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On Social Justice: Theory Readings Week 3... Part One

Gupta and Ferguson begin by thinking about anthropology's study of the marginal, of the marginal of the margins. Going back to early anthropology they consider the use of bounded places, such as the Torbriand, to study people in original states. They argue that there is no such thing as original states. That all places are places of contact and exchange. Modernity and globalization has sped the process of contact and exchange. Concern over homogenizing is dismissed with the understanding that great central concepts of what is and how to control what is, is always failing. An affective consideration is in how the elite of any globally connected place are more closely interconnected to one another than they are to the working class in their physical proximity. This is true on a level. Bill Gates can fly in the same manner as the wealthy of India or Arabia. They might visit the same resorts and concern themselves with the same common problems their status brings, similar diseases and similar treatments. At the same time one sees that the wealthy of India may have a kind of understanding of Krishna that is perhaps closer in conception to that of a poor man in Delhi than the wealthy Sheik born in Abu Dabi, or the Pope in the Vatican. Each may fly in a similar jet yet the sense of what that jet means is not structured under the same cosmology as their fellow elites. But these ideas change with contact and that is part of what Gupta and Ferguson are saying. People have always been interconnected and shifting their means for sustaining themselves in the world based on these contacts.

Their critique of colonialism and the role anthropologists play in this project has a number of problems for me and my way of thinking. Durkheim talks about this cultural communication and his concept makes sense. Ideas, genes, technologies etc... these pass among people and bring about some sort of change. They behave like viruses in so much as a technology may come upon an immunity or may show to outward impact. Not all viruses produce a runny nose or warts. Some only impact birds or cats and not humans and yet the human carries the virus. Contact between people or peoples may bring an idea, a technology, a genetic code; and these may not show. The message may have no impact and yet it is being carried and could possibly touch upon conditions that do activate them in an observable way.

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