Franics Cody: Learning Anthropology from Mark Whitaker
This paper is a study of the kinds of anthropology that Whitaker draws on in narrating the story of his relationship to Sivaram, and the larger story of what he learned from Sivaram’s relationship to the war in Sri Lanka. Learning Politics from Sivaram, which could be described as an intellectual biography, a media ethnography, or an anthropology of politics, raises pressing questions about the roles of ethics and politics in social scientific research. At a time when experimental transnational political formations are proliferating, we must pay specific attention to the means of representation used by Sivaram in his capacity as a web-based political journalist. By providing neither apology nor condemnation of the theories motivating militant nationalist struggle, Whitaker opens a space for reflection upon the social production of knowledge under conditions of extreme violence. But what are the responsibilities of the anthropologist in a time of war, and how might we think about the relationship between ethnography and political journalism in this context?
Biographical Statement:
Francis Cody is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology and the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto. His now completing a project on rural literacy activism in the Arivoli Iyakkam (The Enlightenment Movement), in which he examines the centrality of written language in efforts to democratize knowledge and reshape district governance. His other project focuses on the social history and contemporary political economy of language in Tamil daily newspaper circulation in small towns and cities. Recent research articles from these projects include “Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in rural Tamil India.” Cultural Anthropology 24:3 (2009), and “Daily Wires and Daily Blossoms: Cultivating Regimes of Circulation in Tamil India’s Newspaper Revolution,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19:2 (2009).
