Wiley: Cultural Anthropology: Table of Contents

OUT OF TIME? Chronocracy and Ageism in Brexit–COVID‐19 England

CATHRINE DEGNEN — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

Generation or relative age is a common way humans define social difference. In Europe and North America, old age is frequently perceived as a period of decline and loss, a condition “successful aging” paradigms exhort individuals to avoid for as long as possible. Explicit and implicit ageist beliefs, discourses, and practices marginalize later life, portraying it as undesirable and inferior. This essay explores how imagined generational relationships with time—younger people as future facing, older people as out of time—enrol linear, future-oriented temporal perspectives in reproducing ageism. The aftermath of the Brexit referendum, followed closely by the COVID-19 pandemic, serve as my ethnographic examples. These two extraordinary events permit me to highlight how chronocracy (Kirtsoglou and Simpson 2020)—that is, the denial of coevalness or coexistence in time through everyday temporal regimes—reinforces unequal power dynamics, and to explore how generational groups are differently valued in contemporary England.

THE TRAFFIC IN REPAIRMEN AND A CASE OF GENDER IMPROPRIETY IN POST‐WAR SARAJEVO

HALİDE VELİOĞLU — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

In postwar Sarajevo, repair is mainly a masculine activity, and people lean on communal networks to get things fixed under dire economic circumstances. Yet increased numbers of women without men in their households as an effect of the war necessitate the mediation of other women in facilitating access to men's labor. Women of social capital who have access to men gain prestige by proffering male repair services. Examining the case of a gender-nonconforming woman provides rich insight into the pivotal role that “gender propriety” plays in establishing systems of daily care, normalcy, and social order in Bosnia. The mundane gendered work of repairing broken things ultimately depends on cultivating, sustaining, and sometimes recalibrating relationships among women.

WOUNDS IN UTOPIA: The Politics of Gay Football in 4T Mexico

MAX D. LÓPEZ TOLEDANO — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

LGBT+ football teams have proliferated in Mexico in recent years, allowing communities who previously struggled with feeling at the margins of the nation to make new claims to respectability and national belonging. At the same time, these have developed surprising alliances with political parties, blurring in some cases the relationships of partisan representation that Mexican electoral politics are built on. These patterns, I contend, have been largely enabled by the sociopolitical transformations of Mexico's 4T movement, which has instilled a climate of change surrounding cultural hierarchies of gender and sexuality. In this context, emergent fractures within queer groups have shed light on the contradictions of “Mexican humanism,” Mexico's newly coined political philosophy. Exhibiting the characteristics of a human security regime, Mexico's 4T acts as backdrop to a broader array of political paradoxes that accompany the country's gay football scene—a space of “wounds in utopia,” where wounds, healing, and violence may all coexist.

RESUMEN

En los últimos años, equipos defútbol LGBT+ han proliferado en México, ofreciéndole a comunidades que previamente se encontraban al margen de la nación una nueva oportunidad de respeto y pertenencia ante la mirada nacional. A la par, algunos de estos equipos han establecido alianzas inesperadas con partidos políticos, oscureciendo las relaciones de representación partidista que sostienen de manera histórica al sistema electoral mexicano. Contiendo que estos patrones son en gran parte producto de las transformaciones sociopolíticas del movimiento de la 4T, el cual ha instigado una atmósfera de cambio en torno a las jerarquías culturales de género y sexualidad. En este contexto, fracturas emergentes dentro de grupos LGBT+ revelan las contradicciones del supuesto “Humanismo Mexicano”, la nueva filosofía política de la nación mexicana bajo la 4T. Demostrando características pertenecientes a un régimen de seguridad humana, la 4T en México actúa como telón para una serie de paradojas políticas que acompañan a la esfera de fútbol gay en el país: un entorno de “lesiones en la utopía” dentro del cual procesos de herida, sanación, y violencia coexisten en el día a día.

RECALLING THE SUICIDE: Affective Storytelling and the Ethics of “Good” Womanhood

ANJALI KRISHAN — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Delhi, this article examines middle-class married women's stories about the suicides of their female neighbors. Paying attention to “what moves” women emotionally and “what matters” to them in recounting their stories of life and willful death, these stories are ethical commentaries on what constitutes “good” womanhood, specifically “Hindu” womanhood. Anthropological scholarship in South Asia has established that supposedly good womanhood hinges on how successful middle-class women are in pursuing a modern, globalized “good life” while being rooted in traditional, predominantly Hindu, cultural norms and values. This analysis of suicide storytelling demonstrates that women are not passive subjects of this binary; instead, they actively adjudicate the ethical validity of mainstream constructs of good Hindu womanhood, in the process questioning middle-class understandings of what constitutes a life worth living and whose suffering matters. Such ethical questioning allows the narrators to make political claims for recognition and rights while performing a subtle critique of the prevailing gender politics within Modi's India.

ACT BLUR, LIVE LONGER: Muslim Artists Blurring the Categories of Singapore's Smart City

JAMES MCGRAIL — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

In 2024, Singapore was again named “Smartest City in Asia,” a position achieved through the strategic deployment of surveillance infrastructures and technocratic governance. This article explores the practices of three Muslim artists whose work challenges the limiting categorizations produced by the intertwined logics of Smart Nation governance and state racialization. Based on fieldwork conducted since 2022, I argue that by offering their work plausible deniability through the strategy of “blurring,” these artists operate in the highly surveilled context of Singapore by being unclear publicly. This not just marks a strategy of evasion. By engaging with the anthropologies of Islam and surveillance, I argue that these artworks disrupt established categories, revealing the inherent complexities of identity obscured by technological efficiency and racial categories. Through these works, which go beyond the visible, these artists create space to imagine something otherwise by complicating the neat categorization of the Singapore state.

ABSTRAK

Pada tahun 2024, Singapura sekali lagi dinamakan “Bandar Paling Pintar di Asia”, satu kedudukan yang dicapai melalui pelaksanaan strategik infrastruktur pemantauan dan tadbir urus teknokratik. Artikel ini meneroka amalan tiga seniman Muslim yang mengusik pengkategorian terhad yang terhasil daripada logik berjalin antara pentadbiran Smart Nation dan perkauman negara. Berdasarkan hasil kerja lapangan sejak 2022, saya berhujah bahawa dengan menonjolkan karya mereka kebolehnafian yang munasabah melalui motif “blurring”, para seniman ini beroperasi dengan pendekatan yang lebih terselindung dalam suasana pemantauan tinggi di Singapura. Ini bukan hanya atas dasar untuk mengelak. Dengan mengaitkan wacana antropologi Islam dan pemantauan, saya mengemukakan bahawa karya-karya ini mengoyahkan kategori yang sudah mapan, lalu mendedahkan kerumitan identiti yang tersembunyi di sebalik kecekapan teknologi dan kategori perkauman. Melalui karya-karya yang melangkaui apa yang sedia tampak, saya berpendapat bahawa dengan merumitkan pengkategorian kemas dilakarkan Singapura, seniman-seniman ini berupaya mencipta ruang untuk membayangkan realiti yang lain.

POISONOUS IMAGES: Taranto's Environmental Crisis between the Visible and the Invisible

JASMINE CLOTILDE PISAPIA — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

This article explores poisonous images—images that both register and trouble the visibility of toxicity in Taranto, Italy, one of Europe's most polluted cities due to the continent's largest steel factory. Centered on photographs taken in the city's contaminated cemetery, the essay asks how slow violence can be apprehended ethnographically when pollution remains unevenly perceptible and causally elusive. I argue that the photographic image, beyond its forensic or legal promise, functions as an ethnographic hinge between matter and meaning, visibility and refusal, foregrounding aesthetics as a political as much as a sensory problem. Through three photographic acts produced by cemetery workers, a local performance artist, and myself (as anthropologist), the article proposes “flickering” as an anthropological method—attuned to the intermittence between visible/invisible, absence/presence, and the oscillation of death in everyday life. These poisonous images do not stabilize evidence: they pulse in and out of consciousness, capturing uncertainty and unequally distributed exposures and sensibilities. The cemetery emerges as both site and figure for grasping the metamorphosis of death amid the environmental crisis, where mourning and inheritance remain perpetually unsettled.

“TO HELL WITH SYMBOLS!” Men, Pigeons, and the Violence of Interpretation

ROBBIE PETERS — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

This article examines men who race pigeons in the back alleys of an Indonesian neighborhood amid government crackdowns on gambling. It introduces the equivocal pigeon: a bird these men present as a-symbolic, or incapable of saying things for or about them. The equivocal pigeon is an intellectually provocative animal that upsets commonsense ideas about birds and men and meaning and turns the city inside out by bringing its back alleys into view but not into understanding. The article shows how racing pigeons achieve this feat by drawing men into busy alleys while shrouding them in a thicket of opaque interactions. It views the city from its alleys, where the pigeon confounds postcolonial ways of knowing and governing people. Building on Javanese ways of not knowing, it shows how the pigeon is a meaning-defying animal that protects men from what they call the violence of interpretation (kekerasan interpretasi).

ALIENATING “DEAD CAPITAL,” EATING MORAL PRINCIPLE: Patriarchal Obligation, Land Sale, and Desires of Abandon on Kenya's Urban Frontier

PETER LOCKWOOD — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

North of Nairobi, the city's sprawl enters a landscape of impoverished smallholders, causing land prices to skyrocket. Kenya's economic commentators urge these part-time proletarians to sell their land—deemed unproductive “dead capital”—as an antidote for rural poverty. Senior men from the region insist this ancestral land cannot be sold, because retaining it while working for wages constitutes the cornerstone of masculine personhood. However, in a world of peri-urban destitution, where wages cannot provision desires for middle-class lifestyles, masculine principles of land retention are being abandoned for experiences of abandon. Male landowners alienate family land to fund lifestyles of conspicuous consumption, especially in alcohol. The consumption of dead capital to furnish desires of abandon suggests that Nairobi's urban expansion is made possible by such binge economies of land on its peri-urban peripheries. The conclusion proposes consumption as a theory of changing moral orientations to the short term when people encounter economic dead ends.

MUHTASARI

Kaskazini mwa Nairobi, kuenea kwa jiji kunaingia kwenye maeneo ya wakulima wadogo maskini, jambo ambalo linasababisha bei ya ardhi kuongezeka kwa kasi. Watoa maoni wa uchumi nchini Kenya wanahimiza wafanyakazi hawa wa muda kuuza ardhi yao-inayochukuliwa kama “mtaji mfu” usiozalisha- kama suluhisho la umaskini wa vijijini. Wanaume wazee kutoka eneo hilo wanasisitiza kwamba ardhi hii ya urithi haiwezi kuuzwa, kwa sababu kuimiliki huku wakifanya kazi za mshahara ndicho jiwe la msingi la utambulisho wa kiume. Kando na hayo, katika ulimwengu wa umaskini wa pembezoni mwa miji, ambako mishahara haiwezi kukidhi mahitaji ya maisha ya tabaka la kati, misingi ya kiume ya kuhifadhi ardhi inaachwa na nafasi yake kuchukuliwa na maisha ya “raha”. Wamiliki wa ardhi wa kiume wanaitenga ardhi ya familia ili kufadhili mitindo ya maisha ya anasa yanayoonekana wazi, hasa katika ulevi. Matumizi ya “mtaji mfu” ili kutimiza tamaa za kujiachia yanaonyesha kwamba upanuzi wa jiji la Nairobi unawezeshwa na uchumi wa kuachana na ardhi kwa njia ya kupindukia katika maeneo yake ya pembezoni. Hitimisho linapendekeza matumizi kama nadharia ya mabadiliko ya mwelekeo wa maadili kuelekea muda mfupi wakati ambao watu wanakumbana na magumu kupata njia za kiuchumi.

HIERARCHICAL PRECARITY: Dance Hosting, Labor Struggles, and Masculine Insecurities in China

JUAN CHEN — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

Young Chinese male migrant workers partner with middle-aged women in dance halls, and sell intimacy and romantic relationships in everyday locations as “dance hosts.” Dance hosts experience considerable job precarity and masculine insecurities. While frequently expressing a desire to leave, most hosts remain in the profession and perpetuate their precarious existence. This article explores the relationship between precarity as a labor condition and precarity as an ontological experience among dance hosts. I argue that while precarious labor may stabilize daily living, it also causes new insecurities that destabilize people's lives. This article theorizes the concept of hierarchical precarity to explain labor motivation and suggests that the decision to engage in precarious labor hinges on its capacity to address one's most pressing insecurities, outweighing the additional precarity it creates. I conclude by highlighting how gender relates to different forms of labor struggle and workers' agency in navigating the hierarchically ranked precarity and masculinities.

摘要

中国年轻的男性劳工作为舞厅教练，为中年女性提供陪舞服务，并在日常的场所中售卖亲密关系和浪漫情愫。舞厅教练经历着严重的职业不稳定性和男性气质危机。尽管他们经常表达想要离开这一职业的愿望，但大多数人仍然留在这一行业里，继续着这种不稳定的生活状态。本文探讨了舞厅教练在工作中的不稳定性和在生活中的不稳定性之间的关系。我认为，虽然不稳定的工作或许能够在一定程度上维持日常生活的稳定，但它同时也会带来新的不安全感，从而加剧生活的不稳定性。本文提出了“等级化的不稳定性”的概念，用以解释人们的工作动机，并指出，人们是否选择从事不稳定的工作取决于其能否解决自身最紧迫的不安全感，而且这种不安全感远超这份工作可能随之带来的不稳定性。最后，我强调了性别如何影响不同形式的劳动挣扎，以及劳工在应对等级化的不稳定性和男性气质时所展现出的能动性。 [不稳定性; 男性气质; 性欲; 流动劳工; 舞厅]

BITTER SWEETNESS: Compelling Greenhouse Farming and the Inter‐Mobility among Middle‐Aged Farmers in North China

YUE LIAO — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

This article examines how middle-aged Chinese farmers navigate their position between a highly mobile new urban elite and the traditionally immobile elderly peasantry through a set of practices I term inter-mobility. Based on ethnographic research in Huanglu village, I explore how their adoption of new greenhouse technologies is shaped by both the shifting political-economic landscape of post-socialist China and their desire to align kin-based solidarities with emerging values of progress. I argue that these farmers use greenhouse farming to cultivate a strategic, in-between position, distinguishing themselves from the perceived stasis of the older generation while upholding familial commitments, unlike the perceived rootlessness of younger urban entrepreneurs. This inter-mobility is animated by an ethos of yongxin, which frames their entrepreneurial risk-taking as a form of intergenerational care. The study highlights how China's broader societal transformations generate not just new agricultural technologies but also new subjectivities within its stratified mobility regimes.

摘要

本文以“居间流动”这一概念为核心，考察中年中国农民如何在高度流动的城市新精英与传统上留守故土的老年农民之间，占据一个既区别于二者、又联结二者的居间位置。基于在皇路村的民族志研究，本文发现，这一群体对新型温室技术的采纳，既受到后社会主义中国政治经济格局变迁的深刻影响，也源于他们试图将基于亲缘的团结与新兴的进步价值观相融合的愿望。笔者认为，这些农民通过温室种植构建起一种策略性的“居间”身份：既区别于被视为“安土重迁”的上一代，又以履行家庭责任的方式，区别于被视为“离土无根”的年轻城市创业者。这种“居间流动”的内在动力，是一种“用心”的精神气质，它将创业的风险承担诠释为一种代际关怀的实践。本研究揭示，中国宏观的社会转型不仅催生了新型农业技术，也形塑了其分层流动体制下的新型主体性。[温室农业；流动性；居间流动；主体性；关怀；技术；农民；中国]

RUST AND REPARATIONS: Memory, Labor, and the Politics of Repair in Senegal's Railway Workshop

CHARLINE KOPF — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the multivalences of repair in Senegalese railway workshops, where workers maintain and modify aging wagons from suburban and former transnational rail services, originally imported from France, and later from India and Pakistan. I trace three interrelated dimensions of repair. First, I show how repair operates as both replacement and improvisation, challenging the assumption that maintenance necessarily counteracts decay; instead, it can accelerate deterioration. Second, I analyze repair as reappropriation, focusing on workers' “tropicalization” of foreign technologies to fit local conditions. Finally, I explore how the inevitability of failure, stemming from the machines' inherent faults, demands creative mending and continuous perseverance. These practices generate not only new objects assembled from scrap but also narratives of West African railway workers whose engineering contributions have long been marginalized in colonial and postcolonial histories. Material patching thus becomes an act of reparation, asserting technical authorship and forging alternative histories of infrastructure, labor, and expertise.

TËNK

Xët wii dafay jàngat anam yu bari yi ñuy defaraate ci atelier yu këru liggéeyukaayu saxaar yi ci Senegal. Foofu la liggéeykat yi di defaraate ba noppi di soppi wagon yu màgget yi bawoo ci sarwiisu banlieue yi ak resó transnasional yu njëkk ya te jóge France, ginnaaw ga Inde ak Pakistan. Maa ngi raññee ñetti mbir yu jëm ci defaraat gi. Li njëkk mooy, damay wone naka la defaraat gi di deme ci wuutu gi itam ci góorgóorlu gi, ak di diiŋat xalaat biy wax ni defaraat dafay xeex yàqu-yàqu; ci geneen wàll gi, mën na gaawloo yàqu gi. Ñaareel ba damay jàngat defaraat gi ni looy moomalaat sa bopp, may bàyyi xel ci «tropicalisation» xaralay bitim réew yi ciy liggéeykat yi di def ngir méngale leen ak anam yi dëkk bi di doxe. Fi may jeexalee mooy, maa ngi jàngat ni masin yi mënul ñàkka yàqoo, te bokk ci ay njuumte yu nekk ci masin yi te loolu dafay laaj xeeti defaraat yu yees ak bañ a xàddi. Jëf yooyu duñu yam ci defar ay mbir yu yees yuñ defaree ak ay jumtukaay yuñ jëfandikoo ba noppi, waaye dañuy nettali itam li liggéeykati raay yi ci Afrique sowwu jant sos, ñoom ñi ñu daanulwoon bàyyi xel ci seen liggéey ci wàllu xarala ci taarix bi fi tubaab yi nekkee ak ginnaaw gi ñu fi jóge. Kon defaraat ay yëf nekk na mbir muy defaraat boo ko xoolee ci wàllu politik, di fësal kiliftéef ci wàllu xarala ak di móol yeneeni jaarjaari infrastructure, liggéey ak xarañtéef.

Issue Information

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:06:07 -0700

Cultural Anthropology, Volume 41, Issue 2, Page 189-192, May 2026.