The art of being governed: apocalypse, aspirational statecraft, and the health of the Hmong body (politic)

Hickman, Jacob R.

doi:10.1080/13648470.2020.1833685

Cited by 2 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…This perspective extends directly from the 'proof is in the pudding' logic that, I argue, pervades a widely held Hmong semiotic ideology. That is, Hmong tend to measure the legitimacy of a practice or idea on its efficacy, rather than on its origins (Hickman 2007). In other words, each of these movements can be seen as a self-fulfilling-prophecy-in-embryo.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response to this problem, the group are in the process of actively reformulating and standardizing what they argue will constitute the future canon of Hmong ritual. They have added some novel rituals and religious iconography, and have cut some of the more burdensome practices, such as bride-price, cow sacrifice at funerals, and the ua nyuj dab rite (Hickman 2014). During my fieldwork in Minnesota, they also held regular meetings on Sunday mornings and outreach efforts at major Hmong events.…”

Section: Poj Koob Yawm Ntxwv/kev Ntseeg Leej Niammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 For a description of this ritual and its place in the Hmong ritual canon, see Hickman (2007). 7 For a fuller account of this, see Hickman (2019).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…11Other accounts range from brief synopses of Hmong history relevant to specific ethnographic phenomena, to summaries of particular periods, to competing theories of Hmong history and migration (Culas & Michaud 2004; Hickman 2014; 2021; Lee 2015; Schein 2000; Tapp 2015). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Restoring that which has never been: Hmong millenarianism and the reinvention of tradition

Hickman

2024

Royal Anthropological Inst

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While change and flexibility in ritual practices and traditions have been in some sense constitutive elements of Hmong religion, the religious landscape of the contemporary Hmong diaspora is marked by dramatic changes of an altogether new scale. These include the proliferation of a wide range of competing millenarian movements. Leaders of these movements vie for recognition by casting traditional Hmong ritual practice in a way that allows them to convey their ritual innovations as more authentic than traditional religious forms, underwritten by a genuine mandate of heaven. This requires religious activists to decouple the indexical relationship between traditional ritual and its objects (ancestors and a prosperous future) in order to forge new semiotic relationships between new ritual canons, orthographies, and the future of Hmong society. Hmong millenarian activism challenges conventional notions of ‘conversion’ and ‘proselytizing’, both because the intended audience is limited to fellow Hmong, and because the suasive practices in which these activists engage are actively trying to rework semiotic connections within a broadly shared Hmong matrix of meaning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Poj Koob Yawm Ntxwv/kev Ntseeg Leej Niammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 For a description of this ritual and its place in the Hmong ritual canon, see Hickman (2007). 7 For a fuller account of this, see Hickman (2019).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Restoring that which has never been: Hmong millenarianism and the reinvention of tradition

Hickman

2024

Royal Anthropological Inst

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“…Scaling up to the level of the regional, while they are not isolated entities (Lasrus 2012), for small island states drowning by sea level rise, the apocalypse is still enveloping, and for the health of such island communities, their world is ending; it is their apocalypse. It is for this reason we note a difference in speaking of the end of one's 'worlds' , as an epistemological (as opposed to ontological) delimitation of meaning in the lives of individuals (Lynch 2021), families (Zafar-Smith, 2021), communities (Whitaker 2021;Littlewood 2021), and nations (Hickman 2021). Scaling up again, this epistemological concern with how we know what (we assume) we know also points to the false globalism of many Western discourses about 'the apocalypse' -the destruction of capitalism, threats to democracy, dissolution of state borders, 'World Wars' -as, in reality, both Eurocentric and Christian-centric.…”

Section: Whose Apocalypse? Whose Crisis?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Apocalyptic futures: morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world

Lynch

Sturm

Webster

2021

Anthropology & Medicine

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In the context of Covid-19, anthropologists of medicine and religion alike may be tempted to join with the media in declaring that humanity is facing the end of the world as we know it. Indeed, as the global pandemic rages on, and the dramatic restrictions of national lockdowns ease and then retighten with an anomic unevenness akin to cardiac arrhythmia, it would be easy to imagine that these 'strange times we now live in' are somehow utterly exceptional -an eschatological precipice like no other. Yet, as the papers in this Special Issue on ' Apocalyptic futures: Morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world' amply demonstrate, while the health and social crisis of the coronavirus pandemic is replete with compelling end-times signs, it would be wrong to assume that this new disease -even in its most acutely challenging of moments -holds a monopoly over human imaginations and experiences of world endings. Put simply, popular fascinations with the end of the world did not begin with Covid-19, nor, in our view, will they end with it.Taken literally, rather than as a bad pun, this observation about the longue durée of apocalypticism provokes new and important questions which the authors contained within this Special Issue seek to answer. How do human imaginations of the biomedical and spiritual future alter life in the present? What happens, in this forward-looking temporality, to human reflections on the past -to 'lessons learned' about old diseases now eradicated, or past sins now atoned for? In the context of global disease, international conflict, national protests, and localized fears and anxieties, what does wellbeing look like, and how do humans continue to promote it -medically and morally -even as they face their own mortality, and that of those they love? In seeking to safeguard the 'health' of a nation, how might political and clinical interventions butt up against (or marry with) millenarian religious activism heralding an imminent apocalypse? If, according to some medical and religious commentators, the apocalypse is temporally soon, geographically here, and corporally near, then how might such convictions change the way humans experience their own bodies, as well as the world around them? Apocalyptic timesSuch questions centrally address the notion of time, but, we argue, also highlight the relationship between immanence and transcendence, and often with surprising results. Thus,

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The art of being governed: apocalypse, aspirational statecraft, and the health of the Hmong body (politic)

Cited by 2 publications

References 10 publications

Restoring that which has never been: Hmong millenarianism and the reinvention of tradition

Restoring that which has never been: Hmong millenarianism and the reinvention of tradition

Apocalyptic futures: morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world

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