The Argonaut mini-printed edition Autumn Term 2022

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December 2022

THE ARGONAUT Radical Thought at the LSE.

By engaging with comment, culture and fieldwork, The Argonaut is committed to challenging hegemonic narratives and broadening radical discourse.

Photo credits: Ishani Milward-Bose

Welcome to The Argonaut's michaelmas term 'mini' print edition. The Argonaut is the LSE's space for critical engagement. First published in 1972, we hope to continue publishing engaging social commentry. Funded by LSE's Social Anthropology department but led by students for students, we welcome submissions from everyone. This is a glimpse into what we've been working on this past term. We hope you enjoy; and if you do, please don't hesitate to contact us and contribute - we welcome pieces in the categories of Comment, Culture and Fieldwork, in written, visual and other form.

This is a space for the anthropologically-minded community of LSE to express themselves and create a community.

Much love, Iacopo, Ishani, Hila and Lucy

www.the-argonaut.com Immerse yourself into a sonic landscape whilst you're reading. Taken from 'The Little Argonaut', Issue 002 SOME SONGS FOR THE ROAD | OUR MONTHLY PLAYLIST Listen in to our global fusions and protest songs, specially curated for you by our very own Lucy Bernard each month.

Our December Selection: 1.

‘Ayonha’ by Hamid Al Shaeri 2.

‘Free All Political Prisoners’ by Scott Ferguson 3.

‘Yu Ya Yumma’ by Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy 4.

‘Alone in the Dark Wood’ by Malik Abdul-Rahmaan 5. ‘Curre curre guagliò still running’ by 99 Posse feat. Alborosie, Mama Marjas 6.

‘Straight Path’ by Jaubi, Latarnik, Tenderlonious 7.

‘Strong Culture’ by Asian Dub Foundation 8.

‘Ansumana’ by Susso 9.

‘Lovely Sky Boat’ by Alice Coltrane 10.

‘Que Pena’ by Gal Costa, Caetano Velosa Subscribe to our monthly newsletter at: https://theargonaut.com/the-little-argonaut

Anthro.Theargonaut@lse.ac.uk Instagram: theargonautlse Twitter: @LSEArgonaut

From tycoon to buffoon-divinised king

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by Iacopo Nassigh

enthusiasm in a short time (4). However, an essential aspect that they share seems to me the most fundamental in establishing them both as buffoons and divinised kings: they are tycoons.

You know when an old man that you could easily picture drinking coffee and reading a newspaper at a café instead roams onto the dance floor attracting all the attention? Think about a character like Jep Gambardella (the 65-year-old Roman socialite), portrayed by Toni Servillo in Sorrentino’s film ‘The Great Beauty’. What I want to write about is exactly this sort of paradox of how people who do not behave like stereotypical leaders end up being in charge. This paradox of authority (like Jep being a Roman nightlife star), where leaders explicitly break the rules that position seems to entail (for Jep; his being young and beautiful) yet remain authoritative and popular as a leader, seems clearly applicable in contemporary politics. Yet arguably this is a historical phenomenon and could actually be a key part in maintaining the mystery and separateness that maintains leadership.

David Graeber (2017) writes about sovereignty in an attempt to deconstruct it to original ‘types’ embodying sovereign power and its paradoxes. He finds that the figure of the buffoon is a common archetype for a leader, and this archetype has existed extratemporally. Graeber describes this type as first emerging in Native North American societies on the West Coast where ‘the buffoon’ played an important ritual role and was uniquely unbounded by rules but simultaneously able to enforce them, like a modern-day police officer acting unpunished. This exemption from the behavioural rules that guide daily life, Graeber argues, is one of two key features of authority. The other, he suggests, is the principle of divine kingship.

The figure of the buffoon features frequently today, and as Graeber argues, is often combined with divine kinship such as in the figures of Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump (1). This seems to make a lot of sense. Indeed, both have proved their ‘buffoon’-like characters, refusing to embody a traditional presidential behaviour during their time in charge. This is clearly visible if we just look at a couple of their past statements and actions: Berlusconi doing the cuckoo to former German chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008 (2).

Trump calling a group of African countries, Haiti, and El Salvador at a meeting for immigration at the Oval Office in 2018 ‘shithole countries’ (3). At the same time, one could argue that both have been divinised by their followers since they had the capacity to mobilise adoring masses of supporters, filling them with

Modern day tycoons are one of a kind. Their hideous wealth seems to posit them on another level than the platform occupied by ‘common’ people in the neoliberal pyramid, at the pinnacle of the ones who ‘made’ it. This gives rise to a twofold phenomenon. On one side, they are constantly celebrated by the media as otherworldly, self-made geniuses. At the same time, these people feel free to break social and legal rules that apply to the common person. This ranges from dressing etiquette (you are thinking about Zuckerberg in sliders as well, right?) to tax payment (when did Elon Musk last pay his fair share of taxes?). However, it would be misleading to say that they behave merely without caring about legal or ethical frameworks. The reality is that we allow them to do so without much popular outrage. These two aspects of the tycoon: genius and outlaw, embody two of our secret, impossible dreams.

First, to be intelligent enough not to work, in a western context where we are obliged to do ‘bullshit jobs’ as Graeber puts it.

Second, not caring about laws and norms, which are ever frequent in our hyper-bureaucratised world; to be able to do whatever we want. That’s why we love them, and continue to accept them.

However, this is not enough to come to rule a country. Normal tycoons are neither buffoon nor divine kings, they are missing something. There is a difference between being considered a genius and being divine. In the same fashion, it's one thing to not care about legal and moral norms but another to deny and enforcing them at the same time, as a ‘buffoon’ does. Tycoons are more like superheroes (a popular superhero, iron-man, embodies this type very well) residing in their tall towers without any actual engagement with the ‘normal world’ around them. They are trying to go to Mars or are implementing the metaverse, dreams too distant for people to relate to. They are actually failed buffoondivine-kings, their shortcoming being any sort of tie with social reality and real people. To say it in Barthes’ words, they are missing a ‘prosaic incarnation’ that could better raise up the ‘singularity of a vocation’ (2009: 21). What Barthes is talking about is the process through which a sense of proximity and relatedness raises up in our eyes a person that we already find extraordinary, in this case the tycoon. Let’s now see how Trump and Berlusconi instead managed to ultimate a ‘prosaic incarnation’ and transform from tycoons into buffoons and divine kings.

In their buffoon-becoming, the ‘prosaic incarnation’ was achieved through their speaking about topics sensitive for their electorate.

For example, they both presented themselves as defenders of Christianity, matching the worries of a large part of their respective electorates scared about a ‘culture war’ with Islam. This is clear in Berlusconi’s and Trump’s racist migration policies and their more covert support of conservative Christian groups. In one of Trump’s many memorable speeches, he stated ‘Christians will have power’ (5), in a densely Christian-populated town in Iowa. Berlusconi’s relationships during his period in power with Camillo Ruini, then

3 eader of the episcopal conference of Italy (an influential conference of Italian bishops (6) also highlights this. At the same time, they established themselves as buffoons, dismissing the same rules they proclaimed to defend. While promoting Christian values, didn’t they both break important Christian dictums, both accused of rape and statutory rape (7) by several different women?

The same process is at work in similar ways for Berlusconi and Trump’s acclamation as divinised kings. This time, the illusion of proximity to the electorate is created through a myth: that everyone can make it. Trump and Berlusconi have perpetuated a narrative of them as self-made men who achieved their status through hard work. This closes the gap between them and the average citizen, who see in their positions a possible future for themselves. This makes them appear not just as genius, like many tycoons, but divine as they seem attainable and relatable.

They thus transcend onto another qualitative level to the tycoon.

That said, it could be argued that figures like Berlusconi and Trump may have manipulated the minds of their electorate of their supposed ‘prosaic incarnation’. However, as Bloch (1986) argues regarding the leadership of Elders in the Malagasy circumcision ritual, it's highly unlikely that this is the whole truth. Instead, Bloch finds that Malagasy elders are perceived as related to myths surrounding rituals (he gives the example of circumcision rituals), and as separate from mortal life. In the same fashion, Berlusconi and Trump are themselves products of the ideology that has led them to power: neoliberal entrepreneurial success, as their validity as leaders is maintained because of their proximity to this myth. In Madagascar, the only viable way to perpetuate the ideological myths in the circumcision ritual is, according to Bloch, conducting violence against all that opposes the myth, namely the earthly world. In our contemporary western case, the same could be said for the governments perpetuated by the divinised buffoons, violently attacking all that opposes the neoliberal myth.

Indeed, violence has been used by Trump and Berlusconi against many adversaries of the neoliberal myth. Behind the myth that ‘everyone can make it’ lies the exclusion of many groups that are ‘othered’: women, the working-class, migrant labourers, and indigenous communities among others. Women’s rights have been attacked by Berlusconi and Trump, arguable due to their position as outsiders of the chauvinist neoliberal project, with attempts to take away a powerful right fought for and achieved: the abortion right (8). Many working-class people who still symbolize an antagonism of the neoliberal project have been subjected to increased precarity with new liberalisation of employment (9).

Migrant labourers, attacked as a menace to neoliberal nation-state sovereignty, have been prevented citizenship and belonging from the countries they form the hidden labour force for, with a drastic diminution of their rights and a parallel increase in their exploitation (10). As regards to indigenous communities, many persist to be an enemy of neoliberal neo-colonialism. Much has been said about Trump’s attempts to destroy Native American ways of life, especially with regards to the Dakota Access Pipeline (11).

This violence not only attacks those who oppose the neoliberal project (directly or through their mere existence) but is also committed against the people who form the backbone of the economy through invisible and informal work. Their continued invisibilisation and exploitation is necessary to prop up neoliberalism and maintains its myths, and these are indeed myths. Our buffoon-divine-king leaders are not self-made; they have always been rich (12).

Argonaut Mixes in the spotlight - music at the margins of empire

by Lucy Bernard Each month I curate a playlist of global, fusion and protest music to accompany the newsletter. Music is fundamental to human experience and encapsulates culture, struggle and communitas, and I hope each month’s mix might shed light on subaltern sounds.

Rankin Ann – Liberated Woman: a glimpse from our monthly playlist in 'The Little Argonaut', issue 001.

Dancehall music has been seminal in British culture and black empowerment. Selecta Ranking Miss P began broadcasting on the first ever black pirate radio station 'Dread Broadcasting Corporation' in 1979. She went on to host Radio 1’s first show dedicated to reggae music ‘Culture Rock’ in 1985 and later hosted BBC Radio London’s ‘Riddim and Blues’ on Sunday nights. In parallel, Rankin Ann encapsulates this female-led integration of reggae music into mainstream British media. Her 1982 track ‘Liberated Woman’ from the album ‘A Slice of English Toast’ takes a classic dub track reminiscent of Trojan Records’ Big Youth, brought to life with Ann’s lyrics of female liberation. Reggae’s emergence in the UK was transformative and the (perhaps unlikely) fusion of punk and reggae in the late 1970s as depicted in Bob Marley’s ‘Punky Reggae Party’ and The Clash’s cover of ‘Armagideon Time’ is reflective of the anti-establishment politics of the time. On the Clash’s B-side recording at around 03.00 minutes Joe Strummer shouts “Don’t push us when we’re hot!” after apparently being asked to wrap it up. Dub-powered music is fervently passionate. Indeed, prophet Marcus Garvey prophesied that when the two sevens clash ‘injustices would be avenged’; perhaps this fusion is an ode to exactly that.

Rankin Ann

You can listen to this track and others on our Spotify playlists:

Dispossession through tourism, and resistance through sound: an ethnographic perspective

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by Ishani Milward-Bose forested, and was used by local communities to forage, graze and gather firewood, had now been bulldozed and was in the early stages of being built up into second homes for West-Bengal's growing urban elites. Shockingly, this land was widely known to be ‘khash jomi’ - government protected communal land, so the transaction of this public land into private hands must have had some dodgy deals involved.

The housing crisis in London today has catapulted questions of ownership over land into the foreground of public debate. For someone who lives in this city, it’s never been clearer that processes of property accumulation are occurring – right under our noses – as we see cycles of demolition and construction happening on our doorsteps, while poverty worsens and millions struggle to afford to pay for the fundamental right for secure and safe housing. Yet framing this issue in terms of rights is myopic: access to land is a hotly debated topic that Marx and Engels had a lot to say about.

Arguably, privatisation of land is one of the most fundamental processes that underlies our economic system today: it has shaped the economic relations essential to capitalism by allowing the material world (and thus labour) to be commodified and exchanged.

David Harvey (2004) in his book ‘The New Imperialism’ coined the term ‘accumulation by dispossession’ – a contemporary form of the primitive accumulation Marx argued was the process by which capitalist relations of production were able to emerge. Harvey criticises the idea of ‘original’ accumulation, arguing instead that this process is ongoing and diverse. Today, capitalism’s inability to continually expand has led instead to the development of new mechanisms of dispossession, for example through intellectual property rights, biopiracy, commodification of cultural forms, privatisation of public assets, and environmental degradation among others.

These processes seem to be global, but I want to focus on one example where particularly interesting forms of dispossession are occurring. There has been a booming (domestic) tourism industry emerging Shantiniketan, a small town in West-Bengal, India. I spent most of my childhood in the vicinity of the town and continue to visit, so have the opportunity to observe this process with insider knowledge of interactions across class and caste lines, and of the local bureaucracy. It is clear that the material benefits of tourism here are distributed hugely unequally, with upper-caste urban elites profiting from the vast industry borne in the construction of villas, ‘guest-houses’, hotels and second homes. The land transacted to enable this often bypasses regulations and protections, illegally appropriated from protected indigenous lands. Although constitutionally illicit, the local government is often complicit in these transactions, as businessmen, bureaucrats and land brokers tied up in these processes. For example, in my last visit to the town I discovered that a plot of land just outside town that used to be

Children going to forage for berries in a plot of protected land near Shantiniketan

Although my evidence for these processes of dispossession in Shantiniketan is experiential and anecdotal, these processes have been documented in South Asia at large by a range of authors.

Akram-Lodhi (2007) suggests the rate of land dispossession in India is so high that this period could be coined the neoliberal era of enclosure, which is part of what has been called a ‘global land grab’ (Scoones, Hall, Borras, White & Wolford 2011). Gardner and Gerharz refer to the chronic involvement of state officials in land deals across South Asia as ‘crony capitalism’ (2016: 2). Moreover, it has been documented that those losing out the most from industrialisation and land enclosure are marginalised indigenous communities – referred to in India as ‘Adivasi’ - in various ways (Shah 2010). Adivasi Santal communities in and around Shantiniketan similarly seem to be facing the brunt of these processes.

Adivasi relationships with the state and bureaucracies across India have been characterized by dispossession. An increasing need for interactions with the state has led to Adivasis seeking formal recognition, which necessitates processes of becoming legible to the Indian state. Often, the documents needed to officiate Adivasis identity and access the protections that come with this just don’t exist. In India this process has worsened with the introduction of the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and NRC (National Register of Citizens) in 2019, with one of the effects being that families who have lived for generations on protected land have been forced to leave in a wave of displacement, unable to provide any legal documents proving their rights to access. In other places, evicting Adivasis from their land is not as legally straightforward. This is where the daily interactions of ‘crony capitalism’ take place.

Santals have been systematically marginalised through such processes of dispossession but also through other tools including (but not restricted to) language, culture, and outright discrimination.

The effects of these are material, with analyses of data accessed from India’s national statistics showing deprivation across multiple spheres. For Adivasi populations, the national literacy rate lies at merely 59% compared to the national average of 73% (Census of India, 2011). In West-Bengal, this figure is even more starkly unequal. Another figure useful for highlighting economic deprivation is that the proportion of agricultural labourers among Adivasis is double that of the national average (24% compared to 12%).

Contracted agricultural labour is notoriously informal and casual, with extremely low pay and few benefits.

It is in this context of Adivasi precarity and of capitalist dispossession that I examine the booming (domestic) tourism industry Shantiniketan. Tourism in Shantiniketan has been hugely successful partly because Santals play an important role in the national imaginary. In West-Bengal, indigenous communities represent a nostalgic vision of rural Bengal’s past, with narratives of dependency on land and rich cultural expertise in music and dance widespread.

The West-Bengal state capitalises off this imaginary, developing a rural tourism littered with images perpetuating these visions. During my last visit to Shantiniketan, it was evident that the boom in tourism has been directed towards cultivating this image. I captured some manifestations of this project in the following images:

The visual elements of these are striking. The bottom two pictures depict Santal women dancing and cooking on a traditional woodburning stove; the top two, the ‘guest houses’ they were displayed on. I spoke to the owners of both small-scale ‘hotels’: neither were of indigenous descent (both came from urban areas outside of Shantiniketan), and no Santals were consulted or benefitted in the making and painting of the murals on their walls.

Santals here are simultaneously visible and invisible. The aspects of their identity deemed ‘traditional’ are visible everywhere – on walls, souvenirs, ads, clothing – yet they are invisible when they provide the land and precarious, back-breaking labour needed to prop up the tourism industry. Often, land is sold out of desperation; after years of neoliberalisation of the agricultural industry, small-scale petty farming is no longer profitable for local farmers. This tourism industry disguises accumulation by dispossession in its shadows by painting its face in Adivasi words, patterns and crafts. Certain aspects of Santals are frequently commodified, with womens’ unique clothing, picturesque mud villages, apparent harmony with nature, and depictions of song and dance being frequent themes. This plays into the ancient narrative of what Alpa Shah describes as the ‘Edenic bliss associated with tribal populations who were considered both as savages and as protectors of nature, living in harmony and even

5 worshiping it’ (2010: 107).

Tourism in West-Bengal has commodified this image and manifested it in exchangeable goods sold in many souvenir shops across Shantiniketan:

‘Tribal’ patterns reproduced on bags and masks sold in souvenir shops in Shantiniketan

It seems clear from these brief images that the ‘image’ of Santals has been appropriated, with Santal individuals having little instrumentality in the decision-making processes leading the project of rural tourism. Tourism here thus has been used as a tool for material and cultural dispossession of the Santal Adivasi communities.

Despite this context of exclusion, it’s important to acknowledge spheres of life in which marginalised individuals make decisions, create spaces for themselves and thus resist. It’s easy to pigeonhole a group of people as oppressed and without agency, a common feature especially since the decades of ‘dark anthropology’ (Ortner, 2016). In recent years, anthropology has taken a turn to the personal, utilizing first-person narratives to show agency in a field often concerned with revealing structures of hierarchy and domination (ibid). Cheryl Mattingly, in her study of African Americans struggling for a ‘good life’ under structures of oppression, gives attention to the particularities of experience over ‘public personhood’ (Mattingly 2014: 18), attempting to transform the debates on freedom. In my reflections on Shantiniketan, I utilize her approach to highlight Santal expressions of agency through the medium of sound. Giving attention to the senses as a sphere of expression helps us see ways in which people ‘dub’ (Boellstorff 2003) imported knowledge to create knowledge of their own. More widely, I explore how the sonic world can be utilized by bringing attention to what is heard or unheard, through Brendon LaBelle’s ideas about sonic agency (2018).

So although a visual aspect is commodified (and maybe precisely because of this), many Santal individuals express agency through different sonic means. A commodified image has resulted in people turning to sound and music-making for the self-expression of their identity, as opposed to the West-Bengal state’s image of them.

Through my experience growing up in Shantiniketan and participating in the youth culture of various Santal communities, I have seen ways in which Santals use sound to express their visions of modernity. Dr. Boro Baski, social worker and activist, writes songs in Santali fusing traditional sounds with modern instruments such as synthesizers. A translation of his song ‘Dungri Latar Khadanre’ is as follows: At the foothills, in a stone-quarry Muni, I feel pity to see you carrying stone chips.

For the greed of money, In exuberance of youthfulness You are neglecting your supple body.

What could I say brother,

It's a disgrace to even talk about it.

I carry stones after shunning my self-respect.

My father is a drunkard, My mother is debilitated I do carry stones to satiate my hunger.

(Baski: 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQgP68HTIzk)

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The lyrics to this song clearly depict issues Dr. Baski feels are relevant to Santal modernity, and sound has provided a successful medium of agency in expression. In his informal introduction to this song, Dr.Baski writes that the song refers to a girl ‘Muni’ he met at a mining quarry that supplies West-Bengal with stone chips for the rapidly growing construction industries across the state. He writes ‘Muni is one of the many Santal girls who are trapped in a system which is controlled by local mafia and political leaders’ (Baski 2021). The video for this song is comprised of a medley of footage from the quarry and daily village life and pose striking contrast to the idyllic image of Santal life presented through tourism:

As Brandon LaBelle suggests in his 2018 book ‘Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance’, ‘the ways in which speech and action are orchestrated as volumes and rhythmed as durations, along with intensities of silence and noise, these form a critical base by which to approach questions of political struggle’ (2018: 2). In this context, sound is used to exceed spheres of visibility by acknowledging the unseen – the Santals. Steven Feld refers to the linguistics of voice (2006), suggesting that a voice points towards meaning (in its separation of the signifier and signified); it is ascribed with inner intentionality and thus is a tool for agency. Seeing sound as a means of agency in a context where the visible realm is appropriated and manipulated is key in this context of seeing people holistically; as structuring their daily lives creatively and through resistance. Young Santals more specifically use sound as a medium for agency through ‘biswarjan’ parties, where gigantic speakers are hired during religious festivals, and youth from the local communities dance to Santali base-heavy music. These moments of freedom in the everyday; the ‘banal’, exemplify the moral decision-making visible in daily reality.

Tourism, then, has its problems. In Shantiniketan it has come with appropriation, displacement and the centralisation of profit – all parts of the modern tools of capitalist dispossession as described by David Harvey. Despite this, we must continue to acknowledge that those who are typically hurt by processes of industrial tourism and capitalist expansion find ways to express and create their own realities through varied means. As highlighted, many members of the Santal community in West-Bengal seem to be coping with late-stage capitalism’s flux of identities, and with its more material consequences, through engaging with the sonic realm. This focus is especially important in engaging with debates on freedom and agency. Just as the processes of dispossession are frequently slow, mundane and unexceptional, my interlocutors highlight that they were not just using sound to affect their lives in moments of rupture, but in their daily lives through voice, song and the outdoor ‘parties’ young people throw during festive times. Resistance here and elsewhere thus often happens in the most banal ways.

Camera and Retrospect: or How to Annotate Life

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by Nazlı Adıgüzel Since I started studying anthropology, I have been thinking about my relationship with photography. Quite often, I discourage myself from pressing the shutter button, allowing thoughts about Power and Narrative to settle in. Although a healthy amount of self-reflection and an understanding of the politics of representation are crucial to consuming and appreciating visual media, one must not forget the sheer joy capturing an instance can be. For photography is to still time, materialize an interpretive reality, and visualize the narratives we construct. Here, I share a few photographs I have taken over the years. Some are mere combinations of pixels, occupying their places in my SD card, and some have undergone chemical processing in darkrooms, now stacked on top of each other in my dusty albums. Despite their textural differences, in my opinion, they all embrace the beauty and oddities of everyday life.

1. This first photograph, taken during the 2021 lockdown, is from a virtual ballet rehearsal of my sister, who was kind enough to allow me to photograph her.

When Time, as we sensed it (with its schedules, alarms, and calendars), became obsolete, my sister’s online ballet classes were one-hour reminders of the fact that Tuesdays and Thursdays still existed outside of our house. Looking back at this photograph, I now understand why 19th-century Impressionists were constantly painting ballerinas— the stamina and the elegance they exude are utterly transcendental.

2. Boredom breeds creativity, some say. This is precisely what happened to me when I was having a staring contest with this Venetian mask instead of doing my calculus homework when I was 16. This mask still dares the dwellers of our living room to a staring competition, but I believe I was the only one in our household to take a photograph of it by placing a piece of fake-crystal prism in front of my lens.

3. It is not every day that I am genuinely impressed by street musicians, yet I still think about this Austrian duo converting Museumsquartier in Vienna to the set of Alice in Wonderland. I took many photographs during that trip, some of which I am quite satisfied with, but this one remains my favourite because it is a simple reminder of how genuinely fun humankind can be.

In high school, my literature teacher would always tell his students to hold a pen while reading because it would encourage us to annotate.

Here, I tried to choose photographs that I took before I started studying anthropology; it was a period of my life where I was truly annotating life with my camera, one eye closed and the other looking through the lens. This is mainly a reminder for me to start carrying my cameras with me, and hopefully, this can be an encouragement for you, too, dear Readers: to observe, enjoy, and capture life in any medium that satisfies your eyes and minds.

Migrant politics on a small Italian vineyard

by Carli Jacobsen

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translucent curtain that we used to block the view from the chapel across the square. Essentially, we became best friends over cigarettes and box of wine.

At one point, we ran out of boxes to pack because the shipping company needed special machinery to deliver up the hill and wouldn’t arrive until November. As there were few tasks for the three of us that day, we bottled together: a very slow process in which the bottling machine fills the bottles, inserts nitrogen to protect the vintage, which had been aged seven years, and corks it at approximately five bottles a minute.

Note: all names have been changed in this article. “…in the 8 years Victor has worked here, he’s never once been offered a cup of coffee.”

In this article, I discuss employer to employee relationships on a small vineyard in Umbria, central Italy. Throughout my intense, strenuous, and wine indulgent stay there (a fortnight to be precise; albeit short, but as long as one can manage when earning nothing), I worked closely with a few members of the small ‘team’ on the vineyard. My work consisted of picking grapes, running lab tests, cleaning, refilling, emptying barrels, as well as bottling, labelling and boxing the wines. My boss, Lawrence, inherited the land via the Marquis legacy in 2002. The 1200-hectare space consists of dense black truffle forests, vineyards, farmland, olive groves, holiday homes, and a beautiful castle atop the hill that overlooked the village, which we called the Castello. He knew of all gossip throughout the town, as if his castle acted as a panopticon over the residents. His wife Rachel and I privately referred to him as the “King of the castle”.

My tasks were always done alongside two of the vineyard’s most loyal employees, Amanda and Victor. They were two of the three Romanian workers on Lawrence’s land: they had moved to the village roughly a decade ago, for reasons I didn’t ask at the time.

Amanda had perfected her Italian while Victor and I communicated with hands and the occasional Romanian phrases. Victor was the oldest employee on the vineyard, aged nearly sixty, and lived with his Romanian wife down the road. He walked to work every morning, always so early to work that he completed bottling a few crates before I even arrived at 8am. Victor often worked longer hours than I did, and always refused to leave, even if our tasks were completed early: he always found something to do and very often underused his lunchbreak because of this.

My last few days in the cellar were spent bottling with Victor and my English colleague and roommate Olive, who was hired by Lawrence as head winemaker while he focused on the farming estates. Olive and I quickly developed an intimate relationship: aside from working together eight hours a day, six days a week, we were almost forced into each others’ arms from the get-go, partly due to the doorless shower on the open balcony that only had a tiny

The speed of the machine meant it was a solo task, but the three of us took turns placing bottles on and taking them off the conveyer belt. A few hours into the job and Lawrence walks in, checking in on our progress. While Olive had her turn to sit aside as Victor and I stood at the machine, she asked Lawrence if she could run up to the castle to make herself a coffee, to which he responded that she had better stay down here and overlook the machine, but he’d ask his wife, Rachel, to make it. It was then I piped in and requested two more. Twenty minutes later, Rachel brings three espressos in green ceramic mugs on a metal tray, handing one each to Olive, Lawrence and I. “No, I didnt ask for a coffee.” Lawrence said to Rachel.

“Oh, I thought you said 3.” I sometimes thought Rachel was scared of her husband.

“It was me. It was for Victor too.” I said.

Victor never turned away from the machine to look back, so when Rachel nodded, left the coffees on a stack of crates and left the cellar, Olive took one of the espressos, tapping Victor on the shoulder and offering the espresso to him with a smile, which he silently denied by shaking the empty bottles in hand. I noticed then afterwards that he also denied glasses of water from Olive and I throughout the evening, which he did for the next two days bottling with us.

I raised the awkward exchange at dinner with Lawrence and Rachel that evening. No other employees were invited into the Castello, but Rachel invited me for lunch and dinner almost every day and I only accepted if there was enough food to bring Olive as well.

While Lawrence expressed excitement in sending Olive and I and our sharp tongues away, Rachel gladly took us in because we reminded her of when her two daughters lived at home and the concrete walls

echoed with young girls’ laughter.

“I felt so awful when Victor said no to coffee earlier today. He must feel guilty relaxing on the job” Olive said.

“Probaly because in the 8 years Victor has worked here, he has never been offered a cup of coffee” Lawrence responded.

The conversation rolled on to inform me that Victor and his wife live in the village but do not own a car, so Rachel used to pick up Victor’s wife twice a week to take her to the nearest supermarket in Fabro, seven kilometeres away. During the pandemic, Rachel couldn’t take her in the car and expressed guilt for driving past her.

In that time, Victor’s wife waited outside her home every morning in the hope that another villager would drive past and offer to take her to Fabro. I also learnt that a few years ago, Lawrence and Rachel offered Victor an old Moped that they never used, so he could commute to nearby villages, but his family forced him to sell the Moped for money, and so to this day his wife still waits on the curb for a lift.

experience on the vineyard. Language, ethnicity, and class.

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Lawrence also pays many of his employees in cash. Not only does this benefit his workers by enabling them to avoid taxes, but it also means that his few Italian employees can be registered for Reditto di Cittadinanza: the universal basic income given by the Italian state to unemployed citizens, and thus receive wage on top of the informal labour. This sits in a context of migrants in Italy learning to navigate bureaucracy efficiently, specifically laws concerning migrant labour, rather than being played by it. Anna Tuckett argues that there is certainly institutionalised irregularity that cannot be distinguished from migrant labour function (Tuckett 2015), and this is certainly visible here, as we see that the ways in which the system’s rules can be reinterpreted are dependent on the terrain in which they are navigated. In a rural town that is over an hour from Perugia, the nearest city, and is often inaccessible in the winters, there is little governmental regulation or enforcement, and such ‘illegal’ labour can be done publicly without fear of getting in trouble.

Tuckett explains that the fact that there are a “myriad interpretations of the law by different actors means that individuals experienced it as fickle and shifting” (Tuckett 2015: 116). While cash payment may appear the better option for Victor and his family, it merely reinforces “the interface between agency and social forces” (Vigh 2006: 14). The “actors” that Tuckett mentions can also be the Italian employees that receive cash payments to still be ‘legible’ for Reditto di Cittadinanza. The “actors” can also be employers: many farm owners or rural employers are highly dependent on migrant labour, and thus have become well accustomed to interpreting the system in ways that are beneficial to them. For example, Lawrence also benefits from paying his employees in cash, because it means he can underpay them without his migrant employees being capable of speaking up or reporting such exploitation. Olive and I experienced this personally as well. Olive was paid twelve euros an hour, also in cash as she was not approved a visa (much higher than his longterm migrant employees), while I was not paid at all. And while Olive sublet the apartment in private bank transfers to Lawrence, I did not pay for living costs all. I lived for free on the land for free labour, despite the cost of living being far less than I would have been earning.

The view on the estate from the Castello Victor’s denial to take breaks, to accept coffee or water, to arrive early to work are measures taken seemingly as an act of gratitude toward his employer. Lawrence attempting to help him in the past, not out of selflessness but out of convenience so Rachel didn’t have to pick up Victor’s wife, was something Victor felt needed to be repaid. Even years after the Moped was ‘gifted’, he still made extra efforts through extra unpaid manual labour to reciprocate the exchange. I speculate that his obedience to overwork is also carried forth on the desire to ‘make it up’ to Lawrence and Rachel. There is some form of “de-facto occupational hierarchy” (Bourgois 1988: 331) in action, as his labour is often more strenuous, and his wage is less, than the Italian, English or Danish employees on the vineyard.

Phillipe Bourgois’ term “conjugated oppression” with ethnic groups on a banana plantation is reflected in the various forms of oppression and exploitation that employees across ethnicities

Only a few days after I left, the authorities from the agricultural association in Orvieto (another town nearby) unexpectedly arrived at the vineyard. They walked through the town, checked the cellars, and drove through parts of the farmland, because they had gotten a tip from a waitress in Orvieto (who once used to work for Lawrence but was fired) that he had two foreign female employees that were working illegally on the land. The waitress had overheard Olive and I talking when we stopped for coffee at a café in the town. Lawrence simply invited the authorities in for coffee whilst Olive hid in the apartment until they left. It seems even the more privileged perceive the system as malleable and are able to influence it in ways that their migrant employees describe it as “fickle”. Additionally, Lawrence paying Olive a higher wage, and his extra effort to ‘employ’ me, such as driving 1.5 hours to the airport in Perugia to pick me up, and giving Olive and I coffee on shift, shows how even on a smaller scale, the “commitment to political and citizenship rights for long term residents is less

10 tenacious” (Zincone 2006: 13), and how the advocacy for the rights of migrants is “paternalistic in nature and does not challenge the unequal inclusion which migrants encounter” (Tuckett 2015: 116).

It seems Lawrence acts as a broker between his migrant employees and the law, emerging as an actor in navigating bureaucratic structures for his own, and crucially others’, benefit. As an Italian citizen and a (mediocre at best) winemaker that inherited a Castello estate, his position means he can “relate community-oriented individuals who want to stabilise or increase their life chances but lack economic security and political connections with nation-oriented individuals” (Wolf 1956: 1075-6 as cited in Blok 1974: 8). Lawrence, like the mafiosi as described

by Blok, bridges as well as exploits these paths (Blok 1974) with his employees, by creating dependencies between them through acts of ‘generosity’ that condition his labourers to work dangerously for very little.

Three months after my return to London, I finally opened my journal and recalled my unexpected encounters with Victor. The journal that had originally begun as chemical equations and soil readings from the cellar laboratory very quickly transformed into a series of anthropological accounts. I observed migrant navigation through bureaucracy and power arrangements within the workplace that are deeply imbedded in class and ethnicity. On the vineyard, these manifested in intersectional ways. I often separate my passion for winemaking from my degree but now struggle to see them as individual aspects of my life. It seems that even wine can be complex and contested, with taste notes of misogyny, and with full-bodied politics through which hierarchies of taste and peoples are created.

Poetry and free verse Who’s hands?

by Ishani Milward-Bose

Little Homes

by Sarah Ali

Who’s hands have touched this soil?

Who’s feet, bare, have laboured?

Who’s touch has carved this out?

It’s the mundane that takes me back: sunlight glinting off turquoise peaks and swirls of the Neretva, a raucous kitten winding between my feet, coconut milk still fresh even out of the can.

Sunlight hits the backs of leaves and sets them alight, a sea of lime and lemon.

Imprinted on our landscape; From dead skin cells, Blood dripped from a scraped elbow, Sweat flowed from exerting bodies, Under the blistering sun.

A young boy carved his name into the setting cement ; A despondent attempt at recognition, or possession, or ownership, At materialising and immortalising his part in the process; Painstakingly scraping cement, hammering rods, welding joints, Memories of desperation etched into the concrete.

That is all that remains marked Of the hands that touched that soil, The feed that laboured on, The touch that built it up; The monstrous grey scar in front of me.

Note: this poem was written as a visceral reaction after hearing stories and witnessing first-hand the horrific labour conditions that young men and women working in the construction industry of the developing world have to withstand. It is by nature reactionary, emotive and dramatic.

My Turkish- and Arabic-speaking friends sit with me and we pass around words like we’re playing hot potato, or Chinese whispers, Until something clicks.

Qabool, we cry; a commonality among our tongues.

Believe. Accept. Concordance.

The other night I dreamt of a winding road back home, one that led to my best friend’s back door.

His jasmine tree had snowed petals along the soil; they melted into my palms and fingertips and I woke up disoriented - the way I felt as a child, falling asleep on the sofa and waking up in my own bed.

Note: everyday sights, sounds, conversations, and rituals have been so important for me in evoking a sense of home. This is a poem I wrote when living abroad for the first time, along the icy Neretva river in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

11

Expanding the canon – the case for the reflexive inclusion of epochal memoirs as forms of autoethnography, and for utilising the work of non-anthropologists

By Daniel Guthrie In his 2022 book, 'A Waiter in Paris', Edward Chisholm details his experience working in a Parisian restaurant – an occupation he found to be “governed by archaic rules and a petty hierarchy” (Chisholm, 2022, pg. 12). In this work, he not only analyses the restaurant structure from within, but also describes the p the stratification in the restaurant and in broader society. He gives his reason for writing the book as to give a voice to an invisible workforce, and make people reflect on the lives, and quality of life, of the people who serve them.

I define this type of writing - an account of a specific lived experience of the author - as an 'epochal memoirs'.

When I first read the text earlier this year, I was enamoured, and described it to others as a ‘pseudo-ethnography’. It contains all the features an ethnography should: details of the site of survey (both the bistro itself, and of the decrepit hotel and shoebox room-rentals he resided in); detailed accounts to conversation between himself and the various research participants he engages with (other waiters, the elderly sommelier, the dictatorial manager, and the willowy, elegant hostess he falls for); and conclusions drawn from his study (about the structure of French society, and the need for greater acknowledgement of catering staff). Yet, despite these features, I added the prefix of ‘pseudo’, relegating the trove to a mere piece of entertainment.

I now realise I should’ve taken it seriously, and properly entertained its serious purpose. I had succumbed to the haughty trappings of the ivory tower of academia; I didn’t take the book seriously because it would not be put on my reading lists, it would not be picked up by the LSE library, and I bought it from a regular bookshop (the wonderful oddity that is Word on the Water) rather than from a digitized list of academic resources. I argue that valuing texts based purely on their adherence to anthropological forms and standards is detrimental to the discipline. Why should a piece of work have to be published in Current Anthropology to have anthropological relevance? Why must a phonebook of noted pedagogues be listed under the ‘Bibliography’ section before a text is even considered to be of value? In a discipline so dedicated to analysing hierarchies in order to undermine or question their foundations, why is our internal hierarchy so entrenched?

Word on the water bookshop. Photo by author.

The answers to these questions are murky and abstruse. Indeed, in writing this article, I became engaged in an internal struggle about whether to include citations, and furthermore, whether to cite academics. Would it emphasise my point if I constructed my argument without reference or inclusion to the institutions I just lambasted, or would it instead display some petulancy that rests in my subconscious if I refused to acknowledge value in the hard work of learned professionals, and the norms they have adopted? I concluded it would be to my detriment to not pay some regard to academia – some work does provide benefit to my argument. Yet I have tried to use academic citations descriptively, to illustrate my points with greater clarity rather than to prove that what I believe has value.

I have came to the conclusion that some anthropologists may not be ‘Anthropologists’, and this is no bad thing. By this I mean that some work that could be considered ethnographic may not be produced by people who have studied anthropology and intend to do fieldwork in a standardised way – it comes about from wanting to platform their, and others, experiences. Entering an environment with the status of ‘researcher’ carries with it a host of assumptions, from colonial ideas of the enlightened being as the centre of knowledge-production, to the inevitability that people act differently when they know they are being observed. The value of experimental approaches to ethnography is recognised by some anthropologists, as evidenced in the text Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Sciences (Bejarano et al., 2019). Whilst initially being the project of two institutional anthropologists, the contribution of their research assistants was so significant they were listed as coauthors. The assistants themselves were undocumented immigrants, alongside being activists for the rights of undocumented peoples (Bejarano et al., 2019). The effect of participating in anthropological research, despite not being trained or even knowing what anthropology was before interacting with the academics, was transformative; by the end of the project, “ethnography had changed them and they had changed ethnography” (Bejarano et al., 2019, pg.

13).

This illustrates the value of contributors to the canon ‘finding’ anthropology, and not being subject to the regiment of Malinowski, Boas, Geertz, and Foucault. However, I believe the argument can be taken further, to encompass those who are not intentionally participating in anthropological research. The value of work like Chisholm’s, or its spiritual forefather, 'Down and Out in Paris and

London' by George Orwell, is that the authors authentically straddle a participant/observer divide, and as such, develop a far more honest portrait of the subject matter.

Another reason to expand the canon in this manner is to diversify it.

This would not function exclusively to reintroduce “anthropology’s long-neglected ancestors” (Mogstad & Tse, 2018, pg. 57) – figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, or Ella Deloria - but also to absorb literature such as slave narratives, or first-person accounts of colonial India from the Indian perspective. These writings are foundational accounts for many of the issues of racism and colonialism still being discussed in anthropology. It would expand the discipline if we treated these texts as valid ethnographies, rather than ignoring them and instead referring to the host of canonical intellectuals. It would also radically alter the base of epistemology, with anthropologists humbly taking a seat and seeing what the primary knowledge of those subjugated by western powers can teach us. Even if research participants are deeply involved in formulating theory, it is the labour of the anthropologist in interpreting their words and actions that is deemed to be of real value. This reproduces a power dynamic in which the research participants are not given the regard they deserve. Respecting primary sources that are fundamental to the issues anthropology justifies itself with is not only crucial to expanding the canon, but also vital in efforts to decolonise the discipline and decentralise power from the western institution.

12 What should be emphasised is the use of general anthropological methodologies, such as those Chisholm uses – if you can extract conclusions about the site of study, the actors within these sites, and the composition of society that created these conditions, your work should be entertained as scholarship.

It can also be argued that the same scrutiny is not devoted to epochal memoirs as is applied to anthropology from the institution.

However, ethnographies exist where locations cannot be mentioned, and names and significant details are changed; such is the case in studies of drug dealers of government operations. This necessary secrecy makes it impossible to perform checks on their truthfulness. We rely on the honesty of our peers and their findings, especially given the emphasis of anthropology on finding a new point of research, both geographically and theoretically. I would argue that if an epochal memoir reaches any degree of popularity, it is subject to a far greater degree of scrutiny than most anthropological work.

To bring this argument to a close, I believe epochal memoirs that exhibit general anthropological traits but do not openly deem themselves as anthropological should be included in the canon.

From introducing new, fluid, and invested methodologies of ethnographies, to departures from the general form of anthropological writing, and the decentralisation of power from the western institution, the inclusion of these works could open the doors of anthropology. Formulating flexibility within the rigid rules that validate certain forms of anthropological knowledge over others could rescue anthropology from its state of perpetual crisis.

To overcome our ethical dilemmas about the purpose of anthropology, we must embrace knowledge produced from the bottom up.

https://the-argonaut.com/ Anthro.Theargonaut@lse.ac.uk Critiques for expanding the canon in the way I have argued could come in a variety of forms. One of these may be the issue of form – these texts are not written how anthropology is normally written.

They do not vie for academic credibility, instead emphasising readability, or descriptive value. Yet these forms may not be as dissimilar as initially thought. Anthropologists such as Faye Harrison have constructed readable and intellectual texts, and the necessity to have a dictionary within reaching distance as you choke trying to digest convoluted multi-syllables should not mean the article is more academically valid. Similarly, some may object to the writing being in the first person, arguing anthropology should use more scientific, detached language. Autoethnographies are regularly written in first person and have been a staple of anthropology for decades – texts such as Becoming, belonging, and the fear of everything Black by Lydia Ocasio-Stoutenburg work as both a study of bureaucracy, and a deeply personal epochal memoir about the difficulties of navigating a society as a black mother with a black child who has Downs Syndrome (Ocasio-Stoutenburg, 2021).

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