Communities characterized by hierarchical and dependent relations are cast as inherently oppressive within dominant emancipatory liberal frameworks that privilege notions of freedom and independence. As international humanitarian and development institutions aim to redistribute wealth on a global scale, they are often at pains to emphasize that it is not a “gift” that could create dependency, antithetical as it is to the idealized figure of the unfettered, self-determining individual as the proper subject of liberal ethical life. Such logics, however, exist in tension in places where patronage and dependency are valued as the necessary means of wealth redistribution, guided by collective moral and ethical obligations that often reinforce hierarchical interdependence between subjects aspiring to forms of ethical life. Through ethnographic examples from Africa and the Middle East, this panel examines lived relations of patronage and dependency within Muslim-majority communities and the religious idioms and ethics within which they are articulated. Drawing upon and expanding recent scholarly debates on Islamic development, charity, and distributive relations, the panel aims to offer a fresh investigation of the classic anthropological question about how and why certain ethical communities may work to sustain, rather than eliminate, social hierarchies. The first paper contrasts conflicting notions of “sustainability” within the work of two Islamic development organizations in Tanzania: one beholden to the narrow temporality of global development funding cycles, where “sustainability” entails short-term inputs designed to inhibit dependency, and another supported by pious charitable donations where “sustainability” means long-term relations of wealth redistribution and care. In turn, the second paper examines how shifting moral claims concerning Islamic almsgiving shape hierarchical patronage relations between Syrian refugees and shaweesh (refugee camp headmen) in Lebanon, marked by a tension between the imperative of economic accumulation, on one hand, and a pious obligation toward wealth redistribution, on the other. The third paper examines the social and material relations that guide Sudanese migrants' "sanduk" (mutual aid) societies in Beirut, including how generational and gendered forms of hierarchy are reproduced through and structure conditions of migrant communal survival, and how ethical life factors into these relations of communal co-dependence, both as a mutual aspiration and as a marker of difference/exclusion. The fourth paper analyzes the voluntary submission of agricultural labor within Senegalese daara residential communities, framed as it is within both a Sufi devotional idiom embedded in hierarchical shaykh-disciple relationships as well as liberalized notions of the economy invoked alongside the receipt of international development funds. The fifth paper examines the network of moral interdependencies constituting agricultural day-labor in Syria before the 2011 war, and how Syria's market liberalization reconfigured these networks, producing new tensions and contradictions between domestic economies of care and previous forms of cooperation.

Sanduk as Survival Among Sudanese Migrant Workers in Beirut

Patronage and Dependency in Islamic Ethics and Economies of Care: Ethnographic Inquiries from Africa and the Middle East

technical paper

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

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

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

Anna Reumert

1

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Sanduk as Survival Among Sudanese Migrant Workers in Beirut

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