For an anthropology of destiny

Elliot, Alice; Menin, Laura

doi:10.1086/698223

Cited by 25 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…There is an increasing amount of scholarship on differing conceptualization of fate and destiny (see, e.g., Elliot 2016;Elliot and Menin 2018;Menin 2015). Living in and with uncertainty makes futures 'uncanny', as Bryant and Knight (2019) put it, and if 'the future is written', then it is not clear who can read the text or whether it can be revised.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divination and Ontologies

Zeitlyn

2021

Social Analysis

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The way types of divination move round the planet means it is not helpful to simply attribute one unitary ontology to specific techniques or to groups of practitioners. Explaining divination in terms of ‘ontology’ homogenizes cognitive and conceptual multiplicity, and pre-empts the possible outcomes of divination. Moreover, this contradicts the fundamentally open nature of divination, and the fact that in many forms of divination the reformulation of questions helps keep futures open. With examples drawn from Mambila spider divination, I suggest what an epidemiology of beliefs and ontologies that gather around divination could look like. On this account, divination acts as a ‘boundary object’, mediating both the cognitive differences among clients and the conceptual differences between clients and diviners.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divination and Ontologies

Zeitlyn

2021

Social Analysis

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“…89 Rather than fatalism, this kind of reasoning is best understood through anthropological explorations of ‘destiny’ as a way to make sense of how ‘people imagine and reckon with determining powers’. 93 An anthropology of destiny allows us to consider how to explore the intersection of a sense of one's ‘capacity, and responsibility to act in their lives’ and ‘worldly and transcendental powers’ [p. 91]. The result is often a malleable fixity, a sense that one makes decisions and navigates terrains that are at least partly preordained.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative ethnographies of medical research: materiality, social relations, citizenship and hope in Tanzania and Sierra Leone

Lees

Enria

2020

International Health

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In this paper we bring together ethnographic research carried out during two clinical prevention trials to explore identities, relations and political imaginations that were brought to life by these different technologies. We highlight the ways in which critical anthropological engagement in clinical trials can help us radically reconsider the parameters and standards of medical research. In the paper we analyse the very different circumstances that made these two trials possible, highlighting the different temporalities and politics of HIV and Ebola as epidemics. We then describe four themes revealed by ethnographic research with participants and their communities but mediated by the specific sociopolitical contexts in which the trials were taking place. In both countries we found materiality and notions of exchange to be important to participants’ understanding of the value of medical research and their role within it. These dynamics were governed through social relations and moral economies that also underpinned challenges to Western notions of research ethics. The clinical trials offered a language to express both disaffection and disillusionment with the political status quo (often through rumours and anxieties) while at the same time setting the foundations for alternative visions of citizenship. Attached to these were expressions of ‘uncertainty and hope’ steeped in locally distinctive notions of destiny and expectations of the future.

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“…Yet herein lies a contradiction: Fate is predetermined but can also be controlled (Harrell 1987;Howlett 2022a;Sangren 2012). It is a "malleable fixity" (Elliot and Menin 2018). The popular song gives an optimistic ratio for this malleability, which accords with the positive thinking that teachers attempt to instill in warriors.…”

Section: Struggle: Battling To Transform Fatementioning

confidence: 99%

Gaokao Warriors: Diligent Struggle in China's College Entrance Exam

Howlett

2022

Anthropology & Edu Quarterly

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Those who compete in the Gaokao, China's College Entrance Exam, are often referred to as Gaokao zhanshi, or warriors. Based on long‐term ethnographic research, this article examines how Gaokao warriors combine two types of agency that are conventionally considered contradictory: the docile cultivation of virtue and the struggle against social marginalization. I argue that analyzing this nuli fendou, or diligent struggle, can contribute to a more complex understanding of the Gaokao and similar educational competitions.

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For an anthropology of destiny

Cited by 25 publications

References 20 publications

Divination and Ontologies

Divination and Ontologies

Comparative ethnographies of medical research: materiality, social relations, citizenship and hope in Tanzania and Sierra Leone

Gaokao Warriors: Diligent Struggle in China's College Entrance Exam

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