Troubling complicities
The anthropologist as (im)moral subject
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2229752 |
|---|---|
| Authors | K Rubaii (0000-0003-3016-8544, Purdue University West Lafayette), Varma (0000-0002-5954-7401, University of California San Diego), Saiba Varma |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 377-393 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2049-1115 • E-ISSN: 2575-1433 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/727740 |
| OpenAlex | W4390098758 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 34 |
This creative article seeks to trouble dominant modes of how anthropologists position themselves as moral subjects and grapple with their complicity with/in empire today: what we call "bearing witness" and "denunciation/confession." In contrast to these models, we perform and theorize our own complicities by staying with the multiple social, relational, political, and epistemological entanglements that our fieldwork produces. Through a braided dialogue, we demonstrate the multiple responsibilities and relationalities that come with the positions we occupy as subjects, researchers, and narrators of empire. We define complicity as an active, transitive engagement with others as we are situated in multiple structures of power. Theorizing complicity helps us reveal what relations of knowledge and power we are responsible for making visible and how we can analytically respond to them. By pluralizing complicity, our aim is to stimulate much needed conversation on questions of anthropology's relation to tentacles of empire
Aesthetics · Complicity · Conversation · Denunciation · Embeddedness · Empire · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Relation (database · Situated · Sociology · Witness · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Communication · Law · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
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Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
The Vulnerable Observer
Ghostly Matters
Ethnography in/of the World System
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter
Pathologies of Power
Teach for Arabia
Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics
Return to Ruin
Inter-Imperiality
Expert Witness
The Political Economy of ‘Trauma’ in Haiti in the Democratic Era of Insecurity
Cold War Anthropology
The Imperial University
Tobacco Capitalism, an Afterword
Suspending Damage
The ruse of consent and the anatomy of 'refusal
States, anthropological complicity, and theorizing the political
Decolonizing Diversity
Death Without Weeping
Decolonizing Methodologies
Empire is in the details
Complicity with Domination
From Rapport Under Erasure to Theaters of Complicit Reflexivity
Truth, Shame, Complicity, and Flirtation
"Witnessing "imperfect victims
Witnessing
The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn
Documenting Tragedy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |