- Brazil, Theories of Intimacy, Otherness, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Anthropology of Play, Affect and Emotion, and 15 moreKinship (Anthropology), História e Cultura Afro-Brasileira, Religiões Afro-Brasileiras, Anthropology of political participation, Anthropology, Ethics, Kinship and Relatedness (Anthropology), Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies Philosophy, Cryptocurrencies, Decentralization, Surveillance Studies, Digital Sociality, Securitization, and Security and Surveillanceedit
- I am a Social Anthropologist (PhD 2013, University College London). My ethnographic research to date has focused on t... moreI am a Social Anthropologist (PhD 2013, University College London). My ethnographic research to date has focused on the Israeli, Brazilian and Norwegian societies, with a broad theoretical interest in ritual, kinship, play, paradox, cosmology, risk and morality.
Currently (2022-24) I work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Digital Humanities, Kings College London. My research makes part of a wider ERC research project titled "Surveillance and Moral Communities" (SAMCOM), which is managed by Dr. Vita Peacock (Principal Investigator and Grant Holder). Taking place in London, the fieldwork focuses on individuals, companies and communities concerned with physical safety, information security and practices of monitoring in a range of online ecosystems, including OSINT investigations, blockchain tracking, and the use of shared safety apps on mobile phones.
My previous research also made part of an ERC project titled 'Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons', which was managed by Prof. Bruce Kapferer (PI and Grant Holder) and based at the Department of Anthropology, the University of Bergen (Norway). I focused ethnographically on libertarian social dynamics among Bitcoin aficionados in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Most of my other research projects (2008-13, 2015-17) focused on the Brazilian society. They resulted in multiple publications on religiosity, cosmology, kinship, ritual and politics in contemporary Brazil.edit
In this article we go beyond epidemiological models to make a case for a more holistic approach to the use of face masks as a risk mitigation factor in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that while masking offers a measure of... more
In this article we go beyond epidemiological models to make a case for a more holistic approach to the use of face masks as a risk mitigation factor in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that while masking offers a measure of protection from infection, its moral, political, and affective implications produce two main collateral risks. These are: (1) the heightening of social boundaries, which thus increase the potential of conflict between different social groups; and (2) the impairment of normative interaction rituals followed by a dynamic of distancing, insulation, and social alienation. While we stop short from constructing a hierarchy of risks, we do argue that policy makers should consider these collateral risks as part of any large-scale Covid-19 risk mitigation and communication strategy. We thus provide some principled guidance on how that might be done.
Research Interests:
Relations between play and ritual are notoriously problematic. While play tends to produce doubt, uncertainty and paradox, ritual instead clarifies, authenticates and refines the moral order. Focusing ethnographically on a celebration for... more
Relations between play and ritual are notoriously problematic. While play tends to produce doubt, uncertainty and paradox, ritual instead clarifies, authenticates and refines the moral order. Focusing ethnographically on a celebration for the Divine Holy Spirit (Divino Esp ırito Santo) in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, in this article I nonetheless move away from this common juxtaposition of ritual and play as mutually exclusive conceptual frameworks. I argue that we can instead imagine play and ritual as dynamic, processual experiences, which frequently merge when they are enacted together in highly symbolic public events. Seen in this light, ritual and play do not necessarily differ as rigid, predefined, conceptual frames, but rather as experiences that unfold in different forms: the experiential dynamic of play-scenarios is felt as horizontal deregulation, while the experiential dynamic of rituals converges towards and linear hierarchization. I consequently suggest more broadly that such dynamic terms as 'pulsation', 'intensity' and 'rhythm' better explicate the enduring social effects of public events in which the unequivocal and the ambiguous incessantly reconstitute each other.
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Based on fieldwork with Brazilian neo-Pentecostal pilgrims to the Holy Land and ongoing survey of social media in this article I argue that Brazilian neo-Pentecostals increasingly imagine Brazil as a Promised Land and the Brazilian People... more
Based on fieldwork with Brazilian neo-Pentecostal pilgrims to the Holy Land and ongoing survey of social media in this article I argue that Brazilian neo-Pentecostals increasingly imagine Brazil as a Promised Land and the Brazilian People as the People of God. Here, different substances associated with the Holy Land, the Jewish People and Jesus Christ are used to disperse in Brazil divine power, which is seen to emanate from God. This imaginary seeks to replace the hegemony of the democratic ethos of power in Brazil, which is seen to emanate bottoms-up from the Brazilian People. I associate this process with the conservative wave sweeping through the Brazilian political system and show what a Brazilian political imagination whose spiritual and moral centre is located in Biblical Jerusalem may look like.
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Seeking to uproot evil from people's life, neo-Pentecostal exorcists in Brazil separate between internal and external bodily surfaces and then 'close' the victim's entire body to protect against further malignant intrusion. Based on... more
Seeking to uproot evil from people's life, neo-Pentecostal exorcists in Brazil separate between internal and external bodily surfaces and then 'close' the victim's entire body to protect against further malignant intrusion. Based on fieldwork in Brazil and the analysis of expulsion videos online, I demonstrate that exorcists self-consciously use topological imaginaries of connectedness and disjunction to generate a reality in which demons and humans occupy mutually exclusive ontological domains. I argue that the moral transformation that these rituals encourage is thus contingent on the successful disentanglement of bodily surfaces, which distinguishes inside from outside and humans from demons. I use the term 'moral topology' to analyze this process and call for further cross-cultural attention to the ethnographic vitality of topological imaginaries in the making of cosmological boundaries.
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Published on Allegra Lab Blog as part of a Week Theme on Cryotocurrency and Bitcoin which I edited
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Introduction to Week Theme in the Anthropology Blog Allegra Lab. See full publication here:... more
Introduction to Week Theme in the Anthropology Blog Allegra Lab. See full publication here: https://allegralaboratory.net/bitcoindynamics-the-rhythms-dynamics-and-virtues-of-bitcoin/?fbclid=IwAR3IsAjgOX77acbv-lNA1qyAsHsce72IHuy-cS4Ezp4J2xlkgLQ4feaXH0U
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Paper presented in the Sociology-Anthropology Staff Departmental Seminar at Ben-Gurion University, October 2016. The paper deals with the political imagination in Brazil. It is in Hebrew.
Paper given at the Israeli Anthropological Association (IAA) in June 2015
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Intro to the collected volume "The Dynamic Cosmos" (2022), co-edited by Diana Espirito Santo and Matan Shapiro.
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This article analyses patterns of compliance with COVID-19 regulations in Southwest Norway. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and a series of interviews, we contrast grassroots discourses with the Norwegian government's own emphasis on... more
This article analyses patterns of compliance with COVID-19 regulations in Southwest Norway. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and a series of interviews, we contrast grassroots discourses with the Norwegian government's own emphasis on 'trust' in its risk communication strategies. As opposed to the official claim that Norwegians complied with COVID-19 emergency regulations because they trusted the authorities, the evidence suggests that citizens complied more due to the informal pressure of their peers. Affective reciprocity and moral judgement, including the dynamics of kinship sociability in which they are expressed, here acquire a critical analytical dimension. In dialogue with dominant theories of trust in risk studies, we argue that such relational aspects of everyday life should be taken into consideration as essential factors for any health risk mitigation strategy.
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In this article I explore the fundamental tension in the world of Bitcoin between 'maximalists', who see Bitcoin as a tool for the promotion of a moral revolution, and 'traders', who approach Bitcoin pragmatically as a financial tool.... more
In this article I explore the fundamental tension in the world of Bitcoin between 'maximalists', who see Bitcoin as a tool for the promotion of a moral revolution, and 'traders', who approach Bitcoin pragmatically as a financial tool. Based on ethnography of a crypto gold rush that took place in the Bitcoin Embassy in Tel Aviv, I argue that, despite heuristic distinctions, both of these attitudes advance egalitarian tendencies. While maximalists offer a sense of belonging to a close-knit community of equals, traders promote the nominal equality of all value-making strategies in an open financial environment. I use the terms 'ideational' and 'materialist' to characterize these two modes of practice, which realize contemporary visions of egalitarian life in different forms.
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My Introduction to Don Handelman's new book
Introduction to Special Section in Anthropological Theory. Co-authored with Jens Kreinath.
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Relations between play and ritual are notoriously problematic. While play tends to produce doubt, uncertainty and paradox, ritual instead clarifies, authenticates and refines the moral order. Focusing ethnographically on a celebration for... more
Relations between play and ritual are notoriously problematic. While play tends to produce doubt, uncertainty and paradox, ritual instead clarifies, authenticates and refines the moral order. Focusing ethnographically on a celebration for the Divine Holy Spirit (Divino Esp ırito Santo) in the Brazilian state of Maranh~ ao, in this article I nonetheless move away from this common juxtaposition of ritual and play as mutually exclusive conceptual frameworks. I argue that we can instead imagine play and ritual as dynamic, processual experiences, which frequently merge when they are enacted together in highly symbolic public events. Seen in this light, ritual and play do not necessarily differ as rigid, predefined, conceptual frames, but rather as experiences that unfold in different forms: the experiential dynamic of play-scenarios is felt as horizontal deregulation, while the experiential dynamic of rituals converges towards and linear hierarchization. I consequently suggest more broadly that such dynamic terms as 'pulsation', 'intensity' and 'rhythm' better explicate the enduring social effects of public events in which the unequivocal and the ambiguous incessantly reconstitute each other.
Research Interests: Non-Linear System Social Dynamics & Simulations, Ritual Theory, Play Theory, Social Dynamics, Folklore, Anthropology, Aesthetics, Theories of Play, Games, and Humor, Popular Culture, History of Media and Technology, Narrative Theory, Informal Networks, and 5 moreCosmological Theories (Anthropology), Brazilian Northeast, Maranhão, Culto ao Divino Espírito Santo, and Festa do Divino Espírito Santo
במאמר זה אני טוען כי אנתרופולוגים אינם מתארים עולמות אחרים, ובוודאי אינם מפרשים אותם על מנת לתת להם משמעות. נהפוך הוא: אנתרופולוגים מייצרים עולמות קונספטואליים בעצם האידיוגרפיה של המפגש האתנוגרפי. חשיבותו של הייצוג איננה טמונה לפיכך... more
במאמר זה אני טוען כי אנתרופולוגים אינם מתארים עולמות אחרים, ובוודאי אינם מפרשים אותם על מנת לתת להם משמעות. נהפוך הוא: אנתרופולוגים מייצרים עולמות קונספטואליים בעצם האידיוגרפיה של המפגש האתנוגרפי. חשיבותו של הייצוג איננה טמונה לפיכך ביומרה להעניק לגיטימציה מוסרית לאופני חיים "אחרים"; אדרבא, הייצוג הוא משמעותי רק אם הוא מייצר עולם תוכן אינטלקטואלי ורגשי חדש בעבור מי שצורך את הידע הזה. אני מפתח טענה זו באמצעות סקירה מעמיקה של "היליד היחסי" לוויוויירוס דה קסטרו, אחד הטקסטים המכוננים של המפנה האונטולוגי במדעי החברה. בחלק השני של המאמר אני שוזר עקרונות מתודולוגיים אלו באוטוביוגרפיה האינטלקטואלית שלי על מנת לבקר את הדומיננטיות של הדקונסטרוקציה הפוסטקולוניאלית באקדמיה הישראלית בת זמננו. אני קורא לייצורה של אנתרופולוגיה מקומית פרספקטיביסטית שהולכת מבחינה אנליטית מעבר לעיסוק הפוליטי באי שוויון, כוח, הדרה וכפיפות.
The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian... more
The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian citizens of Israel, we argue that the mundane presence and use of these everyday-cum-security spaces has produced a new civilian sensibility towards securitization, which we call 'routinergency': the naturalization of security emergency as intrinsic to the flow of routine life. We demonstrate that while the privatization of domestic securitization affords reliable protection to every citizen, routinergency also excludes Arab–Palestinians from the ethnonational boundaries that still inform the constitution of collective identities in Israel. Yet, as embodied practice, routinergency also enables access to a universal form of citizenship in Israel, which is premised on socioeconomic criticism of Zionist discourse. We use the topological metaphor of a Mobius strip to discuss how mamad rooms accentuate the contemporary tension in Israel between these ethnonational and neoliberal vectors of citizenship.
Research Interests:
Roberto DaMatta famously argues that in the Brazilian cultural universe stable moral codes buttress familial hierarchy in the house, while situational negotiations underscore egalitarian utopias in the street. In this article, I revise... more
Roberto DaMatta famously argues that in the Brazilian cultural universe stable moral codes buttress familial hierarchy in the house, while situational negotiations underscore egalitarian utopias in the street. In this article, I revise this analytic construct, which a priori assumes that the person of the house and the “individual” of the street are mutually exclusive social categories. Rather than polarize house and street as distinct cultural domains diametrically opposed to one another, I demonstrate ethnographically that houses in the Brazilian state of Maranhão are conceptually continuous with the street to varying degrees. I argue that moral indebtedness in both these domains locally
manifests through the emotional economies of respect (respeito), by which persons/individuals introduce measures of emotional proximity or distance into various types of material exchange relations. Both men and women ultimately channel these types of relations into the space of their family houses, which thus become hubs for the circulation of core social values.
manifests through the emotional economies of respect (respeito), by which persons/individuals introduce measures of emotional proximity or distance into various types of material exchange relations. Both men and women ultimately channel these types of relations into the space of their family houses, which thus become hubs for the circulation of core social values.
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In this article I examine ordinary ethical practices that underpin intimate relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and... more
In this article I examine ordinary ethical practices that underpin intimate
relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and challenge such aspects of emotional relatedness as trust and love. I argue that since a measure of concealment is inherent in both these play-forms, they render invisible those actions that challenge conventional moral injunctions, such as sexual infidelity. I consequently offer an ethnographic theory of ‘invisibility’ by which opacity, uncertainty and paradox become intrinsic to the emergence of intimate relations as ethical practices in their own right.
relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and challenge such aspects of emotional relatedness as trust and love. I argue that since a measure of concealment is inherent in both these play-forms, they render invisible those actions that challenge conventional moral injunctions, such as sexual infidelity. I consequently offer an ethnographic theory of ‘invisibility’ by which opacity, uncertainty and paradox become intrinsic to the emergence of intimate relations as ethical practices in their own right.
Research Interests:
After the establishment in 1682 of a trading company to monopolize commerce between the colony and the metropolis, the Brazilian state of Maranhão has become one of the main slave ports in Latin America. Abolition in May 1888 nonetheless... more
After the establishment in 1682 of a trading company to monopolize commerce between the colony and the metropolis, the Brazilian state of Maranhão has become one of the main slave ports in Latin America. Abolition in May 1888 nonetheless failed to precipitate the collapse of colonial class hierarchies so that throughout the twentieth century a series of local oligarchs continued to cultivate clientelist political systems. Despite institutionalized socioeconomic inequality, however, maranhenses celebrate on a grand popular scale a colossal repertoire of legends, tales and myths. This amounts to a corpus of shared knowledge on the forces that sustain and transform their social universe. In this article, I will focus on the local festival of Bumba meu Boi as preeminent manifestation of this cosmology. Through the analysis of post-abolition sociality in this annual celebration, I argue that in the Tristes Tropiques of Maranhão an infinitely expanding sense of affective egalitarianism is infused with bounded, totalizing and abiding social hierarchies. I thus offer my reading for an ethics of relatedness centred on prevalent imaginaries of play and paradox rather than on clear-cut discriminatory power relations.
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What can we learn about religious diversity in Brazil if we isolate ritual practices from their sociocultural surround? Using vocabulary developed by Don Handelman in his framework of 'ritual in its own right', I discuss this question in... more
What can we learn about religious diversity in Brazil if we isolate ritual practices from their sociocultural surround? Using vocabulary developed by Don Handelman in his framework of 'ritual in its own right', I discuss this question in the context of low-income Northeast Brazil. I demonstrate that Afro-Brazilian possession rites and Christian-Evangelical prayers (oração) transform the lives of the persons who practise them in ways that are intrinsic to their self-organization, internal complexity, and differentiating 'curves'. I consequently argue that these rites are not representations of antagonistic moral prescriptions for good living but rather variations on a single theme of sociality.
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Drawing on ethnographic research in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, this article proposes the concept of the 'intimate event' as a heuristic device in the cross-cultural study of kinship and relatedness. This theoretical construct refers... more
Drawing on ethnographic research in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, this article proposes the concept of the 'intimate event' as a heuristic device in the cross-cultural study of kinship and relatedness. This theoretical construct refers to the retrospective recognition of affective transactions as meaningfully intimate, that recognition being an event which in Maranhão compels ethical reflection. Intimacy can be imagined as an aesthetic of practice that indicates when something simply feels right, and which then frames the correctness of both moral conformity and transgression in affective terms.
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Spirits in Tambor-de-Mina can be seen as a vector of affective connectivity across intra-familial networks of relatedness
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The expansion and normalization of cryptographic money is less dependent on the dollar-equivalent value of different coins and tokens as much as it is contingent on the acceptance of cryptographic tools as mediators of group identity. To... more
The expansion and normalization of cryptographic money is less dependent on the dollar-equivalent value of different coins and tokens as much as it is contingent on the acceptance of cryptographic tools as mediators of group identity. To be more precise, mass adoption is contingent on prevalent imaginaries of decentralization and distribution more than it is about rational cause-effect calculations or economic and financial considerations. We are indeed witnessing an emergence of sort, an opening, a process of crawling legitimization despite encroachment from regulating authorities. It is a process that I call 'cryptogenesis'.
See full publication here: https://www.blockanics.com/2018/11/26/cryptogenesis-the-society-of-the-spectacle-in-the-cryptocurrency-ecosystem/
See full publication here: https://www.blockanics.com/2018/11/26/cryptogenesis-the-society-of-the-spectacle-in-the-cryptocurrency-ecosystem/
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Published as part of a Week Theme in the Anthropology Blog Allegra Lab. See full publication here: https://allegralaboratory.net/hodl-patiently-on-vice-and-virtue-in-the-world-of-bitcoin-bitcoindynamics/
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ברזיל ממשיכה להסתחרר כלפי מטה וכיום לא ברור בכלל אם ומתי המדינה תוכל להשתקם. עם זאת, אנשים הרי ממשיכים לחיות את השגרה שלהם אפילו בזמנים קשים. לכן מעניין לבחון דווקא כיום מה היחס שבין תקווה, כוח פוליטי ושינוי חברתי בברזיל. על מנת לענות על... more
ברזיל ממשיכה להסתחרר כלפי מטה וכיום לא ברור בכלל אם ומתי המדינה תוכל להשתקם. עם זאת, אנשים הרי ממשיכים לחיות את השגרה שלהם אפילו בזמנים קשים. לכן מעניין לבחון דווקא כיום מה היחס שבין תקווה, כוח פוליטי ושינוי חברתי בברזיל. על מנת לענות על שאלה זו חזרתי במהלך הקיץ של 2016 – ממש לאחר הדחתה של דילמה רוסף – לשדה המחקר שלי במדינת מאראניאו (Maranhão) בצפון מזרח ברזיל. עד כה חייתי שם במצטבר כשלוש שנים לצורך מחקרים אנתרופולוגיים על נושאים שונים, רוב הזמן בשכונה נמוכת הכנסה הממוקמת בפרבר של סאו לואיז, עיר הבירה של מאראניאו. על בסיס הביקור האחרון אבקש להראות בכתבה זו כיצד המצב הכלכלי והפוליטי משפיע על הדינמיקה של חיי היומיום בשכונה. אשתמש לשם כך במונח "דמיון פוליטי", כלומר, האופן שבו היררכיות ומערכי כוחות בהווה משפיעים על האופן שבו אנשים מדמיינים כיצד יראה העתיד שלהם. אני טוען כי על מנת להבין את המשחק הפוליטי בברזיל כיום יש צורך להבין שתי נקודות עיקריות ביחס לדמיון הפוליטי המקומי: ראשית, כיצד אנשי-יומיום (שאינם בהכרח פוליטיקאים מקצועיים) מתנהלים בתוך מערכי הכוחות וההיררכיות המרכזיות לעולמם; ושנית, כיצד ההיררכיות הללו מעצבות דפוסים מסוימים של תנועה, הן תנועה ממשית במרחב העירוני והן תנועה קונספטואלית במרחב המדומיין.
An article on the political imagination in Brazil, published on ynet.co.il news site in Hebrew. Full article with pictures here: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4883802,00.html
אני טוען כי תהליך ההדחה של הנשיאה דילמה רוסף בברזיל הוא בעייתי מאוד מבחינה אתית וכמעט מקביל לפוטץ'.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Why I oppose the AAA boycott
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
פורסם בדף הפייסבוק של המחלקה לסוציולוגיה ואנתרופולוגיה באוניברסיטת בן גוריון
https://www.facebook.com/SociologyBGU/?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/SociologyBGU/?fref=ts
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פוסט פייסבוק בתגובה לאירועים הביטוניים בישראל בשבעע של ה-3-10 לאוקטובר 2015
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The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian... more
The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian citizens of Israel, we argue that the mundane presence and use of these everyday-cum-security spaces has produced a new civilian sensibility towards securitization, which we call 'routinergency': the naturalization of security emergency as intrinsic to the flow of routine life. We demonstrate that while the privatization of domestic securitization affords reliable protection to every citizen, routinergency also excludes Arab–Palestinians from the ethnonational boundaries that still inform the constitution of collective identities in Israel. Yet, as embodied practice, routinergency also enables access to a universal form of citizenship in Israel, which is premised on socioeconomic criticism of Zionist discourse. We use the topological metaphor of a Mobius strip to discuss how mamad rooms accentuate the contemporary tension in Israel between these ethnonational and neoliberal vectors of citizenship.
In this Special Section, we offer two different but complementary approaches to this analytical problem. Matan Shapiro focuses on the dynamics of ritualized play, rather than their elementary structures. He elaborates ethnographically... more
In this Special Section, we offer two different but complementary approaches to
this analytical problem. Matan Shapiro focuses on the dynamics of ritualized play,
rather than their elementary structures. He elaborates ethnographically upon the
cosmological theory infused in the relationship between ‘open-end’ and ‘closed-end’
social interactions, as they manifest in the celebration of the Catholic Saint
Divino Espırito Santo in the Brazilian state of Maranh~ao. Jens Kreinath explores
the recursive relations of distinct fragments that allow for the sensory reorganization
of framing a playful ritual in emerging assemblages of human and non-human
agents. He thus lends his ethnographic theory of ‘fractal dynamics’ as a multiscalar
mode of analyzing Arab-Alawite forms of venerating the Saint Hızır in the
Hatay Province of southern Turkey. His theory recognizes the shifting of cosmological
spheres in the interactions with the Saint to be a ritualized play of veneration
and submission by devotees. Both ethnographic vignettes elucidate that the
murky distance between affirmative statements and lewd satire makes these two
forms of social action, in their localized emergent features, mutually-inclusive and
amalgamated social events. In both instances, we thus maintain analytically that
contextual iterations of play and ritual scenarios substitute each other in the formation
of localized collective boundaries that undergird both human and nonhuman
ontological spheres.
this analytical problem. Matan Shapiro focuses on the dynamics of ritualized play,
rather than their elementary structures. He elaborates ethnographically upon the
cosmological theory infused in the relationship between ‘open-end’ and ‘closed-end’
social interactions, as they manifest in the celebration of the Catholic Saint
Divino Espırito Santo in the Brazilian state of Maranh~ao. Jens Kreinath explores
the recursive relations of distinct fragments that allow for the sensory reorganization
of framing a playful ritual in emerging assemblages of human and non-human
agents. He thus lends his ethnographic theory of ‘fractal dynamics’ as a multiscalar
mode of analyzing Arab-Alawite forms of venerating the Saint Hızır in the
Hatay Province of southern Turkey. His theory recognizes the shifting of cosmological
spheres in the interactions with the Saint to be a ritualized play of veneration
and submission by devotees. Both ethnographic vignettes elucidate that the
murky distance between affirmative statements and lewd satire makes these two
forms of social action, in their localized emergent features, mutually-inclusive and
amalgamated social events. In both instances, we thus maintain analytically that
contextual iterations of play and ritual scenarios substitute each other in the formation
of localized collective boundaries that undergird both human and nonhuman
ontological spheres.
Research Interests: Ritual (Anthropology), Ritual Theory, Ritual Studies, Aesthetics of Religion, Folklore, Anthropology, Aesthetics, Theories of Play, Games, and Humor, Popular Culture, History of Media and Technology, Narrative Theory, Informal Networks, and 3 moreRitual Practices, Anthropology of Religion, and Veneration of Saints
In this article I explore the fundamental tension in the world of Bitcoin between ‘maximalists’, who see Bitcoin as a tool for the promotion of a moral revolution, and ‘traders’, who approach Bitcoin pragmatically as a financial tool.... more
In this article I explore the fundamental tension in the world of Bitcoin between ‘maximalists’, who see Bitcoin as a tool for the promotion of a moral revolution, and ‘traders’, who approach Bitcoin pragmatically as a financial tool. Based on ethnography of a crypto gold rush that took place in the Bitcoin Embassy in Tel Aviv, I argue that, despite heuristic distinctions, both of these attitudes advance egalitarian tendencies. While maximalists offer a sense of belonging to a close-knit community of equals, traders promote the nominal equality of all value-making strategies in an open financial environment. I use the terms ‘ideational’ and ‘materialist’ to characterize these two modes of practice, which realize contemporary visions of egalitarian life in different forms.
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Seeking to uproot evil from people’s life, neo-Pentecostal exorcists in Brazil separate between internal and external bodily surfaces and then ‘close’ the victim’s entire body to protect against further malignant intrusion. Based on... more
Seeking to uproot evil from people’s life, neo-Pentecostal exorcists in Brazil separate between internal and external bodily surfaces and then ‘close’ the victim’s entire body to protect against further malignant intrusion. Based on fieldwork in Brazil and the analysis of expulsion videos online, I demonstrate that exorcists self-consciously use topological imaginaries of connectedness and disjunction to generate a reality in which demons and humans occupy mutually exclusive ontological domains. I argue that the moral transformation that these rituals encourage is thus contingent on the successful disentanglement of bodily surfaces, which distinguishes inside from outside and humans from demons. I use the term ‘moral topology’ to analyze this process and call for further cross-cultural attention to the ethnographic vitality of topological imaginaries in the making of cosmological boundaries.
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Abstract After the establishment in 1682 of a trading company to monopolize commerce between the colony and the metropolis, the Brazilian state of Maranhao has become one of the main slave ports in Latin America. Abolition in May 1888... more
Abstract After the establishment in 1682 of a trading company to monopolize commerce between the colony and the metropolis, the Brazilian state of Maranhao has become one of the main slave ports in Latin America. Abolition in May 1888 nonetheless failed to precipitate the collapse of colonial class hierarchies so that throughout the twentieth century a series of local oligarchs continued to cultivate clientelist political systems. Despite institutionalized socioeconomic inequality, however, maranhenses celebrate on a grand popular scale a colossal repertoire of legends, tales and myths. This amounts to a corpus of shared knowledge on the forces that sustain and transform their social universe. In this article, I will focus on the local festival of Bumba meu Boi as preeminent manifestation of this cosmology. Through the analysis of post-abolition sociality in this annual celebration, I argue that in the Tristes Tropiques of Maranhao an infinitely expanding sense of affective egalitarianism is infused with ...
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The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian... more
The Israeli law obliges the construction of bomb shelters as integrated rooms within every residential unit throughout the country. Based on 12 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews with both Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Palestinian citizens of Israel, we argue that the mundane presence and use of these everyday-cum-security spaces has produced a new civilian sensibility towards securitization, which we call ‘ routinergency’: the naturalization of security emergency as intrinsic to the flow of routine life. We demonstrate that while the privatization of domestic securitization affords reliable protection to every citizen, routinergency also excludes Arab–Palestinians from the ethnonational boundaries that still inform the constitution of collective identities in Israel. Yet, as embodied practice, routinergency also enables access to a universal form of citizenship in Israel, which is premised on socioeconomic criticism of Zionist discourse. We use the topological metaphor of a Mob...
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What can we learn about religious diversity in Brazil if we isolate ritual practices from their sociocultural surround? Using vocabulary developed by Don Handelman in his framework of ‘ritual in its own right’, I discuss this question in... more
What can we learn about religious diversity in Brazil if we isolate ritual practices from their sociocultural surround? Using vocabulary developed by Don Handelman in his framework of ‘ritual in its own right’, I discuss this question in the context of low-income Northeast Brazil. I demonstrate that Afro-Brazilian possession rites and Christian-Evangelical prayers (oracao) transform the lives of the persons who practise them in ways that are intrinsic to their self-organization, internal complexity, and differentiating ‘curves’. I consequently argue that these rites are not representations of antagonistic moral prescriptions for good living but rather variations on a single theme of sociality. Courber le social, ou : pourquoi des rituels bresiliens antagoniques sont des variations sur un theme Resume Que peut nous apprendre la diversite religieuse du Bresil si nous isolons les pratiques rituelles de leur contexte socioculturel ? A l'aide du vocabulaire elabore par Don Handleman dans son approche du « rituel en et pour lui-meme », l'auteur discute de cette question dans le contexte des regions defavorisees du Nordeste bresilien. Il demontre que les rites de possession afro-bresiliens et les prieres des chretiens evangeliques (oracao) transforment la vie de ceux qui les pratiquent en fonction de leur organisation interne, de leur complexite et de leur « courbes » de differenciation. En consequence, il avance que ces rites ne sont pas des representations de prescriptions morales antagoniques sur ce qui constitue une bonne vie, mais plutot des variations sur le theme de la vie sociale.
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In this article I examine ordinary ethical practices that underpin intimate relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and... more
In this article I examine ordinary ethical practices that underpin intimate relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and challenge such aspects of emotional relatedness as trust and love. I argue that since a measure of concealment is inherent in both these play-forms, they render invisible those actions that challenge conventional moral injunctions, such as sexual infidelity. I consequently offer an ethnographic theory of ‘invisibility’ by which opacity, uncertainty and paradox become intrinsic to the emergence of intimate relations as ethical practices in their own right.
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Research Interests: Anthropology and Ethnos
Relations between play and ritual are notoriously problematic. While play tends to produce doubt, uncertainty and paradox, ritual instead clarifies, authenticates and refines the moral order. Focusing ethnographically on a celebration for... more
Relations between play and ritual are notoriously problematic. While play tends to produce doubt, uncertainty and paradox, ritual instead clarifies, authenticates and refines the moral order. Focusing ethnographically on a celebration for the Divine Holy Spirit ( Divino Espírito Santo) in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, in this article I nonetheless move away from this common juxtaposition of ritual and play as mutually exclusive conceptual frameworks. I argue that we can instead imagine play and ritual as dynamic, processual experiences, which frequently merge when they are enacted together in highly symbolic public events. Seen in this light, ritual and play do not necessarily differ as rigid, predefined, conceptual frames, but rather as experiences that unfold in different forms: the experiential dynamic of play-scenarios is felt as horizontal deregulation, while the experiential dynamic of rituals converges towards and linear hierarchization. I consequently suggest more broadly...