Week 12: Who is innocent?

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?
Writing clinic

References

Edmonds, Alexander. 2024. “Anthropology and Complicated People.” American Ethnologist 51 (1): 57–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13248.

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.

Hussain, Salman. 2022. “Witnessing “Imperfect Victims”.” American Ethnologist 49 (1): 92–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13054.

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.

Ticktin, Miriam. 2017. “A World Without Innocence.” American Ethnologist 44 (4): 577–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12558.