Doctoral Dissertation Research: Differences to Blame: Agency and Ethnogenesis in Contemporary Suriname

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Doctoral candidate Stuart Strange of the University of Michigan, under the supervision of Dr. Webb Keane, will conduct research on how conceptions of responsibility, agency, and misfortune influence the ongoing construction of ethnic difference in contemporary Suriname. Focusing on the wider implications of cultural attributions of responsibility, the research investigates the different cultural and religious logics used to recognize and assign agency in order to ascertain how these differences impact peoples' perceptions and performances of ethnicity. The research employs social science methods to analyze rituals, narratives, and conversations and to investigate how members from distinct ethnic and religious backgrounds variably communicate and explain misfortune. The project seeks to grasp how diverse ways of attributing responsibility for misfortune and describing the agency of humans, spirits, and ritual objects impact the construction of seemingly objective differences between ethnic communities. The researcher will record and analyze how people talk about misfortune and describe responsibility in different social settings: (1) at a Hindu Surinamese oracle and temple, (2) at an Afro-Surinamese Shrine and church, and (3) in everyday talk in both communities. The research also comparatively records and analyzes narratives of the Surinamese civil war to discern the impact of cultural and religious logics of explanation on the interpretation of this national crisis. The research will contribute to a clearer understanding of how people in contemporary multi-ethnic societies create and understand ethnic and religious differences, while observing the implication of such concepts for the practices of all areas of social life, from politics to the market. By explaining how responsibility and misfortune are attributed and transformed in a society simultaneously culturally hybrid and socially segregated, the research will provide an incisive analysis of human social and cultural difference. The project will also contribute to the training of a social scientist.