Latest lecture

Malinowski Memorial Lecture 2025

When ethnography becomes history

Dr Chihab El Khachab, Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Thursday, 22 May 2025
6.00pm
Shaw Library, Old Building, Houghton Street, WC2A 2AE

What happens to ethnography over time? Whether understood as a research practice or as a scholarly product, ethnography is always already in the process of becoming historical. It can become, minimally, a document of anthropological knowledge production itself, as studied by historians of anthropology. It can become, more widely, a document of the past ethnographic encounter described in writing or in other ethnographic media. The historical becoming of ethnography, however, is seldom theorised from the perspective of the practicing fieldworker, who must in effect anticipate the (historical) future of their research materials as they are producing them – whether one thinks of field notes, photographs, or videos to be used in monographs or multimodal projects in the short term, or the future of these finished products in the long term. Based on my own practice as an ethnographer over the past decade in Cairo, I want to propose a methodological and epistemological reflection around the endurance of ethnographic materials and their multitemporal affordances.

Chihab El Khachab is Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College. He is a social anthropologist specializing in visual and media anthropology, with a focus on Egyptian media production and cultural institutions. He has published widely on these themes, including in Visual Anthropology Review, the Arab Studies Journal, the Journal of the African Literature Association, and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He is the author of two books: Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology and Mediation Shape the Industry (American University in Cairo Press, 2021) and an Arabic-language introduction to core concepts in social theory, Al-Fahhama (The Explanation Machine, Diwan Publishing, 2022). His forthcoming monograph is a history and ethnography of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, provisionally entitled The Achievement State: Cultural Administration in Postrevolutionary Egypt.

Past lectures

Conceptual colour: Race and the anthropology of financialization
Dr Kimberly Chong, 23.05.2024

Ontological Polyglossia: the art of communicating in opacity
Professor Charles Stepanoff, 25.05.2023

Beastly Tales from the Himalaya: an anthropology for the Anthropocene
Dr Nayanika Mathur, 26.05.2022

Discordant Temporalities of Migration and Childhood
Dr Catherine Allerton, 20.05.2021

State-like and state-dislike in the anthropological margins
Dr Judith Scheele, 23.05.2019
Judith Scheele’s Malinowski Lecture of 2019 has been published in the JRAI.
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.13610

Fluctuating formality: anthropology and the structure of difference
Dr Maxim Bolt, 17.05.2018
Maxim Bolt’s Malinowski Lecture of 2018 has been published in the JRAI
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-9655.13615

Primitivist Tourism and Anthropological Research: awkward relations
Dr Rupert Stasch, 25.05.2017

Politics beyond 'interest'. Ethics, kinship and the collective self in Argentine labour unions
Dr Sian Lazar, 19.05.2016

Equality without Equivalance: An Anthropology of the Common
Dr Harry Walker, 28.05.2015

An Economy of Temporary Possession
Dr Rebecca Empson, 22.05.2014

Anthropology and Emotion
Dr A. Beatty, 16.05.2013

The Muck of the Past: Revolution, Social Transformation and the Maoists in India
Dr A. Shah, 17.05.2012

Torture, Compassion, Doubt
Dr T. Kelly, 12.05.2011

Frazer Strikes Back from the Armchair
Dr R. Willerslev, 13.05.2010

The Tycoon and the Tough: Towards a Comparative Anthropology of Urban Marginality
Dr J. Barker, 07.05.2009

Visibly Muslim: An Anthropology of Appearances
Dr E. Tarlo, 08.05.2008

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Dr Y. Navarro-Yashin, 10.05.2007

Beyond Power/Knowledge - an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity
Prof D. Graeber, 25.05.2006

Anti-social anthropology: objectivity, objection and the ethnography of public policy and professional communities
Dr D. Mosse, 02.06.2005

The Christianity of Anthropology
Dr F. Cannell, 20.05.2004

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Prof. Yunxiang Yan, 22.05.2003

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Dr J. Laidlaw, 18.05.2001

Are We All Natural Dualists? A Cognitive Developmental Approach
Dr R. Astuti, 19.05.2000

Functional Origins of Religious Concepts
Dr P. Boyer, 13.05.1999

Erotic Dreams and Nightmares from Antiquity to the Present
Dr C. Stewart, 30.04.1998

If Malinowski met Boas in Barrow: Looking across the Boundaries of Fieldwork from the 1890s to the 1990s
Dr B. Bodenhorn, 20.05.1997

Compassion for the Other: Kinship as Constituted Intentionality in Fiji
Dr C. Toren, 12.03.1996

Postcolonialism and the Political Imagination
Dr J. Spencer, 11.05.1995

The Soul's Body and its Afflictions - An Amazonian Perspective on the Nature of Being Human
Ms A. C. Taylor, 10.03.1994

Questions of Belief - Reflections from Film on Anthropological Practice
Dr H. Morphy, 18.03.1993

Tamed Violence: Genital Symbolism in Portuguese Culture
Dr J. de Pina-Cabral, 20.02.1992

Ritual as Intellectual Property
Dr S. Harrison, 09.05.1991

Basque Visionaries in Trance, 1931
Dr W. Christian, 17.05.1990

Malinowski's Precedent - The Imagination of equality
Dr R. Fardon, 11.05.1989

The Concept of the Person and the Ritual System
Dr A. Iteanu, 28.04.1988

Between Myth and History
Dr O. Harris, 11.05.1987

The Two Sides of Money
Dr K. Hart, 13.03.1986

The Gift, the Indian Gift and the Indian Gift
Dr J. Parry, 09.05.1985

Anthropology and Psychology
Dr D. Sperber, 06.03.1984

Sacred Models
Dr R. L. Stirrat, 15.03.1983

The Architect and the Bee: Reflection on the Work of Animals and Men
Dr T. Ingold, 03.03.1982

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Dr J. Woodburn, 05.05.1981

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Dr M. Strathern, 11.03.1980

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Dr Talal Asad, 06.03.1979

Modes of Reproduction
Dr A. McFarlane, 06.02.1978

The Past and Present in the Present
Dr M. E. F. Bloch, 07.12.1976

On Asking Questions
Dr E. Goody, 04.03.1975

The Couvade: A Problem Reborn
Dr P. G. Riviere, 05.03.1974

Forms and Norms: The Economy of Social Relations
Dr J. H. R. Davis, 27.02.1973

The Golden Fleece
Mr J. A. W. Forge, 07.03.1972

The New Anthropology and its Critics
Mr E. W. Ardener, 23.02.1971

The Analysis of Social Situations
Dr G. Kingsley-Garbett, 24.02.1970

Theories of Myth
Dr P. S. Cohen, 08.05.1969

The Magical Power of Words
Dr S. J. Tambiah, 20.02.1968

In the Beginning
Dr J. R. Fox, 16.05.1967

Spirit Possession
Dr I. M. Lewis, 08.03.1966

Ritual and Social Change
Dr J. N. M. Beattie, 16.02.1965

Anthropological Perspectives
Dr M. P. Banton, 25.02.1964

A Chinese Phase in Social Anthropology
Dr M. Freedman, 30.10.1962

The Concept of Objectivity in Social Anthropology
Dr R. Leinhardt, 05.12.1961

Rethinking Anthropology
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