- “Much of what anthropologists explore is discounted by other observers as obvious and as “mere” detail. This perceived lack of importance, compounded by the inherent indistinctness of many of the processes anthropologists observe, suggests how invisibility serves the interests of power-of the big picture… (Herzfield 2015).
Herzfield, M. (2015). Anthropology and the inchoate intimacies of power. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 18-32. doi:10.1111/amet.12113
- In this article, Herzfield examines the intimacies involved with power structures, and how invisibility of issues serves the interests of those in power. It is with careful adjustment of our intellectual focus between the local and the global that allows us to “see” the workings of power in minute details of day to day interaction, from deliberate “nonseeing” of the weak by the powerful to exercises in discretion by those who possess moral authority. Herzfield notes to be careful when outright defining terms, illustrating this with the fact that state mechanisms of control always inflict marginalizing labels on people, and the demand for definitional clarity reinforces this exclusion. This exclusion can be seen as labeling the “others” which legitimizes targets for discrimination, encouraging fear among the majority. Those in power use exclusion and invisibility to sustain their formal power, in which entire groups can be marginalized. Herzfield frames the need for social sciences and anthropology to respond with critical expertise, paying close attention to the nuances of day to day life. Furthermore, he frames that there is a moral imperative for power structures to become more visible, and for responsibility to be taken by powerful groups.
*See Abstract File Cabinet for Virginia Nazarea’s View From a Point article