Ethnography After Globalism: Migration And Emplacement In Malawi

Abstract

Sites and places present analytical problems to ethnographers who acknowledge the reality of global flows but doubt their I iberatory potential. In this article, I suggest that ethnographers move beyond the rhetoric and organizing assumptions of globalism not simply by discarding the local-global distinction but a/so by interrogating the analytical tendency to disconnect culture from place. Such a tendency appears to contribute to the resilience of constructivism in ethnographic analysis. A perspective of emplacement builds on insights into global flows while providing a focus on embodied and situated presence. I develop this perspective with the aid of ethnography on conflicts between migrants and original inhabitants in an impoverished area of Malawi's capital. The occult powers of a secret society partly account for migrants' emplacement, challenging migrants' globalist imagination that draws on the liberal rhetoric of economic and political reform and on spiritual protection afforded by world religions. The perspective of emplacement reaches beyond globalism by showing how all phenomena in global circulations are at once both particular and capable of spreading widely as elements of the globalist imagination, [ethnography, globalism, migration, emplacement, embodiment, the occult, African urbanism]

Transnational Ethnographies and Anthropological Imaginings of Migrancy

“…When such places do not exist as the location of a community, the capacity to research that social practice using ethnography is almost impossible for many anthropologists to imagine. Indeed, some suggest that this is also undesirable, in that it would ignore the reality that all ideas and communities are necessarily 'emplaced' in order to become part of human experience (Englund 2002). Yet, for others, this continuing emphasis on place overlooks the constructed nature of all ethnographic fieldwork and ethnographic fields*particularly in research projects where participants are highly mobile (Amit 2000).…”

“…It is also a capacity for imagining connections between individuals, groups and sites around the world (Englund 2002). Furthermore, imagining links with other people, places and perspectives is important in the construction of local places and relationships.…”

Ethnographers of the World United? Current Debates on the Ethnographic Study of Globalization

“…Despite the oxymoronic nature of the enterprise, a series of scholars have analyzed global processes ethnographically (e.g. Ferguson 1994;Goldman 2001;Hannerz 1996Hannerz , 2003Comaroff and Comaroff 2003;Tsing 2005;Englund 2002) engaging cultural analyses of globalization and transnationalism (e.g. Kearney 1995;Appadurai 1996;Mintz 1998;Amselle 2002;Ong and Collier 2005).…”

Beyond risk: Emplacement and the production of environmental evidence

“…7 In the summer of 1993, revisions to Subtitle D came into effect, and new "megalandfills," among them, Four Corners, opened to meet the stricter requirements. Englund's (2002) approach to emplacement emphasizes the existential and historical unfolding of social projects in the places to which they belong. Places are not "constructed," as landfill managers, technicians, and regulators sometimes suggest, but present affordances for the mutual interanimation of bodies and their surroundings (Basso 1996:55).…”

“…According to Englund (2002), emplacement offers a perspective on how lived places enact and transform global flows and imaginings, entangling them with particular surroundings. Brandes residents saw their sentiments about the landfill printed, digitized, and televised, sometimes accompanied by their own reported speech, all in the name of opposition to the international waste trade.…”