As we continue reading several of the bestselling ethnographies of the twenty-first century, I can’t help but continue to think about some of the recurring themes and trends these ethnographies have in common. For instance, violence. This week’s The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande by Angela García (2010) does a meticulous job at exploring the geographies of addiction (particularly of heroin) and dispossession of Hispano property and personhood along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. García states: “by attending to the politics of what I call the patient-prisoner, I explore how the local phenomenon of heroin addiction and addicts themselves are constituted not only through hardship and loss but also through the logic, routines, and practices of medical and juridical regimes” (2010: 8). What similarities and differences might the patient-prisoner framework have with other frameworks such as reparation (Thomas 2011), infrastructural violence (Dixon 2020), or obstetric violence (Suh 2021)? What conversations may or may not be happening between ethnographers, works, theories, and in anthropology/social science at large? What trends can we identify and why?
Additionally, Like many of the past ethnographers we’ve read (e.g. Deborah Thomas, Savannah Shange, Siri Suh, Lydia Z. Dixon), García has a personal connection to the primary site of her research—in this case, where she grew up. As readers, we see how she both confronts this personal connection in the context of this difficult topic and uses it as a guiding force in her approaches and frameworks (e.g. looking at the “geographies” of addiction). In addition to this spatial aspect, she also makes a conscious effort to recenter the peoples’ and regions’ history and context in understanding present-day phenomena. She states: “I hope to show how Hispano addictive experience is closely related to history and not merely cultural or personal pathology, as it is so often described” (García 2010: 9). Moreover, in what ways does García position the space/landscape/geography and historical context in understanding Hispano addiction and dispossession? What does her own positionality offer her? How might this compare with how history, space, and positionality are discussed and employed by other ethnographers we’ve read?