Both MairiAnne Mackenzie and Alastair Davidson (this issue) comment on the relationship between i... more Both MairiAnne Mackenzie and Alastair Davidson (this issue) comment on the relationship between immigration and multiculturalism. The following extract is reprinted with permission from the last seven pages for Ghassan Hage's new book, White Nation. It draws the two phenomena together and argues that public concern about immigration stems from the distress that 'White Australians' feel in the face of their declining power in multicultural Australia. The term 'White' stands for people of European origin while the term 'Third World-looking' people denotes most of the rest. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s
In this paper I reflect on two interconnected phenomena associated with Lebanese migration: a hig... more In this paper I reflect on two interconnected phenomena associated with Lebanese migration: a high incidence of gambling among immigrants and the experience of migration itself as a form of “gambling with the self.” I show how both these dimensions are illuminated by Levy-Bruhl’s reflections on gambling and risk-taking. I examine the affinity that Levy-Bruhl’s ideas have with Bourdieu’s notion of illusio that I’ve also used to explore these dimensions.
Preface: Camera obscura, or the unbearable lopsidedness of being - Introduction - Transcendental ... more Preface: Camera obscura, or the unbearable lopsidedness of being - Introduction - Transcendental capitalism and the roots of paranoid nationalism - On worrying: the lost art of the well-administered national cuddle - Border dis/order: the imaginary of paranoid nationalism - A brief history of White colonial paranoia - The rise of Australian fundamentalism: reflections of the rule of Ayatollah Johnny - Polluting memories: migration and colonial responsibility in Australia - The class aesthetics of global multiculturalism - Exighophobia/ homorophobia: 'Comes a time we are all enthusiasm' - A concluding fable: the gift of care, or the ethics of pedestrian crossings - Endnotes - Bibliography - Index
In recent times intersectionality has emerged as a particularly popular slogan among feminist and... more In recent times intersectionality has emerged as a particularly popular slogan among feminist and anti-racist activists. For some, most notably in mainstream white feminist circles, the concept is an after-the-fact buzzword that allows lip service to be paid to social positions such as race and class. For others, the concept is deployed to draw attention to structural crossovers between gender, race, class, sexuality and disability. The identification of gendered or racialised or classed lives – that is, the existence of inequality – is thus either tacitly acknowledged or explicitly foregrounded. Yet what is often missing is pushing this analysis further, beyond the comparative, to interrogate inequality not as fact, but as relation. This, it seems to me, is Ghassan Hage’s greatest contribution to understanding contemporary expressions of Islamophobia. Is Racism an Environmental Threat? is another Hage contribution that vividly and powerfully provokes new and fresh ways of thinking about ‘intersections’ as not merely points of comparison, but sites of exploitation. To do this Hage provokes us to think more deeply about how a particular way of inhabiting the world produces a certain way of relating to the Other – embodied here as the Muslim Other – and the environment. This and is not merely a point of comparison. It is crucial to Hage’s essential argument that there is an intimate relation between racism and the ecological, and that is one of mutual dependency. Thus, Islamophobia (and inequalities in our intersectionality conversations) on the one hand, and environmental degradation, on the other, are not simply events or coordinates for mapping social location, but structures, permanent features, hard-wired logics. The mutual dependency between racism and the ecological is, Hage argues, part of their very nature, arising as one and the same crisis because they reproduce the dominant mode of inhabiting the world, what Hage calls generalised domestication. Hage first takes us into a particular mode of race-thinking and race-practising (p. 12) which, he argues, is fundamentally entangled with the ecological crisis. He defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism plus the fear that anti-Muslim racism isn’t doing its job (p. 50). To understand this definition is to understand the connections between wolves, racism and the environment. Since 9/11, the racialised Muslim has evolved as 770315 JOS0010.1177/1440783318770315Journal of SociologyBook review symposium book-review2018
I’m going to talk about warring societies and the role of academics in them. I’m trying to descri... more I’m going to talk about warring societies and the role of academics in them. I’m trying to describe a logic of colonial settler states, which have always conceived themselves to be besieged by uncivilised others and which structure themselves defensively and legitimise these structures in the sense that they have to protect themselves from the uncivilised others surrounding them.
book will supplant the standard Life of Thomas Paine by Moncure Conway (1892). It persuasively ad... more book will supplant the standard Life of Thomas Paine by Moncure Conway (1892). It persuasively addresses two common reactions to Paine: the elitist view of him as an uncouth man with a dangerously clever pen, and the radical suspicion that he was a half-hearted revolutionary and closet conservative. Keane argues thar Paine's tenets, that good government is grounded on the consent of the governed and that despotism corrupts civil society, imply that democracy must rest on cultural values of tolerance and openness, not on pure individualism. In this book, however, he draws back from weighty pol irlcal philosophy. For example, Paine drew a fundamental distinction between natural rights and civil rights. The former, including freedom of thought and the right to pursue happiness without harming others, are godgiven; the latter are 'based on' natural rights, but 'appertain to man in right of his being a member of society'. Keane, while implicitly endorsing this debatable distlnction, makes no attempt to defend it Instead, he draws auenuon to the insidious brilliance of Paine's political rhetoric, the subversive resonances of his self-presentation 'as a burping, farting rebel in an age cut by knifesharp divisions of courtly respecrabllhy, wealth and power' (296). He plays up Paine's dilemma that while democracy is internationalist it is typically realised at a national level, so that democratic ideas have almost always been supplemented by nationalism, with its despotic potential. This dilemma, with its sharp contemporary relevance, was especially poignant for the first 'citizen of the world'. Keane's book is a good read. It contains historically rich accounts of Paine's political activities in England, America and France, tells with verve of his almost miraculous escape from the Terror's guillotine, and concludes with a moving portrait of the rebel's sad old age. Paul Gillen
Both MairiAnne Mackenzie and Alastair Davidson (this issue) comment on the relationship between i... more Both MairiAnne Mackenzie and Alastair Davidson (this issue) comment on the relationship between immigration and multiculturalism. The following extract is reprinted with permission from the last seven pages for Ghassan Hage's new book, White Nation. It draws the two phenomena together and argues that public concern about immigration stems from the distress that 'White Australians' feel in the face of their declining power in multicultural Australia. The term 'White' stands for people of European origin while the term 'Third World-looking' people denotes most of the rest. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s
In this paper I reflect on two interconnected phenomena associated with Lebanese migration: a hig... more In this paper I reflect on two interconnected phenomena associated with Lebanese migration: a high incidence of gambling among immigrants and the experience of migration itself as a form of “gambling with the self.” I show how both these dimensions are illuminated by Levy-Bruhl’s reflections on gambling and risk-taking. I examine the affinity that Levy-Bruhl’s ideas have with Bourdieu’s notion of illusio that I’ve also used to explore these dimensions.
Preface: Camera obscura, or the unbearable lopsidedness of being - Introduction - Transcendental ... more Preface: Camera obscura, or the unbearable lopsidedness of being - Introduction - Transcendental capitalism and the roots of paranoid nationalism - On worrying: the lost art of the well-administered national cuddle - Border dis/order: the imaginary of paranoid nationalism - A brief history of White colonial paranoia - The rise of Australian fundamentalism: reflections of the rule of Ayatollah Johnny - Polluting memories: migration and colonial responsibility in Australia - The class aesthetics of global multiculturalism - Exighophobia/ homorophobia: 'Comes a time we are all enthusiasm' - A concluding fable: the gift of care, or the ethics of pedestrian crossings - Endnotes - Bibliography - Index
In recent times intersectionality has emerged as a particularly popular slogan among feminist and... more In recent times intersectionality has emerged as a particularly popular slogan among feminist and anti-racist activists. For some, most notably in mainstream white feminist circles, the concept is an after-the-fact buzzword that allows lip service to be paid to social positions such as race and class. For others, the concept is deployed to draw attention to structural crossovers between gender, race, class, sexuality and disability. The identification of gendered or racialised or classed lives – that is, the existence of inequality – is thus either tacitly acknowledged or explicitly foregrounded. Yet what is often missing is pushing this analysis further, beyond the comparative, to interrogate inequality not as fact, but as relation. This, it seems to me, is Ghassan Hage’s greatest contribution to understanding contemporary expressions of Islamophobia. Is Racism an Environmental Threat? is another Hage contribution that vividly and powerfully provokes new and fresh ways of thinking about ‘intersections’ as not merely points of comparison, but sites of exploitation. To do this Hage provokes us to think more deeply about how a particular way of inhabiting the world produces a certain way of relating to the Other – embodied here as the Muslim Other – and the environment. This and is not merely a point of comparison. It is crucial to Hage’s essential argument that there is an intimate relation between racism and the ecological, and that is one of mutual dependency. Thus, Islamophobia (and inequalities in our intersectionality conversations) on the one hand, and environmental degradation, on the other, are not simply events or coordinates for mapping social location, but structures, permanent features, hard-wired logics. The mutual dependency between racism and the ecological is, Hage argues, part of their very nature, arising as one and the same crisis because they reproduce the dominant mode of inhabiting the world, what Hage calls generalised domestication. Hage first takes us into a particular mode of race-thinking and race-practising (p. 12) which, he argues, is fundamentally entangled with the ecological crisis. He defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism plus the fear that anti-Muslim racism isn’t doing its job (p. 50). To understand this definition is to understand the connections between wolves, racism and the environment. Since 9/11, the racialised Muslim has evolved as 770315 JOS0010.1177/1440783318770315Journal of SociologyBook review symposium book-review2018
I’m going to talk about warring societies and the role of academics in them. I’m trying to descri... more I’m going to talk about warring societies and the role of academics in them. I’m trying to describe a logic of colonial settler states, which have always conceived themselves to be besieged by uncivilised others and which structure themselves defensively and legitimise these structures in the sense that they have to protect themselves from the uncivilised others surrounding them.
book will supplant the standard Life of Thomas Paine by Moncure Conway (1892). It persuasively ad... more book will supplant the standard Life of Thomas Paine by Moncure Conway (1892). It persuasively addresses two common reactions to Paine: the elitist view of him as an uncouth man with a dangerously clever pen, and the radical suspicion that he was a half-hearted revolutionary and closet conservative. Keane argues thar Paine's tenets, that good government is grounded on the consent of the governed and that despotism corrupts civil society, imply that democracy must rest on cultural values of tolerance and openness, not on pure individualism. In this book, however, he draws back from weighty pol irlcal philosophy. For example, Paine drew a fundamental distinction between natural rights and civil rights. The former, including freedom of thought and the right to pursue happiness without harming others, are godgiven; the latter are 'based on' natural rights, but 'appertain to man in right of his being a member of society'. Keane, while implicitly endorsing this debatable distlnction, makes no attempt to defend it Instead, he draws auenuon to the insidious brilliance of Paine's political rhetoric, the subversive resonances of his self-presentation 'as a burping, farting rebel in an age cut by knifesharp divisions of courtly respecrabllhy, wealth and power' (296). He plays up Paine's dilemma that while democracy is internationalist it is typically realised at a national level, so that democratic ideas have almost always been supplemented by nationalism, with its despotic potential. This dilemma, with its sharp contemporary relevance, was especially poignant for the first 'citizen of the world'. Keane's book is a good read. It contains historically rich accounts of Paine's political activities in England, America and France, tells with verve of his almost miraculous escape from the Terror's guillotine, and concludes with a moving portrait of the rebel's sad old age. Paul Gillen
From the 15 th of April and until the end of May members of the American Anthropological Associat... more From the 15 th of April and until the end of May members of the American Anthropological Association will be voting on whether to endorse the proposal to boycott Israeli academic institutions as part of offering to support the Palestnians' call for a Boycotts, Sanctions and Divestments (BDS) movement against the state of Israel. I have voted in support of the resolution. As the vote has been an occasion whereby AAA has initiated and encouraged a more public discussion of the pros and cons of the BDS movement, I wish to share my understanding of the nature of the opposition between those who are for and against BDS and why I personally, as a AAA member, support it. To be sure, almost all of the anthropologists who are against the Boycott begin by stating their opposition to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories or the treatment of Palestinians inside the state of Israel. So the debate is not, nor one expects it to be, a simple debate between 'critics and supporters of the state of Israel'. Yet, the difference between the two camps is quite pronounced and it begins to emerge in the very way those opposed to BDS declare their objection and opposition to the Occupation. In their very starting point there is a regressive attempt at shifting the grounds of the debate away from where the supporters of BDS have located it. The starting point of those who support BDS is not that all those who do not agree with them are supporters of the occupation. It is that for a long time now there has been a groundswell of people critical of the occupation (inside Israel sometimes even more than outside of Israel). But this has not had any influence whatsoever on the occupation. Indeed the road to the settlements is paved with people deploring or being opposed to one aspect or another of the occupation, people calling for dialogue, deploring Israeli war crimes and even genocide, and calling for Israeli accountability or for investigations, etc… The BDS supporters' argument is: so, given how useless all this sometimes quite radical 'position taking' has been, can we start something that has a slightly, even if minimally, coercive effect on the state of Israel rather than just something that is merely voicing a 'critique'. Israel creates facts on the ground in its colonization and what is needed is an opposition that is not a mere opinion but one
Uploads
Papers by Ghassan Hage