Nice of you to say so! "Patronising" is something that I think is very hard to avoid so it would be nice to think there are traps I've dodged. A few posts back - the one called 'Taking sides' - Dougald Hine sent me a link to an interview with David Graeber where he says he thinks 'ontological turn' anthropology like the stuff I'm quoting here is patronising. I don't know if that's fair but I do know that I had the same reaction - rightly or wrongly - to the idea that the spirits might "exist for them but not for us." Graeber didn't say that in his actual paper, though. Makes me wonder about the emotional reactions that get hidden in an academic response.
I love this writing as the least patronising exploration of certain peoples and circumstances I can think of.
Nice of you to say so! "Patronising" is something that I think is very hard to avoid so it would be nice to think there are traps I've dodged. A few posts back - the one called 'Taking sides' - Dougald Hine sent me a link to an interview with David Graeber where he says he thinks 'ontological turn' anthropology like the stuff I'm quoting here is patronising. I don't know if that's fair but I do know that I had the same reaction - rightly or wrongly - to the idea that the spirits might "exist for them but not for us." Graeber didn't say that in his actual paper, though. Makes me wonder about the emotional reactions that get hidden in an academic response.