United States

This conversation panel brings together four anthropologists working around issues of voice and voicing, mediation and presence, and regimes of value and truth. Our ethnographic and historical foci include playback singing in Indian popular cinema, glossolalia in Christian South Korea, the labor of characterization in Japanese popular culture, and stenography in early 20th-century Japan. Each of these projects presents a kind of limit case, presenting cultural institutions and forms of cultural semiosis that challenge assumptions of the unified speaking subject, the expressive performer, bounded personhood, and the replicability of voice from one medium to another. In this conversation, we hope to grapple with the models of semiotic circulation at play; the social relations and labor that maintain them in each case; and the forms of personhood, subjectivity, agency, and presence enabled by these varied practices. Together, we hope to consider how semiotically-informed linguistic anthropology can be used more broadly to investigate the varied ways that voices are produced and endowed with power and force. Our conversation will focus on two topics: 1. Semiotic circulation and acts of voicing What models of semiotic circulation (e.g. divine sources; gifts; vessels/conduits; technical notions of fidelity, reproduction, and liveness) are posited in each of these cases, and how are forms of technological and semiotic mediation interacting to support them? How are acts of voicing delegated among different actors or distributed through other technological, sonic and spatio-temporal means? What kinds of values, effects, and risks are associated with the singular embodiment, disembodiment/alienability, or distribution of voice in each of these cases? 2. Ideological frames and structural contradictions Mediation sets up tensions and structural contradictions. Ideals of transparency, direct communication, fidelity, or purity are in tension with both the complex social relations involved, and the sensuous materiality of the signs themselves. What ideological frames (eg. “speech”; “singing”; “transcription”; “acting”) emerge in each case to manage these tensions between various representational/denotational projects and the sensuous/material affordances of signs? How do such ideological frames coexist with the fundamental ambiguity or underdeterminacy that mediation introduces around authorship, agency, and responsibility?

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

Raising Voice: A Conversation on the Structural Contradictions and Affordances of Mediated Voices

semiotics

voice

language

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

panel

Queer and Trans in South Asia: Citizenship, Kinship, and Homonormativity

How can purportedly ‘queer-friendly’ corporations be said to govern gender and sexuality in the global South? And how can our understanding of the relationship between capitalism and sexuality be reconsidered when private organizations, rather than the state, become the most proximate manifestation of power with which individuals and collectivities interact? Moving away from ‘state effect,’ this paper aims to answer the how of corporate governance of gender and sexuality by providing an anatomy of an emergent social movement aiming to promote LGBTQ diversity and inclusion (D&I) in Indian workplaces. Drawing on 16-months of participant observation and semi-formal interviews with D&I advocates in the information technologies industry in Bengaluru, India, this paper utilizes theories of performative economics and critical branding studies to argue that the production of ‘queer value’ is central to being recognized by the sexually ethical corporation. As LGBTQ workplace inclusion becomes increasingly mainstreamed among transnational corporations and international organizations like the World Bank and United Nations, those companies promoting LGBTQ D&I open new channels of recognition, support, funding, and the promise of mobility away from headquarters and across production networks. While geopolitical studies of sexuality, such as homonationalism, instruct us as to how semiotic assemblages can produce places and people as backward, I argue that while sexually ethical corporation similarly maps geographies and people, ethnographic inquiry into this mapping provides a nuanced view of how actors gain resources from global capital and find means of resisting and refusing these same structures of recognition.

Homocapitalism in India: an anthropological inquiry into LGBTQ diversity and inclusion advocacy in an offshore economy

Over the past year, COVID-19 lockdowns have bolstered an already rapid rise of Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Disney+ Hotstar in India, with a variety of implications for queer media production. This evolving new media milieu has required filmmakers and creators to navigate new censorship regulations and normalization pressures alongside opportunities for increased visibility and audience access. Drawing from six months of remote ethnographic research at virtual queer Indian film festivals, this paper examines how queer Indian media creators negotiate the affordances and limitations of emerging OTT industries. By attending to the socio-political dimensions of new media environments, it reveals how OTT engagements index broader pressures toward (homo)normalization and state assimilation that queer communities presently face. Nearly three years after activists won the hard-fought campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in India, queer communities continue to combat long-standing prejudice and petition the state for expanded civil protections. Currently, activists negotiate pressures to assimilate to right-wing nationalist government ideologies and transnational paradigms of “LGBTQ” expression, while contesting the exclusionary effects of homonormative visibility. OTT service providers mirror these legitimization processes by establishing new standards for acceptable representation as they incorporate queer media into mainstream industry. Moreover, ambiguous censorship regulations passed in April 2021 extend government control over OTT programming, threatening to continue long-standing practices of queer media censure. As filmmakers respond to these new conditions, they debate the political goals of contemporary queer movements, their relationship to the state, and the costs of visibility.

Now Streaming: Queer Indian Media and the Costs of Visibility

Possibilities and Challenges of Transgenders as Monitorial Citizens: The Case of India

To (Homo)Sex the Family or What’s Queer about Kinship?

Following market reforms in the late 1970s, the People’s Republic of China has undergone a host of dramatic transformations. The nation’s skyrocketing GDP has recently been echoed in the growth of the charitable sector: reports show that philanthropic giving in China rose from just over $400 million to almost $25 billion over ten years, while the number of domestic foundations grew from around 1,000 to over 6,000 over the same period. On the one hand, China seems to be telescoping two hundred years of equivalent economic development in the U.S. into a mere four decades, and the recent emergence of contemporary philanthropy and social finance appear as a natural stage in this development process•comparable to the charity of American Gilded Age titans such as Carnegie and Rockefeller. On the other, ethnographic attention to this “new phenomenon” challenges the oversimplification of this Eurocentric narrative, and opens up nuanced insights into a variety of ways of doing “philanthropy” or being “philanthropic” that not only draw from imported Western models, but also invoke “traditional” Chinese values and practices, socialist ethics, and novel modes of giving that are appearing in elite circles as well as at the grassroots level, and at intersections of religious and secular, governmental and non-governmental organizations and initiatives.  This panel explores the growing sector of philanthropy and social finance in China. Conversations about philanthropy in this context enlist interlocutors not only in the charity space but also those from nonprofits, private industry, and financial services. We address topics related, but not limited, to the following questions: Is philanthropy Chinese? How are Chinese charitable and social finance practices part of global flows of artifacts and ideas? What are the geopolitical and economic stakes and implications of Chinese philanthropic projects, both nationally and abroad? What is the relationship between philanthropy, charity, and hybrid modes of “doing well and doing good,” such as impact investing and social entrepreneurship, in China? Might examining the intersection of markets and morals in China contribute novel perspectives to scholarship such as that on exchange and reciprocity, the political economy of capitalism, and disaster and crises? How do conversations and practices taking place in China push at the edges of, and even move us beyond, the term/concept of “philanthropy”? We envision a wide-ranging discussion about the ways in which China, through philanthropy and social finance, participates in imagining humanity’s future on this shared planet.

Philanthropy and Social Finance in China




 The past thirty years has witnessed a phenomenal growth of philanthropic activities in the form of education aid, disaster relief, poverty alleviation and so forth in China. As one of the state-promoted virtues since the late 1980s, the notion of aixin (loving heart) has become the widely recognized discourse and virtue that explains altruistic good deeds and has been central to the state’s evaluation of desirable citizens. Nevertheless, the state-promoted virtue of aixin has never evenly distributed among Chinese citizens. Rather, it is a class-based program that often motivates the urban middle-class to “hand down” their aixin to the poor and the disadvantaged. It is also a highly gendered program that often associates aixin with the normative yet stereotypical image of women who are perceived to be caring, loving and compassionate. The aim of this paper is two folds. First, it unpacks the gendered processes of the emergence of aixin in the field of philanthropy when the masculine image of a socialist man who dares to sacrifice his life for a just/socialist cause was replaced by feminized image of women who embody the virtue of aixin. Second, through ethnographic studies of women who work in philanthropy, I argue the feminization of the field of philanthropy also result from the postsocialist condition when women, including the middle-class women, are pushed to take less-demanding and more flexible jobs so they can take care of their families. 

Engendering aixin: philanthropy and gendered practice of compassion in postsocialist China


“You don’t have to be old and wealthy like Bill Gates or Jack Ma; young people can be philanthropists, too!” This was the original appeal that ‘Ready to Give,’ a Chinese youth-founded philanthropy education organization, used to recruit university students and recent graduates into their “smart giving” summer program in 2016. By 2019, RTG was no longer pushing to expand the definition of philanthropy/cishan, but shifted to a focus on social impact (shehui yingxiangli), and encouraged participants to think of themselves as “changemakers” (translated into the neologism: chuangbianzhe). In fact, the “learning-by-doing” model of the organization, which provides participants with the opportunity to give away $20,000 USD in charitable grants means that young people become “changemakers” through “making change.” This paper examines a particular form of what I call “philanthropic subjectification” that takes place as participants undergo personal transformation, and come to understand themselves as new kinds of social actors. Based on ethnographic data from the practice of “evaluation” at RTG, as well as survey and interview data produced for the organization, I engage the lens of performance theory, and draw out tensions between measuring the subjective experience of personal transformation versus measuring the outcomes of the participants’ actions. 

New Generation of Philanthropists in China: Making Change and Feeling Changed



In March 2020, weeks after the coronavirus outbreak in Hubei and the lock down in Wuhan, the local government rushed to announce a “gratitude education” campaign, to teach local denizens to “thank the General Secretary, and thank the Chinese Communist Party.” The subsequent negative pushback online forced the original announcement and social media posts to be swiftly deleted. In this paper I examine how the term gratitude (“Gan-en”) has become intrinsically linked to gifts, philanthropy, and propaganda in recent China, especially in the wake of disaster. Yet as Leinaweaver (2013) notes, “ingratitude” is often more revealing of the fault lines in relations and hierarchies in different societies, and the episode of pushback in Wuhan is revealing of how power dynamics are constantly negotiated between community and state, all the while being filtered by state controlled digital media. By looking at examples of how denizens around China responded in the wake of tragedy vis-a-vis the central government push to be “thankful”, I uncover tensions between how people and state imagine disaster and reciprocity, with implications on what philanthropy might mean in China today.

Politics of (in)gratitude in times of Covid



We outline a research project on virtual ethnography and digital living archives of global Chinese philanthropy, building upon the work of an independent documentarist working specifically on this topic for 12 years. We draw upon virtual ethnography as a research method, particularly use of digital communication technology for ethnographic research, and digital “living archives”, which are ongoing collections that transcend the relatively fixed standards of description, control, and taxonomy of traditional archives, through inclusion of material sampled from the open, porous, and informal universe of user generated content, including social media and materials from other participatory platforms. This digital living archive contains materials that trace over 30 years of Chinese philanthropic history across 7 countries, covering all the leading and most well-known Chinese philanthropists and philanthropy foundations, and documents not only their self-promoted events, but also much of their relations and interaction with the Chinese government and civil society. Our preliminary work on a small sample of this digital archive enabled us to show the significant value of conducting virtual ethnography of global Chinese philanthropy using these materials, which enable scholars to transcribe statements verbatim and examine them with significant nuance through access to audio-visual materials. The extraordinary value of such methods and materials can in turn enable important scholarly contributions to the fields of visual anthropology, global studies, and other critical social sciences and digital humanities. 

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