Anthropology is probably one of the most eye-opening, fundamental, necessary, and yet intriguing discipline that one can be given to discover. The students who study social and behavioral sciences know it better than anyone: once they take their first SBSA course, their worldview is about to change for the best, or the worse. Breaking the shackles of the logic according to which the way we think, live, walk, or even eat is natural is one of anthropology’s main challenges. This semester, as I taught about how our emotions are for the most part a product of social and cultural shaping, many students shared concerns, repeating: “But what remains to be natural, in the end?”. Anthropologists would tell you that everything is cultural, even the way we conceive the notion of nature, and how we oppose it to culture. Why is anthropology “fundamental, necessary, and yet intriguing”, then? Simply because understanding how social norms, values, traditions impose themselves to humans, could help solve so many issues the world is going through, but at one condition: be willing to deconstruct evidence. As I write these lines, thousands of people, the majority of them infants, are losing their lives without any particular justification, and like those who will read these lines, my only feeling is helplessness. The massacre currently taking place in Gaza is one example among many that calls for what anthropologists call cultural relativism, and which I would instead suggest approaching with anthropological hope.
An example is the work of Julie Peteet, who dedicated her research to the first Intifada. By studying how young Palestinians have developed a tendency for uncontrolled violence, she noticed that being violent, as a man, has nothing natural. As they grow up in an uncertain and vulnerable environment, young Palestinians shape their beings that can only be reactive, and most probably, anyone in their situation would develop similar behavior patterns. The explanation, again, is not to be found in the supposed natural essence of the being, or masculine appetite for violence. Anthropology sheds light on the intricacies between violence as political system; vulnerability and restriction through limited education, economic resources, and civic engagement; all of which lead in all logic to oppression as a cultural pattern, and fragility as a “natural” behavior. Sadly, Peteet’s work dates back to 1994, that is 29 years ago. This number is significant enough (and most of us aren't even that old) to remind us how fragile and uncertain the world is, as well as to incent ourselves to tackle it through its understanding. By contextualizing media discourses and their underlying political and economic stakes, we become armed to position ourselves in the face of such human disaster.
What is the point of knowing that an oppressive political system produces violent beings? In fact, what Peteet teaches us is that violence is an expression of unbearable suffering, and that suffering can also be a motor for action. If some people react with violence, which may not be legitimate for some, it is because, deep down, they have a desire for change. And this desire is legitimate. It is what makes us human. To set out armed with this hope is what I call being anthropologically hopeful, and the obligation of each one of us is to find the strength to seize it to live in the world we dream of.
If humans are capable of the worst, they are also in capacity to resist. As she was addressing the first Intifada, Peteet had no idea that a second one would come ten years later, let alone that such an acceleration of violence could explode in such a way today.
Being anthropologically hopeful in front of the world’s fragility, begins by being informed and being methodologically doubtful, as Descartes put it. Believing in disbelief is hope. Questioning the world around us, questioning the most obvious certainties and givens, considering certainties as trees that hide entire forests of mysteries that society urges us to take as evidence, is hope. Being anthropologically hopeful, is to believe in humans’ inner capacity to change the world and disrupt the growth of a forest, or the will to let it spread.
If you ever feel helpless, tell yourself this: your dreams and desires are valid. They are resistance. They can only help the way Palestinians desperately attempt to envision their survival. If the feeling of powerlessness is totally legitimate, giving up hope for a better world is not: it is the power of yours.
To learn more: Julie Peteet, 1994, “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian "Intifada": A Cultural Politics of Violence”, American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 31-49. URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/646520
Marion Breteau, for the Voice magazine American University of Kuwait, November 21st, 2023