cally describes 3 lived Isla~li that is cornpltx, \vith its 0u.n aesthetic pohver, plv\.iding a d... more cally describes 3 lived Isla~li that is cornpltx, \vith its 0u.n aesthetic pohver, plv\.iding a dramatic contrast to the depictions o f ?vllnsli~ns that we read today alllost daily in the press. It is the kind of book that \w need to teach right IIOIV. REED. ADAM.
This dossier article contains four short and varied contributions from activists and other servic... more This dossier article contains four short and varied contributions from activists and other service and healthcare providers who have been agitating and working on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS in Ireland since the early 1980s. The dossier contains: (1) a history, by Bill Foley, of the early collective efforts of a group of gay men to provoke government action and healthcare under the umbrella of Gay Health Action (GHA) (2) a speech delivered by Dr. Erin Nugent to government officials on the re-branding of HIV Ireland in 2015; (3) a brief history, recounted by Noel Donnellan, of ACT UP Dublin since it was revitalized in 2016 by a small cohort of dedicated activists from a dormant group into a vibrant collective that has achieved great legislative change with regards to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); and (4) a polemic, written by Thomas Strong, on living with HIV as a queer man in Ireland that demonstrates the ways in which HIV stigma not only thrives in but molds and shapes twenty-first-century gay men's communities, both in real life and online.
In 2018, the Irish public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which s... more In 2018, the Irish public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which since 1983 banned abortion in the country. While this was a watershed moment in Irish history, it was not unconnected to wider discussions now taking place around the world concerning gender, reproductive rights, the future of religion, Church-State relationships, democracy and social movements. With this Forum, we want to prompt some anthropological interpretations of Ireland's repeal of the Eighth Amendment as a matter concerning not only reproductive rights, but also questions of life and death, faith and shame, women and men, state power and individual liberty, and more. We also ask what this event might mean (if anything) for other societies dealing with similar issues?
On the night of December 1, 1982, a surgical team in Salt Lake City implanted a plastic pump in t... more On the night of December 1, 1982, a surgical team in Salt Lake City implanted a plastic pump in the chest of 61 year old Barney Clark. The operation lasted nine hours; it was not without complications. It was the first time in history that a human being had been implanted with an "artificial heart" intended as a permanent replacement for his "real" heart. Clark died 112 days later on the night of March 23, 1983: his circulatory system had collapsed. Now, over a decade later, research on the artificial heart has also collapsed.
Though comparisons between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are of limited use, many people experience the epid... more Though comparisons between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are of limited use, many people experience the epidemics simultaneously. For those of us living with HIV, every comment on COVID-19 becomes a fretful allegory of HIV, and the ethical lessons that COVID-19 teaches will inevitably be brought to bear on how we understand the meaning of the HIV epidemic, especially as it pertains to sexuality. This essay describes some of the ways gay men in Dublin, Ireland, reasoned about the ethics of sex during lockdown.
Page 1. masculinity motherhood and mockery Eric Kline Psychoanalyzing Culture and the latmul Nave... more Page 1. masculinity motherhood and mockery Eric Kline Psychoanalyzing Culture and the latmul Naven Rite in New Guinea Page 2. Page 3. Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery Page 4. Page 5. Masculinity, Motherhood, and ...
This essay critically evaluates Judith Butler's recent writings on kinship. In this work, Butler ... more This essay critically evaluates Judith Butler's recent writings on kinship. In this work, Butler challenges the universalist assumptions of psychoanalysis, hoping to lay the analytical groundwork for imagining new forms of familial relationship. Butler examines the way that anthropology and psychoanalysis have constructed the incest taboo as necessitating heteronormative forms of kinship. Butler's critique of kinship, which draws on her theories of subjection, belies her own attachment to a vision of social life occupied primarily by normative institutions, in particular the state. I suggest that new forms of kinship must be understood on their own terms, whether or not they are accorded legitimacy in law or accepted by psychoanalysis. Anthropology's ethnographic practice can emendate an account of subjection and recognition that obsessively looks to institutions and norms even as it criticizes them. keywo rds Kinship, homosexuality, the state, subjection K inship' 1 is definitely back on the anthropological agenda, but did it ever leave? Anthropology seems sometimes eager to proclaim its hallowed topics passé-to 'rethink' itself-only to resurrect those topics later with occasionally self-congratulatory gestures of re-discovery (Faubion 1 996; Weston 2001 :1 47-1 5 2). In what has become something of a conventional narrative, we read that David Schneider's provocative and brilliant critiques were instrumental in displacing formalist and/ or functionalist analyses of 'kinship,' beginning especially in the 1 970s (Carsten 2000; Franklin & McKinnon 2 001). Of course, this displacement, which one might lump together with a turn toward 'interpretation,' 'meaning,' or, indeed, 'culture' (as in, 'A Cultural Account'), was itself displaced by attention to pow er, inequality, and more recently, transnationalism or the global. But 'kinship' is now rediscovered; will 'culture' come back into vogue (Ortner 1 997)? My terminology is
Blood supplies have become indexes of national security and the public good. While blood shortage... more Blood supplies have become indexes of national security and the public good. While blood shortages can provoke anxiety, controversies continue to erupt in many countries over proper donor screening, especially with reference to HIV. This article sketches these dynamics in several global settings, focusing especially on activist efforts by gay men to reform exclusionary blood donor guidelines. The contours of the debate recall familiar conflicts between the putative demands of public health and the rights of individuals in the era of AIDS. However, if gay activists marshal a discourse of individual rights vis-a-vis forms of institutional exclusion, they also seek a broader shift in social and cultural understandings of gay identity. To capture this complex interplay of citizenship and sociality, risk and responsibility, the article introduces the notion of `vital publics' to refer to the peculiar associational form represented by blood supplies. Vital publics are kinds of embodie...
Is bioteclmology t u r n i~~g everyone into Melanesians? 11e question occurred to me as I fi~iish... more Is bioteclmology t u r n i~~g everyone into Melanesians? 11e question occurred to me as I fi~iishcd Sandra Barnford's Ric~loqy Llnt~loo~~c~d, a text that is something of a chimera. %w book pairs paradoxes of postmociern pirentage and other zeitrgcistcapturing reproductive oddities with detailed anah/sis of tlit. sociocultural co~~cepts of the Kamea people of interior Papun New Guinea. Riotechnological c~~terlzriw has both ulsettled and reinscribed key pre~nises that uiderwrite Euro-American ideas, especially thost. premises that Barnford labels "biological," suc11 as the bodily integrity of persons, tlw forward temporality of fife processes, the discreteness of distinct spt~ies, and the boundarv betxlwen the human and the nolhuman. Ba~nford suggests that Kamea concepts reverse these grounding presuppositions, luntit~g that Euro-American ideas, prodded by nettt tcclu~olog~es, may in a sense "catch upf' to Melanesian ones. Barnford has thus contrived an imaginative, iilttersptries text, one that will appeal to multiple audiences, including tl~ose interested in science stuclius, medicine, kinslip, gender, and Melanesia. Each chapter in the v o l~u~~e opens with a vignette describing Euro-American contro~-ersies regarcling biotrclmology, and then segues into etlmagraphic analysis of Kamea social life. Chapter 1 concerns the devdopment of genetically modified organisms and popular fears that these might lead to the inadvertent mixture of genetic material from different species. Kimea, in contrast, constr~lct intergeneratiotul continuity through relatio~~s between p p l e explicitly mediated by the land and especially by its trees and plants. Human being and human bodies ' are not constructed in contrast to "nature" but, rather, through relations cultivated with it. Chapter 2 discusses mix-ups in the use of new reproductive technologies that lead to legal aporias, as when a \\-lute mother gives birth u~wspectt.dlv to black cluldrcn beca~tw of an error in a fertility clinic. Kamea, again in contrast to biological thillking, do not hold that parents share any heritable substa~~ce with their children. In a complex dixussion of the
During the COVID-19 emergency, people around the world are debating concepts like physical distan... more During the COVID-19 emergency, people around the world are debating concepts like physical distancing, lockdown, and sheltering in place. The ethical significance of proximity—that is, closeness or farness as ethical qualities of relations (Strathern 2020)—is thus being newly troubled across a range of habits, practices, and personal relationships. Through five case studies from Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, contributors to this Colloquy shed light on what the hype of the pandemic often conceals: the forms of ethical reflection, reasoning, and conduct fashioned during the pandemic.
This article examines the culture of romantic relationships among gay/bisexual male youth in the ... more This article examines the culture of romantic relationships among gay/bisexual male youth in the Castro District of San Francisco.
cally describes 3 lived Isla~li that is cornpltx, \vith its 0u.n aesthetic pohver, plv\.iding a d... more cally describes 3 lived Isla~li that is cornpltx, \vith its 0u.n aesthetic pohver, plv\.iding a dramatic contrast to the depictions o f ?vllnsli~ns that we read today alllost daily in the press. It is the kind of book that \w need to teach right IIOIV. REED. ADAM.
This dossier article contains four short and varied contributions from activists and other servic... more This dossier article contains four short and varied contributions from activists and other service and healthcare providers who have been agitating and working on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS in Ireland since the early 1980s. The dossier contains: (1) a history, by Bill Foley, of the early collective efforts of a group of gay men to provoke government action and healthcare under the umbrella of Gay Health Action (GHA) (2) a speech delivered by Dr. Erin Nugent to government officials on the re-branding of HIV Ireland in 2015; (3) a brief history, recounted by Noel Donnellan, of ACT UP Dublin since it was revitalized in 2016 by a small cohort of dedicated activists from a dormant group into a vibrant collective that has achieved great legislative change with regards to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP); and (4) a polemic, written by Thomas Strong, on living with HIV as a queer man in Ireland that demonstrates the ways in which HIV stigma not only thrives in but molds and shapes twenty-first-century gay men's communities, both in real life and online.
In 2018, the Irish public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which s... more In 2018, the Irish public voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which since 1983 banned abortion in the country. While this was a watershed moment in Irish history, it was not unconnected to wider discussions now taking place around the world concerning gender, reproductive rights, the future of religion, Church-State relationships, democracy and social movements. With this Forum, we want to prompt some anthropological interpretations of Ireland's repeal of the Eighth Amendment as a matter concerning not only reproductive rights, but also questions of life and death, faith and shame, women and men, state power and individual liberty, and more. We also ask what this event might mean (if anything) for other societies dealing with similar issues?
On the night of December 1, 1982, a surgical team in Salt Lake City implanted a plastic pump in t... more On the night of December 1, 1982, a surgical team in Salt Lake City implanted a plastic pump in the chest of 61 year old Barney Clark. The operation lasted nine hours; it was not without complications. It was the first time in history that a human being had been implanted with an "artificial heart" intended as a permanent replacement for his "real" heart. Clark died 112 days later on the night of March 23, 1983: his circulatory system had collapsed. Now, over a decade later, research on the artificial heart has also collapsed.
Though comparisons between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are of limited use, many people experience the epid... more Though comparisons between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are of limited use, many people experience the epidemics simultaneously. For those of us living with HIV, every comment on COVID-19 becomes a fretful allegory of HIV, and the ethical lessons that COVID-19 teaches will inevitably be brought to bear on how we understand the meaning of the HIV epidemic, especially as it pertains to sexuality. This essay describes some of the ways gay men in Dublin, Ireland, reasoned about the ethics of sex during lockdown.
Page 1. masculinity motherhood and mockery Eric Kline Psychoanalyzing Culture and the latmul Nave... more Page 1. masculinity motherhood and mockery Eric Kline Psychoanalyzing Culture and the latmul Naven Rite in New Guinea Page 2. Page 3. Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery Page 4. Page 5. Masculinity, Motherhood, and ...
This essay critically evaluates Judith Butler's recent writings on kinship. In this work, Butler ... more This essay critically evaluates Judith Butler's recent writings on kinship. In this work, Butler challenges the universalist assumptions of psychoanalysis, hoping to lay the analytical groundwork for imagining new forms of familial relationship. Butler examines the way that anthropology and psychoanalysis have constructed the incest taboo as necessitating heteronormative forms of kinship. Butler's critique of kinship, which draws on her theories of subjection, belies her own attachment to a vision of social life occupied primarily by normative institutions, in particular the state. I suggest that new forms of kinship must be understood on their own terms, whether or not they are accorded legitimacy in law or accepted by psychoanalysis. Anthropology's ethnographic practice can emendate an account of subjection and recognition that obsessively looks to institutions and norms even as it criticizes them. keywo rds Kinship, homosexuality, the state, subjection K inship' 1 is definitely back on the anthropological agenda, but did it ever leave? Anthropology seems sometimes eager to proclaim its hallowed topics passé-to 'rethink' itself-only to resurrect those topics later with occasionally self-congratulatory gestures of re-discovery (Faubion 1 996; Weston 2001 :1 47-1 5 2). In what has become something of a conventional narrative, we read that David Schneider's provocative and brilliant critiques were instrumental in displacing formalist and/ or functionalist analyses of 'kinship,' beginning especially in the 1 970s (Carsten 2000; Franklin & McKinnon 2 001). Of course, this displacement, which one might lump together with a turn toward 'interpretation,' 'meaning,' or, indeed, 'culture' (as in, 'A Cultural Account'), was itself displaced by attention to pow er, inequality, and more recently, transnationalism or the global. But 'kinship' is now rediscovered; will 'culture' come back into vogue (Ortner 1 997)? My terminology is
Blood supplies have become indexes of national security and the public good. While blood shortage... more Blood supplies have become indexes of national security and the public good. While blood shortages can provoke anxiety, controversies continue to erupt in many countries over proper donor screening, especially with reference to HIV. This article sketches these dynamics in several global settings, focusing especially on activist efforts by gay men to reform exclusionary blood donor guidelines. The contours of the debate recall familiar conflicts between the putative demands of public health and the rights of individuals in the era of AIDS. However, if gay activists marshal a discourse of individual rights vis-a-vis forms of institutional exclusion, they also seek a broader shift in social and cultural understandings of gay identity. To capture this complex interplay of citizenship and sociality, risk and responsibility, the article introduces the notion of `vital publics' to refer to the peculiar associational form represented by blood supplies. Vital publics are kinds of embodie...
Is bioteclmology t u r n i~~g everyone into Melanesians? 11e question occurred to me as I fi~iish... more Is bioteclmology t u r n i~~g everyone into Melanesians? 11e question occurred to me as I fi~iishcd Sandra Barnford's Ric~loqy Llnt~loo~~c~d, a text that is something of a chimera. %w book pairs paradoxes of postmociern pirentage and other zeitrgcistcapturing reproductive oddities with detailed anah/sis of tlit. sociocultural co~~cepts of the Kamea people of interior Papun New Guinea. Riotechnological c~~terlzriw has both ulsettled and reinscribed key pre~nises that uiderwrite Euro-American ideas, especially thost. premises that Barnford labels "biological," suc11 as the bodily integrity of persons, tlw forward temporality of fife processes, the discreteness of distinct spt~ies, and the boundarv betxlwen the human and the nolhuman. Ba~nford suggests that Kamea concepts reverse these grounding presuppositions, luntit~g that Euro-American ideas, prodded by nettt tcclu~olog~es, may in a sense "catch upf' to Melanesian ones. Barnford has thus contrived an imaginative, iilttersptries text, one that will appeal to multiple audiences, including tl~ose interested in science stuclius, medicine, kinslip, gender, and Melanesia. Each chapter in the v o l~u~~e opens with a vignette describing Euro-American contro~-ersies regarcling biotrclmology, and then segues into etlmagraphic analysis of Kamea social life. Chapter 1 concerns the devdopment of genetically modified organisms and popular fears that these might lead to the inadvertent mixture of genetic material from different species. Kimea, in contrast, constr~lct intergeneratiotul continuity through relatio~~s between p p l e explicitly mediated by the land and especially by its trees and plants. Human being and human bodies ' are not constructed in contrast to "nature" but, rather, through relations cultivated with it. Chapter 2 discusses mix-ups in the use of new reproductive technologies that lead to legal aporias, as when a \\-lute mother gives birth u~wspectt.dlv to black cluldrcn beca~tw of an error in a fertility clinic. Kamea, again in contrast to biological thillking, do not hold that parents share any heritable substa~~ce with their children. In a complex dixussion of the
During the COVID-19 emergency, people around the world are debating concepts like physical distan... more During the COVID-19 emergency, people around the world are debating concepts like physical distancing, lockdown, and sheltering in place. The ethical significance of proximity—that is, closeness or farness as ethical qualities of relations (Strathern 2020)—is thus being newly troubled across a range of habits, practices, and personal relationships. Through five case studies from Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, contributors to this Colloquy shed light on what the hype of the pandemic often conceals: the forms of ethical reflection, reasoning, and conduct fashioned during the pandemic.
This article examines the culture of romantic relationships among gay/bisexual male youth in the ... more This article examines the culture of romantic relationships among gay/bisexual male youth in the Castro District of San Francisco.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2005
cally describes a lived Islam that is complex, with its own aesthetic power, providing a dra? mat... more cally describes a lived Islam that is complex, with its own aesthetic power, providing a dra? matic contrast to the depictions of Muslims that we read today almost daily in the press. It is the kind of book that we need to teach right now.
"In this talk, Thomas Strong from the National University of Ireland discusses how in the highlan... more "In this talk, Thomas Strong from the National University of Ireland discusses how in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, not all people accept accusations of witchcraft.
Often, witchcraft accusation divides communities by gender, generation, or denomination. But the people, who are often groups of young men, who foment “attacks” on witches are able to draw on powerful forms of “symbolic domination” (like forms of divination, ritualized village courts) in order to quell dissent and threaten those who might be repulsed by or opposed to attacks on the accused. A further consideration is that some kinds of evangelical sermon focus on mystical violence: the threat of witches is preached about in order to bring people into the fold. Other churches are less focused on the “demonic,” and do not therefore promote the idea of witchcraft so centrally. In this context, the social field of witchcraft accusation, mystical violence, and response is divided and complex.
What has to be found are ways to support people in communities who oppose acts of retributive violence against the accused, to find discursive resources that work for them when they oppose these acts and that may empower them to help “stand up” to the crowd that may be demanding a violent attack on a witch.
This podcast is from the landmark Sorcery and witchcraft-related killings conference hosted by the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific’s State, Society and Governance and Melanesia program and the Regulatory Institutions Network on 5-7 June 2013. "
A global debate is underway regarding the application of criminal law to instances of HIV transmi... more A global debate is underway regarding the application of criminal law to instances of HIV transmission. In some settings, existing statutes are used to punish individuals who transmit HIV. In others, states are enacting new HIV-specific laws. Meanwhile, international HIV/AIDS advocacy and human rights organizations issue briefs opposing these measures, even as on-going prosecutions garner headlines. While advocates for the criminalization of HIV transmission seek to punish harmful conduct and thereby deter risk taking, opponents fear that prosecutions will be sought against people already rendered vulnerable to stigma and discrimination, exacerbating inequality and hampering prevention efforts. The debate illustrates points of intersection between discourses of biomedicine and law, exemplifying a contemporary biopolitics of ‘responsibilization.’ However, insofar as opponents of criminalization argue that such measures are at cross purposes with the aims of public health, they reinscribe the biopolitical premises underlying the application of criminal law to HIV infections. Diverse meanings attributed to infection by those infected are thereby narrowed -- or simply lost; as advocates on all sides clamor for attention, the disordered intimacy of infection remains invisible. This paper compares the life story of a man infected with HIV in 2006 in California to the claims and content of a controversial 2006 California Supreme Court Case in which the Court ruled that ‘constructive knowledge’ of HIV risk requires persons who ‘might’ be infected (by virtue of their prior risk behavior) to report this to potential sex partners.
A short trip to Strathern’s Melanesia serves a few purposes. First, if knowledge has different k... more A short trip to Strathern’s Melanesia serves a few purposes. First, if knowledge has different kinds of effects by virtue of (a) the presuppositions which frame it {as in the distinction between 'constitutive' and 'regulative'} and (b) the relational contexts in which it is activated {as in the distinction between the domestic and the political}, we are invited today then to ask similar questions about the unknown, understanding that in many contexts, the unknown is deliberately produced as a precondition of the social.
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Papers by Thomas Strong
Often, witchcraft accusation divides communities by gender, generation, or denomination. But the people, who are often groups of young men, who foment “attacks” on witches are able to draw on powerful forms of “symbolic domination” (like forms of divination, ritualized village courts) in order to quell dissent and threaten those who might be repulsed by or opposed to attacks on the accused. A further consideration is that some kinds of evangelical sermon focus on mystical violence: the threat of witches is preached about in order to bring people into the fold. Other churches are less focused on the “demonic,” and do not therefore promote the idea of witchcraft so centrally. In this context, the social field of witchcraft accusation, mystical violence, and response is divided and complex.
What has to be found are ways to support people in communities who oppose acts of retributive violence against the accused, to find discursive resources that work for them when they oppose these acts and that may empower them to help “stand up” to the crowd that may be demanding a violent attack on a witch.
This podcast is from the landmark Sorcery and witchcraft-related killings conference hosted by the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific’s State, Society and Governance and Melanesia program and the Regulatory Institutions Network on 5-7 June 2013. "