ANTH 3623: Reconciling justice with anthropology (Semester 1,
2026)
May 18, 2026
Main reading:Hussain (2022); Ticktin
(2017)
Other reading:Edmonds (2024); Gusterson
(2017); Harding (2021); Harding
(1991); Pasieka (2017); Pinheiro-Machado and
Scalco (2021)
Agenda for class
The Human Terrain System in Iraq
Khan and his son are considered to be “terrorists,” according to
the Pakistani state (Hussain 2022, 97). Kamran
is a “jihadi” and martyr according to his family (Hussain 2022, 99). These
labels are ethnographic observations. What should an anthropologist do
with them?
Objectivity, neutrality, “fairness”—Should these matter?
Allow me to make a conjecture: Objectivity is not possible for a
human observer, particularly when the observer is observing people like
themselves.
Then, consider that objectivity is a fiction. Social scientists act
“as if” they are natural scientists.
What’s good and what’s bad about this fiction?
What are the “feeling rules” of anthropology? In an era of
political emotion, does anthropology have a special role in teaching
people how to feel?
Gusterson, Hugh. 2017. “From Brexit to Trump: Anthropology and the
Rise of Nationalist Populism.”American Ethnologist 44
(2): 209–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12469.
Harding, Susan. 1991. “Representing Fundamentalism: The Problem of
the Repugnant Cultural Other.”Social Research 58 (2):
373–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970650.
———. 2021. “Getting Things Back to Normal: Populism,
Fundamentalism and Liberal Desire.”Social Anthropology
29 (2): 310–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.13042.
Pasieka, Agnieszka. 2017. “Taking Far-Right Claims Seriously and
Literally: Anthropology and the Study of Right-Wing Radicalism.”Slavic Review 76 (S1): S19–29. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26564942.
Pinheiro-Machado, Rosana, and Lucia Scalco. 2021. “Humanising
Fascists? Nuance as an Anthropological Responsibility.”Social Anthropology 29 (2): 329–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.13048.