Terms of engagement

Anthropology is nothing if it is not a particular way of describing the world. Yet what is most precious to it – the terms and concepts that mark it as a discipline – can also be the most tricky. When resurgent boundaries and exclusions twist truth telling and faking in any which way, anthropology might find a new urgency in thinking about the conceptual life it tries to express. How it engages has always depended on (attention to) how terms are used, something shared with those who people its subject matter. Critical attention has never been more important. An exploration into the colourings and resonances of diverse verbal usages, old and new, points to moments where language works both with us and against us. Indeed supports for xenophobia and the like may be embedded where least expected. Out of it all, the lecture imagines a future for anthropological exposition. There could be no better place to start than in EASA's many-languaged company. L'anthropologie n'est rien si ce n’est une manière particulière de décrire le monde. Pourtant, ce qu’elle a de plus précieux – les termes et les concepts qui la distinguent en tant que discipline – est parfois extrêmement complexe. Alors que la résurgence des frontières et les exclusions déforment les récits de vérité et les contrefaçons de toutes les manières possibles, il serait urgent que l’anthropologie réfléchisse à la vie conceptuelle qu'elle tente d'exprimer. La manière dont elle s'engage a toujours dépendu de (l'attention portée à) la manière dont les termes sont utilisés, ce qu’elle a en commun avec les acteurs au sein des thèmes abordés. La vigilance critique n'a jamais été aussi importante. L’examen des teintes et résonances de divers usages verbaux, anciens et nouveaux, révèle des moments où le langage agit à la fois avec nous et contre nous. En effet, un soutien de la xénophobie et d’autres phénomènes du genre peuvent se trouver là où l'on s'y attend le moins. Sur cette base, cet article envisage un avenir pour les exposés anthropologiques. Quel meilleur endroit pour commencer qu’au sein de la communauté multilingue EASA. Understanding that not all relations, and not all separations, are the same is going to be crucial over the next few years. (Green 2017: 531) 10 April 2020. The event by itself seemed nothing: a BBC programme, ‘on the frontline of the medical and scientific fightback’, about Covid-19. Descriptions of the virus, with eye-watering visuals, accompanied a narrative of possible links – to wildlife markets, city-size bat populations and viral mutation encouraged by intensive farming. It then switched to statistics of reproduction speed-up. Only fleetingly mentioned was how different countries acted, that presumably not being part of the science, although it was surely part of the pandemic (Latour 2020: 2).It was, however, noted that South Korea, prepared by SARS, was relying on mass testing. It is illuminating looking back: the programme referred to tests several times, planting the suspicion that the UK’s restricted testing was only recording 5–10% of cases. Some medical scientists have been less reticent in saying that the Westminster government was not learning from experience elsewhere. On the news the very next morning that government, in the ministerial person of the Secretary of State for Health, in effect boasted just that. Hancock was quizzed about the British Medical Association stating once again that they did not have enough personal protective equipment (PPE). The biggest death toll so far was also announced. He was pressed for some admission of responsibility. The interviewer was stark: lives have been unnecessarily lost. Hancock freely admitted that his ministerial brief was to look after people’s lives. Yet he then, repeatedly, asserted variations of ‘We must take it from where we are at now’. Where they were at now was not just the farce over equipment, but acting against WHO advice on mass testing. And in this absurd affair of PPE, Hancock explicitly said that we should grasp matters as they are now and not dwell on what is past. Yet the line between premature accountability and learning from previous actions is a fine one; an acknowledgement of past problems would at least signal that there was something to learn. ‘Let’s take it from here’: nothing to learn. All Europe was in lockdown, but many must have heard that first glorious moment when the balconies of Milan spilled over with music. Lockdown music had already become a genre when a colleague in Leiden sent me a zoomed performance from the Rotterdam Philharmonic. On 11 April, the news also played a short piece from two musical families who happened to be next-door neighbours in Cardiff, hailing from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Welsh National Opera. The European music makers acted out their constrained circumstances, neither denying nor overcoming the restrictions but showing what was possible. Theirs was a critical intervention, an address to the conditions or terms of lockdown. And they incidentally demonstrated the power of learning, new and old. Their houses had back gardens, running between them a fence with a hole. The hole enabled the Cardiff players to adapt their rehearsal, to keep distance while also hearing one another, enabling them to draw on diverse disciplines of musical performance. Giving this lecture online felt, on the occasion, like talking through a fence. I wanted to draw on the diversity of social anthropology, and address an aspect of the discipline in its own terms without feeling that its cumulative expertise was rendered irrelevant by current events, any more than applied to the musicians. Those two media episodes: relating them adds a dimension to each. Hardly unusual – it is the kind of relation everyone makes all the time in joining up bits of a universe that might otherwise seem disparate. This is of course how the ‘science’ was portrayed, linking a virus leaping across species to animal-rearing practices that speed up viral reproduction. And separation being a relation from another point of view, an anthropologist would say, what was medical and scientific about such knowledge was separated from other issues, just as the Minister separated himself from an immediate past. That said, the suspicion about testing made suspicious in turn the Minister’s insistence that everything possible was being done. One commentator (Matharu 2020) on those UK governmental Coronavirus briefings borrowed a Russian anthropologist’s (Yurchak 2005) term for fake normality, ‘hypernormalisation’: they’re lying, we know they’re lying, and they know that we know they’re lying. Whether to link or separate, making relations is the stuff of criticism; it is equally the stuff of suspicion, and suspicion rebounds on those who are suspicious. For as much as relations reveal what is not immediately apparent, pointing to externalities or unaccounted implications and thereby extending questions about responsibility, they are also hazardous. Writers and thinkers beware! For making relations is, more generally, central to how writers and thinkers expound things. There is no guarantee that simply because they are made relations will be either truthful or helpful, but in the English language, at least, they are essential to exposition. Exposition implies getting a reader or listener to understand, and the relations being drawn help form what is explained or analysed, how it is argued and what is omitted. For any anthropologist the issue is as routine as it is for a TV programmer or a minister on the defensive. Practices of exposition are normally open to through those and both and one the same exposition is all of and something It will also be on and so or which may their it that the terms on which with their can as much against their as with It is to about this particular in a company. Anthropology is nothing if it is not a particular way of describing the world. when resurgent boundaries and exclusions twist truth telling any which way, there is to be thinking about its of exposition. The issue in and out of what we might of and then again of what we might of its The conditions and in terms of which people with one another, or with what they as their at their most to the of is an for as are at some point in they have a with to one and an of is the – at least argued otherwise – of For the this of not just to and but a of in find and of and more open to critical is also in of exposition. Where so much on a of it will what all, from one may seem from another, and and conditions of anthropological can the makes the as the to what is for and by it must some terms of in to and in the of has a of to It may the of an as to what as in or Yet and conditions the of a will be different from the conditions of subject to conditions their may one another to their own Indeed it is a point as to the kind of that might be when of with for for as as making a or as of more any where people are – or otherwise – will be subject to the of to to an of the that anthropology is to current and two of such one of them explicitly The first a of to address faking in the in the for a of on the anthropology of and in this et from the out a of both the and the of the and were new, there was something new about their the were with a news media of a fake in and then a that the first was fake – no such as to who et that the of this the of of – and of in – and that once seemed something or fake had become a term for of all the it was also with another kind of with the once said, the the to in the of is at once and This the as their of and faking is also a about about practices that the very of the and the et fake are not but routine in the of a with of social performance me to the not of and For all the to into the of the the conditions which – of – separated from the and the the same another of anthropological was The was on and have in this about and and The was in terms of how or otherwise to as which they such as or was one were what they crucial in their of an anthropological which might they For a its when itself – of – made of 2017: could have been of is suspicious of in from and the of other terms of into when it is the very of that is with after all one of the to about Europe as a of on is nothing Yet what of fake and when can be equally or as to is that For some UK not when everyone is of acting out of personal those who up fake are like those who as are and only are if are not being to the is not being is not its if it simply other in This on personal and and 2017: an of what we might for anthropological in the of and of all have has to or – as in the of the National and – and the of of learning and One might on the conditions of of own such as and the on for and There was a moment by open and with and in a of and who thereby were to against the the was never enough by some simply had to be on the Association of in of and through as as against the of and actions and are but of the of of all of government or in their place is the or of the people 2017: a that in of For all the might to to of the was by the European and in matters of by the scientific the as of and were into the of terms of were out of in the of the social in terms of and of to scientific the that to as as critical of all Critical is in in form may be from or on the terms of on the way and reader in the in of the of his own was by a a kind of subject is a some relations from from or if there is in are being in through on the say, government or its is of or of to the social the of into accountability of suspicion, this time of and than to as the the as for to their we may who is were not a This is an made of the of as it practices did not as was not on the terms of were and without is 2017: One was that without to this the the kind of in the in the place separated from from as they back from about the of if of the and it was as a not as an the who to relations of own had been in the of to an of anthropological that was as it could be on the other on the and with but it not in was a of over and other over the of that might be to their own as to what as in anthropological terms has been to the of which anthropology is a part – not so much in terms of the of particular but more in terms of the implications of different of thinking (Green and There is an twist to social have the anthropological An from the that there in the of the of and with the that was and in how people up and so social could be and with lives of their – questions about and concepts enough then, of for for – The in to that of and was as at is a in the of would be nothing without their own the is to be an of did a of in in an at a moment when they were their own as from moments of or between and they acted out that would people’s of the The made – events, – the being a social such as or a form of that might help about their it had been as a how open to may about anthropology from the way that have Those who their as social in and on in their of of social and anthropology in This is the were not just some had in the for and one might be for anthropology the its own The way look to their practices of is also a way of looking after if of their is terms of with one another so surely is in how the concepts they are in other The narrative has across many us to about the that to at all, of or and can to the very and terms they a term of may seem or then again can anthropology, with or anthropology, is for its it is also for the it in of social are not simply to the of particular there are to be made about such as those by of the as as of an about the of in the term just as or can take or such as or more Yet have to this point been in the might have that the of an its would be by the terms it in to itself out to be a the terms which was from of were the and that into an the on its and the – as in or – of its all of to its less is the that the also itself as a in English a is a verbal as a for or the term up and conditions with the of their is with a on the one over concepts in to the of on the with language to new or of verbal Out of this an particular the way in which terms are attention to For and their the is to Indeed is a form of that for anthropology is as as it is in how terms are can seem more than or I take up of terms as of to across we can also while in one will the first de and making it all possible. many a of and an of the one of was to across was also the of another of over its language of The was no by what was already in as has become a of of the a for the scientific just as as over the course of the European than those might in another language is no less for being a is this from which anthropology so many terms of itself may be suspicious. is of the that is, of just as English to be of the I turn attention to this one language, not to the or nor to dwell on or but to take up as them in of their It is a of not what is and much And were I to on a has for a It is, after all, terms of its own of as between to a but I dwell on relation as a a has its own or in On the one like or for a a narrative the term has through the relations that are or to of that are they are a is over or On the other its also a and when in the or it makes an of more rendered through or Those about European might that such a of is a English is in the its as a term of British social anthropology a with the of relations as an point of anthropological might be more rendered in terms of or not to of and Yet there is a to the term that not seem to over and in the to those who the must the the of were were relations with something like a the to as between – to for a of social already such – they did not of all as in the of in anthropology, of would a to and exposition to be a particular of the relation I to what when the a to the is equally and the – between – is to of is another however, and English it where might The we have in relations from the that we are to and the language in which those are a language that with that are to are and are then that there between them a and that this is very and that it two people to their most so much so that it is that the is For if it were not it would be like the of being next to a in the Yet the very language in which we are to this that it is a that is to the of both it is, as we have just said, an is – – an relation be between as and relations can only link a – not but the of a an relations the way its with one relations with the the of on all being by into relations with one another, links that to each. Yet neither of conditions English have just been the an of the and the and The English of relations between otherwise may be in such a way that the of with of their and on one the truth to be that the of the or of but now like with the to with the that there are to verbal is not to an language but to an about and One might for at the for thinking in anthropological as to a relation as would the and that reveal the relation between as is to point to the for in a the term that like the of a to an event neither I as to there may be an to the the very of as relating itself had a an made in the to and to the being is being to with that it is what one might when practices of exposition anthropological also in the way of what is of the and is of of where over the of relations English I on those of relations where relating implies a about the of and that as a as for more than works to by boundaries to it itself the of the of the term and a of across Europe, by the of a of between of and and in The was the of in a European of between subject of of said were other of in boundaries the of a of the term has such the of a made up of otherwise its one what such relating might to the xenophobia noted This is not to those social or or other which many that would be it is to point to the of of that such can to The same of that would the of such exclusions – the the – the of those It is as the more are as the more is the more the for is the more this like lockdown, another moment There is a of in of us and to on the of exposition just anthropological but – across all of Europe – are of on Where that is it is to know what English being about of the term the has been equally and And in a critical about this language, I how that particular term has been by from other and of have or to what as its time to on the that from this is a anthropological to from English when it and something as as as an to not least for its of the in many – the is not – but this is one of There is something to be from of diverse then, those verbal that exposition. The more through and the more such it was in of can be said with a different all the conceptual and they can The an into what otherwise conditions of the effect and of This in or It is a that in turn learning an from the in the central UK to Covid-19. Yet how to take of of exposition without The has a up – by in the particular form of they into some of the of relations from this with the it has up the kind of that the English as as the that may be That the to and is the with which it has been a It is not us to but is making us what people can of one in the the virus has to what social and thinkers of all have been for English is not but when they English writers and thinkers have to against the of This is of no moment for a discipline with diverse over and again telling it otherwise de la and et anthropology to of those never while something to those that as with old of exposition. Coronavirus not of however, what people are telling about their own – two populations could not more we are already One is another the in the become for through a fence. to of relations of and what conditions can the truth of social be 2020: An of has in which people are of the of has been back into from which it was Yet who to that now one the as and but crucial for describing the virus has the to which everyone is already while with one It is a that diverse of the term relation in diverse to back into for they to be implies such an find it to of separation or as a of of distance as an of and and – with or without – as people have attention to relations where have not always a of part of the the terms of would new become And if to take relating as a what critical is scientific for the I also the of both the in and in what The of the lecture was by the who through diverse for has up questions about conditions of for a most and of

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