Without fail, chains evoke images of connections saturated with power. As objects and physical formations, they bind people, animals, and things to specific locations. Chains are the irons that incarcerate, the handcuffs that demobilize, the locks that protect private property, the protest devices that attach demonstrators to buildings, the sex tools that enable people to act out playful, subversive, and/or (politically) charged desires, and the “human chains” into which both activists and state troops morph in order to stand their ground.

Yet as metaphorical and material realities, chains also have a capacity to stretch beyond specific places, implicated as they are in interconnected planetary economies. “Commodity,” “value,” “supply,” and “block” chains invite us to think of far-spanning financial circuits, in which production and consumption are tied via successive links. Chains, however, are not neutral framings of economic life; in much corporate and bureaucratic usage, they performatively enact images of linear, transparent, and modular organizational forms, which disguise the contingent and localized practices that render capitalism an everyday possibility (Appel 2019; Caraballo Acuña 2022; Smith 2021). The disavowal that such chains commit is not merely discursive. In many ways, the creation of commodity value is premised on the obfuscation of the daily goings-on in production sites, and with that, on the devaluation and exploitation of the (non)humans living there (Ferry 2005; Tsing 2009, 2013).

Chains, then, also speak to specific registers of oppression and exploitation. If anything, in capitalist and colonial modernity, commodity chains were for several centuries actualized through the attendant enchainment of Black, Indigenous, and Brown peoples, from whose enslaved labor Euro-American empires extracted surplus value by way of cotton, gold, sugar, and otherwise (Leal 2018; Yusoff 2018). Present-day emancipation commemorations such as Juneteenth in the United States and Ketikoti in Suriname and the Netherlands urge us to remember these chains and to honor the people who broke them. At the same time, such remembrances highlight that the severance and undoing of these oppressive ties requires continuous effort and struggle, as the shackles of the past are tethered to injustices of the present, including police violence, legal and economic marginalization, and the institutional and academic silencing of People of Color (Burton 2015; Simpson 2014; Todd 2015). Moreover, forms of modern-day servitude and forced labor remind us that human bondage is not something of the past and works increasingly through forms of financial indebtedness.

For the upcoming issue of Etnofoor, we welcome contributions that critically interrogate chains as power-laden imaginaries and objects that index, enforce, and reconfigure enclosures, even as they simultaneously forge connections. Topics include, but are by no means restricted to, supply-chain capitalism, blockchain, (modern) slavery, labor exploitation, incarceration, animal captivity, police brutality, protest strategies, BDSM, or themes situated at the intersection of these and other subjects. The special issue will address the complex political and affective work that chains do in the name of coercion, resistance, protection, endurance, and everything in between. What metaphorical and material realities do chains protect or consolidate? What forms of relational and infrastructural work do they obscure or substitute? Which histories do chains hold together – or drag into the present – and which do they negate? What are the stakes in, and the costs of, making and breaking chains?

We welcome papers addressing these and other questions through ethnographic fieldwork or theoretical analysis. Authors can submit an abstract of no more than 200 words to editors@etnofoor.nl before October 16, 2024. We also welcome book reviews and creative contributions such as photo essays or graphic narratives. The deadline for authors of accepted abstracts to submit their full paper is February 1, 2024. The issue is scheduled for the summer of 2025.

References

Appel, Hannah

2019 The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press.

Burton, Orisanmi

2015 Black Lives Matter: A Critique of Anthropology. Cultural Anthropology. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/black-lives-matter-a-critique-of-anthropology

Caraballo Acuña, Vladimir

2022 Carving Space and Time: Interruptions and (Un)Predictability in Infrastructural Design of Emeralds and the Mining Formalization in Colombia. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 27(1-2):146–164.

Ferry, Elizabeth Emma

2005 Geologies of Power: Value Transformations of Mineral Specimens from Guanajuato, Mexico. American Ethnologist 32(3):420–436.

Leal, Claudia

2018 Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Simpson, Audra

2014 Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University press.

Smith, James H.

2021 The Eyes of the World: Mining in the Digital Age in the Eastern DR Congo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Todd, Zoe

2016 An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology 29(1):4–22.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt

2009 Supply Chains and the Human Condition. Rethinking Marxism 21(2):148–176.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt

2013 Sorting out Commodities: How Capitalist Value Is Made through Gifts. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(1):21–43.

Yusoff, Kathryn

2018 A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.