Benjamin Smith
Sonoma State University, Human Development, Faculty Member
- Sonoma State University, Anthropology, Faculty Memberadd
- Cultural Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Language and Culture, Aymara, Anthropology of Children and Childhood, and 33 moreAndes, Semiotics, Animals & Society studies, Cyberanthropology, Human Development Theory, Masculinity, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Anthropology of Peru, Linguistic Relativity, Authenticity, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Language socialization, Language and Identity, Socialization, Semiotic Anthropology, Anthropology of Biomedicine, Therapeutic discourse, Anthropological Linguistics, Language Ideology, Stance, Discourse Analysis, Lev Vygotsky, Charles S. Peirce, Carl Rogers, Online Communication, Indigenous Studies, Virtual Worlds, Game Spaces, Digital Games, Multiplayer Online Games, Digital Media, Material Semiotics, and Ontologyedit
This article critiques the concept "novice" in the language socialization paradigm. Although rarely theorized, the concept "novice" has framed what is seen as an event of language socialization: it must include at least one person who has... more
This article critiques the concept "novice" in the language socialization paradigm. Although rarely theorized, the concept "novice" has framed what is seen as an event of language socialization: it must include at least one person who has not yet acquired some socially valuable characteristic or skill. Conversely, we propose that novicehood is not a natural category: agents who appear as "novices" only do so relative to ideological worlds in which they are made to appear relatively incapable. We then go on to consider three consequences of this reformulation: agents and objects of socialization do not have to be human, socialization does not necessarily lead "upward" towards expertise, and the linguistic mediation of these processes does not always summon agents towards maturity. This critique leads us to propose a theory that both includes a broader range of socializable agents
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In this article, we offer an account of the strategy that parents in Southern Peru undertake to control the " excessive " gaming of their sons. With this strategy, parents attempt to reconstruct the " networks " or " channels " through... more
In this article, we offer an account of the strategy that parents in Southern Peru undertake to control the " excessive " gaming of their sons. With this strategy, parents attempt to reconstruct the " networks " or " channels " through which parents and sons attend to, monitor, and are made communicatively available one to another, a strategy that requires them to – among other things – disassemble competing networks of socialization. Our analysis of this ethnographic material requires us to provide a theory of the role that the " phatic function " plays in processes of language socialization [language socialization, phatic function, digital gaming, parenting, Peru].
Research Interests: Semiotics, Latin American Studies, Linguistic Anthropology, Digital Media, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 11 moreParenting, Cyberanthropology, Anthropology of Children and Childhood, Human Development, Semiotic Anthropology, Language socialization, Andes, Language Socialization (Anthropology), Digital Anthropology, Anthropology of Childhood, and Phatic Function
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In this article, I offer an account of the “linguistic landscapes” associated with the commodification and purchase of internet services in southern Peru. Through an account of public signage deployed by internet lounges in this area as... more
In this article, I offer an account of the “linguistic landscapes” associated with the commodification and purchase of internet services in southern Peru. Through an account of public signage deployed by internet lounges in this area as well as the ideologies that make sense of it, the analysis reveals one of the ways in which moral panic over digital gaming gets semiotically mediated. To do this, the article develops a theoretical machinery that makes sense of the ways in which public signs—relative to their infrastructural contexts—come to project channels for their uptake. When these relationships are considered relative to the ideologies that target them, what gets revealed are the moral contours of Southern Peruvian public life. The analysis ultimately shows how the concept “linguistic landscape” can be useful for the semiotic study of infrastructure as well as the forms of the public life that it helps to mediate.
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In this short essay, we introduce a collection of papers that examines the relationship between semiosis, subjectivity and timescale. We argue that a temporal approach to the relationship between semiosis and subjectivity—i.e., one that... more
In this short essay, we introduce a collection of papers that examines the relationship between semiosis, subjectivity and timescale. We argue that a temporal approach to the relationship between semiosis and subjectivity—i.e., one that considers, at least, the interactional, ontogenetic, and historical timescales—can reveal the variety of ways in which semiosis comes to be implicated in subjectivity. This approach can be understood as a reformulation of the traditional linguistic anthropological concern with linguistic relativity.
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This article develops an approach to semiotically mediated processes of socialization that can make sense of the agency that non-humans – especially material things – wield in socialization. The empirical focus is the densely material... more
This article develops an approach to semiotically mediated processes of socialization that can make sense of the agency that non-humans – especially material things – wield in socialization. The empirical focus is the densely material game of marbles, as played among indigenous Southern Peruvian boys. I show how an account of the identities at stake in marbles – i.e., human-ness and masculinity – requires an analysis of the “dis-ordering” or “parasitical” (Serres, 1982) agency of the marbles playing field. Doing so reveals a graduated series of qualitative changes – i.e., a trajectory of identification (Wortham, 2005) – across which boys appear more fully human and masculine.
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This article describes the semiotics and politics of “real” and “false” selfhood in American therapeutic discourses of the World War II era, focusing on Karen Horney and Carl Rogers. Giving a semiotic analysis of their work requires... more
This article describes the semiotics and politics of “real” and “false” selfhood in American therapeutic discourses of the World War II era, focusing on Karen Horney and Carl Rogers. Giving a semiotic analysis of their work requires developing an account of Erving Goffman’s understanding of commitment that
can then be used to illuminate the form of politics that underlie their ideologies of selfhood. The article culminates in an account of the ironies of the neoliberal politics infusing these therapeutic ideologies. At stake is a historical period characterized by a knotting of ideologies about commitment, their semiosis, and the neoliberal imagination.
can then be used to illuminate the form of politics that underlie their ideologies of selfhood. The article culminates in an account of the ironies of the neoliberal politics infusing these therapeutic ideologies. At stake is a historical period characterized by a knotting of ideologies about commitment, their semiosis, and the neoliberal imagination.
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In this article, I give an account of informal teaching among siblings as a caretaking practice among Peruvian, Aymara speaking children. To do so, I draw upon a notion of “metaculture” () or a “theory of the cultural” to account for the... more
In this article, I give an account of informal teaching among siblings as a caretaking practice among Peruvian, Aymara speaking children. To do so, I draw upon a notion of “metaculture” () or a “theory of the cultural” to account for the sense in which informal teaching practices imply a form of authoritative, reflexive positioning toward the normativities qua normativities (“culture”) of everyday social life. Drawing on an analysis of interview data, I give an account of an Aymara “folk pedagogy” in which identities like oldest, older, and younger sibling are interpretable as forms of metacultural social positioning. An analysis of a series of video-recordings shows the way in which – that is, through acts of “correction” – older siblings deploy a theory of the cultural as they informally instruct their younger siblings.
Research Interests: Education, Informal Learning, Linguistic Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Children and Childhood, and 8 moreHuman Development, Socialization, Language socialization, Andes, Learning in Informal Settings, Language Socialization (Anthropology), Aymara, and Middle Childhood
In this article, I offer an analysis of Peruvian Aymara speech directed toward sheep and alpacas, children, and marbles (specifically, the use of “animal-oriented interjections”). The use of these forms positions addressees as reduced... more
In this article, I offer an analysis of Peruvian Aymara speech directed toward sheep and alpacas, children, and marbles (specifically, the use of “animal-oriented interjections”). The use of these forms positions addressees as reduced (quasi) agents and thereby mediates Aymara ideologies about the scaled or graduated character of those enminded beings that regularly act as addressees. Ultimately, the analysis reveals an Aymara human–nonhuman frontier that requires attention to both the interactional encounters sustained across perceived ontological divides (divides understood to turn on species and ethnodevelopmental difference, etc.) and the (scaled) character of the ideologies that renders these divides “ontological.”[humans, animals, childhood, materiality, semiotics, mind, Andes]
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This article takes up the way that Aymara boyhood marbles play counts as a spectacle of masculinity. Specifically, I examine the way that a boy's relationship to bad luck qhincha (bad luck) in marbles has consequences for his gender and... more
This article takes up the way that Aymara boyhood marbles play counts as a spectacle of masculinity. Specifically, I examine the way that a boy's relationship to bad luck qhincha (bad luck) in marbles has consequences for his gender and sexual affiliations. To do so, I analyze the way in which qhincha instantiates as a participant status in marbles and the way in which heterosexual “toughness” and homosexual “weakness” and “transgression” are thereby—that is, in relation to qhincha—made salient. Theoretically, I show that Aymara masculinity requires a semiotically nuanced concept of “identification” in order to capture its processual, task-like character. [identification, metapragmatic discourse, masculinity, the Andes, bad luck]
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This article examines ideologies of the speaking subject in the psychotherapeutic theory and practice of the American psychotherapeutic innovator Carl Rogers. I consider both Rogerss explicit theorizing about and the interactional... more
This article examines ideologies of the speaking subject in the psychotherapeutic theory and practice of the American psychotherapeutic innovator Carl Rogers. I consider both Rogerss explicit theorizing about and the interactional expression of Rogerian concepts such as nondirective therapy and real or authentic selfhood. These ideologies are analyzed as crucially targeting the relative denotational explicitness and the calibrational qualities of the expression of Goffmanian commitment. Beyond this immediate goal, the analysis aims to explore the wider historical significance of Rogerian therapy and to offer a semiotically sophisticated account of the relationship between ideology and commitment.
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Paper given at the 2015 AAA meeting.
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Paper given at 2013 AAA Annual Meeting.
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Word count: 1,921 Abstract The language of therapy is a domain of study that considers the role that signs-or, more narrowly, language-play in psychotherapeutic change and in the institutions in which that change occurs. Major problems... more
Word count: 1,921 Abstract The language of therapy is a domain of study that considers the role that signs-or, more narrowly, language-play in psychotherapeutic change and in the institutions in which that change occurs. Major problems include the characteristic sequencing of utterances in therapy as well as the ideologies that make therapeutic language an effective form of social action. Increasingly, also, the domain of study includes a consideration of how therapeutic language comes to be consequential for the broader institutions and social formations within which the therapeutic encounter regularly occurs.