In One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax, Dipesh Chakrabarty examines human interrelatedness with, and responsibility within, the Earth System from a decolonial perspective. Drawing on a diverse range of disciplines, this book is a critical intervention that considers perspectival gaps and differences around the climate crisis, writes Elisabeth Wennerström.

One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax. Dipesh Chakrabarty. Brandeis University Press. 2023.

In One Planet, Many Worlds, Dipesh Chakrabarty addresses existing perspectival gaps and differences around the Earth System. This latter term can be understood from the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme’s definition (7) as a system integrated with the planet’s physical, chemical, and biological processes, of which humans are a part. Chakrabarty makes the “globe/planet distinction” (3) to navigate the climate crisis alongside the Earth System. The parallax is a helpful yet critical concept highlighting how appearances change depending on where the focal point rests.

Climate awareness is not a new concern, and the distribution of adverse climate impacts is highly unequal

The case in point: climate awareness is not a new concern, and the distribution of adverse climate impacts is highly unequal. Chakrabarty asserts that failures to act in relation to the Earth System are evidenced not only by the climate crisis but also in energy extraction politics (eg, 9 and19) and global justice debates (eg, 43 and 79). In contrast, he cites Kant’s emphasis on the “categorical imperative” to follow moral laws, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances. Arendt is further emphasised in the case for collective action. But in the Anthropocene, argues Chakrabarty (invoking Kant and Arendt on ethics), there are many signs of how the approach to addressing the climate crisis risks being “bereft of any sense of morality” (6).

Chakrabarty’s research interests intersect with themes in modern South Asian history and historiography, globalisation, climate change, and human history

As a leading scholar of postcolonial theory, comparative studies and the politics of modernity, Chakrabarty’s research interests intersect with themes in modern South Asian history and historiography, globalisation, climate change, and human history. This book demonstrates his extensive commitment to communicating change through a socio-historical narrative. The text is multidisciplinary in scope, moving freely between the natural and social sciences and the humanities. The critical premise is the need to learn from what may appear complex and from what is multifaceted.

He deconstructs “global warming” and “globalisation” by differentiating their relationship to the Earth System (eg, 19-21 and 56). Chakrabarty argues that the Earth System can be delimited as “a heuristic construct” when used in Earth System Science (ESS), wherein scholars’ focus on monitoring geological and biological factors (3). Chakrabarty finds a more fruitful discussion from a continued historicisation of “global histories” and the “geobiological history of the planet” in the different meanings of the “globe” – including “the 500-year-old entity brought into being by humans and their technologies of transport and communication…a human-told story with humans at its center” (3). The discussion includes the COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter One), postcolonial historiographies around an “Earth system” (Chapter Two), and the need to reconcile what Chakrabarty refers to “as ‘the One and the Many’ problem that makes climate change such a difficult issue to tackle” (15) (Chapter Three).

The climate crisis is entangled with political factors, economic growth processes and capitalism, in part seen in the reverberating effects of natural resource extraction

Chakrabarty contends that the climate crisis is entangled with political factors, economic growth processes and capitalism, in part seen in the reverberating effects of natural resource extraction – what many scholars refer to as the Great Acceleration. Complementary notes expand such negotiations to Derrida’s “democracy to come” (60) and Hartog’s discussion on the elements of time and space that pose a particular political problem in the Anthropocene (22, 69, 74). Here, perspectives differ not only over whether Anthropocenic humans lie at the centre, but around the Earth System, which is one while also entailing many differentiated and interrelated processes (7-8). He states: “Any human sense of planetary emergency will have to negotiate the histories of those conflicted and entangled multiplicities” (16).

Many injustices and inequalities in the Anthropocene are repressed, too; he gives the example of how many longed for the pandemic to be over and for life to return to normal, yet when it came to vaccinations, this desire turned political (22). The pandemic shows, according to Chakrabarty, how we are “entwined with the geological – over human scales of time and space” (73).

He references Foucault’s biopolitics where “natural history remains, ultimately, separate from human history” (31), and more of a critique on modern political thought: “We are a minority form of life that has behaved over the last hundred or so years as though the planet was created so that only humans would thrive” (39). In contrast, the biologist Margulis combined three Greek words (hólos for “whole,” bíos for “life,” and óntos for “being”), in the understanding of the holobiont, the superorganism that hosts a myriad of other life, of which humans are a part (38).

Chakrabarty offers no essential framework to address the climate crisis. Still, he contends that the critical question remains how to navigate the present and respond alongside the Earth System.

Chakrabarty offers no essential framework to address the climate crisis. Still, he contends that the critical question remains how to navigate the present and respond alongside the Earth System. He suggests that multiple entry points for the reconfiguration of hegemonic “contemporaneity,” can be found in the writings of thinkers across disciplines – from philosophers, physicists and botanists to activists, marine biologists and anthropologists, including Hartog (69), Latour (71), Todd (95), Winter (96), Haraway (98), and Kimmerer (103). By deconstructing “the globe” he reimagines the contours of connective global histories, citing the impetus of “Haraway and Indigenous philosophers—to make kin, intellectually and across historical difference” (102). Charabarty’s text draws together all these ideas to unpack the asymmetrical patterns of time and space in the Earth System and make a case for global environmental justice. Overall, Chakrabarty’s work One Planet. Many Worlds makes a critical intervention on how to think about the climate crisis, deconstructing the present way of being within the Anthropocene.

Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Triff on Shutterstock.

In Contesting Moralities: Roma Identities, State and Kinship, Iliana Sarafian challenges established scholarly practices that attempt to define Romani identity, instead exploring how individuals navigate societal constraints with agency and resilience. Deftly combining ethnographic research, anthropological theory and personal reflection, this is an essential read for understanding the complexities of lived Roma experience, writes Martin Fotta.

Contesting Moralities: Roma Identities, State and Kinship; Volume 5, New Directions in Romani Studies. Iliana Sarafian. Berghahn Books. 2023.

The past decade has seen the publication of several high-quality monographs in various languages focusing on the lives, histories, and experiences of Romani people. While several have provided new insights into social processes, deconstructed existing preconceptions, or both, rarely has a book so subtly yet vehemently demanded that readers rethink their habits of thought about classical topics in Romani-related scholarship. This relatively short book by Iliana Sarafian, a talented anthropologist of Romani descent, does precisely this; it asks scholars to stop ruminating on who the Roma are and the character of ethnic boundaries, instead urging them to focus on how Romani individuals thrive within constraints and how they attempt to create spaces of survival for themselves and their families. It calls for exploring “experiences from the margins of Roma-ness” (98), but without presupposing to know what the core of Romani culture is.

Experimental in style and voice, Contesting Moralities is located within the ongoing effort to decolonise academic knowledge. The book is unique, however, in how the push to redefine the terms of representation in academic discourse is combined with solid ethnographic grounding and a commitment to anthropological theorisation. Weaving in self-reflection and personal narratives, it sheds light on broader social processes – on how racism, historical legacies, cultural traditions and social dynamics intersect in the lives of Romani individuals. It foregrounds individuals’ agency and the multifaceted nature of Romani experiences.

Weaving in self-reflection and personal narratives, [the book] sheds light on broader social processes – on how racism, historical legacies, cultural traditions and social dynamics intersect in the lives of Romani individuals.

The book is based on research in two pseudonymous Bulgarian Romani neighbourhoods – Radost and Sastipe – as well as in various state and non-state institutions. Sarafian is open about how practical circumstances and her position as a Romani woman influenced her research. For instance, she was assigned the role of a daughter when she first settled among non-kin and shut out from conversations of sexuality and intimacy among married women, as ignorance on such matters is expected from unmarried young Romani women. She does not treat these moments as constraints, however, but uses them as an opportunity to ponder social processes and patterning.

Sarafian is open about how practical circumstances and her position as a Romani woman influenced her research.

The main theme running throughout the book examines how Romani subjectivities are moulded by the state and its policies as they interact with values, practices, and relationships of kinship. The book focuses on a set of selected sites where the state has tried to interfere with Romani kinship, some of which are highly politicised and visible in everyday discourse: assimilation policies, control over fertility, disciplining of motherhood, and education of children. The book documents the scope of the state’s intervention and its violence past and present. “[T]here was no child in her Roma neighbourhood not going to some form of pansion [orphanage or a boarding school],” one of her research participants observes about life under the state socialism (85). The book charts the clash of state and kinship moralities and the contradictions this generates “inside” kinship relationships. It also documents various ways through which kinship resists the state or assimilates its initiatives.

Kinship, however, is not treated as a cultural artefact or tradition. Rather, the point that Sarafian tries to convey is that Romani kinship is oriented toward the future: weddings serve as communal projections of the potential for a better future, and childbearing reproduces this projection in the form of children. The concomitant aspect of this focus on becoming is Sarafian’s careful tracing of personal agency and capacity to aspire, even in moments where these could be the least expected, such as early marriages. At times, this struggle for self-determination is shown to be self-defeating. Such is the case of children, who take it upon themselves to protect their siblings and families from discrimination and racism, but in the process become further alienated from the educational system.

Romani kinship is oriented toward the future: weddings serve as communal projections of the potential for a better future, and childbearing reproduces this projection in the form of children.

The book is also a meditation on how, for people like Sarafian – who, in a move reproductive of antigypsyism, are sometimes dismissed as “Roma elite” – involvement in scholarship or activism becomes a mode to pursue authenticity and reflects their concern with the survival of Romani people. This dynamic generates its own contradictions, however. It threatens to co-opt Romani activists and scholars into co-constructing a figure of vulnerable and impoverished “hyper-real” Roma that would be legible to the state or development agencies. For many, in the context of racism and exclusion, these might be the only viable alternatives to achieve self-realisation while simultaneously connecting to their communities and responding to expectations from their families; for Sarafian, the book also becomes a way to connect with her family and community and to comprehend their position in contemporary Bulgaria. In a surprising twist, after she had been denied a job as a nurse at a local hospital, moved to work for an NGO, and then shifted to academia, Sarafian came to see a structural continuity between Romani activists, herself, and a woman who managed to become a doctor, but ruptured all relationships with her kin in the process: “I wanted to visit Ekaterina in Sofia to share that she was not alone, that there were other Roma who had managed to navigate the world within and outside of the Radost neighbourhood” (79).

The book’s style replicates its focus on the unfinished and ambiguous nature of social forms and processes, as well as the open-endedness of people’s aspirations. Rather than following one case study throughout the book or even through a chapter, each chapter is organised around a series of ethnographic stories and viewpoints. Some readers might find such a narrative approach difficult and desire some kind of synthesis or resolution. However, this is a deliberate writing strategy: “[W]hat there is still to say goes beyond the limits of this book” (101). The juxtaposition of fragments propels Sarafian’s description, sharpens her analysis, and invites future interpretations. Through ethnography, by highlighting particularities of various identifications or adding caveats to descriptions of kinship and state moralities, she constantly tries to re-articulate those social aspects that make a difference, often in ways she had not anticipated: “I found spaces, stories and examples of the everyday that challenged my preconceptions about Roma identifications” (11).

 The chapter on education […] makes visible how any state effect is produced: in day-to-day interactions, in the intermeshing between institutional actions and everyday racialisation

My main objection to the book is that the state often comes across as a monolith. The only exception is the chapter on education, which makes visible how any state effect is produced: in day-to-day interactions, in the intermeshing between institutional actions and everyday racialisation, and in how teachers, directors, and schools translate policies, respond to economic constraints, and in turn shape the educational outcomes, and thus the futures, of Romani children – for better or worse. The book would have been much richer if such an approach had been reproduced in other chapters.

Sarafian is unapologetic and does not try to hide her motivations: “I wrote as I did because of the idiosyncrasies that have shaped me” (98). The result is a timely, readable book and an essential example of Romani autoethnography. Unlike Black autoethnographic writing, this genre remains underdeveloped in Romani-related scholarship, even in its critical iteration aimed at amplifying marginalised voices and empowering communities through challenging established forms of knowledge production. Contesting Moralities will therefore be of interest to those keen on understanding the complexities of being Romani in different contexts and to anyone interested in critical commentary on pressing social issues.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image Credit: Brum on Shutterstock.

In Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage, Michael Herzfeld considers how marginalised groups use nationalist discourses of tradition to challenge state authority. Drawing on ethnography in Greece and Thailand, Olivia Porter finds that Herzfeld’s concept of subversive archaism provides a useful framework for understanding state-resistant thought and activity in other contexts. A longer version of this post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.

Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage. Michael Herzfeld. Duke University Press. 2022.

“The nation-state depends on obviousness because, in reality, its own primacy is not an obvious or logical necessity at all. It is presented as a given, and most people accept it as such. Implicitly or explicitly, subversive archaists question it” (123).

The excerpt above encapsulates the central thesis of the social anthropologist and heritage studies scholar Michael Herzfeld’s Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage. That being said, that the modern nation-state is widely accepted as the primary unit of territorial and cultural organisation, but that there are a group of people, subversive archaists, who question this rhetoric. Subversive archaism challenges the notion that the nation-state, constrained by bureaucratic organisation and with an emphasis on an ethnonational state, is the only acceptable form of polity. Subversive archaists offer an alternative polity, one legitimised by understandings of heritage that date back further than the homogenous ‘collective heritage’ proposed in state-generated discourses for the purpose of creating a ubiquitous representation of national unity (2). As Herzfeld suggests, subversive archaists instead reach into the past to reclaim older and often more inclusive polities and understandings of belonging, and in doing so, they utilise ancient heritage to challenge the authority, and very notion, of the modern nation-state.

Subversive archaists instead reach into the past to reclaim older and often more inclusive polities and understandings of belonging

Herzfeld examines the concept of subversive archaism through comparative ethnography, drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with two communities: the Zoniani of Zoniana in Crete, Greece, and the Chao Pom of Pom Mahakan, Bangkok, Thailand. At first, the two communities appear geographically and culturally distinctively dissimilar. However, they share one important feature neither country has ever been officially colonised by a Western state. Herzfeld ascribes the term “crypto-colonialism”, a ‘disguised’ form of colonialism, to both Greece and Thailand, as states that despite never being officially colonised, were both under constant pressure to conform to Western cultural, political, and economic demands. Herzfeld explains that such countries place a great emphasis on their political independence and cultural integrity having never been colonised, yet many forms of their independence were dictated by Western powers.

In identifying themselves with the heroic past of the nation state, [subversive archaists] legitimise their own status as rightful members of the nations in which they now find themselves marginalised.

In Chapter Two, Herzfeld explores the historical origins of the images and symbols mimicked by subversive archaists to challenge the dominant, often ethnonationalist, narrative of the nation-state. Subversive archaists ransack official historiography and claim nationalist heroes as their own, and in identifying themselves with the heroic past of the nation state, they legitimise their own status as rightful members of the nations in which they now find themselves marginalised. Rather than reject official narratives, subversive archaists appropriate them, in ways that undermine state bureaucracy. For example, the Zoniani (and many Cretans) do not reject the official historiography of the state, which emphasises continuity with Hellenic culture. In fact, they fiercely defend it, and go one further, by citing etymological similarities between Cretan dialects that bear traces of an early regional version of Classical Greek. In doing so, they make claims that they have a better understanding of history than the state bureaucrats.

Chapter Three explores belonging and remoteness through kinship structures and geographical location. Herzfeld highlights how the nation-state uses the symbolic distancing of communities as remote or inaccessible as a tool to marginalize communities. Pom Mahakan is located on the outskirts of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and nowadays Zoniana is accessible by road. Herzfeld argues that the characterisation of these communities as remote and inaccessible is applied by hostile bureaucracies rather than by the communities themselves as an extreme form of intentional political marginalisation.

Zoniani society is still structured by a patrilineal clan system, and Chao Pom society by a mandala-based moeang system. These structures represent an older, and alternative, system of polity to the modern bureaucratic nation-state.

In Chapter Four, Herzfeld proposes that we reframe the assumption that religion shapes cities and instead think about how cosmology shapes polities. In particular, how Zoniani society is still structured by a patrilineal clan system, and Chao Pom society by a mandala-based moeang system. These structures represent an older, and alternative, system of polity to the modern bureaucratic nation-state. For example, the Chao Pom embrace religious and ethnic minorities, arguing that diversity is representative of true Thai society, and that tolerance and generosity are true Thai ideals. The notion of polity itself is the focus of Chapter Five which explores how Pom Mahakan and Zoniana have cosmologically distinct identities that, when conceptualised as part of the same system as the nation-state, both mimic and challenge the state’s legitimacy, thus inviting official violence.

Herzfeld argues that what sets subversive archaists apart from the “state-shunning groups” described by Scott […] is their ‘demand for reciprocal respect and their capacity to play subversive games with the state’s own rhetoric and symbolism’

Herzfeld explains how neither the Zoniani nor Chao Pom fit into the James C. Scott’s concept of “the art of not being governed,” applied to Zomian anarchists who flee from state centres into remote mountainous regions in northeastern India; the central highlands of Vietnam; the Shan Hills in northern Myanmar; and the mountains of Southwest China. Herzfeld argues that what sets subversive archaists apart from the “state-shunning groups” described by Scott, but also makes them representative of a widespread form of resistance to state hegemony, is their “demand for reciprocal respect and their capacity to play subversive games with the state’s own rhetoric and symbolism”. Arguably, the reason that the Zoniani and Chao Pom can demand ‘reciprocal respect’ is related to their ethnic, historical, and cultural affiliation with the majority that marginalises them. The ethnic minorities of Zomia do not benefit from the same types of affiliation.

Ultimately, Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority

Ultimately, Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority. Herzfeld is not proposing that any given group needs to fit neatly into the category of subversive archaists, but rather how some groups reach back into the past to offer an alternative future. In Chapter Eight, Herzfeld explores the future of subversive archaist communities, and also how subversive archaism might mutate into nationalist, and potentially dangerous, movements. The Chao Pom embrace ethnic and religious minorities on the grounds that acceptance and inclusion are true Thai ideals. However, there are dangers to invoking ideologies attached to ‘true’ ideologies of national cultures and traditions, and other types of communities can utilise the rhetoric of subversive archaism. For example, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, “antimaskers” use the language of “liberty” and “democracy” against the modern bureaucratic state, seeking to transform the present into an idealised national past.

I was initially sceptical about who qualified as a subversive archaist. At first, the term seemed too rigid, a community had to be marginalised by the state authority, but associate themselves with the majority and use the language of the state to legitimise themselves their alternative polity. Then, the term seemed too broad, it is not specific to a certain geography, ethnic identity, or religion, and can apply to religious and non- religious groups. Subversive archaism might help us make sense of the Chao Pom and the Zoniani, but who are the subversive archaists of the contemporary world? Then, one morning, when listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service covering the inauguration of India’s controversial new parliament building, I heard a line of argument, from the Indian historian Pushpesh Pant, that struck me as being rooted in subversive archaism.

When asked about the aesthetics of the new parliament building, Pant remarked “I think it is a monstrosity… If the whole idea was to demolish whatever the British, the colonial masters, had built, and have a symbolic resurrection of Indian architecture, I would even go, stick my leg out and say Hindu architecture, it should have been an impressive tribute to generations of Indian architectural tradition Vastu Shastra. Vastu Shastra is the Indian science of building, architecture.” He goes on to say: “How does this symbolise India?”

I suspect that given the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, the tools of subversive archaism, rather than subversive archaists groups per se, will become all the more visible.

In invoking the Vastu Shastra, the ancient Sanskrit manuals of Indian architecture, and the Sri Yantra, the mystical diagram used in the Shri Vidya school of Hinduism, Pant demonstrates his deep understanding of ancient Indian architecture and imagery. And in doing so, he highlights the missed opportunities of the bureaucratic state in designing their new parliament building to create a building that was truly representative of archaic Indian architecture. He does what Herzfeld describes as “playing the official arbiters of cultural excellence [here, the BJP] at their own game”. I suspect that given the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, the tools of subversive archaism, rather than subversive archaists groups per se, will become all the more visible.

This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia. This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, the LSE Southeast Asia Blog, or the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Main Image Credit: daphnusia images on Shutterstock.