
































What an Event Does/Is (and What Does/Is Not) 

Review by Marcelo González Gálvez

In the Event: Toward an Anthropology of Generic Moments

by Lotte Meinert & Bruce Kapferer (eds) 

Berghahn Books, 2015

It  has  been  a  while  since  anthropology  gave  center  stage  to  the  debate  on  what  the  focus  of  its

observations should be. Socio-cultural transformations, shifts in theoretical paradigms, and the crisis of

representation,  to name but a few, are among the reasons for this  loss of relevance.  In the Event:

Toward an Anthropology of Generic Moments is a collective effort aiming to help this debate recover

its former position through a renewed reading of the School of Manchester’s (and fundamentally Max

Gluckman’s) proposals, illuminated by contemporary philosophy and present-day social phenomena.

The key contribution  that  In the Event puts  forward is  an analytical  discussion  on what  an  event

implies. In doing this, the contributors argue against considering events as mere illustrations of more

general  social  issues,  and  thus  as  accessories  –  or  adornments  –  of  anthropological  descriptions,

positioning  them  instead  as  the  axis  of  ethnographic  analysis.  Contributors  build  on  Gluckman’s

situational analysis in order to argue that events are critical circumstances that somehow produce some

sort of spatio-temporal suspension, evidencing the social tensions existing in the contexts (between

social balance and change) and being the source of multiple further potentialities that derive from the

event itself. In this way, the contributors respect one of the main premises Gluckman puts forward in

order to criticize the stasis of structural-functionalism: stability in social life does not have to do with

the shape a society may take, but with its perpetual fluidity and instability. From there, the contributors

combine  detailed  ethnographic  descriptions  with  sophisticated  theoretical  discussions  in  order  to

demonstrate the importance of thinking carefully about what an event could include, generate and do.



The introductory piece, by Bruce Kapferer, magisterially summarizes the role that events have assumed

–  first  through the  School  of  Manchester,  later  through  a  series  of  different  scholars  –  in  giving

anthropology a livelier sense of what we loosely label as ‘society’. Sharing, in fact, a critical view on

the idea of 'society'  as an integrated whole,  Kapferer shows how these different perspectives have

historically employed the notion of event to underline dissonances over consensus, and multiplicity

over singularity. Discussing perspectives on events’ potential long-term effects, on how they become

historical  memory or how they are creative instances,  Kapferer  points  out that  events  consistently

manifest contradictory principles, and are thus usually much more disturbing than functional in the

social  contexts  where  (and when)  they  occur.  While  doing this,  he  draws  an  outline  of  a  general

framework to understands events, beyond the specificity characterizing each one of them.

The different articles comprising the volume are specific analysis of different events, which in turn

could be comprehended as ongoing events in themselves, and whose reading may bear the potential of

generative action on the thoughts of their readers. The first article, by Thomas Fibiger, is an insightful

illustration  of  the  intersection  between  an  event  and  the  memory  of  it,  and  further,  of  how  the

remembrance of the event may become an event in itself. Focusing in ‘Ashura, the commemoration of

the  death  of  Iman  Husayn in  Karbala,  by  the  Shi’I  Muslims  of  Bahrain,  Fibinger  challenges  the

boundaries between the past and the present, religion and politics, and the anthropological distinction

between  emic and  etic,  revealing  the  complexity  of  trying  to  express  a  complete  image  of  the

commemoration. By focusing on the analysis locals themselves make of their participation in the event,

this  paper  discusses  a  unitary  interpretation  of  it  by  vividly  manifesting  its  fragmentary  nature,

expressing myriads of different understandings of the situation and of the rationalities taking a part in

it.

In a similar vein, Bjarke Oxlund devotes his chapter to explore the multiple tensions and ambiguities

encapsulated in an event taking place as a celebration of an electoral victory in a contemporary South

African university. While doing this, he shows how the event manifests temporal bonds, encapsulating

a long history of ethnic tensions that goes beyond the sequential distinction between pre- and post-

apartheid eras, and making explicit the configuration of current South African interethnic relations, in

an interesting connection to Gluckman’s classic piece on the building of a bridge in Zululand (1940).

From there he concludes that, far away from merely expressing these tensions, the event is a productive

instance that shows the processual nature of social life, and the creative agency of the people involved



in it.

In the third chapter, Jesper Oestergaard makes an interesting argument by combining elements of skill,

landscape, cosmology, and memory. This article, which connects to the previous chapters in terms of

the importance granted to the biographic elements in the construing of an event, attempts to describe

the process of an anthropological  approach to  the perceptions of a  Buddhist  lama,  who is  able  to

distinguish the traces  left  by a mythological  figure in  a  cave of  western Nepal.  While  doing this,

Oestergaard is able to conceptualize every encounter as an event – the encounters between the lama and

himself, between the lama and the traces – showing how they give birth to one meaningful world from

what previously were worlds apart. This happens as well with the encounter between geography and

mythology, which ‘creates’ the sacred place where the guru and the pilgrims also meet. From there he

proposes that encounters do not involve two or more parts trying to discover meaning, but trying to

construct it instead in their mutual engagement.

Shifting  the  focus  from  the  local  implications  of  events  to  how  they  also  express  transnational

connections, in the fourth chapter, Jonas Østergaard Nielsen discusses the impacts climate change has

had on a small village on northern Burkina Faso. Explaining how people there have coped with weather

variability  employing  a  diversified  economic  strategy,  it  centres  on  how,  since  the  1970s,  the

appearance  of  international  development  projects  has  become  the  major  strategy  to  do  so.  More

specifically, the article focuses on the consequences of one specific event: the arrival of an international

development expert. In doing this, it shows how the event suspends identities and statuses, which can

be negotiated and reconstructed throughout its duration. This is especially critical, in this case study,

regarding the dialectical construction of gender relations. 

In the Event’s  fifth  chapter,  by Mikkel  Rytter,  is  also an exploration on how an event  may make

transnational connections evident. Focusing on a devastating earthquake that affected northern Pakistan

in 2005, Rytter shows the effects this catastrophe produced worldwide, and in Denmark specifically,

through the  Pakistani  migrants'  expression  of  an ‘intensive  transnationalism’.  The main  effect  this

paper focuses on is the establishment of a medical organization aiming to help earthquake survivors. In

doing so, Rytter is not only able to show global connections in motion, but also the ethnic tensions

existing in the core of Danish society. 

In  the  sixth  article,  Anja  Kublitz  focuses  her  analysis  on  the  massive  pro-Muslim demonstrations



generated by the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. In this

context, the author shows how both events, the publication of the cartoons and the demonstrations,

serve as creative instances allowing, on the one hand, the reconstruction of the hegemonic discourses

on migrants,  and on the other,  the emergence of a context of Muslim union to fight against  those

hegemonic discourses. From her analysis, Kublitz proposes an interesting argument of how events may

trigger changes at certain levels, but may leave others untouched, specifically referring to structural

relations between the Danish and the so-called minorities. 

Later,  in the seventh chapter,  Jakob Krause-Jensen attempts  to  prove the adequacy of Gluckman’s

analysis to the study of modern corporations, exemplified by a company producing home electronics

for the global elite. Doing this, Krause-Jensen sets up his analysis from a small meeting – the event –

and engages with discussions previously addressed in the book, concerning transnational connections

and the ambiguity of social relations, focusing primarily on how the corporation ‘discovers’ – and does

not ‘create’ – the core values of its ‘culture’. 

In the Event's last two chapters return to the initial emphasis on local articulations over transnational

connections. Chapter eight, by Stine Krøijer, focuses on radical left protests in the context of NATO's

sixtieth  anniversary  to  propose  a  view of  them as  performances  that  somehow work  as  temporal

incarnations of an alternative future. In doing this, instead of working on how the protest – as a ritual –

creates a collective consciousness, following the classic lead opened by Durkheim, Krøijer focuses on

the emergence of synchronicity and bodily affect that allows the appearance of another time in the

present. In this sense, she draws on Victor Turner’s notion of  communitas (1997), which considering

the integrative role of ritual also underlines the transformative potential of liminal periods. 

In the last chapter, Morten Nielsen also examines the ruptures produced by the emergence of ‘possible

futures’,  starting  from  devastating  floods  that  affected  Mozambique  in  2000.  In  a  remarkable

exploration that could be extremely fruitful concerning debates on structure and agency, Nielsen shows

how confronting the incapacity of the state to fulfil their needs, people take an urbanization project in

their own hands but deciding to respect the state’s urbanization regulations. Following this argument,

the author is also able to manifest the spatial and temporal connections produced by the flooding, and

how the imitation of the state concedes legitimacy to the occupancy of the newly urbanized terrains,

everything allowed by the generative capacity of the original event.



In general terms,  In the Event: Toward an Anthropology of Generic Moments accomplishes several

goals that make it a book extremely worth reading. For a start, it is an excellent introduction to the

contemporary validity of the Manchester School, particularly in terms of the exploration concerning the

question of what an event is and does. Furthermore, and following from this, the various contributions

to this volume show a very thought provoking argument, inspired by Deleuze (2002): the event is the

seed to change, to multiplicity, to the unexpected, rather than merely the illustration of something that

already exists. Finally, every chapter of this book manifests something that is becoming increasingly

evident for all of us: the translocal connections made visible by the occurrence of events. Although it is

essential that we consider what makes an event actually something particular (i.e., the place and time of

its occurrence), we have to be aware that its occurrence may produce and activate global effects that

cannot even be imagined by the direct participants of the event. Isn't the fact that an anthropologist

based in Chile is writing the review of this book, concerning events located mainly in Europe and

Africa, a perfect example for this claim?

References Cited

Deleuze, G. 

2002. Diferencia y repetición. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

 

Gluckman, M. 

1940. Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand. Bantu Studies 14 (1): 1-30.

Turner, V. 

1997. The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction.

Marcelo  González  Gálvez is  a  researcher  at  the  Interdisciplinary  Center  for  Intercultural  and

Indigenous Studies, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He completed his PhD in 2012 at the

University  of  Edinburgh,  and  currently  teaches  at  the  Department  of  Anthropology  at  Pontificia

Universidad Católica de Chile, and at the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology at Universidad

de Chile.

© 2016 Marcelo González Gálvez


