Bad Habitus: Anthropology in the Age of the Multimodal
Bibliography
Takaragawa, S., Smith, T. L., Hennessy, K., Alvarez Astacio, P., Chio, J., Nye, C., & Shankar, S. (2019). Bad Habitus: Anthropology in the Age of the Multimodal. American Anthropologist, 121(2), 517–524. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13265
Notes
Notes
Go to annotation“Although the idea of multimodal anthropology may challenge dominant paradigms of authorship, expertise, capacity, and language, we argue that there is nothing inherently liberatory about multimodal approaches in anthropology.” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 517)
The call to (or trend of) multi-modality in anthropological research is connected to issues in technosiences and capitalist practices. Ethical considerations need to happen.
Multimodal approaches are often interwoven with the digital and the technosciences. That seems to be a good connection to the digital humanities.
Go to annotation“We finish up with an invitation to get comfortable with feeling bad about our bad habitus.” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 519)
The text discusses
- multimodal inheritances as well as critique on the field itself
- multimodal and global capitalism
Multimodal inheritances
Go to annotation“Multimodal tools and what appears to be a growing acceptance within anthropology and interdisciplinary departmental tenure committees of nontextual work (for example, ethnographic films and interactive media, exhibitions, curatorial activities, and research-creation) have, we suggest, created a sense that multimodal tools may be one way to subvert dominant narratives of success based on a single-authored monograph or article.” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 519)
Go to annotation“However, an acknowledgment of our bad habitus necessarily means assuming a critical position in relation to the use of multimodal tools, which also reproduces the dynamics and power hierarchies entrenched in anthropology.” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 519)
There are calls to decenter the euro-centricness of anthropology and adequately mirror the field and the societies it is coming from.
Multimodality mirrors former approaches, as well as their issues, in trying to capture and preserve human activity.
Multimodal and global capitalism
Go to annotation“Many technologies being used in anthropology today are fundamentally implicated in the oppression of people through unequal labor, distribution of resources, and alienation from land, disproportionately affecting marginalized groups in developing worlds as well as minority groups in industrialized spaces.” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 521)
This is paralleled and supported by western epistemologies and their inability to integrate the non-human.
Examples of unfolding examples of that include “Anatomy of an AI System”.
The dependence on such systems is an important point to reflect in multimodal approaches.
Vocab
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multi-modality: “characterized by several different modes of occurrence or activity; incorporating or utilizing several different methods or systems.” Sarah Pink (2009)
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invention: as in Go to annotation“inventive pedagogies, forms, and collaborations, “to refer to the multiple ways of doing anthropology that create different ways of knowing and learning together.”” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 517)
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bad habitus: the reinforcement of existing power relations in anthropology, from from the  technosiences
Discussion
This quote withdrew from me.
Go to annotation“If the tools are dealt with only as to further the production of anthropological knowledge, or to find a better solution for anthropology as a discipline, then what is achieved is either a refinement in the pseudo-science of appropriating Otherness or a mere stir within the same frame. (Chen and Trinh 1994, 439)” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 517)
What does fugitive anthropology mean, practically.
Go to annotation“fugitive anthropology, a rethinking of the contours of the political in co-creating spaces of liberation and transformation” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 520)
Digital Humanities?
Go to annotation“So, we are wondering, if we as anthropologists fundamentally do not understand (or even care about) the technologies we use in the service of multimodal anthropologies, how can we begin to critically engage with our practices?” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 522)
Again, how does this happen, in the field
Go to annotation“we propose an anthropology of the multimodal as one way to address bad habitus.” (Takaragawa et al., 2019, p. 522)