issue of religious experience, and in this case particularly the kind of experience that lies at the centre of Protestant Christianity -direct, unmediated experience of God's presence. Refreshingly, it is framed not merely in terms of changes in intellectual fashion -the turns towards the body, th…
Ritual, Performance and the Senses
Ritual, Performance and the Senses is a unique and timely collection at the heart of which is an experiment in anthropological theory. It explores the possibility of developing a new anthropology of ritual by combining theoretical insights from three distinct domains of anthropological inquiry: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the anthropology of the senses
Introduction
This short introduction contextualises the three contributions to this special section. Globally, anthropologists are feeling the effects of the neoliberal restructuring of the university. Here we examine the new pressures on anthropological research, to transcend the boundaries of the discipline in particular ways – through forms of interdisciplinarity and / or a focus on the societal or economic impact of research
Anthropologists behaving badly? Impact and the politics of evaluation in an era of accountability
This paper discusses the move within UK social science funding to use non-academic ‘impact’ as a measure of quality and success for social research. It suggests that behind this move are a set of unspoken assumptions about what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ impact, and the paper seeks to problematize these. By way of provocation, it presents three classic cases of anthropological research, in which the impact of anthropologists on the societies in…
Anti Nuke
More than two years after the triple disasters that included the meltdowns at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, between 160,000 and 300,000 Tohoku residents remain displaced, the power station teeters on the brink of further disaster, and large swathes of northern Japan are so irradiated they may be uninhabitable for generations to come. But today in Tokyo, it is as though March 11, 2011 never happened. The streets are packed with tourists…
Defence and attack
A nation's politics and socio-cultural identity can sometimes be best considered through the lens of Association Football (soccer). Examining football in the Mediterranean island of Malta in the inter-war years of 1920–1940 this paper focuses its analysis on the phenomenon that is the game of football and the epi-phenomena it provokes and sustains. In the tiny archipelago that constitutes the Maltese islands, the game as it was played and adminis…
Series Preface
Series Preface
Cross-currents
Beggars' Belief
The first American invasion of Iejima occurred on April 16th, 1945. U.S. Army accounts chronicle in meticulous detail the vicious battle for this small island, situated three miles west of Okinawa's main island (hontou). One thousand troops aboard eighty landing craft stormed Iejima's eastern beaches, meeting heavy resistance from dug-in Japanese defenders. In the following five days of bloodshed, two thousand Imperial Army soldiers were killed, …
Coming to terms with advanced breast cancer
A Moment with Christ
This article considers an uncanny feeling experienced during fieldwork in Malta, and examines indigenous explanations of this and other similar feelings. In Malta, explanations of such strange or uncanny experiences vary, but religious explanations present themselves as particularly convincing. The religious indoctrination process involves the creation of powerful feelings, which are sedimented as memories in the body of the believer and serve as…
Corruption and Clientelism in a 'Systemless System
This article raises important questions concerning the deployment of stereotypes about traditional and modern political practices by the Maltese people. These stereotypes are often used to make claims against politicians and the state, reflecting various understandings of what the state (or government) is and does. For the Maltese, reform and modernization are often seen as positive developments. However, they are also fraught with risk, as clien…
The nostalgic construction of community
This paper examines local people's memories of a Maltese urban community that was demolished in the 1970s. The memories create an idealised, nostalgic picture of community harmony and solidarity prior to the demolition, but also apportion blame for its subsequent destruction. The paper argues that in such situations of physical displacement and/or social dislocation, this nostalgic process serves as a strategic resource that not only produces ord…
How Landscapes Remember
This paper considers the possibility that as subject or agent, the landscape might have the potential to contain, store or transmit memories of their past, which are engaged experientially as uncanny. In a simple sense it asks why there are some landscapes - or landscape features - that are regarded as spiritually animated by different social groups, at different times. The paper focuses on the Neolithic temple site of Borġ-in-Nadur, in Southern …
Powers of Good and Evil
A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an increase in beliefs in, and representations of, evil and the devil. These beliefs, it is argued, constitute forms of resistance to, or rejection of, "modernity." This volume builds on these arguments, suggesting …
Ritual structure and ritual agency. 'Rebounding violence' and Maltese festa
Le present article explores les implications de l'observation que la structure rituelle des fetes des Saints Malte est l'inverse de la rite de passage classique qui serve comme modele a la theorie du rituel par Maurice Bloch. Tandis que sa theorie souligne le conservatisme de la structure rituelle, j'essaie de montrer que le point de vu inverse - suggere par la festa - souligne la capacite d'agir qui est inherente a la pratique rituelle. Si l'on …
Powers of Good and Evil
A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an increase in beliefs in, and representations of, evil and the devil. These beliefs, it is argued, constitute forms of resistance to, or rejection of, modernity. This volume builds on these arguments, suggesting th…
Ethnographic Practice in the Present
In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, …
Religion and Embodiment
While the anthropology of religion has for some time been concerned with the body, it has only relatively recently turned toward the concept of embodiment. Embodiment shifts the focus from cognitive, linguistic, or language‐like phenomena toward forms of bodily practice and performance that are themselves seen as the substance of religion. Embodiment figures the body as both locus and conduit of embodied religion; the subject, rather than object,…
Defence and attack
A nation's politics and socio-cultural identity can sometimes be best considered through the lens of Association Football (soccer). Examining football in the Mediterranean island of Malta in the inter-war years of 1920–1940 this paper focuses its analysis on the phenomenon that is the game of football and the epi-phenomena it provokes and sustains. In the tiny archipelago that constitutes the Maltese islands, the game as it was played and adminis…
Undignified and Inefficient
Between 1922 and 1972, London reputedly adopted a hands-off attitude to devolution in Northern Ireland. This was true of the formal machinery of government, what Bagehot referred to as the ‘dignified’ part of the constitution, but the ‘efficient’ part, most notably relations between civil servants, highlights a more complex picture of intergovernmental relations. Jim Bulpitt's notion of a ‘dual polity’ – acknowledging that alongside the dignified…
An Island in between
Uncanny Landscapes
Shehas conducted ethnographic research examining the sensory experiences of
Sensational Religion
This is a big book, by any measure. With over 700 pages and 37 chapters, it covers an awful lot of ground. It is intellectually weighty, demonstrating the depth of analysis necessary to understand
Anthropological Locations
Among social sciences, anthropology relies most fundamentally on fieldwork--the long-term immersion in another way of life as basis for knowledge. In an era when anthropologists are studying topics that resist geographical localization, this book initiates a long-overdue discussion of political and epistemological implications of disciplinary commitment to fieldwork. These innovative, stimulating essays--carefully chosen to form a coherent whole-…
Let our Profs be Profs
This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a "Prof". It argues that anthropology has a role to play in drawing attention to the significance of these transformations of subjectivity
Messages of greeting
Let our Profs be Profs
This contribution traces the impact of research and teaching audit on university life in UK. It focuses on how the audit regimes generate an entrepreneurial subjectivity among academics, thereby transforming what it means to be a "Prof". It argues that anthropology has a role to play in drawing attention to the significance of these transformations of subjectivity
Tramps and Reformers, 1873-1916
Coming to terms with advanced breast cancer
Reflecting on Teaching and Learning in Anthropology
Newsbriefs
A Bridge Too Far? The Relationships Between History and Anthropology
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
A Moment with Christ
This article considers an uncanny feeling experienced during fieldwork in Malta, and examines indigenous explanations of this and other similar feelings. In Malta, explanations of such strange or uncanny experiences vary, but religious explanations present themselves as particularly convincing. The religious indoctrination process involves the creation of powerful feelings, which are sedimented as memories in the body of the believer and serve as…
An Island in between
The nostalgic construction of community
This paper examines local people's memories of a Maltese urban community that was demolished in the 1970s. The memories create an idealised, nostalgic picture of community harmony and solidarity prior to the demolition, but also apportion blame for its subsequent destruction. The paper argues that in such situations of physical displacement and/or social dislocation, this nostalgic process serves as a strategic resource that not only produces ord…
Anthropological Locations
Among social sciences, anthropology relies most fundamentally on fieldwork--the long-term immersion in another way of life as basis for knowledge. In an era when anthropologists are studying topics that resist geographical localization, this book initiates a long-overdue discussion of political and epistemological implications of disciplinary commitment to fieldwork. These innovative, stimulating essays--carefully chosen to form a coherent whole-…
Corruption and Clientelism in a 'Systemless System
This article raises important questions concerning the deployment of stereotypes about traditional and modern political practices by the Maltese people. These stereotypes are often used to make claims against politicians and the state, reflecting various understandings of what the state (or government) is and does. For the Maltese, reform and modernization are often seen as positive developments. However, they are also fraught with risk, as clien…
Human Rights in Global Perspective
Looking Forward to the Past
Critiques of the essentialising tendencies of nationalist discourse are well established in the social sciences—particularly in anthropology. This article builds on the calls for a more processual approach to national identity. It focuses not only on the problematic essentialism of discourses of national identity, but also on their inherent teleology. Social scientists have shared with nationalists a view of national identity as a problem that ne…
Human Rights in Global Perspective
Mitchell 1. Representing the Common Good: The Limits of Legal Language, Kirsten Hastrup 2. Two Approaches to Rights and Religion in Contemporary France, John Bowen 3. This Turbulent Priest: Contesting Religious Rights and the State in Tibetan Shugden Controversy, Martin Mills 4. Legal/Illegal Counterpoints: Subjecthood and Subjectivity in a Pirate State, Yael Navaro-Yashin 5. Anthropologists as Expert Witness: Political Asylum Cases Involving Sri…
Powers of Good and Evil
A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an increase in beliefs in, and representations of, evil and the devil. These beliefs, it is argued, constitute forms of resistance to, or rejection of, modernity. This volume builds on these arguments, suggesting th…
Ritual structure and ritual agency. 'Rebounding violence' and Maltese festa
Le present article explores les implications de l'observation que la structure rituelle des fetes des Saints Malte est l'inverse de la rite de passage classique qui serve comme modele a la theorie du rituel par Maurice Bloch. Tandis que sa theorie souligne le conservatisme de la structure rituelle, j'essaie de montrer que le point de vu inverse - suggere par la festa - souligne la capacite d'agir qui est inherente a la pratique rituelle. Si l'on …
Performance
Undignified and Inefficient
Between 1922 and 1972, London reputedly adopted a hands-off attitude to devolution in Northern Ireland. This was true of the formal machinery of government, what Bagehot referred to as the ‘dignified’ part of the constitution, but the ‘efficient’ part, most notably relations between civil servants, highlights a more complex picture of intergovernmental relations. Jim Bulpitt's notion of a ‘dual polity’ – acknowledging that alongside the dignified…
Ethnography
Ritual structure and ritual agency. ‘Rebounding violence’ and Maltese festa1
A fourth critic of the Enlightenment
This paper examines the potential contribution of the work of Michel de Certeau (1925–1986) to anthropological theories of agency, resistance and subjectivity. It argues that de Certeau's work shares with contemporary anthropological theory a legacy of the counter‐Enlightenment that combines a profound pessimism about modern society with an emphasis on the redemptive possibility of populism, expressivism and pluralism. Whilst in anthropology thes…
Global and Local Football
What can the history of a nation's football reveal about that nation's wider political and socio-cultural identity? How can the study of local football culture help us to understand the powerful international forces at play within the modern game? Based on long-term and detailed ethnographic research, this book uses Malta as a critical case study to explore the dynamics of contemporary football. Situated on the fringes of the EU, and with an appa…
For Belief
This article argues for belief, suggesting that the reason why anthropologists might have moved against belief is their persistent attachment to a linguistic model of religion that sees the job of the anthropologist of religion as being one of translation. In such a model, the absence of the word 'belief' signals the absence of the process. We argue for the enduring utility of belief, not as a linguistic category, but as a description of experien…
Series Preface
Sociology (29 works) · Political science (17 works) · History (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (13 works) · Anthropology (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Psychology (10 works)