Cheeni

Class Sociology - I

Type

Materials

Reviewed

Extra - Anthropology of Space

Road on a Google Map - Road is just a ‘Road’ - 10 km of straight space

For a person who lives on that road, there might be important things (Gate
Zero, Ganesh, Kaapikendra)

Place is a geographic category that signified immersive lies expeircen

Space is a flat geographic category, it is plainly seen in its dimensions. (like how
administrators see an area to be of certain size)

When Sassen talks about space, she talks about a particular and specific
experience of globalization - no matter how much uniformity is created, a
quantum of particularity exists

Overview - General Pointers - Globalization

Mintz is a food anthropologist - She thinks of the world from the lens of food

It seems possible to eat food from many different countries

There was a pattern of exotic hotels and eateries shutting down despite of
being well maintained. Why?

Most people who wanted to eat good food outside of their home and had
the financial means to do so did not want to eat food that was alien

But, there are also instances where people exclusively fantasises about certain
specific types of food - Korean Food, Chinese Food etc (Korea’s soft power,
Certain temporal trends becoming popular and replacing other trends etc)

Cheeni 1
 Hallyu Wave - Global popularity of South Korea's cultural economy
exporting pop culture, entertainment, music, TV dramas and movies

Change in taste and food preferences is much slower than other cultural
changes - Even when holly-wood movies and related items had become
prevalent - food items like cheese burgers were seen as distant

It takes time to localize food items and make them fit into the Indian schema
- KFC and McDonalds inculcating paneer in their items or using certain
spices etc

Difference in different aspects of globalization making their way into local

spaces. In a village, elements like Hollywood or American music might
enter because of internet. However, it might take a lot more time for food
choices to become prevalent (maybe because infrastructure development
that is required for eateries to open up takes time)

Globalization - How connected are we?

Parts of the globe are constantly in materialistic, aesthetic, economic, and

political connections - this has a history way before 1900s - as far back as
ancient empires

(It was thought McDonalds will wipe out and replace all food cultures of the
world. It did nothing of sorts. However, it only altered and made universal
certain logics of the world - market logic of food being cheap and fun, eating
fast)

There is a slighlty different and more ‘IMMEDIATE’ version of a global system

De-Territorialization - Certain cities lose their cultural elements as it connects

with the global. Its own social relations of different components are alterated,
destroyed and mutated

If culture includes things like food, culture is deterritorial across global

nodes that might not be geographically connected to each other (Delhi and
Meerut can have less in common than Delhi and Meerut)

Global cities have become packages of each other - A scandalized package

of cultural entities

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 Airport - has different kind of signs - someone who regularly goes to a airport
would stop focusing on these sings - gradually, as s/he goes to different
airports, it just become an ‘airport’ - irrespective of the city or the country it is
located in. Local culture elements are removed. Similar to the aforementioned
cities.

EVERYTHING BECOMES A PACKAGE OF EVERYTHING ELSE

(Idea for publication - This is a part that gets untold. If friction is applied to
understand the supply chain, it might help)

Is globalization necessarily urban?

Demand of certain items that is created as a consequence of globalization

is often urban. Thus, it creates a fallacious picture. If we trace supply
(which is necessary part of the current capitalized and global world) chains
back to their origin of productions, it is more often than not the countryside

So, certain integral facets of the global world can be imbibed into the rural

It is wrong to associate the global with the urban?

Initially, sugar war very rare - like cotton, coffee, chocolate (other things that we take
for granted in our consumption). How did it become mundane?

United Kingdom - It was only the aristocratic class that could afford sugar.

It is the global logics that make the sugar at such a scale possible (Refer to text
to see how it originally played out)

Sugar becomes a marker of civility- going to tea shops or coffee bars and
consuming sugar to display a certain sense of social positioning and class

A sociology of globalization

In the first chapter, the author talks about the expectation that globalization will
take a backseat

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 State changes its agenda as the global flows of capital changes the global
ecosystem - The state absorbs external pressures to make its own and
transform this said agenda -

💡 A global ecosystem of the global flows of capital is made possible through

the active participation of the state

State exists in a grid (in the neighbor of different countries - China is emerging
as a powerful entity in the global scenario; because of this, other powerful anti-
US countries like Russia are making alliances with them - this means that the
global ecosystem of this global neighbor of nation-states (particular territory
controlled by state pertaining to, normally, a certain ethnic or a national identity;
all nations are not a state, all states may not be nations but all nation states
cooperate to maintain a certain status quo (reasonable assumption))

The nation can precede the state (Brazil, India, China)

Mughal empire was a state not a nation

Indian national movement emerged as a nation expressed through

culturally coherent ideas

Notion of immigration and diaspora is a curious phenomenon that the state

resists

(States are dynamic entities that constantly evolve. Throughout time, elements
constituting a state can change)

Powerful states often used international institutions (like UN) to exert their
pressure in the form of soft power

States measure their sovereignty in relative terms in context of other states -

India’s sovereignty is contingent on a lot of ifs and buts which leads to the
question - How sovereign is India - to assess, India’s features are compared to
other (often similarly places) nation states

(SC judgments on gender issues - mentions UN or US judgments - this is a form of

soft power)

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 Institutionalized Globalization - work through a series of different entities like the
WTO, WB etc - such dependence is created that an extention of market logic is
not possible without the help of these agencies - these agencies are a facade of
the power of global

Globalization has had the impact

(Sassen wrote this book in 2007 - her thesis has changed by 2018 due to China’s
actions destabilizing the North-Atlantic supremacy)

Cities have been important zones of production, survival etc - this makes it all
the more important to study the city now than it was a couple of decades ago

Before our current globalization, firms worked from within. There was opportunity
to climb the corporate ladder in a linear fashion. You start from a bottom rung
and then rise up gradually within the corporate

Now, with globalization, certain forms of specialization is needed - a complex

intermediate space emerges where they can just buy those specific needs than
hiring them

Expanding world of intermediaries (finance, lawyers etc)

When firms merged, the firms might go broke but these intermediary sector
would still make money

This specific sector has become very rich and powerful

As globalization expands, this intermediation function is replicated (Even if not

as strong as in the west)

Center for activism - Tokyo, Oslo, New York - Rain forests are very far away from
there -

Extraordinary specialization across cities

Why not 1 super or major global city? - Frankfurt, Paris, London - they are
radically different from each other - this differentiation allows them to specialize
in such a manner that they cannot be technically formed into one major city (this
is a gap in Sassen’s study)

Each city feeds into the process of globalization in a different way - this is
what Sassen means when she refers to this ‘Differentiation’

Cheeni 5
 What she puts to be different is that east/west division holds no
good. Rather, characterization of labor should be seen between
global cities (that exist both in the west and non-west) and non-
global cities. (the perspective should rather focus on the global
flows - capital, ideas, finance)

No matter how deterritori production processes become, all industries need some
place to house their center - there is ahead of centrality this brings money
resourced back into a territorialized modality

Process of de-territorialization and subsequent territorialization

Ex - During the call center boom, though labor is being outsourced (de-T) - money
that is generated is still being flown into headquarters of the actual companies that
is located in major cities like New York or Dublin (the payment are a fraction of the
flow of money in the form of remittances)

Such benefits certain jobs like investment bankers more so than it would peasants
in Africa

Some places like the Hague or Geneva also become important and global cities into
because they have avenues of profit and investment but because they politically
important institutions (like ICJ)

Analytic Borderlands - Areas where they are set classifications.

Anna Tsing - no proper classifications between certain sociological metrics -

private or public, legal or illegal, rural or urban

If you live in Bombay, you will see Koalapur in terms of ‘absence of Bombay’

You live in the shadow of something that is not present

Categories of what are cities, villages, small towns break down

These do not refer to spatial borderlands - It is a metaphor to show some sense

of lament at these analytical ambiguities that cannot be understand by focusing
on spatial niches

MAIN TAKEWARS

Cheeni 6
 DeT - ReT

Changing Role of the State (ch 3)

Critique of the West and Non West classification

Updating of the global cities - new layers of global cities adding to the old layers of
global cities

Cheeni 7
 Cohn + Sahlins
Class Sociology - I

Type

Materials

Reviewed

Sahlins

When Cook (with other Europeans) came to the Hawaiian shore, there
interaction with the natives was shaped by the existing myths that had been
historically reproduced again and again

The myth as a structure?

Initially, exchanges were not based on economic incentives (offering of women)

- so the myth was being replaced with reasons different to what they led to?

Within the reproduction of the myths (reiterating) - transformation takes place

Factual accuracy of the European archives - Albeit, there is a colonial gaze, the
factual matrix can be taken as it is. Even if the interpretation might have been
wrong.

Our imagination - Historically, interaction with strangers breed repulsiveness

and elements of conflict

However, this might not be true

Hawaiian chieftain internalizing the presence of James Cook

Interpreting the stranger with his own knowledge system of ‘stranger’ -

affixing the identity of Lono to Captain Cook to put the presence of Captain
Cook in a context he is familiar with

His imaginative structure is invested in a mythical structure that Lono (their

god) comes back from his transcendental land again and again

Cohn + Sahlins 1
 This reasoning or mythical logic might seem Hogwash - Anthropologically,
however, it needs to be taken seriously. This can be their science (or the
equivalent of scientific objectivity).

In pointing out our discrepancies of what we categorize as science and myth,

Sahlins point out our presupposition of how a certain reasoning should
inherently be in the benchmark of the real and rationale while some would
necessarily be hogwash

Through the conduit of colonialism, we inherited certain benchmarks through

which as assess standards of ‘reasonability’ and perceive what can be
classified as real or mythical. These benchmarks were thought out before the
project of colonialism was embarked on.

There is almost an aesthetic or pattern of distinction where certain reasoning

appear as bizarre which we caste in the ream of mythology. Other things that
align more with the idea of ‘modernity’. - the actual rationality is irrelevant. What
is important are the differing perceptions of what is modern and what is
mythological.

What is a myth?

Devdutt Patnaik - Fiction - Nobody’s truth. Myth - Somebody’s truth.

Myths guide the way a community would interpret their future - this is one
function of a myth?

They tried to interpolate Cook in their mythical structure which the latter
later disrupted. They restored stability by killing Cook

Society invests a lot to restore stability. It wants to weed out all forms of
aberration or built in instability that might affect order (ex - someone
marrying out of their caste where such is highly valued)

Title - Historical Metaphors and Mythical Reality - This oxymoronic title

represents the central argument

History secularizes the study of past (approached what happened in the past
from a very objective standpoint) - in mythological study, truthfulness of a
statement of whether Christ was actually crucified or not is irrelevant, as
opposed to history that specifically wants to determine the veracity of the
statement

Cohn + Sahlins 2
 Concept of ‘Actual’ crucification (asal me hua kya) - concerns of history

Myth is more complicated, at least in Sahlin’s imagination. It is an imaginative

ense,ble that structure the entire reality of a believer or a community. A ‘myth’
effects everything you interpret about the world.

Myth has a schema which reproduces itself in reality. You play out the myth.
You believe Yono is real. You look out for when Lono would come. This causes
the imaginative schema of myths to manifest in the physical world.

Secular v Non-Secular

Dream - Sees a animal

S - Just a dream. Very substance is immaterial, irrelevant and false

NS - Imbued with meaning. True (in the sense that it has substance or
is material so to tell something about the world)

Beliefs can be ever changing. They can be individual or collective. They are
nodal points that do not guide you. Their influence is not as overarching as
thought. Myths are way more powerful than standalone believes.

A belief may become a myth over time. The belief of black cat flows out of
the mythical ensemble of different ideas concerning animals possessing
magical powers.

Modern Myths - Science is right. Modern Man is Rational. Market is the only
way of representing economic activities.

Universal v Myth - Universal travels. Myth is static, contextual and collective.

Each myth will have its own universal structure but that does not mean that
each universal is a myth

Interaction of different classes (semblance of war - though not really. Direct war
when portuguese came to India. No direct conflict in Hawaii - there was
underlying resistance)

Women offering their bodies to the most powerful (Europeans - on ours case) is
a case of these women following the norms set by the structure of the Hawaiian
society. But the insertion of the Europeans changes the nature of the structure
and thus affects these norms

Cohn + Sahlins 3
 Material allocation of gifts and social power flows in opposite directions. The
transaction is such that the giver heightens its own power. If the king gives you
a gift, the valuation of the gift is higher than if the gift was given by a commoner.

In the ecounter between objects and parties - (everyday, the practice of getting
coffee by giving 10 rupees defines you anew) - this encounter has its own built
structure. Practice has its own internal logic. Over time, this practice CAN
change the main bigger structure (does not have to)

Cohn + Sahlins 4
 They are interpolating their mythical structure into the European order.

Cohn + Sahlins 5
 Douglas
Class Sociology - I

Materials

Reviewed

Type

I used a lot of points from Suvanssh's notes to flesh out my own. Please give him a kiss
next time you see him :p

Lecture 1 (Ch 1 and 6)

We assume certain things to be impure or unclean. When they get into any said
pure thing, contamination apparently takes place.

Things are conventionally

Ideas of impurity - Historical functional juncture in time (different belief systems

across time have informed such ideas - they are especially contingent on
societal contexts)

This introduces stability in the cognitive system of individuals or

communities.

A society function by creating a core nucleus (representative of its central

believes) that is cognitively considered the most stable

In the Indian nucleus - Caste Hierarchies, Gender Classification, Binary

Genders, Left Wing and Right Wing

Internal world of the community is based on an internal schema (map of

believes that traces how different dynamic in the society work or should
work)

If a society considers X to be sacred and Y to be impure, the former

would exist in the center of the society and latter would be pushed to
the periphery

Douglas 1
 This is how certain scheme manifests in the bodily world

These ideas of core and the periphery provides a social 'blueprint'. These
blueprints resides in the cognitive world. Its notions, however, manifest in the
physical world, bodily world, and the social world.

Anomalous entities - They are not classified in the schema (androgynous

woman who dress like man, not trans)

Dirt is an important analytic. She identified dirt to not only be harmful to the
physical world. Dirt is essentially 'matter out of place' - anomalous

These are considered anxiety provoken because they cause disorder

Society has a preference for order where any entity that disturbs the
order is considered an anamoly

The basis of social production of disgust is not because of any threat to the
physical body of anyone (almost never to do with this) but it is because it
disrupts order. That thing is seen not to be in order.

What happens in the center is more important as compared to what

happens in the periphery. There is not an organic homogeneous cognitive
scheme across society (As was somewhat put by Durkheim that has been
criticized by Douglas)

Society emerges with a desire for order with a violent reaction to a

disruption to order

Structural Anthropology - Interested in social totality. You will see an internal

blueprint in a society through which the entire society works. That is why,
anthropology works, to get that schema (that social totality) that allows
analysis of economy, genders, aesthetic, culture of that society. Mary
Douglas is a structuralist anthropologist. She has argued that there is an
internal stability built into these systems. Everything will make sense once
the internal schema of things is decoded.

Ritual - Connects the earthly and the divine. Exists in the earthly world
but carries a signature of the divine world. (You are in a traffic jam, you
see a small shrine. You get a sense of divinity and metaphorically move
away from that place)

Douglas 2
 note - Ritual is discrete from rationality. (ex - People dipping in
Yamuna despite of how polluted it is)

Religion - Broadly, where the Transcendent (of the other world) is

present within the immanent (immediate world - earthly)

Religion needs to have the sacred and the profane

Durkheim - Sacred emerges as a carrier for an intangible social

bond that the society shares. This amorphous social bond is
curated through the sacred. The sacred becomes the vessel of this
bond.

Post-Structuralism - critiques structuralism but it cannot stand without

structuralism.

Things with form have higher symbolic currency (forms of god - Shiva
embedded in tangible material like coins).

Non Structure - Things that are lying lose (not part of the social
schema). They have dangerous power and inspire anxiety and fear.
(mleccha in the cast system is a non structure). They are
interpolated with such feelings of dread)

Quote (Colonial Anthropology)

Mana-'success', political opportunism, societies in the colonial

era seen as laboratories of stasis. However there were internal
conflicts which were ignored and looked over by colonial
powers.

Douglas 3
 The ritual has nothing to do with the reality of the phenomenal world. That is
why, it is possible, to see an extremely dirty river as something with divinity.

Idea of dirt is used by those trying to understand how caste works.

Internal scheme is accurately mirrored in the social, physical and the cognitive
world

The internal is not as easy to express in language.

Structure of Ideas - Schema

Durkheim v Douglas - At the time of Du, structuralism of not well built enough to
see tension between classes. It sees community as one. They see internal
coherence.

Douglas says that they are core and peripheral. There are dynamic
differences between up and high, core and periphery, right and left. Plus,
she talks about non structures that don't exist within those classifications.
Douglas acknowledges the lack of such cohesion and talks about the
fizzures in a society.

Lecture 2 (contd, ch 7 and 8)

Core and Law

Core - It has to constantly be changed by social processes

NLS - You have a certain core of what is to be done. Wake up, study,
dinner, projects, moots. The fundamental force behind this is to keep
you committed to a certain level of university discipline.

Douglas 4
 This is social discipline (peculiar from others). Formal law is a boundary
making exercise to the fundamental core making social processes

Law exists that if you don't abide by these social processes, the law kicks in
at the boundaries. If you are withing the boundary of what is lawful, the
action of law is passive.

Law exists on the periphery or the margins of the society

Chickenneck problem - Law and society. What changes when. What kick-
starts and what follows. There is no causal relationship. There is instead a
correlation relationship

Law also facilitates social hierarchies that have been created by the core

Law is a tool - It can be caste, religion, it isolates the margin, it includes the
margin.

Imported utopia - Fantasy of what it means to have a democratic, plural

liberal states (with features like a certain parliament system, certain
judiciary system) - our idea of utopian law is continued from the ideas of
colonial law. Colonial law is an intrusion that oppresses but it allows the
imagination in the afterlife of that oppression an idea of utopia.

Does every action of the dominant core to control the margins of the society
count as law? No. Law specifically refers to codified. Social discipline can
include customs. (both can act pressure to act in a certain way)

Transition is a place where law CAN crumble. It might become polyvalent

(mean several things at the same time). How do people inculcate this
transition in this cognitive schema - ethnographic question. Being in that
phase (of not belonging either where) inspires anxiety. How do society deal
with that anxiety?

Generation changes are explained through this. There is a change in

schema of different generations (what the expect, norms).

These changes are not direct. They are a consequence of the friction of
different social norms. Gradual process.

Boundaries occur and are prevalent at a very tangible violent material

fields.

Douglas 5
 If someone transitions from one side of the boundary to the other, they
are in a liminal phase. Mind absorbs the reality through boundary
making processes and strategies.

There are political boundaries (left and right) - Leftist would claim to
never go to the right no matter what. Transition can happen. People can
stay in the liminus stage of transitioning.

In the liminus phase, you are perceived as per societal expectations. If

a man starts dressing up as a woman, he would be subjected to a
certain lens based on the society's core that would cause his liminus to
be manifested

Being in the liminus is a function of being open societally about any

said transition.

Not a matter of acceptance

You have acceptance in a certain status. You transition and then

move to a new status where the view of the society is not the same
when you are in Liminius. Liminality is eliminated when society
grants your new status acceptance

Non-structures location - Hijra, Witch. They have strange supernatural

powers (perceived to be). It can be controlled or uncontrolled based on the
perception of the society. Difference is due to agency.

Hijra - It is perceived that they can give blessings. So they can give
blessings as they desire. There is a certain control on how they use
their said supernatural powers.

Witch - The woman might not even know she is being perceived as a
witch. She has limitless power as per the perception of the other
person. This makes her supernatural power as a non structure
'uncontrollable'.

Unable to categorize or label these individuals as per the core schema of

the society. This causes anxiety.

Non Structures are not necessarily non-legitimate.

Douglas 6
 Morality is not the same as purity or pollution. Pollution don't run in clear
interaction of morality. 'You should not steal' but you can 'Marry 4 times' -
moral dictums. They don't necessarily overlap.

Quote

Discussion

Post-colonial India claims to be progressive. But there are marginalized and

oppressed communities. There persistence is not the matter at hand. However,
when we look at them, we actively 'otherize' them. We distance ourselves form
them and actively try to NOT associate as being related to them.

Reading text becomes a method of otherization when we read about people

engaging in rituals and magic

Douglas 7
 Inside and Outside - The latter is constantly being segregated while at the same
time, as a consequence, we are affirming the inside. By delineating what is
outside, we assert us being in the inside. (upper caste becomes essentially
anything that is not lower-caste, process of laying down what is upper caste
becomes a matter of detaching it from what can be associated with the idea of
the lower caste)

Elements of the outside within the inside are weeded out through this
process. Such inside-outside binary can be seen similar to the WEST-NON
WEST (EAST) distinction.

Outside becomes the version of the inside that the former wants to cleanse.

Core, which created the community internal schema, is interested (and has
high stakes) in creating the outside and consequently destigmatize it.

These elements that do not conform to the schema of the core do exist on
the inside. However, there is a constant process of trying to purge out these
elements from the inside. ]

The outside and inside are not opposites of each other. The outside is
created due to this process of "cleansing" the inside of what it denies and
dismisses as "not themselves" creating an "ideal" version of themselves
(similar to what Said said was done by Europeans during the time of
colonialism)

Advanced religion are constantly weeding out elements, they see as

threatening through the language of morality

This is a form of purification; without purification, the ritual hierarchy loses

its essence. The dominant "pure" object loses its right to assert its position
in the upper echelons due to its pollution. Eg-endogamy and marriage
within the social group; the black male's archetype of hypersexuality, and
the white male asserting his duty to protect the white woman from this
hypersexuality which "threatens" their purity.

This very divide is based on the idea that the pure is sieved out of mixed
elements. Insistence on purity (ex - virginity), creating almost a sense of anxiety,
is a major contingency that is mirrored in the primary 'Us' and 'Them' logic of the
society.

Douglas 8
 Social Violence - Root is the conceptual framework of what the ideas of 'pure'
and 'impure' is for different people. (cow - Hindus) - the conceptual idea of cows
is what is important here to consider.

If we actually see any person's internal composition, it is very different from the
social schema of what is pure. In a way, every individual can have traits that
would be deemed to be impure (which should actively be thrown into the
periphery) - however, relative purity is to be seen. Even if an individual has
(marignal) qualities, he can be near the core as he is relatively purere to others.
Or otherwise, it may be so

Douglas 9
 ⚙
Hamlet - Interpretation,
Universality + Guest Lecture
Class Sociology - I

Created @November 10, 2021 11:21 AM

Materials

Reviewed

Type

Shakespeare in the Bush

Difference in context - Despite of the existence of an authoritative original intent

of any piece of literature (of art, for say), there can be different valid contextual
interpretations because of the difference in perceptions of what is universal (and
difference in lenses based on varied perspectives)

Value of authorial intent? Over- interpretation?

Is the tribal interpretation objectively correct?

Cultural Appropriation - Extent - Majority interpreting the culture of the minority

as per their own views and changing it

What is universal? - No universality but there has been attempts to reach

universal beliefs to gain political power. Such universalization has not only
happened through political instruments but also through literature, art etc.

Technically, a bad thing because such application of universality allows

oppression

Caveat/Exception - Universality also in certain cases allows for good things

like sanctioning against things like murder and rape

Hamlet - Interpretation, Universality + Guest Lecture 1

 Article is not about authorial intent, its about the intent of the author of the
article who carries Shakespeare as the cultural resource and tries to claim
authority of interpretations over that text

Mis-interpretation clearly exists. Subjectivity is not so valid to attribute

pertinence to every interpretation.

Content of the science is not universal, science is.

Content keeps changing (earth was the center of universe, changed now)
but the authority of science is universal. If science changes its content, we
will believe it because of the universal belief that science is correct. '

Science has 'transcended time' - here 'Transcend Time' means sustaining

for a specific 'longish' period of time - ex - Christianity lasted a millenium

Anthropologist - field work - Africa - feeling that she might feel displaced in a
different cultural environment among the tribal - cultural resource sued to bind
them together

The irritation she got when hearing the different interpretations of the tribal of
Hamlet was because of the her stable cultural resource getting challenges, this
tore apart the familiarity she had with the text

Residual and Emergent - Battle of ideas, perceptions, logics (gist of the article) -
It's always dynamic in the sense that the societal validity of different ideas are
constantly changing all the time. Some ideas are declining and become
'Residual' whereas some ideas are gaining more validity and becoming
'Emergent'

Here, tribal interpretation (emergent) would still not gain validity (globally) in
a long time because of how they are politically places.

Text should not be seen as an inert object, it moves around the world collecting
layers of interpretation. Text is a live entity.

English has cultural and aesthetic value. It allows them to read texts like
Shakespeare. Consequently, they can anchor themselves in a cultural
resources (or resources) that connects them to western culture

What is 'West'? - Broader interpretations than just a geographic territory. It

represents all political and cultural domains where a anglo/franco features

Hamlet - Interpretation, Universality + Guest Lecture 2

 can be found. (prevalent ideas like liberalism)

Warfare between the big perspective and the small perspective - the former
being the western perspective or in our specific case, the perspective of the
Bohannan. The small perspective is of the Africans tribes

When we read the article, even we find the interpretative methods of the tribal
chief quiet inimical to interpreting what is 'correct'. This is because our own
anchoring with western culture.

Interpretation is a political battle. During interpretations, we bring a lot of

cultural, political, social beliefs into it.

Hegemony - Overarching power or dominance where the (dominated accepts it

- defining feature)

What seems real to us might seem hogwash to other people of different cultures
or of different time. Vice Versa.

Things can be universal at a certain juncture of time.

Yeh Freedom LIfe

Experimental Mode of Films - Alternate Films, explore peripheral methods that

have existed but are not as strongly circulated

It allows for a different kind of presentation. It does not have to be excellent

visually. 'Presence' and 'Feeling' can be used.

Inhabit different kind of spaces

Presence and Framing - What difference does the position of the filmmaker
makes?

The place itself makes known - How do people sense it? (When walking
across Delhi, the sound of Delhi can differentiate between Old Delhi and
New Delhi. It is difficult to delineate where the difference starts or ends but it
is there. Specific places have their own sounds and their own presence).
These difference places can be inhabited through the filmmaker's lens

Episodic nature of films against the narrative? - Story of individuals were not
known before filming. It was recorded in fragments and reconciled latter into a

Hamlet - Interpretation, Universality + Guest Lecture 3

 narrative

Why Film? - Allows you to pay attention to multiple inhabiting spaces. When
you look through a camera, you are seeing an altered image. Seeing it in the
edit is different (+perspective)

Making such films is different across all facets (filming, editing) - because of the
way the narrative is. It allows you to not create something per se, but heighten
the perception of something that naturally happens in life. Its about bringing
something that is already there to a conscious level.

Something changes, but what? - The filmmaker can expand the frame
he/she is in and transcend his/her experiences

Subject/ Context - Important - like Delhi in our specific case? - The activism, the
pollution, the refusal to stop etc. Delhi is about power. It moves by constant
remaking of the ciy. Constant erasure of people and identities. These things
shape the way the story goes.

Motivation in calmness. Creating narrative in uncertainty, inconsistency of

thought, forms of wandering., transience of things (Acceptance of such
transience)

When filming, it can get awkward (intrusive?) to focus on what is happening to

the other person, one can bring the focus to herself. What is happening to me?
How is the experience changing or affecting me? Its not about seeing, its about
sensing (shifts, intensities)

Delhi - Slums Settlements - resettling to colonies was a matter of dignity. Colony

inhabitants were no longer jhuggi or slum dwellers living in the periphery but
legally resettled individuals. This transition was important too. 'Doctor' film was
a representation of that.

Delhi represents different cycles of life and the world (they are inter-
dependent)

Question of form - Reply using a cinematic stance. What is the filmmaker's

presence? It is determined by the space (shop, beauty parlor, dispensary)

Practice of sociology and anthropology acts out in a mundane, unaware way.

Does not tend to use cameras (occasionally!). Film making is essentially an

Hamlet - Interpretation, Universality + Guest Lecture 4

 alternate research mode which allows going against the standard mundane
methodology

Filmic Intent - The act of seeing is narrowed down. A choice (Aesthetic,

Political, Cultural) is made to not focus on certain characters and not to
focus on certain.

Vulnerable does not acknowledge themselves as vulnerable

Hamlet - Interpretation, Universality + Guest Lecture 5

 Menon + Illiah
Class Sociology - I

Type

Materials

Reviewed

Forum
1. Was sex/gender a universally relevant criterion of social differentiation at
all?
Albeit sex and gender have been planes of discrimination between individuals and
groups across different historical contexts, Menon has asserted that our current
notions on which we differentiate are something that has only recently ('recently' - in
the grand scheme of human history) been introduced by western conquests.
It is interesting to note here that Menon mentions the study of western
anthropologists who have proved how sex/gender have been factors of social
differentiations across time and societies. However, this is a consequence of
westernized schoolers imposing their own universals on native societies of different
regions. This plays out with simple circular reasoning. These anthropologists
assume the existence of gender and interpret the society as such - thus, being
biased and predisposed towards finding sex/gender categories in these societies,
which ultimately leads them to discover the same.
However, a more objective ethnography would lead to many different conclusions. It
is found that communities scarcely differentiated between males and females to
organize their social structures. Factors like age were instead often given
preference. Additionally, social roles were not genderized, unlike our modern
societies where certain roles are seen as being inherent masculine (head of
household,  clan leader) or feminine (caretaker). (this has been termed 'gender
flexibility)
Moreover, there was an absence of othering of individuals that did not fit the binary
categories of 'male' or 'female'. Such an is Native American culture,

Menon + Illiah 1
 heteronormativity did not exist in its current form where intersex people were seen
as divine and homosexuality was seen as a 'third' and 'fourth' gender. This
essentially made many individuals a legitimate part of the society who currently are
pushed to the margins and socially and systemically discriminated against.
4. Is gender a universal? How does it travel across contexts?

Menon (Lecture Notes)

Painting of Krishna

...

The culture you are enmeshed in creates a certain 'accepted' version of god

Someone who is not used to these pictures may find themselves to be

confused, bewildered, might try to justify it

Hetero-normativity has laid down such boundaries of sexuality and identity

that whenever someone crosses those boundaries, we try to label them -
like 'homosexual'. This painting might feel like representing Homosexuality
(As someone also argued in class) but it does not necessarily. Cross-
Dressing here can be seen as something vere discrete from homosexuality.
The 'gender' (term used in a loose sense) roles do not switch.

Why do we Study 'gender' when talking about difference?

Gender has been a primary axis of differentiation historically. It has

structures social hierarchies across different communities.

Menon makes the argument about how west imposed its categories of 'male'
and 'female'

How much of these notions were prevalent in India? - Since we see kings
were still men or the practice of Sati

She has given the example of the Bhakti movement but that was a
movement that essentially rose to oppose the prevalent standards of the
society. So she selectively uses examples to draw a picture of an India
which is fairer than reality.

Menon + Illiah 2
 However, historically, in pre-historic times - it can be argued that there was
no social differentiation between gender (though historians like Upinder
Singh argues that even pre-historic time had gender roles)

Marxist Historian Argument - It was after the advent of the idea of 'caste',
gender roles were imposed

Caste reproduced itself through sexual segregation of women

High caste women were exempted from going out of the house or doing
certain acts of labor (lower caste strata women often had no
impositions, or relatively lower ones in terms of what can be done or not
done)

Constant locking up of women (upper caste) is where patriarchy began

- this has the important notion of woman as a 'property' of the man

Women become an axis of signifying 'purity'. If this woman has a

relationship with a lower caste, honor would be lost. The entire structure
of the family would be broken

Such an idea was echoed by Frederic Engels

Origin of Private Property - Family is the first sign of capitalist

exploitation. Family owns property. A man owns a family and
capital. That capital must be passed down to a lineage that can
be associate with him. He does 2 things - He makes woman
reproduce for the family and makes the confine to the domestic
sphere so that their body is not available to men, especially
those low in the social hierarchy

Economic logic behind curbing female sexuality.

Distinguishing between Gender and Sex

Biological Determinism - Assumption that various 'natural'

characteristics lead to existence of some level of subordination and
social marginalization. Moreover, this subordination was justified.

Science of sex was invented by medicine in the 17th-18th century

where people wanted a stable and reliable truth about their bodies and
who I am and what do I desire sexually (through medical discourse,

Menon + Illiah 3
 sexual desire and self become interlinked and deterministic) - this
brings us to the general western idea that one needs a stable sexual
identity to feel content with self (promoted by the medical
establishment)

The idea that society exists to suppress freedom of sexual desire and
identity is a western idea

Two equally forces at work

Interrated ways in which society produces sex differences

Sex Differences structure society in particular ways

Ex - Dating statistics - Women will say less to a man who has less of a
socially recognized attribute of maleness - This is due to social differences -
These notions supposedly structure the supposed 'natural idea of 'sex'.

Social expectations are internalized and they become individual

expectations. Individual is socially produced.

Sex is precarious. It is contingent on this repeated performance.

Patriarchy was prevalent in India but this binary argument that maleness
and femaleness reside within the body of the individual (naturally) was
imposed

Menon + Illiah 4
 She is critiquing the idea of a natural body. A body is supposed to have
natural impulses and all that. Eveyrone is where some kind of make up that
is ocntingengt on their individualy placed identities

Seeing like a Feminist

Illiah (Lecture Notes)

Caste existed before the advent of the colonialists - However, there was rigidity
added to the conception after the arrival of the Britishers. They gauged
everything in a 'silo' manner - they categorized individuals with no nuance. It
created a very simple but extremely deceptive representation of the Indian
society

Henry Maine (historian) - Brahmainical class had interpretative authority over

this text.

Gandhi was anti discrimination - but he did not take a strident view on the need
to annihilate caste - that is why Ambedkar and Gandhi treaded off

Top

Low - People who did not have access to temples or village institytions or
the ritual economy - these are the

Menon + Illiah 5
 Illiah is not talking about the aforementioned.

Religious - Unearthly. Secular - Earthly, Worldy life

Cultural hegemony of the secular world is captured by the Brahmans by taking

in control the secular institutions of the world - Banks (other financial
institutions), Education, Schools, Markets etc - They are not directly using caste
identities. They are instead using their social power as Brahmans to take
control of these institutions.

Santhal Rebellion - Consequence of exploitation (physical, bodily, mental) by

upper caste landlords over a stretched period of time

Current ideas of caste are seen narrowly through the idea of 'ritual economy' -
Entry into Temples, Access to Wells, Sabrimala Temple - Illiah has argued that
caste is a pervasive element that exists across the entire society, from secular
institutions to temples.

Caste exists in the silence about caste

Secularization of caste - Caste hides behind liberalism as it infiltrates the folds

of liberal values. Liberalism becomes the go to ideology where one wants to
hide its privileged identity.

'All Light Matter' politics - I stand with everything good. It stands from the
position of a person who wants to take politically correct person. They have a
good heart but does not want to give up their excessive privilege at any point.
They pose to support all the right things at the right time except when it is
against their own position in the society.

Status Quo of class and caste - who get what part of the total pie - remains
intact

These people actively stop lower caste from moving up form their positions
of being oppressed

These people perform caste

They don't want their positions challenged

Helping people or posing as such allows build up of social capital too

Menon + Illiah 6
 Someone who has been a landless laborer for 3 generations - they would send
their children for word at the age of 13 for low paying physical labor. The
cultural horizon that they can use education to advance themselves
generationally is nor there. Unlike, a poor upper caste person would move
upwards in the social hierarchy if they were in the same position financially say
in the 1960s.

Structural Violence - Violence is perpetrated due to people's position in a

societal structure

Ambedkar vision - Dalits would come to cities as they would provide an abode
of castelessness. However, that cannot be realized as cities too perform caste
(Hotels - based on upper caste tastes - consider that a universality)

Illiah wants to point towards the broader idea of Hinduization - how such has
made every institution about caste

7th chapter - Argues creation of a democratic system based on dalitbahujan

ideals - everyone does minimum physical labour etc

Beyond argumentation, it becomes important to see the reality of the

author. He is angry due to his own experiences. They are angry because
they have suffered long periods of oppression

Marx - Elites have made such choices to minimize their physical labor for
leisure and so they have more time to do activities that allow them to
accumulate power

Upper caste have access to a future horizon that there is hope (politics of hope)
- Interview of Scavengers who are low caste asked why they do not educate

Menon + Illiah 7
 their children - they say "What it the point?" - they are not able to make
investment into hope. Hope is a resource that upper castes have

Menon + Illiah 8
 Simmel + Marx
Class Sociology - I

Materials

Reviewed

Type

Simmels

'Strange', as opposed to 'Othering'

Strange is something that begins with perceiving a commonality with

whatever we perceive as strange

'Deflection from the usual'

Strange is something that we want to understand. It is what we try to

interpolate our boxes (categorization of the world) but fail to. Contemplation
of the Strange is pleasurable as opposed to the contemplation of the 'Other'
which can create emotions of disgust and disdain

Being 'Other' is not to be strange.

Ophelia (Hamlet) goes mad. Her delirium is interpreted as strange. Our

desire (imaginary world that we do not have access to but want access to
through art) to know about AI, Apocalypse, Alien etc (which is all strange)
is pleasurable to us because:

Outward projection of what we wish to be, what we want to be like

them. We want to know what is is like to be an alien or a mad person,
we want to contemplate how we would contemplate with them

We see a version of our desirable (hero, god) or our despicable (mad,

lowly animal) selves. These are our questions in our mind that we feed
to when we read science fiction (or contemplate such strange things)

A stranger is locked in a limbo, between familiarity and distance. (it exists

neither outside nor inside)

Simmel + Marx 1
 Strange - Like us but not like us (commonality but a difference)

A stranger is content with being seen as 'Out of Place' (similar to be the gen z
desire to be seen as quirky)

An individual in a community plays out his individuality by standing out through

the act of being 'strange'

If individuals go out to be different and desire to do so, why do they still find
comfort in the familiar? (what is the dynamic between the desire to stand out
while remain part of an established norm)

We want to be strange momentarily. However, in the long run, we desire to

be part of some commonality. There is a strong desire to fit in. (Tuhami -
wanted to be part of the community. Even Crapanzano presented him as a
representative of his community but at the same time, his experiences were
posited to also demonstrate him as exceptional and peculiar)

There are contradictory coexisting desires of fitting and and standing out

If we peruse the philosophy of what is an individual in sociology - An individuals

pulls back when society comes at them and imposes customs (there is constant
push and pull. Society constantly puts pressure on individuals. When such
pressure is applied, an individual excavates back into his individuality and his
peculiar nature. This is relevant when analyzing the sociology of the individual
and the society)

Classical Sociology - Focuses on the fact that people conform whereas

Simmel's work is based around the fact that an individual pushed out of a
society and manifests his peculiar traits

You might find a monk in a society. S/he is seen as different or strange from the
society (away from society). At the same time, they are interpolated in the
dynamics of the society since people look up to them.

Simmel is interested in Stranger as a person. Who is s/he?

Love isn't spectacularly "strange" anymore as it should be.

"Strangeness" and uniqueness in the beginning of a relationship, which is

more endearing and positive than usual

Simmel + Marx 2
 The sensuous gaze is what makes the person special (the rose-tinted
glasses of love)-Bhakti movement and devotional poetry.

Ideologies of love deeply entrenched in our emotional landscape derived

from social norms and social norms and context-movie and literature telling
us what love is supposed to look like

Ideology which emerges from the west that some special mysterious things
would happen - large number of people do not ascribe to this

In the history of humans (and specifically, partner-finding), the idea of dating

is rather new. It is rather a function of social capital.

That intimacy is what Simmel presents as a template for the western

society. This template has spread due to globalization.

Institutional set up that might help - a few decades ago, there were no
places for people to sit and go for 'dates'. The etymology of casual
dating was absent. This has come (in India especially) post the 90s and
00s post globalization. These ideas have also made their way into
popular cultural instruments and platforms like Bollywood

Not to say that people did not love in the 80s buts is open
presentation was not similar to how it was today. ['Dating' was done
under a tree, so to say]

Late Capitalism has brought out the habit (or the fondness) of talking to
stranger which was not as ubiquitous before (this too has facilitated the
modern idea of dating, love and intimacy)

As modern cosmopolitan citizens of the world, we have become

stranger-sociable. (easier to build intimacy with strangers)

There is a pressure to conform to the cosmopolitan personality

(irrespective of whether you are comfortable with it) - Modern
Identity - It has its own underlying ethnocentrism (not overt, not
public). It was a way of understanding social life and social
dynamics by loosening ones own cultural anchors

The logic of liberal tolerism - They are tolerant to the people who
conform to the sense of modernity that they view to be right. However,
this view is based on certain assumptions of the liberals that they have

Simmel + Marx 3
 no cultural underpinnings (like a Conservative Christian or Muslim). But,
they are also inhabiting a certain cultural practice within their largely
modern community and calling it a template of the normal or the
common-sensical

When we say tolerance, we don't mean it in a sense of pure or extreme

tolerance. It is a tolerance of making a pretense of being friendly to
everyone who conforms to our understanding of what is right.

Love isn't spectacularly "strange" anymore as it should be

"Strangeness" and uniqueness in the beginning of a relationship, which is

more endearing and positive than usual

The sensuous gaze is what makes the person special (the rose-tinted
glasses of love)-Bhakti movement and devotional poetry.

Ideologies of love deeply entrenched in our emotional landscape derived

from social norms and context-movies and literature telling us what love is
supposed to look like.

The paradox of novelty/strangeness-the novelty/strangeness is what leads

to the relationship dying out, but will the relationship even begin if we start
with the assumption that there is no novelty, there is no "destined
soulmate'?

Dating as an individualistic pre-marital practice is relatively new in the

history of partner-finding and as a function of "social capital" you have
access to.

Is this strangeness, then, a Western construct? The idea of love being

something sublime, divine?

Late capitalism bringing out this race behind creating "strangeness" by

being "different". Becoming stranger-sociable as we become modern
cosmopolitan citizens of the world, talking and falling in love with strangers.

Cosmopolitanism is a system related with limits; it is linked with the idea of

being "modern" by not being linked to any particular identity. Not being linked to
or "bound" by culture, therefore they develop ideas of what is "modern" and
what fits its template and what doesn't. Liberal tolerance means "I am

Simmel + Marx 4
 comfortable with what I decide is comfortable.", being tolerant to what fits that
"modernity" template.

A focus and pressure to be cosmopolitan today-not remaining restricted to a

certain identity but to interact and identify with multiple cultures by
loosening your hold over the original identity/culture. Because there are
certain (economic) "benefits" to cosmopolitanism. Even cosmopolitanism
has a certain form of ethno-centrism under it (imposition of a certain culture
on other cultures due to pre-conceived notions about them.)

Modernity has certain deeply rooted templates about what is acceptable

and what needs to be followed; not following these templates is considered
blasphemous.

There is a certain tolerance level associated with cosmopolitanism

regarding the "different" practices followed by other groups: being 'liberal'.

This tolerance is thus not extreme tolerance but a pretense of cherry

picking who comes in depending on their parameters. Eg-going to a college
and people judging you on the basis of whether you fit their template or not.

The idea of "the stranger" overlapping with "the other": the non-relation
generated when a community decides and denounces a community as
"strangers" saying "they are not us".

Other - Sees it from a perspective of 'Non-relation'. There is an argument of

us and them.

Strange - Exoticism. Othering involves a certain distance that does no

tallow since exoticism.

3 kinds of strangeness - Closeness and Distance, Intimate, Non-relation

(us and them which comes very close to othering; often associated with
ideology)

Simmel + Marx 5
 Diff between 1 and 3 - Former is an oddball in the common society.
Latter represents another community; additionally, ideology
differentiates.

Why is this famous? - It picks on the strangeness of individuals

Others are often seen as collective. Individuals are not seen as

different and strange in this context

Three kinds of strangeness

Closeness-distance dichotomy (in whatever tenuous way, the stranger is

considered a "part" of the community as an oddball)

Intimacy

Non-relational strangeness of us-them propelled usually by ideology

stranger considered as the "other", not a "part" of the community

racial and ideologized superiority enshrined in Western philosophy

Marx v Simmels

S - Estrangement does not necessarily marginalize you in a community. It is

a more generalized feeling of strangeness that is prevalent

M - He talks about such estrangement and alienation in a way that such

leads to marginalization of the ones who are being alienated.

Marx

Estrangement and objectification of labour.

Objectification-The conversion of an aphysical identity and entity embodied

within the labour moving outward and becoming, quite literally 'objectified'.
The realization of labour implies loss of realization for workers, since the
object is appropriated by the producers. the worker's efforts and
manifestation of its fruition is snatched from him.

Estrangement-The product of the labour becomes something alien to the

worker, something unknown and strange. Maybe because there is a
separation of the physical and the metaphysical; the conversion of
something imaginary and intrinsic to the labourer to something that doesn't
"belong" to him?

Simmel + Marx 6
 Example of handicraft workers, "breathing life" into products and losing their
own lives in the process. Maybe implies a subtle undertone of exploitation and
forced production which snatches the essence of wilful production of goods.
Example of the story from Enid Blyton (two workers who made a golden
peacock, one who made it wilfuly for daughter viewed it as something intrinsic
to himself, holding a certain value and breathed life into it, other viewed it as a
simple, lifeless object "separate" from himself)

The means of life he receives from nature no longer remain so. The worker
becomes a slave to the object since he "receives" from the nature instead of
interacting with it. He becomes a "physical subject".

The separation of the labor from the worker leading to an inverse relationship
between the both.

Simmel + Marx 7
 The separation of the worker from the object he produces, the dichotomy of
riches and splendour and the worker's decrepit condition.

How even the act of production is a process of alienation, the object itself is a
function of this relationship between the worker and the act of production.

Labor is forced and a form of slavery to an individual or a force external to

oneself, thus not belonging to oneself, comparison drawn with religion. It is not
satisfaction of needs, but a means to satisfy needs external to it. This is self
estrangement-turning the worker's own skills and intimate ideas against himself,
thus alienating him from himself.

Labor restricts the totality of the worker's life and existence to productive
activity. Life itself becomes a "means to life". He exists only to work and he only
works to exist, becoming a mere animal. An animal is merely concerned with
immediate subsistence and living, whereas the free man produces universally
and even when he himself is free from physical need.

Simmel + Marx 8
 Estrangement from "species-life" also implies an estrangement from other men
since other people are also part of the species life.

The idea that man discovers himself vis a vis his relation to other men implies
that the alienation of a worker's product and his labor means submission to
another man (not god, not nature) alien, hostile and much more powerful than
him.

Production relations (productive forces-forces specific to production): The

relation between the owners of the factors of production and the workers
utilizing the factors of production. (in capitalism, this would be the relation
between labor and capital in capitalism.

Capital here WOULD NOT mean the capital in neoclassical economics.

Capital here is a social relation of exploitation (and subordination) and

extraction of value for little in return. A landowner is prima facie not a capitalist
but once he starts extracting value from it, he becomes a capitalist.

Capitalists become so by historical processes (primitive accumulation, for

example the enclosing of commons and common land to make it productive
for value extraction).

What is value?

The intrinsic worth something holds

Relative value quantification (as opposed to absolute value)

Use value-Value derived by use of a particular product (marginal utility)

Marx flips it by saying that as you use more and more sandwiches, you
would want it to sell it in the market at an exchange value.

Simmel + Marx 9
 Exchanging an apple with a cigarette because you value the cigarette more
than the apple now (Due to diminishing marginal utility). Relative value of
cigarette is more now.

In a complex economic system, monetary system is utilized.

A capitalist emerges because he has money (M) and can utilize it to produce
commodities.

A commodity is congealed labour (solidified labour). Labour+raw

material=commodity.

Selling the commodity in the market (at M') makes profit (M'-M) (or surplus
value in Marx) which is reinvested back in the market to increase profit
(circulation of money within the capitalist circle).

The surplus value signifies labour and value addition, which is extracted by the
capitalist who uses labour as an automaton. It should ideally belong to the
labour.

The commodity itself signifies the value of the labor (derived from the body of
the labourer). (Note-the value is not monetary per se but the surplus itself
entails something beyond money-the value extracted from the labour)

The use value belongs to the person utilizing the product but the exchange
value (difference) is appropriated by the capitalist.

All of this implies that capitalism sustains itself on exploitation and injustice and
must break down if workers are to get the value of their labor.

Marx-a humanist and a materialist

Superstructure (overarching ideas and concepts in humankind) and base

(Economic materials and products and material objects and their relations)

He is a materialist because he explains how dialectics in the material

products, processes and economic realities (the base) have shaped history
instead of a dialectic of ideas (Hegel) (the superstructure). He is thus a
dialectic materialist.

Society is shaped by class struggles (who have different ideologies) in a

dialectic. Once someone wins, the entire base changes, changing the
superstructure.

Simmel + Marx 10
 Thus according to him, even ideas and concepts themselves originate from
the base and material realm.

French revolution-Marx (18 something Napoleon Bonaparte)-He mocked

the French Revolution since there was no change in the base (propertied
individuals still won)

Marx wants freedom and liberation for all, not just a particular section of society.

Labour is the strongest and the weakest part of the societal link. They are
economically, physically and emotionally the weakest but without them,
economic sustenance would not exist.

The worker might make a chair but he does not know where it will end up.

Assembly line production-Particularly alienating and estranging

What the worker produces is more valuable than his body and labor itself. His
lack of ownership over the product he himself makes is especially traumatic and
estranging.

The worker is not more than an animal who works merely for subsistence (A
bird making a nest). His life becomes a means to his life and existence. He is
separated from the species-life and social existence of humanity. He only works
for money.

Simmel + Marx 11
 There is hierarchies in Marx's communist utopia itself but the base is such that
there is no private ownership and accumulation of power in the hands of a few.

The alienation of the product of the labor from the worker and its transfer to
another person, directly implying this another person's "strangeness" and
"othering" as an alien, hostile and stronger power, is what leads to class
divisions.

Simmel + Marx 12
 Environmentalist ideas of Marx-What the worker does in combination with
nature

Many people concerned with a lack of natural concern in communist ideals

A person becomes a worker first and then a physical subject in the current
system

Nature is assumed to be a conglomerate of resources meant to fuel

economic growth and progress.

Originally, a person uses nature for subsistence by working on it (an

interactive and dynamic relationship with nature) but then as a worker, he
starts exploiting nature

Worker wrenched away from sensuous nature-an attachment and intimate

relationship with nature lost

Shifting the blame and hazards on the workers by the capitalists

Transforming the person into a labourer separates the two aspects of a

worker and a physical subject-the "labour" and the "subsistence" aspects
are cleaved away.

'Object'-Purpose of labour; worker as purposive representation of labour

Disciplining mechanism by automating workers and limiting leisure

Simmel + Marx 13
 Marx's contradiction in later works where he says that going back to the
past is not particularly important-here he's seen romanticizing the originally
benign relationship with nature.

JB Foster-Labour metabolizes nature [metabolic rift] [Marx's ecology]

The metabolic rift cannot be separated or eliminated, is an important

component of the industrial complex

The engulfing of the countryside into the urban industrial complex by land-
grabbing and utilization of forced labour from the former

A city metabolizes and usurps resources from the countryside in a parasitic

relationship

Colonial west had the same relationship with the non-West.

Raymond Williams-The Country and the City

DISCUSSION

Surplus value extraction done by essentially marking up the price of the

product, putting it out of the reach of the worker due to the wages themselves
being lower than the exchange value.

Gramsci-Over time, capitalists turn themselves into systems of respite and

leisure [hegemony-manufactured consent]

Bourgeoise is not just the top 1%, there are classes within the rich and
privileged themselves

Freedom is the superstructure of capitalism

Freedom in itself is not real freedom-the "American dream"

Economic freedom does not imply freedom in its basest sense.

Bourgeoise queer marriage construct-Queer people in America still follow the

same model of heteronormativity after moving in; following cis-het norms of
marriage and life [state protection and paternalism]

Where do non-workers fit in? Artists and philosophers? Not non-workers per se
but people who do not fit in the production process?

Simmel + Marx 14
 In Marxist scholarship, art, film and literature are seen as a canvas for display of
class relations and struggles. Eg-Romantics putting a veil on the dirty reality of
industrialization (an oblique relationship) by escaping into pristine nature

Frederic Jameson-Late capitalism (post codist nature) seen in the movie Blade
Runner, making money out of money in modern art and speculation
(imaginative value)

Building of class consciousness and class unity-EP Thompson-Going to church

collectively

Simmel + Marx 15
 Tuhami + Hurston
Class Sociology - I

Materials

Reviewed

Type

Crapanzano
What seems commonplace (or obvious) to our standard perceptions/
perspectives may not be similar to someone places different in the world (tribes
in Hamlet)

Crapanzano is peculiar about perceptions - perceptions of different people

coming from different places

Almost no one confirms the world in new categories. People put new things in
categories that have already been created in their minds. (teacher - when a
teacher sees a new student, she automatically attributes that student to be part
of a certain category)

Crapanzano confronts this process

What is Ethnography? - Documenting of people in the view they wanted to be seen

(ethno - people, graphy - writing).

We are trying to grasp a version of how people see themselves in the world
as opposed to how our external view of them is?

Writing entails a reductionist element. To put down something on a text

makes the description more stable and less dynamic. (Does this do justice to
the subject in presenting an accurate representation of it?)

People (non-ethnographer) perceive things from their own boxes.

Ethnographer, on the other hand, actively try to see things from other
people's perspectives.

Tuhami + Hurston 1
 Ethnography has came a long way from the colonial times when people
(colonisers) just reduced everyone to be barbaric etc.

Tuhami - as the research went on - became textual material ethnographically

(albeit he simultaneously exists as a physical human being). The textual material
is only an essence of Tuhami.

Any textual material would technically only be able to capture part of the whole.
It would only be an essence of the subject.

What Aisha does to infertile woman might be true. But the overarching story
might be metaphorical for the Moroccans

When you inhabit a cultural space for along time (sometimes over 10 years), it
becomes easier to research. People cant go in an interview format and ask
people explicit questions. Close connection is required. It is important to
understand the other person to be able to frame pertinent questions. You ask
them about the internal assumptions.

Etic (Research Approach) When you see something from the outside. Objective,
non structural approach (opposed to people who immerse in the cultures and
realities of people for a long time)

Ethnographic Encounter has his own visceral nature, which when you reduce to
a stable mode of narration, what you experience through general contemplation
is the reductionist view of the encounter and the experience

In global knowledge system, there is a huge hierarchy about assumptions of the

west and of the non-west. The former's is considered more stable and rugged.
West's assumption about us are attributed more value than of the east.

We have internalized the fact that we are lower than the west

Going to see monuments in Europe is a big thing as it puts you as someone

who has access to 'High Culture' however the Europeans would not attribute
similar value to seeing something like the Taj Mahal or the Fatehpur Sikri

This is the manifestation of the hierarchy of the knowledge system

Ethnographic texts can be strange. Why? - Existence of churned cultural,

rational, universal assumptions

Tuhami + Hurston 2
 Interaction of the anthropologist and the subject also reflects the interactions of 2
different communities (they also carry with themselves their own individual ideas
and subjects)

Inter-subjective dialogue (autobiography lacks since there is an absence of

an encounter, so to say

Hurston
Nuanced form of othering (especially when compared to Tuhami)

The difference between Tuhami and Crapanzano was radical

Whereas Hurston is similar to her subjects, in fact she is part of the same
community. Though she has 'moved up in the world', so to say, her community
has no regard for her achievements (in the sense that they do not see her to be
distant due to those achievements). She had contract with Franz Boas (big
thing, he was a big American anthropologist)

Hurtson born - 1890 - died in 1960s - one of the first (probably, the first) African
American anthropologists. Part of the Harlem (gets its name form the neighborhood,
movements in poetry, jazz, literature, music where black people took part in may
different artistic movement renaissance)

Highly celebrated today in African American studies (more than Anthropology)

Hurston would always be seen as a black woman (black + woman - inter-

sectional). Compared to Crapanzano whose work is not seen through the lens
of his identity.

Negros gatekeeping - why?

Safeguard identities (relevant to see the circumstances - racial overtones)

Culture for the negros was their last domain of power that they wanted to
protect form the ethnocentric gaze or appropriation of the whites

Cultural resource - those who have it become interpretative authorities of that

resource. Having this can consequently transform into political power.

Tuhami + Hurston 3
 Safeguarding their culture allows Negros to retain this authority of theirs and
stops the white wo/man from appropriating this resource for their own benefit
(analogy - In Hindu culture, Brahamans portrayed themselves as the sole
interpreters of ancient texts that allowed them to have political power over the
other castes)

Cultural power - Partha Chaterjee - The Nation and Its Fragments - About
Bengal Nationalist Freedom Movement - Control of the imagination of what
the upper caste Bengali women should be - weather she should be
goddess like, chaste, house wife etc. Culture becomes the last domain of
autonomy, to show in a limited way that you still have some power (in the
context that you are losing economic and political power but are trying to
stay attached to some sense of power or authority )

This is a form of soft power. However, it manifests into hard power on

political facets

The silence and the inscrutability of the aunt (as a representation of the
community) is a political stance in itself? Can her words of kindness and
indifference be taken at face value?

Even if it not giving them political power, it is marking out a zone of political
power for them

Shame in having their story written by a white anthropologist which is a

deadening feeling for them. "We will rather have our story untold and die than
have a white anthropologist tell it"

They do not want to submit their knowledge to the 'colonial' authorities

Matter of (impure) influence - If a white anthropologist tells their story, s/he can
appropriate it and make the conveyance impure and the folklore inauthentic

They are interested in showing that they were dealt a wrong hand (social
hierarchy). The creation of folklore was to keep hope among the future
generations (distribution of soul - there would be fairer distribution of soul in the
future)

In American and African culture, Jew is a common enemy (why - don't know)

Tuhami + Hurston 4
 He is a bit suspicious. These are rhetorical questions. There is a sense of
distancing (cannot be called othering)

'Too later for who' - the folklore is not dying (?) so what do you want to preserve

Moseley is sensing that what she wants to turn the folklore into Heritage, which
is understood to be dead culture

From Moseley's perspective, it seems like Nora is trying to turn their cultural
resources into a text that will be read by whites (and can be possibly
appropriated by them)

She is the daughter of Lucy and they love her very much but they sense that
she is different from the Nora that she knew. Her education and exposure has
perhaps changed her. The textual nature of the stories is something that they
are not enthusiastic about and they are scared that Nora might change it

They call their cultural resource (the folklore) lies. They are subtly making fun of
Zora by calling it lies. They is an indirectness in all the speech that the engage
in when they talk to Zora. They choose not to tell Zora directly that they dont
want to turn their folklore into texts; this shows a sense of collective wisdom

"Textual Commodification of Stories"

Heritage turns lived culture in to dead culture (dead doesn't mean that it is
gone. It is gone. The cultural space would not longer be inhabited)

Zora feels displaced and dislocated

Tuhami + Hurston 5
 Discussion (Thursday)
Various things are difficult to grasp with our existing knowledge systems

Anthropologists like Crapanzano try to expand the discipline by putting down

these things in an understandable manner

To categorize explicitly X as Y (essentially lay down any thing in an already made

grouping) is doing 'violence' to that thing (since such categorizing only captures part
of the essence of that thing)

Idea that raising consciousness (or the activities that might promote it) will bring you
to an objectively more aware stage might not always be true (often such increase in
awareness is more of a consequence of

Prevalent knowledge systems quarantine (limit) experiences (or awareness) to our

5 senses. 'This is the only experience you can feel' ← (Physical manifested reality)

Multiplicity of psychological states of belief of existing - There is no state of

psychological normality or abnormality - people's psyche exists on different and
alternate planes

Book recommendation - Thin Places - Woman looking for home (She is in Boston
but goes to forests of Nepal to do fieldwork) - She found Buddhism

She faced many problems - broken marriage, raising children alone

The anthropologist, when he stays in a different society for a long period of time,
gets a conflicting identity (reconciling his original identity with his new identity as he
picks on the lifestyle and the perspectives of wherever he is)

Gulliver Travels - When Gulliver comes back to England after living with the
Yahoos (horses), he keeps talking with the houses with whom he has a better
relationship than the humans (Yahoos were superior than humans and the latter
were subservient)

Does the anthropologist need to have an anchor to his own culture (when he is
outside for a long time) to ensure that when he produces his ethnography, he is not
influenced by the culture he is present in

Tuhami + Hurston 6
 There is no need to leave out own cultural beliefs for an anthropologist - what is
required is acknowledgement of the varying needs

Saba Mahmoud - Politics and Piety (Feminist Anthropology) - There is a group of

women in a revivalist movement who chose to wear a veil (represent patriarchy) -
Mahmoud gives the ethnographic description of this revivalist movement - it was
very uncomfortable

Crapanzano is taking Tuhami's point of view as legitimate but he is also

Work on Religion - Atryee speaks with many people who are right wing Hindus - she
does not agree with them - however the goal is to find the cultural constructs from
which they derive their position and the implications of those constructs (for things
like nation building (?))

Tuhami + Hurston 7