AN102 Anthropology, Text

Anthropology, Text, Filmand Film

& The (Draft
Middle East Syllabus)
Dr
Dr Philip Proudfoot
Philip Proudfoot

This course is designed to encourage students to read anthropological monographs critically and to
consider how anthropology relates to other forms of knowledge generated by social scientists, artists
and filmmakers.

After an introductory week, we will examine three subject areas:

(1) Resistance and Revolt.

(2) Understanding Queer Lives.
(3) Migration, Multiculturalism, and The Other.

Throughout each of these three cycles we will read one monograph, one text, and watch one film
(ethnographic and/or fictional). The text and the monograph are split over the three weeks and youre
encouraged to work your way through them as the course progresses.

There is also a selection of extra material found in the supplementary options, both as written text and
as film. To gather as many insights as possible, all classes will be divided into smaller groups, and its
a good idea to divide the extra reading up amongst yourselves.

Finally, each cycle will introduce some bonus activities which offer a rare chance to engage more
directly with the subjects and places under discussion.

The courses aims and objects are located on the final page of the syllabus.

INTRODUCTION

The term begins by exploring what ethnography is, and what distinguishes ethnography from other
scholarly and artistic approaches and products.

You might, at this point, want to take a quick look over the three monographs introduced later in the
course (in Weeks 2, 5 and 8). This will give you a feel for the writing, and how it is anthropologists
produce their claims to knowledge. Here you will notice that Week 2 deploys an almost novelistic-style
in its field descriptions; week 5 builds theory from individual life histories and week 8 is an exercise in
auto-anthropology (the anthropologist is part of the community being studied).

But all three monographs are not just purely transcribed notes from the field: a range of other
processes are involved, like theoretical interpretation and cross-cultural comparison. So, might this
be what differentiates the output of anthropology from diaries, documentaries, films, photos, and
novels? Is it really just down to the rigour of scholarship?

We will examine the postmodern critique of anthropology a critique that flourished in the 1980s
and 90s by asking some tough questions. Clifford and Marcus (1986) suggest we ought to
conceptualise ethnography like any other text, meaning ethnography has its own stylistic conventions,
tropes, poetics, and rhetorical demands. Drawing attention to these conventions brought into
question anthropologys self-presentation as a more or less neutral scientific discipline. Indeed, in
the tradition following Malinowski (1922), the anthropologists voice was absent, meaning the
authors role in their object choice was obscured from view.

What are the tropes of ethnographic writing? How have these tropes changes through time?

Is the writing culture critique fair?

How can we move beyond the critique? Or should we all just pack up and go home?

Week 1: Introducing Ethnography as a Style of Writing

Essential Reading
Clifford, J. (1983) On Ethnographic Authority, Representations 1(2): 11846.
Marcus, G.E. and D. Cushman (1982) Ethnographies as Texts, Annual Review of Anthropology 11:
2569.

Other Readings
Abu-Lughod, L. (2008).Writing women's worlds: Bedouin stories. University of California Press.

Agar, M. H. (1996). The Professional Stranger: An informal Introduction to Ethnography. Academic

Press.

Clifford, J. and G. Marcus (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1940) The Nuer, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Geertz, C. (1988) Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, Stanford, CA: Stanford

Malinowski, B. (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific, New York: Dutton.

Sperber, D. (1985) Interpretive Ethnography and Theoretical Anthropology, in On Anthropological

Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. University Press

CYCLE 1: RESISTANCE AND REVOLT

In our first cycle, we examine how anthropologists, activists, artists, writers and filmmakers have
variously represented and theorized resistance to power.

First, in Joyriding in Riyadh, we look at the kinds of secret rebellions taking place behind closed (car)
doors, in the dead of night, in the desert, and often away from the states gaze. We will debate the
extent to which disenfranchised Saudi youths are able to reclaim public space by turning the capital
city into a playground for cars. (Drifting video + Vice documentry)

But are these modes of secretive (or indirect) resistance actually best represented as resistance in
the first place? Why do/did anthropologists of the Middle East (in particular) focus so heavily on
everyday resistance? Or what Asef Bayat called, The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary? What
does this focus miss?

Since 2011, protests, public occupations, and the ascendance of populist politics from the left (Corbyn)
and the right (Trump) have dominated news headlines. Many of these global challenges could be
framed as residual aftermaths to the 2008 financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy
movement. Yet despite these moments of radical change, many anthropologists have continued
conducting fieldwork that -- more often than not -- only touches tangentially on dramatic events.
Why?

Indeed, ethnographers have often been accused of only portraying stasis. Is this a problem of
methodology? Or, perhaps, this is because outright revolts are rare fleeting moments, chance
disturbances in otherwise routine fieldwork processes? But how has digital technology changed the
possibility for ethnographies of revolt? Or, maybe, the basis for these rare moments is still actually
best located in our informants day-to-day struggles?

To examine this point, we will look at what happens when scholars turned their attention to the 2011
Arab Uprisings and the waves of war, counter-revolution and defeats that followed.

What are the limits of resisting power? How is counterrevolution lived?

Might other forms of intellectual productions, street art, novels, movies and diaries, actually better
capture these moments of radical break and collapse?

How can we assess this material ethnographically?


Week 2: Resistance and the Politics of Representation

Essential Reading
Menoret, P (2014). Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, And Road Revolt. Cambridge University
Press. [Introduction. Chapters 1 - 2]

Other Readings
Bayat, A. (2013).Life as politics: How ordinary people change the Middle East. Stanford University
Press. [Part 1: The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary. 33 56]

Comaroff, J. (1985). Chs 1-3. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1-77.

Halasa, M., Omareen, Z., & Mahfoud, N. (Eds.). (2014). Syria Speaks: Art and culture from the
frontline. Saqi. [An art collection]

Nash, J. (1992.) Interpreting Social Movements: Bolivian Resistance to Economic Conditions

Imposed By The International Monetary Fund. American Ethnologist. 275-293.

Ong, A. (2010). Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Suny
Press, 2010.

Proudfoot, P. (2015). Red Chinos, Resistance and Masculinities in Crisis. Muftah.Org. Special Issue
On Masculinity. Http://Muftah.Org/Red-Chinos-Resistance-Masculinities-In-Crisis/
#.Vlcvyt8rlwf

Proudfoot, P. (2017). The Smell of Blood: Accumulation by dispossession, resistance and populist
struggle in Syria. City, 120. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2017.1331568

Scott, J. (1985) Weapons of The Weak: Everyday Forms Of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale
University Press. [Chapters: 1, 2, Or 3.]

Scott, J. (1990) Domination and The Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1-107. [Chapter 7]

Tripp, C. (2013). The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. [Chapter 6: Symbolic Forms of Resistance: Art and Power]

Wedeen, L. (2014). Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria. Critical Inquiry (Vol. 39).
Https://Doi.Org/10.1086/671358

Week 3: Recording Violence, Revolt and War

Essential Reading
Menoret, P (2014). Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, And Road Revolt. Cambridge University
Press. [chapters 3, 4]

Essential Text
Yazbek, S. (2012) A Women in The Crossfire: Diaries of The Syrian Revolution. Haus Publishing

Other Readings
Abbas, H. (2011). The Dynamics of the Uprising in Syria. Jadaliyya. Retrieved From Https://
Cmes.Uchicago.Edu/Sites/Cmes.Uchicago.Edu/Files/Uploads/Pre-Readings/Hassan Abbas -
The Dynamics Of The Uprising In Syria (19 October 2011).Pdf

BBC. (2017). Why Is There a War In Syria? Retrieved From http://www.bbc.com/news/world

Middle-East-35806229

Das, V. (Ed.) (1990) Minors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Lan, D. (1985).Guns & rain: guerrillas & spirit mediums in Zimbabwe(No. 38). Univ of California
Press. [Part One: The Operational Zone]

Gilsenan, Michael.Lords of The Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative In An Arab Society. Univ
Of California Press, 1996. [P. 157 250]

Hinnebusch, R. (2012). Syria: From Authoritarian Upgrading To Revolution? International Affairs,

88(1), 95113. Https://Doi.Org/10.1111/J.1468-2346.2012.01059.X

Wedeen, L. (1998). Acting As If: Symbolic Politics and Social Control In Syria. Comparative Studies
In Society And History, 40(3), 503523. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0010417598001388

Week 4: Cultures of Resistance and The Limits of Revolt

Essential Reading
Menoret, P (2014). Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, And Road Revolt. Cambridge University
Press. [chapters: 5 - 6]

Text Text
Yazbek, S. (2012) A Women in The Crossfire: Diaries of The Syrian Revolution. Haus Publishing

Film
Noujaim, J. (Director). (2013).The Square[Motion picture]. Egypt.

Other Media
Bidayyat Collective. (2013). Were coming to slaughter you - - YouTube. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTIGewdmswM

Blaze, The (2017). The Blaze - Virile - YouTube. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UivZrL2znh0

Burnat, E. (Director). (2012).5 broken cameras [Motion picture].

Freedomforeveryone20. (2011). Syrian Revolutionary Dabke - YouTube. Retrieved from https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCS8SsFOBAI

Mashrou Leila. (2017). Mashrou Leila - Roman (Official Music Video) | - YouTube. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF__cpsDmZk

Martinez, E and Ching, S. (Directors). (2016). After Spring [Motion Spring]. UK.

Loach, K. (Director). (1995). Land and Freedom. [Motion picture]. UK.

Pontecorvo, G. (Director). (1969).The Battle of Algiers [Motion picture]. United States: Allied Artists
Corporation.

Al Jazeera. (2015). Aljazeera Arabic: Should We Kill All Alawites? - YouTube. Retrieved from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtNYSUqYHw [subtitled]

Other Readings
Graeber, D. (2009).Direct Action: An Ethnography. AK Press. [Introduction]

Ramadan, A. (2013). From Tahrir to The World: The Camp As A Political Public Space. European
Urban and Regional Studies, 20(1), 145149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776412459863

Van De Sande, M. (2013). The Prefigurative Politics of Tahrir Square-An Alternative Perspective On
The 2011 Revolutions. Res Publica, 19(3), 223239. https://doi.org/10.1007/
s11158-013-9215-9

Bonus Activity

Jenn Durret, a producer and senior editor on The Square will join us for a special screening of another
of her films, After Spring (2016). The film follows two refugee families living in Zaatari camp in
Jordan, the largest camp for Syrian refugees in the Middle East. The film follows the families as they
interact with aid workers struggling to keep the camp running.

Jenn will host a Q&A discussion and describe what its like trying to produce a documentary true to
reality in some incredibly pressing circumstances.

CYCLE 2: UNDERSTANDING QUEER LIVES

In the second cycle, we move from organised and disorganised rebellion, to liberation movements and
identity politics. Specifically, we turn to the scholarly and artistic representation of LGBT+ (Queer)
life.

First, we will discover what orientalism is and how it impacts our ability to think about and represent
other cultures. In particular, we will examine how orientalism remains an ever-present frame that
distorts the work of scholars, writers and filmmakers, especially when they endeavor to describe non-
normative sexualities.

How might anthropologists, and others, help us pick apart dominant ideas like heteronormativity?
(the normalisation of straight world views), or the stereotypes of a uniquely homophobic Middle
East versus a progressive civilised West?

Or, is the Middle East actually homophobic? Certainly, many local LGBT+ activists in the Muslim
world will tell you it is. But how do others, who are not obviously political activists, talk about
themselves and their (sexual) identities?

What does a life history approach like that found in Queer Beirut tell us about fluidity and
difference? Does Merabets hyper-reflexive approach actually help us to understand the lives of
Lebanese gay men?

What might be the source of Arab homophobia? Is it Islam? A colonial history and a neo-colonial
present? Economic underdevelopment? Why did the gay rights movement take hold in Euro-America
and not the global south? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once said, there are no gays in Iran Might he
even be correct?

The postcolonial scholar, Joseph Massad, at least, would agree with president Ahmadinejad. Well
consider the main arguments laid out in Joseph Massads Desiring Arabs and his suggestion that
western discourse is imposing gay identity on non-Western people. Massad is not here arguing that
same-sex desire itself is western but that previously in the Middle East there was a pervasive
bisexuality that preferred to go without naming. But is Assads characterization of a heteronormative
West even, itself, accurate?

Jasbir Puar takes this argument further by identifying how the struggle for gay rights plays a direct
role in Western imperialism with Hillary Clinton even having argued that the United States ought to
militarily intervene in the global south to defend LGBT rights. Israel is also here frequently accused of
playing-up its LGBT+ credentials (pinkwashing) in order to distract attention from its suppression of
Palestinian rights (many of whom we must assume are also queer).

Do gay Muslims need saving?

Week 5: Making and Unmaking Queers

Essential Reading
Merbat, S. (2014). Queer Beirut (1st ed.). University of Texas. [Introduction. Chapters 1 - 3]

Other Readings
Ackroyd, Peter.Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. Random House, 2017

Afary, J. (2009).Sexual politics in modern Iran. Cambridge University Press.

Al-Azm, Sadik Jalal. "Orientalism and Orientalism in reverse."Khamsin8.1981 (1981): 5-26.

Afsaneh, N. (2005). Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties
of Iranian Modernity. Berkeley.

DEmilio, J. (1997). Capitalism and Gay Identity. The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History,
Political Economy, 169178. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004

Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. The History of Sexuality An
Introduction, I, 168. https://doi.org/10.2307/1904618

Gagn, Mathew. "Queer Beirut Online the Participation of Men in Gayromeo. com."Journal of Middle
East Women's Studies8.3 (2012): 113-137

Hennessy, R. (2000). Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. Politics (Vol. 1).
https://doi.org/queer theory; kapitalismus; vergngen

Massad, J. A. (2008). Desiring Arabs. University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 4: Re-Orientating

Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World]

McCormick, J. (2011). Hairy Chest, Will Travel. Journal of Middle East Womens Studies, 7(3), 7197.
https://doi.org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.7.3.71

Michael Segalov. (2015). Being gay in the Islamic State: Men reveal chilling truth about
homosexuality under Isis | The Independent. Retrieved February 5, 2017, from http://
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/being-gay-in-the-islamic-state-men-reveal-
chilling-truth-about-homosexuality-under-isis-10470894.html

Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. 1978.New York: Vintage,1999

Sofian Merbat. (2012). Disavowed Homosexualities in Beirut | Middle East Research and Information
Project. Retrieved February 5, 2017, from http://www.merip.org/mer/mer230/disavowed-
homosexualities-beirut

Ward, J. (2015). Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men. NYU Press. [Chapter 4: Average
Dudes, Casual Encounters: White Homosociality and Heterosexual Authenticity]

Yildiz, A. (2016). Turkish, Dutch, gay and proud: Mapping out the contours of agency in
homonationalist times. Sexualities, 136346071664580. https://doi.org/
10.1177/1363460716645805

Week 6: [Reading Week]

Week 7: Honour, Shame and Same-Sex Desire

Essential Reading
Merbat, S. (2014). Queer Beirut (1st ed.). University of Texas. [Chapters 4 - 6]

Essential Text
Haddad, S. (2016). Guapa. Other Press.

Other Reading
Dunne, B. W. "Homosexuality in the Middle East: An agenda for historical research." Arab Studies
Quarterly(1990): 55-82

Massad, J. A. (2008).Desiring Arabs. University of Chicago Press. Chapters 1,2, and 5.

Puar, J. K. (2005). On Torture: Abu Ghraib.Radical History Review,2005(93), 13-38

Schmidtke, S. (1999). Homoeroticism and homosexuality in Islam: a review article. Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies, 62(2), 260. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0041977X00016700

Whitaker, B. (2011)Unspeakable love: gay and lesbian life in the Middle East. Saqi
Wikan, U. (1984). Shame and honour: A contestable pair.Man, 635-652

Week 8: Do Gay Muslims Need Saving?

Essential Reading:
Merbat, S. (2014). Queer Beirut (1st ed.). University of Texas. [Chapters: 6, 7, 8]

Essential Text
Haddad, S. (2016). Guapa. Other Press.

Film
Fox, E. (Director). (2006).The Bubble [Motion picture]. Israel.

Other Media
Kabreet. (2016). Kabreet - Momken Bokra (Official Video) - YouTube. Retrieved from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3b6cmUJ5r8

KHANSA. (2017). KHAYEF - ZAHZAH X KHANSA - YouTube. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1k1YIyrQOY

Hamed, M. (Director). (2006).Omaret Yakobean [Motion picture]. Egypt.

Sharma, P. (Director). (2007).A Jihad for love [Motion picture]. United States: Halal Films.

Tanaz Eshaghian. (2008). Transexual in Iran (Be Like Others) - YouTube. Retrieved from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHmi3WAieew

This Morning. First gay Muslim married couple reveal abuse since wedding - YouTube. (2017).
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC2BLbDP0kU

Other Readings
Dauvergne, C., & Millbank, J. (2003). Burdened By Proof: How the Australian Refugee Review
Tribunal Has Failed Lesbian And Gay Asylum Seekers. Federal Law Review, 31.

Dutta, A. (2015). Queering Necropolitics across Borders. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies,
21(4), 670673. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3123749

Gaudio, R. P. (2011).Allah made us: Sexual outlaws in an Islamic African city(Vol. 5). John Wiley &
Sons. Chicago

Lewis, R. (2013). Deportable Subjects: Lesbians and Political Asylum. Feminist Formations, 25(2),
174194. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ff/summary/v025/25.2.lewis.html

Morgensen, S. L. (2010). SETTLER HOMONATIONALISM: Theorizing Settler Colonialism within

Queer Modernities. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(12), 105131. https://
doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-015

Puar, J., & Mikdashi, M. (2012). Pinkwatching and pinkwashing: Interpenetration and its
discontents.Jadaliyya, August,9

Ritchie, J. "Pinkwashing, Homonationalism, and IsraelPalestine: The Conceits of Queer Theory and
the Politics of the Ordinary."Antipode47.3 (2015): 616-634

Schulman, S. "Israel and Pinkwashing.."New York Times22 (2011).

Shakhsari, S. (2014). The queer time of death: Temporality, geopolitics, and refugee rights The time of
death: Temporality and refugee rights, 17(8), 999. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460714552261


Bonus Activity

An optional evenings conversation with Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa, and Joseph Aoun (Director
of Lebanese LGBT NGO Helem). This will be your chance to ask direct questions about what queer life
is really like in the Middle East, and how best to represent it.

Cycle 3: Migration, Multiculturalism, and The Other

In our final cycle, well return to some of the questions first asked in week 1 and consider again how
anthropologists are able to contribute to our understanding of cultural difference.

How might scholarly work help negotiate difference in our current climate of a refugee crisis,
European racism, multiculturalism, and the rise of the regressive populisms that threaten vulnerable
lives?

Again, might films and texts actually be a better medium here? Or can anthropological work also join
the fight?

In much early anthropology, the ethnographer was absent, a presumed neutral observer floating
above the nitty-gritty attempting to lock-down and describe cultures as distinct hermetically sealed
units. The (historical) merits of this approach are up for debate but against today's reality of
globalisation and multiculturalism we must, surely, begin to unpick the massive forms of interaction
and flow that characterize our lives.

In Becoming an Arab in London Ramy Aly turns the ethnographic project onto himself and his own
community of Arabs in London, and he does so with the explicit aim of challenging ideas about
ethnic essentialism that assumes without question the existence of a fixed groups with their own
marriage patterns, foods, culture, meeting places, and ways of life.

With Becoming Arab as a spring board, we will look at the different ways in which anthropologists,
and others, have portrayed diasporas as cultural units, either bounded, unbounded, or in a state of
flux.

Diasporas have been defined in relation to the degree of a particular communitys dispersal, the
duration of its settlements, its institutions, and the kinds of emotional sentiment any given
community forms toward its homeland. But perhaps anthropology cautions us against deploying the
term diaspora like some fixed essential characteristic with a series of checkboxes. Should we instead
concentrate efforts on de-substantiating the term and drawing attention to the practices and
processes through which the struggle to bind is actually played out?

When it comes to capturing flux and movement, it has been suggested anthropologists ought not to
remove themselves from the writing, but deal directly their with own presence in the text. Will doing
so help us also learn something about ourselves?

It is probably not a surprise to discover this, but anthropologists do sometimes fall in love (and lust)
with their informants. How might this most charged form of interaction with the other impact our
imaginations of different cultures and the erotic?

Perhaps we might think here through Tayib Salihs Seasons of Migration to the North, a classic
postcolonial novel documenting a Sudanese mans time in England, and his discovery of British sexual
fetishism toward the orient.

What is the best way to capture these varied perspectives on movement, migration and cultural
interaction?

Where do ethnographers, as people also on the move figure into all of this?

And can anthropologists maybe even help the fight back against anti-migrant and anti-refugee
politics?

Week 9: Diaspora

Essential Reading:
Aly, R. M. (2015).Becoming Arab in London: performativity and the undoing of identity. Pluto
Press. [Introduction. Chapters 1 - 3 ]

Other Reading
Barth, F (1969) Introduction, in Fredrik Barth (ed.) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social
Organization of Culture Difference, London: George Allen and Unwin.

Clifford, J (1994) Diasporas, Cultural Anthropology 9(3): 30238.

Cohen, R, and Nicholas V, H.Global diasporas: An introduction. Routledge, 2008.

Gilroy, P (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Gilroy, P. (2013).There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack. Routledge. [Chapter 5: Diaspora, utopia
and the critique of capitalism]

Hall, Stuart (2003 [1990]) Cultural Identity and Diaspora, in Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur
(eds) Theorizing Diaspora, Oxford: Blackwell.

Mullings, Leith. "Interrogating racism: Toward an antiracist anthropology."Annu. Rev. Anthropol.34

(2005): 667-693.

Noble, G., Tabar, P., & Poynting, S. (1998). 'If anyone called me a wog, they wouldn't be speaking to
me alone': protest masculinity and Lebanese youth in western Sydney. Journal of
Interdisciplinary Gender Studies: JIGS,3(2), 76.

Noble, Greg, and Paul Tabar. "On being Lebanese-Australian: hybridity, essentialism and strategy
among Arabic-speaking youth." Arab-Australians today: Citizenship and belonging (2002):
128-144.

Peteet, Julie. "Problematizing a Palestinian diaspora." International Journal of Middle East

Studies39.4 (2007): 627-646.

Week 10: The Other, the Erotic, and Loving Informants

Essential Reading:
Aly, R. M. (2015).Becoming Arab in London: performativity and the undoing of identity. Pluto
Press. [Chapters 3, 4 ]

Essential Text
Salih, T. (1969) Seasons of Migration to the North. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. Heinemann.

Other Readings
Borneman, J. (2007). Syrian episodes: Sons, fathers, and an anthropologist in Aleppo. Princeton
University Press. [Chapter 3]

Hassan, Wail S. "Gender (And) Imperialism: Structures of Masculinity in Tayeb Salihs Season Of
Migration To The North."Men and Masculinities5.3 (2003): 309-324.

Kulick, Don, And Margaret Willson, Eds. Taboo: Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity In
Anthropological Fieldwork. Routledge, 2003
Malinowski, Bronislaw.A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term. Vol. 235. Stanford University Press,
1989.

Markowitz, F. (1999). Sexing the Anthropologist: Implications for Ethnography in Markowitz, F., &
Ashkenazi, M. (Eds.). Sex, Sexuality, And The Anthropologist. University of Illinois Press

Newton, E. (1993). My Best Informant's Dress: The Erotic Equation in Fieldwork. Cultural
Anthropology,8(1), 3-23

Taylor, J. (2007). And You Can Be My Sheikh: Gender, Race, And Orientalism in Contemporary
Romance Novels.The Journal of Popular Culture,40(6), 1032-1051

Wax, M. L. (1972). Tenting with Malinowski.American Sociological Review, 1-13

Week 11: Refugees, Migrants and European Racism

Essential Reading:
Aly, R. M. (2015).Becoming Arab in London: performativity and the undoing of identity. Pluto
Press. [Chapters 5, 6]

Essential Text
Salih, T. (1969) Seasons of Migration to the North. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. Heinemann.

Film
Fassbinder, R. (Director). (1974). Ali: Fear Eats the Soul = Angst essen Seele auf [Motion picture].
Germany.

Other Media
BBC. (2016). Norway: Rape prevention classes for refugees - BBC News - YouTube. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQW8DIrskE

Cuarn, A. (Director). (2006).Children of men [Motion picture].

Mahmoudi, N. (Director). (2016).Parting [Motion picture]. Afghanistan.

Rosi, G. (Director). (2016.).Fire at Sea [Motion picture].

Villeneuve, V. (Director). (2010).Incendies [Motion picture]. Canada. Jordan.

Other Readings
Andersson, R. (2014). Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine migration and the business of bordering
Europe(Vol. 28). Univ of California Press

Anthony Faiola and Stephanie Kirchner. (2016). Germany is trying to teach refugees the right way to
have sex - The Washington Post. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://
www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/13/germany-is-trying-to-teach-
refugees-the-right-way-to-have-sex/?utm_term=.fb30d87c6bd2

Holmes, S. M., & Castaeda, H. (2016). Representing the European refugee crisis in Germany and
beyond: Deservingness and difference, life and death.American Ethnologist,43(1), 12-24.

Mennel, B. C. (2000).Masochistic Fantasy and Racialized Fetish in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali:
Fear Eats the Soul.

And one final bonus activity

A Fieldtrip to Edgware Road and visit to the Mosaic Rooms (http://mosaicrooms.org)

 Aims and Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this term, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and
understanding of:

What ethnographic writing is, how anthropologist make claims, and how these claims relates
to other forms of literature (diaries, novels, blogs) and films (ethnographic documentaries
and mainstream movies)
The problems associated with representation in various mediums
The ethical and epistemological dimensions involved in producing anthropological
representations
The main debates in ethnographic writing and ethnographic methodologies.
A background knowledge toward the key themes in Urban Anthropology; Anthropology in
Arab-Majority Societies; Migration; Queer Ethnography and the Anthropology of Politics.

Subject Specific Intellectual Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to:

Identify, select and evaluate appropriate arguments and evidence from various sources and
present conclusions in an appropriate format
Recognise and formulate social science questions.
Be competent in the use of theoretical perspectives and concepts as they relate to (1) Power
and Resistance; (2) universalism and essentialism; (3) migration and multiculturalism; (4)
self-reflexivity.

Transferable Skills

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to:

Critically evaluate monographs, novels and other texts as both a communication medium and
a research tool within the discipline of anthropology.
Consolidate your critical, evaluation, analytical, and communication skills though a wide
variety of classroom activities (debates, presentations, Q&A and field trips)
Employ research skills to build successful arguments
 LSE Social Anthropology | Prospective AN102 Class Hand Out | Dr Philip Proudfoot
Sample Handouts

Week 2: Resistance and the Politics of Representation

Summary

Much social science has limited its focus on resistance to distinct moments of mass revolt. These moments are
then explained as either irrational occurrences, spontaneous reactions to oppression, or as rational expressions
of reasoned dissent. This week well look instead at how anthropologists have identified and described practices
of resistance in sometimes unexpected places. Cycle Ones monograph, Joyriding in Riyadh, exemplifies this
disciplinary approach which, since the late-1970s, has endeavored to shine light on how individuals everywhere
creatively re-appropriate dominant power structures and crystallise challenges to those in power.

MIA in the Saudi Drifting Inspired Video to Bad Girls. Link

Key Concepts

Power | Resistance | Hegemony | Domination | Marxism | Post-Modernism | Theocracy

Activity

One reason anthropologists have studied day-to-day resistance is due to the emphasis we place on long-term
fieldwork. In other words, its rather difficult to plan for an anthropologist to plan for a revolution. Yet, with the
rise of social media and affordable recording devices theres now a greater possibility for digital ethnography.
Before your session please send me one or two YouTube video links that you think support or refute that: (1)
The Syrian Revolution was a spontaneous mass uprising or (2) Occupy Wall Street was a revolt against
capitalism. On the basis of these videos, well discuss the prospects and limitations of mass recording for
anthropology beyond everyday resistance.

Key Questions

1) How should anthropologists identify the political and the non-political? Is this even possible?

2) Is everyday resistance politically meaningful? Is resistance the right term to use when describing cultural
phenomena encountered by anthropologists?

3) Can you give any examples from your own life experiences where an act which might not appear obviously
about power and domination - ultimately was?

4) How might focusing on everyday resistance lead us to miss other more important transformations in
society? Do you think Joyriding in Riyadh avoids or engages with the repressive Saudi State/Islamism?

5) Menoret claims he is determined to avoid the romances of resistance: what does he mean by that and do
you think he avoids it?

6) What is the difference between drag racers, drifters, and Islamists in Saudi Arabia? How do these
groupings map onto Saudi society at large?

7) How does Menoret use resistance as a diagnostic tool to identify and understand state power in Saudi
Arabia?
 LSE Social Anthropology | Prospective AN102 Class Hand Out | Dr Philip Proudfoot

Week 5: Making and Unmaking Queers

Summary

This weeks lecture examined anthropological approaches to homosexuality and explored how these approaches
have informed ethnographic representation of queer life in Middle Eastern and Islamic Worlds. Muslim
homosexuals remain a source of constant mainstream media fascination. Were told gay Arabs are being thrown
from rooftops by Islamic State; that Iran regularly hangs homosexual men and that even in Britain a recent gay
Muslim wedding resulted in death threats. The Middle East is, in short, sexually repressed and morally
regressive. But, in todays class, we will examine, with reference to Sofian Merabets Queer Beirut, what
anthropology might have to say about homosexual life in these Islamic Worlds.

Le Fumeur de narguil Pierre Et Gilles

Key Concepts

Orientalism | Heteronormativity | Gay International | Queer theory | Life History | Essentialism

Activity

Before class, collect a few articles online from Western newspapers covering queer life in the Middle East and/or
in Islamic Worlds. We will identify and debate their methods of representation displayed in these articles in our
discussions.

Questions

1) Is being gay 'natural or a socially constructed phenomena?

2) How does orientalism impact mainstream (and ethnographic) representations of queer life in the east?

3) Why does Sofian Merabet (Queer Beirut) talk about himself so much?

4) Are the words gay and lesbian suitable for cross-cultural comparison? Should we strive instead to use
terms drawn from the culture under discussion? What are the relative merits of either approach? And what
is Sofian Merabets approach?

5) Why do some of Merabets informants refuse the label gay and why do some accept it? What is the role of
global communication networks in circulating representations of an international gay identity in Beirut?

6) Thinking back to last week, would you say the gay men re-appropriating space in Beirut as queer is best
understood as resistance?

7) Are gay rights Western? Do gay Muslims need saving?

 LSE Social Anthropology | Prospective AN102 Class Hand Out | Dr Philip Proudfoot

Week 10: The Other, The Erotic, and Loving Informants

Summary

This weeks lecture examined exoticism and eroticism in anthropological representations and outlined the roles
sexual subjectivity plays in the production of anthropological knowledge.

In class discussions we will consider what ethnographic insights can be gleaned from Seasons of Migration to
the North. Consider, for example, how quickly Mustafa discovered white British women can be seduced easily
with tales of the snake-charming Orient. Perhaps in light of Malinowskis diary, we ought to assume that
anthropologys early ancestors were likewise seduced? To this we can only speculate, for, as James Clifford
observed, excessive pleasures and desires were (perhaps deliberately) obscured from traditional monographs
(1986: 13). Esther Nugent would add that rather than being obscured traditional anthropology turned white
male heterosexuality into a culturally given and unmarked category (1999: 4). If this is true, how exactly can we
adjust ethnographic representations to account for the erotic and exotic dimensions of fieldwork?

Key Concepts

Colonialism | Post-colonialism | Self-

Reflexivity | Auto-Ethnography |
Epistemology | Objectivism | Exoticism |
Race | Sexuality

Activity

The exoticism described by Tayeb Salih is

alive and well in contemporary London. On
your journeys through the capital this week,
try and snap a few photographs of advertising
you think is deploying sexualized ethnic /
orientalist representation to sell particular
products. In class well discuss these images
and try and identify what ethnic tropes
Malinowski in the field theyre drawing upon.

Questions

1) Should we consider Mustafa or the narrator as anthropologists? Or is is better to frame Seasons of

Migration to the North as a text that can inform broader anthropological speculation?

2) Mustafa and the narrator both travelled to the West, yet they had very different experiences, how can we
compare, contrast or explain these differences?

3) What explains Mustafas various attitudes towards his female British partners and his Sudanese wife? Who
is exploiting who? How might these relations of exploitation emerge in anthropological fieldwork?

4) Compare and contrast how Seasons of Migration to the North and Being an Arab in London explore
sexuality, race, colonialism and orientalism in London.

5) Does participant-observation stop at sex? Is sex in the field unethical? Why? Why not?

6) How do the gender roles and sexualities of anthropologists in their home societies affect the kinds of
sexuality they express in the field? How might the erotic desires of the anthropologist be perceived by the
people with whom she/he does research?

7) If we propose that for an ethnography to be considered good it must reveal the intimate details of our
informants lives i.e., magical formulas, esoteric myths, private experiences, etc. Are sexual relationships
with informants any more exploitative? Why? On the basis of whose taboos? What knowledge might these
relationships produce?