Moments of Dislocation: Why the Body Matters in Ethnographic Research

Ethnographies originate in everyday interaction with others, but anthropologists’ analysis and interpretation of people’s social world is often restricted to their words and identifiable actions. Like in every social setting, much of the knowledge we acquire during fieldwork remains unarticulated and habitual. We often lack the tools to even become aware of it, let alone to bring it into the predicated realm. Still, its existence is the only basis we have for recognizing unarticulated experiences of others. Anthropologists have become very interested in bodily experiences, but have tended either to cognitively interpret the experience of others or to privilege their own experiences as a basis for ethnography. I argue that we should instead use our own bodily experiences to intersubjectively recognize those of others, and I propose avenues for doing so

Inequality, Victimhood, and Redress

In relation to inequality, the law is ambivalent. Legal norms can be used to create or formalize differences in a society, but social groups can also use legal norms in their attempts to attenuate inequality. This contribution differentiates three ways in which law can affect structures of inequality: legislation, case law, and law enforcement, and law's discursive forms and legal practices. It focuses on the latter, or what Bourdieu calls 'the force of law', at the level of lived reality. To do so, it examines the apartheid litigations where South African victims of human rights violations turned to U.S. federal courts to seek redress, and shows how, in that pursuit, new forms of inequalities were produced. As the law needs to valuate life, the evaluation of human life poses the danger of producing new disparities. Recourse to the law can, however, also be emancipatory for the injured. Both effects-emancipation from and cementation of inequalities-have societal rather than mere technical causes

The Electricity Crisis in Zambia: blackouts and social stratification in new mining towns

In Zambia, privately-owned copper mines consume more than half of the electrical energy produced. By contrast, only 22% of private households are connected to the national grid. Against this background, the paper analyses energy distribution in Zambia’s Northwestern Province, where new copper mines have opened following the hike in copper prices during the 2000’s. Unlike rural families, residents in the three new urban centres in theory have access to electricity. Since 2015, however, the country suffers from an electricity crisis partly as a result of poor rainfalls in the 2014/2015 season. In a situation of undersupply, the mine keeps unlimited access to electricity which privileges its operations and the housing areas. Daily blackouts for the rest of the town entrench existing inequalities and produce new ones. Based on long-term ethnographic research, the paper examines how electrical infrastructure and the possibility for forms of sociality relate both in the everyday and in the political discourse. I show how unequal electrical infrastructure contributes to the structuring of people into new social classes, and how, consequently, infrastructure is political from the start. By reflecting on the political and social consequences of unequal electricity supply, I provide preliminary thoughts on an energy distribution ethic

Swiss Extractivism: Switzerland's role in Zambia's copper sector

Switzerland is usually not looked upon as a substantial economic actor in Africa. Taking Zambian copper as a case study, we show how important Swiss companies have become in global commodities trade and the services it depends on. While big Swiss trading firms like Glencore and Trafigura have generated increasing scholarly and public interest, a multitude of Swiss companies is involved in logistics and transport of Zambian copper. Swiss extractivism , we argue,­ is a model case for trends in today's global capitalism. We highlight that servicification , a crucial element of African mining regimes today, creates new and more flexible opportunities for international companies to capture value in global production networks. These opportunities partly rely on business-friendly regulation and tax regimes in Northern countries, a fact which makes companies potentially vulnerable to reputation risks and offers opportunities to civil society actors criticizing their role. New and different Swiss-Zambian connections emerge from civil society networks organizing around companies' economic activities

What's in a name?

The women’s march in 1956 to the Union Buildings in Pretoria ended with thirty minutes of complete silence, as part of the protest against the extension of the Apartheid pass laws to women. Lilian Ngoyi initiated this muted half hour. It was a quest for meditating on what kind of society South Africans aspire to live in.http://www.sagw.ch/en/seg/publications/tsantsa.htmlam201