Articles by Amade M'charek
Social Studies of Science, 2023
What is race? And how does it figure in different scientific practices? To answer these questions... more What is race? And how does it figure in different scientific practices? To answer these questions, I suggest that we need to know race differently. Rather than defining race or looking for one conclusive answer to what it is, I propose methods that are openended, that allow us to follow race around, while remaining curious as to what it is. I suggest that we pursue generous methods. Drawing on empirical examples of forensic identification technologies, I argue that the slipperiness of race-the way race and its politics inexorably shift and change-cannot be fully grasped as an "object multiple." Race, I show, is not race: The same word refers to different phenomena. To grasp this, I introduce the notion of the affinity concept. Drawing on the history of race, along with contemporary work in forensic genetics, the affinity concept helps us articulate the way race indexes three different realities: race as object, race as method, and race as theory. These three different, yet interconnected realities, contribute to race's slipperiness as well as its virulence.
Journal Article, 2000
This article is about population. My aim is to answer the question, what is population? Instead o... more This article is about population. My aim is to answer the question, what is population? Instead of defining it myself or asking geneticists what it is, I want to trace population in genetic practices and to ob- serve how it is embodied in them. Toward this end, I analyze a forensic case. My analysis results in two arguments: first, that geneticists cannot know the individual without a population; second, that in genetic practices neither the individual nor the population is inherently “biological”—both are technologically assisted categories.
prepublication draft-Handbook for the Anthropology of Technology, 2021
Drawing on a study of a recently adjudicated Milica van Doorn case, this chapter offers a discuss... more Drawing on a study of a recently adjudicated Milica van Doorn case, this chapter offers a discussion of the multiple ways racial differences are enacted in forensic and legal practices of identification. This murder and rape case, we suggest, is especially enlightening, as the (unknown) suspect's 'Turkishness' came to be enacted in different ways throughout the criminal investigation. In this chapter, we zoom in on different technologies of enacting the suspect's 'Turkishness', emphasizing in particular technologies ranging from witness reports to familial DNA searching. As such, this chapter contributes to the theorization of the way forensic technologies enact multiple and not necessarily commensurable collectives in the search for an individual suspect. Analyzing these versions of collectives and their mobilization in this case, this contribution zooms in on the multiplicity of difference, challenging the reader to disentangle (racial) classifications in specific practices in order to hold on to their never-quite-settled, never-quite-singular character.
Drawing on a study of a recently adjudicated Milica van Doorn case, this chapter offers a discuss... more Drawing on a study of a recently adjudicated Milica van Doorn case, this chapter offers a discussion of the multiple ways racial differences are enacted in forensic and legal practices of identification. This murder and rape case, we suggest, is especially enlightening, as the (unknown) suspect's 'Turkishness' came to be enacted in different ways throughout the criminal investigation. In this chapter, we zoom in on different technologies of enacting the suspect's 'Turkishness', emphasizing in particular technologies ranging from witness reports to familial DNA searching. As such, this chapter contributes to the theorization of the way forensic technologies enact multiple and not necessarily commensurable collectives in the search for an individual suspect. Analyzing these versions of collectives and their mobilization in this case, this contribution zooms in on the multiplicity of difference, challenging the reader to disentangle (racial) classifications in specific practices in order to hold on to their never-quitesettled, never-quite-singular character. . Twenty-seven long years have gone by between the discovery of her lifeless body in Zaandam and today's trial. That we are here today at all, we learn from the public prosecutor's winding account of the criminal investigation, is somewhat of a technological and legal victory. While there were a few ! 2! cues in the early stages of the research -one witness spoke of a 'singing man with a Turkish appearance' seen in the vicinity of the crime -the slow and tortuous search picked up speed only in 2017 when 133 men of Turkish descent living in the area of the crime in 1992 were asked to cooperate in familial DNA testing. These 133 men were selected based on a previous analysis of the DNA found on Milica's body, which analysis was aimed at the biogeographic ancestry of the unknown suspect. While the suspect, A., did not participate in familial DNA testing, his brother did -leading the police straight to A.'s door. A
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Nature Lim... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Nature Limited. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
Forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) encompasses a set of technologies geared towards inferring externa... more Forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) encompasses a set of technologies geared towards inferring externally visible characteristics from DNA traces found at crime scenes. As such, they are used to generate facial renderings of unknown suspects. First, through the configuration of molecularly inscribed parts, pigmentary traits are assembled into a probabilistic rendition of the face; second, facial features are landscaped from DNA to produce a metrically rendered face; third, by geographically ordering DNA, an unknown suspect is attributed a particular genetic ancestry as to give him a face. We ethnographically examine these FDP practices within and beyond the laboratory to demonstrate how the promise of individuality-namely the face of the suspect-comes with the production of collectives. And it is precisely these collectives that are a matter of concern in the context of crime, as they rapidly become racialized. We show that each of these FDP practices folds in dispa-rate histories-variously implicating the individual and the collective-while giving rise to different versions of race. The "race sorting logic" (Fullwiley in Br J Sociol 66(1):36-45, 2015) displays the tenacity of race in genetics research and its practical applications.
American Anthropologist, 2020
In this introduction to the special section “Encountering the Face, Unraveling Race” we argue tha... more In this introduction to the special section “Encountering the Face, Unraveling Race” we argue that the face deserves more attention from anthropologists, in particular in relation to the current debate on race and science. We first discuss the ways the face has been addressed as an indicator of personhood—that is, a highly individualized and individualizing part of the body. We briefly engage with Levinas and his influential concept of the face as the locus for ethics. We suggest that the face does not always stand in for individuality and an ethical commitment toward the other, but rather forms part of the very categorization of the other as different/same. Here, we embrace the alternative notion of “faciality machine” by Deleuze and Guattari, which indicates a move from ethics to politics, thereby allowing for a practice-oriented analysis of the nexus between face and race.
In this chapter I introduce the non-English word, Harraga, to address the convoluted nature of mi... more In this chapter I introduce the non-English word, Harraga, to address the convoluted nature of migration, death, borders and colonial legacies. My empirical material comes from the south of Tunisia. I draw on practices of migration from Tunisia, the extraction of resources and its effect on the economy of the country, the washing ashore of dead bodies on the southern Tunisian coasts as well as recent European border management in this very part of the country, aimed at stopping migration both from Tunisia and Libya. Harraga ()الحراقة is an Arabic word used in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. It could be translated as those who burn. A pragmatic or accommodating translation would be 'sans papiers', or 'undocumented migrants'. However, harraga is not a word for a group of people, but for an activity. The activity of moving out of the Magreb. Those who engage in harga, 'burn' borders so as to enter European territories, or overstay their visa. Yet folded in the word harraga is much more than activity of leaving for Europe. I will slowly unpack this word and show that 1) Harraga is not about identity (the migrant/the refugee), but an activity, the activity of burning borders and of expanding living space; 2) Harraga is not about burning bridges or leaving histories behind, but about crafting connections and colonial extractions; 3) Harraga problemetizes Europe's borders by siding with those who burn them, human beings.
Science, Technology and Human Values, 2020
The capacity of contemporary forensic genetics has rendered “race” into an interesting tool to pr... more The capacity of contemporary forensic genetics has rendered “race” into an interesting tool to produce clues about the identity of an unknown suspect. Whereas the conventional use of DNA profiling was primarily aimed at the individual suspect, more recently a shift of interest in forensic genetics has taken place, in which the population and the family to whom an unknown suspect allegedly belongs, has moved center-stage. Making inferences about the phenotype or the family relations of this unknown suspect produces suspect populations and families. We discuss the criminal investigation following the Marianne Vaatstra murder case in the Netherlands and the use of forensic (genetic) technologies therein. It is in many ways an interesting case, but in this paper we focus on how race surfaced in science and society. We show that race materializes neither in the technologies used nor in the bodies at stake. Rather, race emerges through a material semiotic relation that surfaces in the translation that occurs as humans and things move across sites. We argue that race is enacted, firstly, in the context of legislation as biology reduced to bodily characteristics; secondly, in the forensic analyses as patterns of absent presence; and, thirdly, in society as a process of phenotypic othering.
American Anthropologist, 2020
The face, just like DNA, is taken to represent a unique individual. This article proposes to move... more The face, just like DNA, is taken to represent a unique individual. This article proposes to move beyond this representational model and to attend to the work that a face can do. I introduce the concept of tentacularity to capture the multiple works accomplished by the face. Drawing on the example of DNA phenotyping, which is used to produce a composite face of an unknown suspect, I first show that this novel technology does not so much produce the face of an individual suspect but that of a suspect population. Second, I demonstrate how the face draws the interest of diverse publics, who with their gaze flesh out its content and contours; the face engages and yields an affective response. I argue that the biologization of appearance by way of the face contributes to the racialization of populations.
Citizenship Studies, 2019
The Mediterranean Sea has become an iconic site in the so-called migration crisis. Thousands of d... more The Mediterranean Sea has become an iconic site in the so-called migration crisis. Thousands of dead bodies have washed up on the southern beaches of Europe. We draw on ethnographic material collected at sites in Italy where the bodies of drowned migrants have been cared for by professionals and volunteers. We argue that while caring for the dead allows them to be identified as persons, it also produces relationships that go beyond formal citizenship. We introduce the notion of forensic care work to analyse the practice of identification and show how it produces a relational citizenship. We follow the movement of bodies from where they are found to examination and burial. We show that this process involves constant tinkering and experimenting with in this specific forensic practice and argue that caring for the dead requires caring for the forensic infrastructure.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2019
This paper examines ways of knowing "the Roma" as a category of people. It attends to mobility an... more This paper examines ways of knowing "the Roma" as a category of people. It attends to mobility and its obstructions, and the ways that coincide with bureaucratic, institutional, and everyday modes of sorting and racializing groups of people. Our case study is situated in Romania. Whereas "the Roma" do not exist as a category in the Romanian national registry of citizens, mainstream public discourses regarding "Roma migration" have significantly proliferated over the past decades. Yet, how do authorities come to know "the Roma" and how do they render groups of citizens into racialized populations? We examine two bureaucratic practices in Romania, the census and the registry of citizens, and show how the latter is enacted through various "technologies of vision." We focus on the category of "the Roma" as a material semiotic configuration enacted by various "data" regarding issues such as territorial segregation, phenotypic appearance, smell, and dialect. Situated at the intersection of Border and Surveillance Studies, Romani Studies, and Science and Technologies Studies, this paper contributes to debates about how "the Roma" are rendered visible in practices of identification and migration management in Europe.
Bergrede Lecture, 12 February , 2019
Preken voor eigen Parochie, de Kleine Komedie, 9 September, 2018
ergens diep in onze genen dat we een overzichtelijke groep willen hebben[; een groep] om mee te j... more ergens diep in onze genen dat we een overzichtelijke groep willen hebben[; een groep] om mee te jagen of een dorpje [mee] te onderhouden. En dat we niet goed in staat zijn om een binding aan te gaan met ons onbekende mensen.'' Dit zijn de woorden van minister Blok van afgelopen juli. Mijn naam, M'charek, is Arabisch en betekent deelnemer. Wij hebben die naam te danken aan het feit dat wij de kunst van het vissen niet verstonden. Het verhaal gaat dat mijn voorouders uit Libanon migreerden en zo'n 200 jaar geleden in het Tunesisch stadje Zarzis aankwamen. Een stadje waarvan de bevolking afhankelijk was van visserij. Tijdens het vissen bleek al gauw dat mijn voorouders daar niks van bakten. Om ze als het ware voor uitsterven te behoeden werd tegen ze gezegd, "kom met ons mee, (charek m3ana), neem deel aan wat wij doen." En zo hebben wij dankzij de hulp van de lokale bevolking geleerd te vissen, werd het zuiden van Tunesië ons thuis, en werden wij (charek m3ana) M'cherik/M'charek.
De Correspondent, 2018
DNA-onderzoek in politieonderzoek wijst soms hele groepen met bepaalde raciale kenmerken onterech... more DNA-onderzoek in politieonderzoek wijst soms hele groepen met bepaalde raciale kenmerken onterecht aan als verdachte. Het is een voorbeeld van de grote rol die erfelijkheidsleer speelt in ons dagelijks leven. Maar in de wetenschap is daar te weinig kritiek op, omdat praten over ‘ras’ er taboe is.
Crime, Media, Culture, 2018
In 1999 a young girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found murdered in a rural area in the Netherland... more In 1999 a young girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found murdered in a rural area in the Netherlands. In 2012 the perpetrator was arrested. Throughout this period and after, the Marianne Vaatstra case never ceased to receive media attention and was part of public debate. How is it that this murder became a high-profile case? We argue for an understanding of the Vaatstra case as a 'fire object'. Law & Singleton's fire metaphor helps to attend to objects as patterns of absences and presences. In the Vaatstra case it is in particular the unknown suspect that figures as a generative absence that brings different versions of the case to presence and to proliferate. In this paper we present four versions of the Vaatstra case that were made present in the media that also differently shape identities of concerned actors, victim, suspect and communities. The unruly topology of fire objects might well explain the high-profileness of such criminal cases.
Tecnoscienza, 2016
The article focuses on circulations and what circulations bring about. It does so by following th... more The article focuses on circulations and what circulations bring about. It does so by following the movements of DNA through different domains of forensic practice. By zooming in on DNA and the role it came to play in the Dutch Marianne Vaatstra case, the paper demonstrates the performative work of circulations and invites to attend empirically to circulations as an object of research. The article is organized along three steps, in which it is argued that: circulations bring about identities; that circulations make context; circulations are permanent and can only be stopped actively. In the analysis, circulation is no longer to be understood as a process of transmission, as a simple movement of people, commodities, or ideas from one place to another. Rather, the conclusion invites to attend to circulation as a performative event. An event that co-shapes not only humans and things as they move through space and time, but also the contexts in which this happen in situated manners.
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Articles by Amade M'charek
Date: Monday, December 16.
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: REC B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
Racism challenges the development of biometric technologies today. To better understand this situation, my historical research explores how these technologies build on older racial research practices. In this talk, I will discuss how the introduction of measurements and statistical methods transformed racial research between 1900-1960. With skull-measuring instruments such as the caliper and statistical formulas, anthropologists and biometricians transformed skulls into data templates and quantified racial research. British biometricians Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant used these metrical approaches to challenge racial dogmas, including Nazi racism. At the same time, I will show how they continued to reproduce old racial biases in their new methods and theories. My research thus reveals how biometric practices were considered objective and reproduced prejudices and assumptions.
About the lecturer
Iris Clever is a PhD Candidate in the UCLA History Department and works on the cultural history of science and bodies. She holds Bachelor and Master’s degrees in History from Utrecht University. Her dissertation examines the relationship between race, data, and biometry in the 19th and 20th century. Iris’s research has been supported by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the American Philosophical Society, the UCLA Department of History, and the E.J. Brandenburg Foundation.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, right-wing populists claim to speak for “the people,” but they often mean people socially defined as white, especially those who see themselves as victims of immigration, demographic change, and egalitarian social policies. In this respect, right-wing populism amounts to a form of “white identity politics.” Many liberals respond by advocating color-blind policies that ignore the social reality of race and racism.
This presentation locates a more promising (but also problematic) response in the recent growth of white antiracist activism. For a growing number of white activists, abolishing whiteness, and race itself, is a worthy long-term goal. But they also recognize that they inevitably benefit from being socially defined as white. Therefore, they seek to take responsibility for the history and effects of racism, not simply as individuals or as human beings, but as white people.
In contrast to those who assume a fixed and homogenous conception of whiteness, these activists seek to politicize white identity. Rather than abolish white identity, they want to reconstruct it. This presentation will examine different kinds of white identity politics, focusing on the critical assessment of emerging forms of white antiracist activism.
About the speaker
Mark B. Brown is professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. He studied at UC Santa Cruz and the University of Göttingen, and he received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Bielefeld University. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), and various publications on the politics of expertise, political representation, climate change, and related topics. He teaches courses on modern and contemporary political theory, democratic theory, and the politics of science, technology, and the environment. His recent research is on James Baldwin and the politics of white identity.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition, the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation.
The psychoanalytic understanding of fantasy is the prime angle through which I try to understand the phantasmatic construction of the figure of the Jew, but also that of the figure of Muslim and how they intertwine in contemporary post-war and post-Socialist Germany. The analysis will show how the processes to maintain and change - what researchers call - "race" takes place in these workshops.
Anna-Esther Younes is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam, as part of Sarah Bracke’s Vici project “EnGendering Europe’s Muslim Question”. As a scholar of race and racialization, Younes is primarily interested in the material as well as psycho-dynamic forces that built and maintain race in our everyday life and institutions. Each year she publishes the Islamophobia country report about Germany, which chronicles the development of anti-Muslim racism since 2015.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition, the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation.
This paper examines welfare encounters between parents and youth care professionals in Amsterdam as an important site where citizenship and belonging are negotiated. We draw on two ethnographic projects that focus on Egyptian migrant parents and their interactions with the welfare state in Amsterdam, and the work of Parent and Child Team professionals in Amsterdam-North, respectively. We found that parents wondered whether they and their children were treated equally and fairly by the professional actors they encountered, and feared they were discriminated against. While Parent and Child Team professionals were reluctant to adopt the generalizing culturalized framing dominant in public discourses, few questioned their ability to provide support to families who occupied considerably different ethnoracial and socioeconomic positions. Professional practices left little space for disagreement or an acknowledgement of possible racialized aspects of their encounters with clients. Our work evidences the elusive, and for parents, haunting presence of race in these welfare encounters.
About the speakers
Anouk de Koning is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Leiden University (per 1 June). While she has previously conducted research in Egypt and Suriname, in the last ten years, her research has focused on negotiations and contestations of belonging in Europe through the lens of the urban landscapes and the welfare state. She leads the 'Reproducing Europe: Migrant Parenting and Contested Citizenship' project (reproducingeurope.nl), and is the author of Global Dreams: Class, Gender and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo (AUC Press, 2009), and, with Rivke Jaffe, of Introducing Urban Anthropology (Routledge, 2016).
Wiebe Ruijtenberg is a PhD candidate at the department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, moving, as of June 1, to the Anthropology Department, Leiden University. As part of the Reproducing Europe project, his research explores how Egyptian migrants parents in Amsterdam deal with the often overwhelming presence of the state in their intimate lives. Wiebe graduated from the Research Master Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam with a thesis on social life in gated communities in Cairo, Egypt.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition, the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Over de problematische terugkeer van ‘ras’ binnen het gebruik van DNA als opsporingsmiddel.
Het is 25 jaar geleden dat de eerste DNA-wetgeving in Nederland werd ingevoerd. In de jaren erna werd in toenemende mate forensisch DNA ingezet als opsporingsmiddel. De wetgeving van 2003 maakte het mogelijk om het 'ras' van onbekende verdachten te bepalen. Nu, 16 jaar later, is het dus de hoogste tijd voor een historisch overzicht van de rol die ‘ras’ speelt in de praktijk. Tijdens dit programma houden wetenschappers, forensisch experts en een politiefunctionaris het gebruik van DNA in de opsporingspraktijk tegen het licht. Ook bevragen zij de relatie van DNA-onderzoek tot racisme, stigmatisering en etnische profilering.
Dit programma is georganiseerd in samenwerking met de seminar serie 'Ir/relevance of race in science and society'. De serie is een initiatief van het Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research en de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
This talk addresses the relationship between the contested terrain of race and the politics of cultural heritage and belonging in post-colonial Europe. Presenting material from my research on Afro-Dutch identity making, I argue that instead of reproducing the dyadic white-majority-black-minority framework, we must situate the negotiation of race in the triangular relationship between the persistent whiteness” of Dutch nationhood, the country’s postcolonial Afro-Caribbean population, and its more recent African postmigrant population. Discussing “African heritage” projects by young Dutch people of Afro-Caribbean and Ghanaian descent respectively, I discern two different critiques of the racialized exclusivity of Dutchness. Struggles for “Black citizenship” seek recognition of African heritage as part of Dutch colonial history and seek to inscribe Blackness into Dutch nationhood; “Afropolitan” celebrations of “being African in the world” not only question the primacy of Dutch national belonging but also resist hegemonic formulations of Blackness. In this “trialogue”, race gets done and undone in intersection with other axes of difference and inequality, including citizenship status, migration trajectory, and African origin. The triadic framework the paper advances not only conveys the complexity of racial dynamics in vernacular heritage making, but also sensitizes to alternative understandings of belonging and alternative sources of critique.
About the lecturer
Marleen de Witte (University of Amsterdam) is a social and cultural anthropologist working on issues of religion and media, globalization, postcolonialism, the senses and the body, race, cultural heritage, and popular culture. She has done ethnographic research in Ghana and the Netherlands and is currently developing a comparative project on Afro-Europe.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition, the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Date: Monday, January 28
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
This paper places dogs into the centre of the politics of the everyday within late colonial and postcolonial Kenya and Zambia, focusing upon how colonial systems of racialisation relied upon the animal to naturalise and legitimise tenuous structures of power. The legacy of this colonial racialisation of dogs continued after Independence through the widespread discourse of - and belief in - ‘racist dogs’. Engagement with the idea of ‘racist dogs’ is the central development in the paper and begins to unpack why dogs are considered racist in certain contexts and what these ‘racist dogs’ can tell us about their owners’ postcolonial positionality.
Bio
Joshua Doble is the Royal Historical Society Marshall Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. He is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Leeds, where he researches the social history of settler colonialism within the context of decolonising territories of Kenya and Zambia. This research examines the intimate relations between white settlers and the African people and environment around them to question what decolonisation means in these pseudo-settler postcolonial territories.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition, the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
This paper takes a distinctive analytical route into the broader Flint water crisis, which began in 2014 when a change in municipal water source caused the city’s population to be exposed to toxic levels of lead. Specifically, it contrasts the disregard for the population with the care taken for the machines at the city’s General Motors engine plant. I argue that the differential protection of nonhuman material integrity of GM’s machines over the nonhuman material integrity of the water pipes and the human bodily integrity of the people of Flint provides a window into racialized biopolitics. In the Flint water crisis, we can see crucial stratification within human and nonhuman categories, stratification that I will argue rests on questions of ownership. The paper follows such disparate nonhuman objects as fiscal bonds, machines, and pipes, to track the intertwined flows of capital, labor, and water. In Flint, the city’s creditors and GM’s machines received quick care, in contrast with the disregard for the vulnerability of the pipes and the population. The protection of finance and machines over pipes and people illustrates the devaluation of groups of humans considered to be surplus in the service of the interests of capital. It also demonstrates the extent to which ideas of emergency, citizenship, and bodily integrity are politically contingent. This small event within the broader ongoing Flint water crisis illustrates a fundamental element of racial disparities in health in the United States: differential protection of nonhuman financial capital and racialized human life.
About the lecturer
Anne Pollock is a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. She is the author of Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference (Duke University Press, 2012) and Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2019). Among other projects, she is currently working on her third book manuscript, which explores race and biopolitics in the 21st century United States.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Ryanne Bleumink, Lisette Jong, Ildikó Zonga Plájás
Date: Monday, July 9
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
This presentation is about ways of knowing how race comes to matter in the practice of police facial composite drawing. Researching technologies of vision in the setting of criminal investigations, we encountered a mundane problem, namely limitations to use visual material collected in the field due to its sensitive nature. In order to advance our analysis of technologies of vision and the production of (visual) differences in the context of facial composite drawing, we developed an experimental film project in collaboration with two of our interlocutors. We produced an experimental setting in which we worked together with the forensic artists. We recorded the process using different technologies, as such producing different materializations of the event: written text, audiotape, film, drawing, sensorial experience. The experimental setting opened up a reflexive space for all participants, albeit not necessarily in the same way. Tinkering with the generated materials allowed us to carefully analyze the enactment and slipperiness of race in practice. This presentation combines written text with experimental montage to address three different practices through which race seems to take shape in the process of making facial composite drawings: 1) haptic vision; 2) layering and surfacing; and 3) overlooking the normal.
About the lecturers
Ryanne Bleumink is a PhD candidate in the RaceFaceID project. She studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and Global Criminology at Utrecht University. In the RaceFaceID project, Ryanne studies forensic identification techniques as they relate to race, focusing on the making and dissemination of facial composites in which a face is “given” to an unknown perpetrator. As part of her research, she conducted fieldwork at the Dutch police.
Lisette Jong studied sociology and anthropology at the University of Amsterdam where she developed an interest in feminist science studies. As a PhD candidate in the RaceFaceID project, her research focuses on how practices of forensic craniofacial identification and reconstruction give faces to unknown individuals. Besides studying skulls, Lisette enjoys teaching and playing roller derby.
Ildikó Zonga Plájás graduated in visual ethnography from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her film Swamp Dialogues — a visual anthropological analysis of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve in Romania — has been screened at more than two dozen international film festivals and was awarded several prizes. Following graduation, Ildikó has been a guest lecturer at Leiden University and she is currently a PhD candidate in the RaceFaceID project.
For more information about the RaceFaceID project see: http://www.race-face-id.eu/
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
http://aissr.uva.nl/content/research-groups/health-care-and-the-body/seminar-series/ir-relevance-of-race-in-science-and-society.html
Jesus said 'Let the dead bury the dead' (Luke 9:60). But, obviously, they cannot. They need the living to do it for them. What strikes the reader of the overwhelming historical and anthropological literature on death and the disposal of the dead is the deep concern that most societies have in taking care of the bodies of the dead. In his monumental book on The Work of the Dead (Princeton 2015) the historian Thomas Laqueur takes as his starting point an anecdote about the Greek Cynic philosopher Diogenes who supposedly has said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In his research on mainly Europe’s cultural history from the Greeks till today Laqueur shows that almost everyone at any point of history does care. In recent ethnographies, such as Eric Mueggler’s Songs for Dear Parents (Chicago 2017) about the Lolopo in Yunnan (China), and Piers Viterbsky’s Living without the Dead (Chicago 2017) about the Sora of Orissa (India), or in Matthew Engelke’s current research on secular humanist funerals in Great Britain, we find a variety of deep societal concerns about taking care of human remains. This scholarship is all about death practices in times of relative peace.
With warfare another concern comes up: the locating of the missing war dead. When peace returns a huge effort is made to locate the dead and give them a proper burial. Identification tags (‘dog tags) have been in common use for more than a century to help identify fallen soldiers. Northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have huge cemeteries for the war dead of the First and the Second World War. Many of them remained unidentified like the 130.000 whose bones one can see through the small lower windows of the alcoves of the Ossuary of Douaumont near Verdun in France, but the effort goes on. The German War Graves Commission still locates 40.000 missing dead a year. There is an overwhelming need in many societies to find the dead which is more recently supported by advances in DNA research in forensic science. This search can have tremendous political consequences like in the aftermath of the Civil War in Spain or in the aftermath of the American War in Vietnam. The politics of finding the dead and dealing with the dead is an important topic in our Religious Diversity Department.
Although questions about the living conditions of refugees who have been forced to migrate are of paramount concern one should not forget the dead. The concern for connecting again with those who have fled from somewhere and have died on the way grows when others have found a place to settle or have not fled at all. This January Tam Ngo and I did fieldwork in Vung Tau (no diacritics). At the time of the victory of the North Vietnamese communists in 1975 it was a sleepy fishing area on the South Vietnamese coast, inhabited largely by Sino-Vietnamese and by Catholics who had fled in 1954 from North Vietnam out of fear for communist atheism. Now it boasts an enormous statue of Christ and a huge number of catholic churches. The Sino-Vietnamese presence is hardly noticeable anymore, since many of them were pushed out around 1978-79 as a result of the growing antagonism between China and Vietnam. Those who wanted to flee from communist rule used the fishing boats of the area. Many perished in the sea. Nowadays one finds not only catholic churches but also a great number of Buddhist shrines for those who died in the sea. They are frequented by relatives who either still live in Vietnam or have made a living abroad. We also interviewed a female North Vietnamese army officer in a village nearby who had become a telepathic medium for reaching and locating fallen soldiers. In Vietnamese society one is struck by the frenzied looking for the dead of all sides.
With people on the move in perilous conditions, like with the Vietnamese boat refugees of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the question becomes what happens with those who do not make it to the safe shore. Amade M’charek, an anthropologist of science at the University of Amsterdam and an expert on forensic research, is currently looking at what happens with the bodies of the migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and are washed ashore. Since 2014 more than 30.000 people have drowned on their flight in the Mediterranean. Given the enormous importance of locating and identifying the dead she and her collaborators have taken an important initiative. I would like to draw your attention to their fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia. Recently they initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery to help realising a dignified cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia). In addition, they are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies. They hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros with a social media campaign. On the following website you will find background information for this initiative: http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French).
Date: Monday, May 28
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
The recent trend towards selective immigration policies is based on the racialization of certain categories of migrants into irretrievably unassimilable Others. In Europe, this trend has materialized largely through the application of integration requirements to the immigration of foreigners, the so-called “civic integration turn”. Based on an analysis of parliamentary debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, this paper asks which migrants are considered likely or unlikely to integrate based on which presumed characteristics. We find that Dutch civic integration policies aim at barring “migrants with poor prospects”. In sharp contrast with a long history of Dutch social policies, politicians deny state responsibility for migrants’ emancipation based on a discursive racialization of these migrants as unassimilable. While class has hitherto been largely ignored in the literature on migration and the politics of belonging, we show that class, intersecting with culture and gender, is key in this process of racialization.
In this seminar, Saskia Bonjour will present the paper: “The “migrant with poor prospects”: racialized intersections of class and culture in Dutch civic integration debates”. The paper is co-authored with Jan Willem Duyvendak.
About the lecturer
Saskia Bonjour is assistant professor in political science. She teaches mostly in the field of gender & politics and intersectionality. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and citizenship in the Netherlands and in Europe. She is especially interested in family migration, civic integration, gender and migration, and Europeanisation.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants, who wash up in the south of Tunisia.
Recently we initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery as to help realize a dignifying cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia).
To this end we will work together with local officials, volunteers and NGOs. In addition, we are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies.
On the website you will find background information for this initiative.
We hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros as soon as possible with a social media campaign. So we need your help.
Your donation is welcome! But we also ask you to spread this fundraising call as widely as possible.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French)
Thank you very much,
On behalf of the board of the DMC Foundation,
Amade M’charek.
Date: Monday, April 23
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
In Cape Town, young men of colour try to escape the dangers of crime and poverty in their neighbourhood, by attending school in the more privileged white suburbs and thereby aspire towards social upward mobility. This escape, however, poses them to different kinds of risks related to gangs, violence and racism. In this talk, I show how the upwardly mobile young men who took part in my longitudinal ethnographic study in Cape Town try to avoid those risks. I argue that they stay safe by changing their ‘colour’ - like chameleons - to adapt to the conditions of their shifting environments. ‘Ghetto chameleons’ perform flexible cultural repertoires, by shifting between Black/Coloured ghetto and White suburb accent, slang, clothes and handshakes. They play with race through their cultural performances, and that enable them to pass as insiders in both places. The practical skill of passing as insider protects them from the dangers of gangs, violence and racism.
About the lecturers
Dr Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard is an anthropologist and criminologist, a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), and an associate professor in sociology at the University of Copenhagen. Her work focuses on the social mechanisms behind violent acts and victimization, cultural explanations for crime, and micro-sociological approaches to violence. She studied behaviour in criminal events through the means of ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa, and offender interviews and CCTV camera observations of robberies in the Netherlands. Currently she is doing research on the role of bystanders in violent events that compares bystander behaviour in robberies and street fights recorded by CCTV cameras in South Africa, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Denmark.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Date: Monday, March 26
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam.
See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
Scrutinizing the recent disproportionate media and political attention provided to the ills of the ‘white working-class’, this article examines the framing of their apparent underachievement in education policy and discourse in post-Brexit vote England. In a political context dominated by anti-immigration and nationalist rhetoric, this article aims to investigate the framing of such underachievement across class, gender and ethnic differentials. To that end, a Critical Frame Analysis was conducted of three policy documents focusing on differences in diagnosis of, and solutions for, ‘white working-class' underachievement. We contend that the political emphasis on redistributive social justice and identity politics introduces a logic that can lead to remedies consistent with the idea of interest-divergence emanating from Critical Race Theory (CRT). The article concludes that transformative reform is lacking and communicated outcomes overly focus on ‘white working-class’ boys as a specific target, obscuring issues common across and specific to other groups.
About the lecturers
Dr. Esther Miedema is a Lecturer in the Governance and Inclusive Development research programme (GID) of the AISSR, co-principal investigator of the 5-year, 11-country 'Her Choice' research programme on early marriage: http://www.her-choice.org/en/ and principal investigator of a comprehensive sexuality education research project in Ethiopia. Her teaching and research are in the field of education, gender, sexuality and international development. She is interested in a) the genealogy of, and interactions between, global, national and local narratives about education, young people and health within sexuality education, and b) the ways in which young women and men contest and subvert gendered norms and violence, and inequalities more broadly.
Kafui Adjogatse is a Research Master’s student in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Warwick in July 2010, with a quantitative dissertation focusing on the differences between socio-economic incentive structures between violent and non-violent crime in the United States. Having spent five years working as a Credit Analyst at Macquarie Bank specialising on Emerging Markets and Tax Structures, he returned to academia in 2016. His research interests include intersectional structures of oppression across ethnicity, class and gender, in addition to international trade and tax systems. He has recently conducted fieldwork in Mexico for a Research Master’s dissertation that investigates the role of the primary school teacher in the (re)production of an ‘anti-black’ Mexican national identity.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Go to webpage seminar series.
In March 2012, a study into sentencing disparities shocked the Dutch Judiciary. Three researchers of the University of Leiden have demonstrated that defendants’ ‘foreign’ or Dutch ‘appearance’, as well as their capacity to speak Dutch, influence judges’ sentencing decisions: defendants who both ‘appear foreign’ and who do not speak Dutch are more likely to be sentenced with a prison sentence than those who both ‘appear’ and speak Dutch (Wermink, de Keijser and Schuyt 2012). Several actors in both politics and media quickly made up their minds: the judiciary may promise to treat like cases alike, yet the data clearly suggested that the members of the judiciary are at least somewhat affected by discriminatory stereotypes. Judges themselves, however, were rather piqued. Two judges replied to the study’s findings in the Dutch Jurist’s Magazine, where they wonder whether the researchers have ‘any idea’ as to how judges decide on actual cases.
I want to show that this controversy pivots on two different conceptions of what it means to treat like cases alike. Starting with the recognition that research methods are best conceived of as performative, rather than simple representational devices, this lecture takes up the challenge raised by these judges (and others like them), in that it wants to zoom in on the way the Leiden researchers have conceptualized and enacted similarities and differences between cases in their methodological approach to sentencing. It pays particular attention to the way national and phenotypical measures of differences between individual defendants are uneasily and precariously linked to generate a measure of their ‘foreignness’. However, this lecture will also seek to contrast the researchers' modes of doing difference with judges' own, more narrative understanding of individual cases. In these narrative practice of case-making, ethnic or racial modes of making differences are, for understandable reasons, conspicuously absent. As such, this lecture aims to attend for the specific ways our worlds are made and ordered by different kinds of expert and made amenable to specific questions and interventions.
About the lecturer
Irene van Oorschot is a post-doctoral researcher in the RaceFaceID project (principal investigator: Prof. Amade M’charek) with interests in pragmatist philosophy, ethnography, the study of law, bureaucracy and expert knowledges, and feminist and queer theorizing. Her previous work— her dissertation Ways of Case-Making, to be defended on February 2, 2018 - addressed local epistemic practices in a Dutch criminal court and focused in particular on the role of the case file in mediating these practices. Within the RaceFaceID project, she concentrates on how differences between individuals and populations come to matter at the intersection of legal modes and scientific/forensic modes of knowledge-making.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.
Proceed with caution! ‘Ethnicity’ in health research, policy, and care in the Netherlands
Date: Monday, September 25
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
In European health policy and research policy, the ‘inclusion paradigm’ in health research and care is gaining momentum. This inclusion paradigm is based on the notion that health inequalities are amplified when healthcare and research fail to address the needs of populations and individuals who are physically and culturally different from the male white ‘standard’ in medical research and care. In order to combat such inequalities, ‘inclusive’ European policies in the areas of healthcare and research thus call for the greater inclusion of diversity pertaining to ethnicity, race, sex, gender, sexuality, and age in health care and research. As a consequence, the specific research field of Ethnicity and Health is developing in Europe, and ethnicity is being included in health research and care more frequently. Critical scholarship on the use of ethnicity and race in health research, care, and policy, however, indicates that the manner in which race and ethnicity are included and constructed in these fields might actually be intertwined with and contribute to the very societal dynamics which in fact produce larger societal notions of difference and sameness which underlie some of these societal and health inequalities. During this lecture I will explore the case of the Netherlands, to discuss how scientific knowledge and facts about ethnicity related to health are produced through research practices, and what the consequences might be of the production of this ‘knowledge’ and of these ‘facts’.
About the lecturer
Alana Helberg-Proctor is a researcher at the University of Amsterdam and an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University. Her research interests include analysis of the use of ethnicity and race in scientific research, health policy and care. Alana obtained her PhD degree from the Department of Health, Ethics, and Society at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences in 2017. Her thesis is entitled (Un)Doing Ethnicity: Analyses of the socio-scientific production of ‘ethnicity’ in health research in the Netherlands.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Go to webpage seminar series.
Forthcoming events
November 6 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
December 18 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
January 22 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
March 5 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
April 16 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
May 28 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
Race, Belonging, and Knowledge Production After DNA
Date: Thursday, June 22
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Room B2.08, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
This paper asks: how do participants in genetic ancestry research remake the meaning of DNA when they repurpose their data to speak less to researcher’s questions and more to their own? It examines how Lemba South Africans used both the fact of their participation in genetic studies that imagined them as "black Jews" and the studies' published results as evidence in their claims on the South African state. It argues that geneticists’ research intentions and interpretations of data are only the beginning of the meaning of genetic ancestry. It considers former research subjects as primary producers of genetic knowledge through their interpretations of their own genetic data, and it develops the concept “genetic afterlives” to theorize this knowledge production. By tracing how Lemba people invoked DNA to mediate their relationship to Jewish diaspora and African indigeneity, this paper suggests that these genetic afterlives can spark a rethinking of what constitutes genetic knowledge, who produces it, and for what reasons.
About the lecturer
Noah Tamarkin is an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at the Ohio State University and a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. He received his PhD in Anthropology with a parenthetical notation in Feminist Studies from University of California Santa Cruz in 2011. He was the inaugural predoctoral fellow in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College and has also held a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Humanities Forum. His book manuscript in progress, Genetic Afterlives: Evidencing Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa, examines the politics of race, religion, and recognition among Lemba South Africans leading up to and in the aftermath of their participation in genetic tests that aimed to demonstrate their links to Jews. His new research, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Ohio State University’s Criminal Justice Research Center, examines the introduction and implementation of legislation to expand South Africa’s national criminal DNA database. This project considers the social, cultural, and political implications of genomics as it emerges as a global technology of governance and as a form of postcolonial development. His articles include “Religion as Race, Recognition as Democracy: Lemba ‘Black Jews’ In South Africa,” published in 2011 in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and “Genetic Diaspora: Producing Knowledge of Genes and Jews in Rural South Africa,” published in 2014 in Cultural Anthropology, reprinted in Déjá Lu in 2016, and recipient of the 2015 American Anthropological Association General Anthropology Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship. His research has also appeared in The Routledge Handbook of Global Citizenship Studies and Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies and is forthcoming in Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
In this lecture, I will delve into my recent book "White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race" (Wekker 2016), which is an ethnography of dominant Dutch self – representation. After a general introduction to the main concepts and understandings I use, I will highlight two topics. First, I will address manifestations of “everyday racism” in the Netherlands in the popular - cultural sphere and , second, I will pay attention to White innocence in the academy. The dominant Dutch sense of self is characterized by the centrality of a (mostly) silent, but self-flattering conception of whiteness and race has, by dominant consensus, been declared missing in action in The Netherlands: "we do not do race".
About the lecturer
Gloria Wekker is emeritus Professor in Gender Studies, Faculty of the Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. A social and cultural anthropologist, she specializes in Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, African- American and Caribbean Studies.
Some of her major publications include The Politics of Passion; Women´s sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (Columbia University Press, 2006), for which she won the Ruth Benedict Prize of American Anthropological Association in 2007. Her last book is White Innocence; Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, which was published in April 2016 by Duke University Press.
She has recently served on two committees that made proposals to restructure the University of Amsterdam, after the Occupation of the Maagdenhuis: The committee on Democratization and Decentralization (D &D) and she was the chair of the Diversity committee.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Andrew Irving is Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His research areas include sensory perception, time, illness, death, urban anthropology and experimental methods, film and multi-media. Recent books include Whose Cosmopolitanism? Critical Cosmopolitanisms, Relationalities and Discontents, (2014 with Nina Glick-Schiller. Berghahn Press); Beyond Text: Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology, (2016 with Rupert Cox and Christopher Wright. ManchesterUniversity Press), The Art of Life and Death (2016: Hau Monographs: University of Chicago), and Anthropology and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds (2017 with Sarah Pink, Juan Salazar and Johannes Sjoberg. Bloomsbury).
Recent media works include Wandering Scholars: Or How to Get in Touch with Strangers: Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, Vienna (2016); Live Edition: Plataforma Gallery, Bogota, Colombia (2015), and the playThe Man Who Almost Killed Himself (2014) in collaboration with Josh Azouz and Don Boyd, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, BBC Arts and Odeon Cinemas.
Date: Monday, February 6
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
One of the central features of actuarial knowledge and its application is the establishment of classifications. These classifications are needed to price risks, to manage costs, and they offer a language for the identification of new products for new markets. These classifications are technical and necessary for the establishment of risk at an aggregate level and they are simultaneously moralising.
In South Africa, these classifications are heavily saturated with concerns about racial inequality, especially so since the end of apartheid in 1994. This is evident in a) the establishment of racial quota and other policies that should make South Africa’s financial sector more inclusive; and b) the precariousness of racial classification for market segmentation and risk analysis.
In this talk, Erik Bähre examines how and when these racial categories are established and avoided. He explores how these classifications are contested and what these contestations reveal about the positionality of the insurance sector in South African society, especially so vis-à-vis the state and African clients.
The study is based on interviews with actuaries and other professionals involved in the insurance sector, an online survey among actuaries, fieldwork and a neighbourhood survey in the townships of Cape Town, and the analysis of public debates and policy documents.
About the lecturer
Dr. Erik Bähre is Associate Professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University. He is an economic anthropologist specialised in South Africa. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork, as well as conducted surveys, in the townships and squatter settlements of Cape Town. His main research interest is how dramatic economic changes affect social relations, and particularly why they cause particular tensions within households, among kin and neighbours. He has done research on financial mutuals among neighbours and migrants, on the provision of commercial insurances, social grants, and entrepreneurship.
Currently, Erik Bähre is doing research on the morality of life insurances in a five year project in five different countries within the research project ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance to examine the morality of life insurance’. For this project he has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
April 3: ir/relevance of race seminar with professor Gloria Wekker
1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure;
2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and
3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research?
Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
Each of the panels in this chapter focuses on DNA and its relation to race and the female body. In each subsequent panel we will zoom in further on the crucial role of gender in the production of race. The first panel sketches the use of DNA in “root-seeking practices” (Nelson 2008). In this panel I show how the attempt to restore genealogies comes with the price of fixating African-ness and representing an archaic image thereof. The second panel takes us to the field of population genetics and drafts the genetic out-of-Africa story, also called the Mitochondrial Eve theory. Starting with a seminal paper published in 1987, I examine how it un/doesrace by situating it in a longer history of racial science and attend to the crucial role of gender therein. The third panel zooms further in on genetics, focusing on one key technology, a DNA reference sequence, on which all research discussed here is based. Unraveling the history of the sequence shows how it folds in itself histories of race and racism, as well as misogyny, such as the history of Henrietta Lacks.
1. Why clinical research needs to take diversity as point of departure;
2. What conceptual, practical, ethical and methodological constraints hamper an appropriate consideration of diversity in clinical research; and
3. Which novel strategies can be used to facilitate more systematic attention for diversity in clinical research?
Our approach was multidisciplinary, and involved clinicians, epidemiologists, ethicists, sociologists and anthropologists. Jointly we wrote six reviews, exploring these questions from different angles. One of our first tasks was to agree on a definition of clinical research. We defined clinical research broadly as exploratory research on the aetiology of diseases and on health perceptions, and observational (quantitative and qualitative) or experimental research on the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of diseases. The assumption underlying the project was that diversity by age, sex and ethnicity in health and health outcomes is not sufficiently acknowledged in clinical research. However, in the course of the project, we found that many other dimensions of diversity exist and might need to be considered for clinical research to be relevant to health and health outcomes in different populations and individuals.
dat beetje speeksel dat
iemand opstuurt en de
enorme waarde die het
heeft voor commerciële
DNA-banken.
Honderden verdronken vluchtelingen zijn daar de afgelopen jaren aangespoeld. M’charek woont sinds haar elfde in Nederland maar is in deze streek geboren en getogen. Zij helpt en steunt de vissers van Zarzis die zich bekommeren om de zielloze lichamen die ze vinden in de zee en op het strand. Omdat de autoriteiten de dode vluchtelingen niet willen begraven, hebben de vissers een eigen provisorische begraafplaats aangelegd waar de lichamen een liefdevol maar anoniem graf krijgen.
ZEMBLA onderzoekt in Tunesië de gevolgen van Fort Europa en volgt M’charek en de vissers in hun strijd om de anonieme vluchtelingen een naam te geven.
Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery
In Tunesië spoelen ieder jaar de lijken aan van verdronken migranten. De stroming drijft ze naar de stranden van het stadje Zarzis. De aangespoelde lichamen worden niet geregistreerd, niet gedocumenteerd en door vrijwilligers provisorisch begraven.
De hoofdpersoon in onze uitzending, antropoloog en expert forensisch onderzoek Amade M’charek, is voorzitter van Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery. De stichting zet zich in voor de aanleg van een verantwoorde begraafplaats voor verdronken migranten in Zarzis.
Lees meer op de website van Stichting DMC https://www.stichting-dmc.nl/nl/
Speakers: Sébastien Chauvin, Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Darshan Vigneswaran, Hernan del Valle (MSF, Amsterdam, and Saskia Bonjour – not present, but with a textual contribution below: Amade M’charek (Anthropology, UvA)
PDF can also be downloaded here: http://dare.uva.nl/record/382724
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention tot this fundraising campaign aimed at building a cemetery for burying drowned migrants who wash up in the south of Tunisia.
Recently we initiated the foundation Stichting Drowned Migrant Cemetery as to help realising a dignifying cemetery for drowned migrants in the town of Zarzis (South Tunisia).
To this end we will work together with local officials, volunteers and NGOs. In addition, we are in conversation with international NGOs to start a process of registration and documentation of these bodies.
On the website you will find background information for this initiative.
We hope to collect the necessary 40,000 euros as soon as possible with a social media campaign. So we need your help.
Your donation is welcome! But we also ask you to spread this fundraising call as widely as possible.
http://stichting-dmc.nl/ (in Dutch, English and French)
Thank you very much,
On behalf of the board of the DMC Foundation,
Amade M’charek.