2015 RAI POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE:
ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF ENGAGEMENT
MANCHESTER, 4-5 JUNE
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General Programme
Thursday 4th June
10-10.30am: Registration and Coffee
10.30-10.45am: Welcome [Theatre A]
10.45-11.45am: Research-Shots [Theatre A]
12.00-1.30pm: Panel Session One
1.30-2.30pm: Lunch [Christies Buffet]
2.30-4.00pm: Panel Session Two
4.00-4.30pm: Coffee Break
4.30-6.00pm: Panel Session Three
6.00-7.30pm: Wine Reception [Kro Bar]
Friday 5th June
9.30-11.00am: Panel Session Four
11.00-11.30am: Coffee Break
11.30-13.00pm: Panel Session Five
1.00-2.30pm: Lunch [2.220]
2.30-3.30pm: Film Screening [Theatre A]; “Entre Memorias (“Between Memories”): A
Collaborative Journey into the Experience of Memory in Postwar Peru”
3.30-4.00pm: Coffee
4.00-5.30pm: Key Note: Prof. Veena Das [Theatre A], Title TBC
5.30-5.45pm: Closing Remarks [Theatre A]
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Thursday, June 4th
Research Shots: 10.45-11.45am
Panel
Research Shots:
What is your
research about?
Conveners
Participants
Venue
Frances Paola
Garnica
Wanting Wu
Nicoletta Landi
Daksha Rajagopalan
Anna Wherry
Charlie Rumsby
Dario Ranocchiari
Tseren Byambasuren
Alina Apostu
Ryan Foley
Theatre A
Conveners
Participants
Venue
Elvira Wepfer
Pavlos Papadopoulos
Clara Rubio Ros
Ryan Foley
Room 5.210
Mary-Anne Decatur
Ursula Probst
Marina Della Rocca
Anita Datta
Room 5.211
Session One: 12.00-13.30pm
Panel
Europe in Crisis:
Perspectives
and strategies
for renewal and
resistance
Undisciplined
Sofia González
translations: Sex
Ayala
and gender
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Session Two: 2.30-4.00pm
Panel
Conveners
Participants
Venue
Maria Salazar
Joycelin Okubuiro
James Blair
John Foster
Room 5.209
Making natures,
making humans:
Native
José Luis Fajardo
worldviews on
ecology and
politics
Rosalyn Bold
Sarah Friend
Jenni Mölkänen
Boana Visser
Room 5.210
Illness and its
discontents:
Critical concepts
and narratives
Karol Górski
Nicoletta Landi
Daksha Rajagopalan
Peter Fuzesi
Room 5.211
Conveners
Participants
Venue
Peter Fuzesi
Annastiina Kallius
Rebecca Bradshaw
Pina Sadar
Sabine Bauer
Room 5.210
Lana Askari
Courtney Wittekind
Paloma Yáñez
Ines Ponte
Room 5.211
Law, rights and
citizenship
Theodoros
Kyriakides
Session Three: 4.30-6.00pm
Panel
Critical
Collaborations
Methodologies
and
explorations of
youth
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Friday, June 5th
Session Four: 9.30-11.00am
Panel
Embodied
knowledge
Conveners
Participants
Venue
Hester Clarke
Sho Shimoyamada
Chloe Faux
Wanting Wu
Room 3.212
Daljit Singh
Aleksandra Reczuch
Anna Giulia Della Puppa
Ana Chiritoiu
Room 3.213
Mismanagement,
suspended
Ximin Zhou
ambiguities and
hope
Session Five: 11.30-1.00pm
Panel
Moral
Economies
Negotiating
with the State:
Political agency
and
engagement
Creativity,
representation
and
engagement in
visual and
sensory
methods
Conveners
Participants
Venue
Rachel Smith
Phaedra Douzina Bakalaki
Riddhi Bhandari
Carmen Leidereiter
Francesco Montagnani
Room 3.212
Louise Laverty
Samar Kanafani
Srishtee Sethi
Peter Chaudry
Sinéad O’Sullivan
Room 3.213
Rosa Sansone
Mascha Legel
Eugenio Giorgianni and Paloma
Yáñez
Siddhi Bhandari
Nicole Hoellerer
Room 3.214
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Abstracts
Thursday 4th June
Research Shots: What is your research about?
10.45-11.45 a.m.
Convener: Frances Paola Garnica
Embodying Chinese dance and Chinese identity in Belfast
Wanting Wu
Queen’s University Belfast
This presentation is based upon my MA research, carried out through participantobservation and interviewing amongst Chinese dancers in Belfast, discusses how performing
Chinese dance in western contexts leads to transformations in the dance and in the
identities of the dancers. The Chinese community in Belfast has been well established since
the 1950s, and dance plays a significant role in communal ceremonies and festivals, such as
the Spring Festival celebrations for the Chinese New Year, as a symbol of Chinese identity.
Much of the Chinese dance performed in Belfast, however, has diverged in significant ways,
from dance practice in China, including the participation of non-Chinese dancers and the
attendance of large numbers of non-Chinese audience members. The presentation displays
three forms of Chinese dance in Belfast, the Lion Dance, which is a group dance popular in
the Hong Kong region, the hybrid Chinese dance taught at an Indian dance studio which
includes elements of ballet, jazz and ballroom dance, and my own performance of a fan
dance, which is seen as representing Chinese national identity because it is associated with
the dominant Han ethnic group. Through comparison of the ways Chinese dance is taught,
choreographed and performed in China and in Northern Ireland, I question what is the
philosophy of Chinese self? How does learning Chinese dance shape the self, to what extent
can learning Chinese dance give a taste of Chinese culture? And how do people from
different cultural backgrounds, such as Indian, American or Northern Irish respond
differently to learning the same Chinese dance movements? The presentation also shows
the possibility of learning through doing – of gaining some understanding of Chinese culture
by mastering the skills of Chinese dance, by a process of situated learning, whilst also
showing the changes that occur when Chinese dance is performed outside China.
An Italian sexual education program for teenagers through images
Nicoletta Landi
University of Bologna
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I would like to present the research I am working on for my PhD thesis to explain the double
role of anthropology – analysis tool and practical strategy for intervention – in sexual
education for teenagers. I took part to the activities of Spazio Giovani, a youth centre of the
Italian public Health System. It’s a free access Counseling center where teenagers and adults
meet psychologists, gynaecologists, obstetricians, health educators. Classes from Junior
High School or High School can visit it and Spazio Giovani cooperates with many public
schools through sexual health promotion programs often involving teachers, tutors and
parents. As PhD student and anthropologist I took part, through an action-research, to the
development and trial of a sexual education program called “W l’amore” inspired by a Dutch
project. I worked with psychologists and health professionals to create a project that could
answer the kids, the families and the teachers needs concerning sexual identities,
relationships and sexual health. My contribution has been to introduce a critical approach
about sexual plurality, gender and diversity. I tried to stimulate an innovative way to
promote sexual health beyond physical well-being, trying to consider sexuality and sexual
health in a more comprehensive way. We produced and tested a magazine to be used by
previously trained teachers with the students in the class: through images, texts and
activities, boys and girls can talk about anatomy, growth, family relationships, friendship,
gender stereotypes, sexual orientation and sexual plurality, gender based violence,
contraception and STD’s prevention. I would like to present a sample of this magazine to
show all the resources and problems a sexual education program can face in the Italian
context. I would also tell about anthropology’s role in the public sexual education system
through my multiple positioning: researcher and operator, sometimes activist, but always
engaged.
Administering Victimhood: Bureaucracy and the production of ‘the victim’ in Botogá,
Colombia
Anne Wherry
University of Oxford
In July 2011 the Colombian government passed the Victims and Land Restitution Law, the
first legislation in the country to officially recognize the presence of an internal armed
conflict and offer reparations to its victims. The political objective of the Victims Law was
multifold: to introduce a new effort at transitional justice preceding renewed political talks
with guerrilla groups; to present a law for the ‘victims’ rather than the ‘perpetrators’; and to
allow for those affected by the armed conflict, particularly the displaced, to reclaim citizen
rights and livelihoods. Current literature on the Victims Law focuses on understanding its
potential as a tool for effective transitional justice. While this approach offers insightful
analysis of the political positioning of the Victims Law within the country, there has not been
an adequate consideration of what issues are being eclipsed in such a framing, nor a
nuanced analysis of how this law is producing new forms of knowledge and regulation as it
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is given life. Approaching the Victims Law through ethnography can move the analysis
beyond thinking in purely political terms to considering the experiences of those involved
with the law as it is carried out. Motivating an ethnographic approach to the Victims Law are
the following questions: Through what legal and administrative procedures have over six
million Colombian citizens come to secure status as victims of the armed conflict? How is
victimhood being conceptualized, measured, and regulated? What are the criteria through
which victimhood is determined and, more precisely, the texture of bureaucratic decisionmaking with regards to establishing victimhood? How do functionaries determine in practice,
through micro-level decision-making, who is a victim and who is not, and what becomes
important in making this determination?
Statelessness in Cambodia
Charlie Rumsby
Coventry University
Stateless populations face great human insecurity, with limited access to education, decent
work, the right to vote and an inability to hold any public positions. Given these conditions
their formalised entry into the political domain seems unachievable. The Vietnamese in
Cambodia are at a double disadvantage; they are rejected politically and suffer from the
strained international relationship between the Cambodian and Vietnamese governments.
Many are poor, some are stateless, and most would rather keep a low profile as antiVietnamese sentiment still runs very deep in Cambodia. This paper, by looking at the
influence of Protestant Christianity on a population of stateless Vietnamese children via a
missionary school in Cambodia, illustrates how stateless children were able to produce
future orientated aspirations – despite living in a context of weak institutions and facing
discrimination due to their ethnicity. The case study of Preah Thnov demonstrates how
Christian education offered tools to raise consciousness of local, regional and global politics
and, in some instances, legitimised and created a space to voice their political desires in an
environment which denies them political inclusion. Building on a discussion of inclusion and
exclusion, this paper challenges perceptions of what ‘political recognition from below’ looks
like, and how a minority group with the support of transatlantic Protestant Churches is
reconfiguring its identity and view of the future. This in turn will have consequences for
integration into the society in which they live, and more notably the age children enter into
employment and the work they undertake. This paper opens up discussion on the role of
religious organisations who are offering an alternative narrative when it comes to belonging,
listening to and raising the voices of the those who have been born into a ‘status’ that
renders them illegitimate persons.
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On Making the Bee
Daksha Madhu Rajagopalan
University of Aberdeen
My research is on bees. This research shot describes my ongoing Masters dissertation
research, which runs from May until September and also involves upcoming fieldwork with
Maltese beekeepers. Bee populations are facing a critical condition worldwide, and my
research aims to contribute an anthropological perspective towards finding a solution. As
anthropologist Jake Kosek has put it, “the changing relationship between bees and humans
brought the modern bee into existence in a way that has made it vulnerable to new threats”
(2010: 651). This notion of ‘bringing the modern bee into existence’ speaks to the idea of
emergent organisms. Anthropology has recently witnessed a turn of interest towards nonhuman and other-than-human beings. Post-human anthropology often engages with plants,
animals, and even “cyborgs” (Haraway 1997: 210). The premise is that beings do not
precede their interactions; rather, every creature, including both humans and non-living
beings, emerges or “becomes” through interspecies relationships (Haraway 2008: 4).
Drawing on theoretical developments in multispecies anthropology, my research is on how
the particular bee-organism emerges through human-bee-hive interactions. I will
also explain why an anthropological perspective is important for policy and solving global
bee-related problems. I am interested in examining beekeeper-bee and scientist-bee
relations.
Ginger/ Europe is an archipelago. Collaborative ethnography and activist performative
practices in the EU at the time of the crisis
Dario Ranocchiari
Universidad de Granada
This is a hybrid transdisciplinary scholar-activist project, based on the metaphoric image of
Europe as an archipelago more than as a Union. It is composed of three steps. The first one
consists of a virtual communication campaign and ethnography, focused to the broadcasting
of the project and the building of a social network of people interested to its general topic:
how has the idea of the European Union changed due to the economic crisis of 2008? The
second one consists of a concrete boat trip on board of the vessel Ginger, from the North
Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, along the European waterways which unify – or divide – the
European “islands”. During this journey, the activists involved in the virtual community will
physically meet Ginger, participating in collaborative social events/workshops and sharing
performative products based on “the idea of Europe at the time of the crisis”. The third step
consists of collaborative workshops to be held after the conclusion of the journey, visiting
some strategic activist groups in their own local context for analysing collaboratively the
whole experience from a methodological point of view. The objectives of the project are to
create a virtual network of subjects interested in reflecting on the social consequences of
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the crisis from a performative point of view, and to collect the subjects’ performative
contributions on the European Archipelago in an open access audio-visual archive. If
successful, we think that a hybrid project like this – with its transdisciplinary methodology
based on visual anthropology, performance studies, critical geography and the collaborative
study of social movements – can be a useful example of how to conciliate expert and
grassroots knowledge.
Sensorial experience of blindness through a tactile photo exhibition, Mongolia
Tseren Byambasuren
University of Manchester
During the past 68 years of the communist era, the blind community of Mongolia was
provided with generous welfare care. However, they were conveniently isolated-having to
work at a special factory, living in an allocated neighbourhood and educated only to the
compulsory high school level. They remained without a voice in the sphere of public
dialogue, defined by law as 'persons who are not able to participate in the activities of
society due to physical impairment.' Since the collapse of the communist regime in the
1990s, the country underwent a harsh transition from a state governed system to a free
market economy. As a result the blind were stripped of their financial care support
structures and became the most economically vulnerable community. Furthermore, they
have remained an isolated and socially excluded community as there have not been
structures in place to make social activities and institutions accessible and to allow them to
participate in social activities and institutions in a meaningful way. Taking this lack of
structural support into consideration, this project will use photography to narrate the story
of a blind man, in this context. It will illustrate and highlight the problems he encounters and
his struggles in an exclusive society. The project will provide a glimpse of the unique
circumstances that evolve from the experience of a disability. The photographic story will
illustrate the experience of disability as a physical, cognitive and social phenomenon. The
purpose of this project is twofold. Firstly, to give the blind people a voice to articulate their
struggle and their effort to find a place in a non-inclusive society. Secondly, to promote
awareness and understanding of the blindness amongst the general public. The sensorial
experience of blindness will be given through the tactile photo exhibition/photo book.
Furthermore this will be the first ever tactile photo exhibition/book produced for the blind
community of Mongolia.
A Sound Ethnography of London’s Anglican Church
Alina Apostu
SOAS, University of London
My PhD thesis focuses on sound and music in their relation to Anglican religious experience
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in two London churches. I wish to discover how sound influences religious experience to
further our understanding of how a religion with a long, established history and set of
norms operates in today's secular London. By grounding the study in the sonic environment,
these particular field-sites will contextualise a discussion over the relationship between
structure and spontaneity of religious experience in the Anglican faith. Historically and
theologically, the Anglican confession nurtures a continuous play between structure and
control, on the one hand, and novelty and change, on the other hand. This interplay will be
reflected in the comparison between these two churches that have different degrees of
adherence to strict traditional norms. Since music represents a core element of religious
experience in the Anglican Church and the latter has a rich, flexible music tradition, I put
forward that sound will facilitate a new, comprehensive analysis of the relationship between
these two apparently opposed elements of Anglican faith, in contemporary London; sound
is a substance that instates order and togetherness and also one that materialises personal
subjectivities and individuality. The study will focus on the role of the choir and the sound
relations to clerical leader(s) and members of congregation; furthermore, it will investigate
affordances of the sonic environment (in terms of space and materials) for religious feeling,
transmission of religious knowledge, activation of memory and feelings of belonging for
participants. Thus, the study will approach questions of staging, organisation and
performance of religious experience through sound and issues regarding the particular
affordances that sound materiality creates for religious experience. Concurrently, the
setting of religious experience will allow for a foray into the nature of sound as
anthropological subject.
‘Why Anthropology? It’s personal.’
Ryan Foley
University of Oxford
My research is about seeking alternatives. It is easy to feel trapped in a job, stuck in a rut,
living your life as if a cog in a wheel - in short, alienated. What other options exist? As will be
familiar to many anthropologists, experts in cultural relativism the consequences of
historical contingency, the global economy today is based on shared assumptions,
institutions and legal systems, and far from being the only way, it reflects only one accident
of history. My research, based on twelve months of fieldwork in Emilia-Romagna, focuses on
a worker-owned social cooperative in the services sector of a small city. Cooperatives have
been championed by the United Nations as part of their Millennium Development Goals,
with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon touting cooperatives as "a reminder to the
international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social
responsibility". Consistent with the cooperative movement's birth as part of the socioeconomic transformations of the industrial revolution, it is perhaps not surprising that the
model is in the spotlight after the 2008 market crash rocked faith in the sustainability of the
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current system. Yet numerous studies of cooperatives and development show that these
organizations often failed to be economically viable or alternatively found economic success
through imitating neoliberal models that focus on efficiency and competitiveness. My
research shows how cooperative workers interpret and seek to apply cooperative values
such as democracy, solidarity and equality in every day work. Is the cooperative able to
compete in a marketplace that is guided by neoliberal values without compromising on its
own? I will address this question by sharing my findings on labour relations within the
cooperative, leading to the conclusion that the cooperative business structure alone does
not result in the production of a lived alternative to alienated work.
Session One – Group A
12.00-13.30 pm
Europe in Crisis: Perspectives and strategies for renewal
Convener: Elvira Wepfer
Challenging Neoliberalism: Alternative Exchange Networks and Social Movements in
Greece
Pavlos Papadopoulos
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Summary:
The paper deals with the contraction of the alternative economic structures during the
financial crisis in Greece. Its cause is to highlight the conflict against the austerity measures
as an opportunity for the construction of new and democratic, anti-capitalistic ways of
exchange.
Abstract:
Starting from the point that economy is a social construction, this paper highlights the
questioning of capitalism’s rationalism. The austerity measures led social conflict to selforganization and to the construction of alternative forms of economy. There is a great
discussion about the establishment of post-capitalist structures that question the hegemony
of capitalism in the exchange of products. Capitalism undergoes a serious critic and its
reaction is to exclude in every way these projects from its system as non-normal, but these
acts seek hegemony and the construction of a new rationality. The paper deals with the
formation of an Alternative Food Network established in the city of Katerini in 2011. The
self-organization of the people led to the creation of the “Without Intermediaries Social
Movement” which sought the productive reconstruction of the country, starting from an
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urban level. The movement established a social agreement between producers and
consumers with the detour of a fundamental institution of capitalism, the Intermediaries.
It’s main characteristic lies on the installation of a new and direct bond between these two
groups under the mutual interests. Civil society was organized under assemblies in the
public sphere, in an occupied public building, taking decisions under direct democracy. The
detour of the market led to the lowering of the prices on agricultural products and to the
invigoration of financial liquidity for the producers. The success of this movement led to the
adoption of its model of organization by other cities of Greece. The movement created a
network all over the country.
Socio-political movements and migration: the case of the Marea Granate and ANC in
London
Clara Rubio Ros
University of Lleida
Summary:
Spanish economic crises caused a lack of job opportunities for Spanish young people. They,
looking for their opportunity to build up a professional career, migrate abroad. However,
they still feel responsible for changing Spanish politics. Willing to contribute to a more
democratic system, they get involved in different social movements in their host countries.
Abstract:
The Spanish society is facing a time of political turmoil. Many of its citizens, who share a
desire for changing the Spanish political situation, created numerous socio-political civil
movements. The movements aimed to build a fairer and more equal society, always through
democratic processes (either elections or referendums). On the other hand, due to the
economic crisis and the persistent precariousness of the Spanish labour market, many
Spaniards migrated to other cities around the world. Most of them feel the need of working
for a change in the country where they were born; to do so they exported the socio-political
movements to the cities to which migrated. This case study is based on two socio-political
movements that were originated in Spain but have different international needs. The article
is focused on the city of London and aims to understanding the origins of the movements;
how are they nationally and internationally organised; their actions in London and their
goals. Marae Granate Londres (London Maroon Wave) is one of the social movements
linked to the 15-M movement, which seeks to denounce the forced emigration (what they
call exile) of many young Spaniards due to the austerity policies of the Spanish government
and its economical consequences. Amssemlea Nacional Catalana – ANC (Catalan National
Assembly), is a socio-political movement that works for the Catalan Independence. The
movement has created different nodes abroad, aiming to promote the Catalan Cause
internationally besides to agglutinate Catalan independence supporters in the UK.
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Why anthropology? It’s personal
Ryan Alison Foley
University of Oxford
Summary:
For me, the practice of anthropology is necessarily engaged. Based on my own disappointing
experiences as a worker, I sought out anthropology as a tool to critique the assumptions of
the modern globalised economy. Therefore, if I am unable to engage with others I will have
worked in vain.
Abstract:
My relationship with anthropology is personal. It is not a purely intellectual pursuit, but a
deeply felt practice. Disappointed after years working in a multinational company, I turned
back to academia. I wanted to understand why I felt so dissatisfied being part of such a
successful company. I took a degree in comparative law, economics and finance, and
discovered the potential of the anthropological method as a tool to critique the assumptions
of economic science that bolster the neoliberal political economy which had left me feeling
alienated. To use Hart, Laville and Cattani's phrase, I wanted to participate in 'building the
human economy'. This led me to a year of fieldwork with a worker-owned social cooperative
in the services sector of a small city in Emilia-Romagna. This region in Italy has had a strong
history of cooperative business ever since the emergence of the modern cooperative
movement during the industrial revolution. My research explores how the cooperative
workers interpret and seek to apply cooperative values such as democracy, solidarity and
equality in every day work. Is the cooperative able to compete in a marketplace that is
guided by neoliberal values without compromising on its own? While tere are clear
shortcomings in the reality of cooperative business practice and structural limitations
imposed by the rules of the market, there are also some clear benefits, one of which is
simply the search for these ideals. As I prepare to share my research, I also continue to work
actively with cooperatives.
Session One – Group B
12.00-13.30 pm
Undisciplined translations: Sex and gender
Convener: Sofia González Ayala
Translating Female Genital Cutting as a Human Rights Violation in a Maasai Community
Mary-Anne Decatur
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SOAS, University of London
Summary:
This paper draws on fifteen months of fieldwork to examine the ways in which
mistranslations and miscommunications shape how female genital cutting as a human rights
violation is understood by a group of Maasai community members in the Kilimanjaro region
of Tanzania.
Abstract:
Female genital cutting is recognized within international discourses as a violation of human
rights. This paper draws on fifteen months of fieldwork to examine the ways in which
mistranslations and miscommunications shape how female genital cutting as a human rights
violation is understood by a group of Maasai community members in the Kilimanjaro region
of Tanzania. In keeping with international discourses, campaigns in Tanzania to end female
genital cutting label the practice a violation of human rights (haki za binadamu in Swahili).
Maasai people I spoke with translated haki za binadamu to the word esipata/isipat in Maa,
meaning truth/truths. This translation conceptualizes a ‘right’ as something that is correct
and does not necessarily connote entitlement. One key interlocutor, a young Maasai man,
elaborated that men and women have different isipat, where men have the ‘right’ to be
head of the family, while women have the ‘right’ to collect firewood, milk cows and prepare
meals. He supported the idea of beating girls who request to undergo female genital cutting
in order to make them learn what is ‘right’. This interlocutor’s mother and her friends
argued that female genital cutting was once consistent with ‘rights’, but is now a violation of
them. This (mis)translation of the term human rights positions women who have undergone
the practice as potentially culpable and helps contextualize a popular rumour in the
community stating that women who have undergone female genital cutting will be arrested
and imprisoned if discovered when giving birth at the local hospital.
Difficult Engagements – Anthropology and Sex Work Politics
Ursula Probst
Freie Universität
Summary:
While critical analyses of sex work and its relation to (global) power structures are a vital
contribution to public discourses, engaging in these debates can be a difficult navigation
inbetween moralised “crusades” and the positionalities of anthropologists as scientists and
“allies”.
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Abstract:
Debates about sex work are often influenced by moralised myths and decontextualised
images of the (mostly female) sex worker as passive victim that reproduce the
stigmatisation and marginalisation of sex workers rather than providing a critical assessment
of the social structures and inequalities shaping the experiences of sex workers. By
documenting the diversity within the sex industry and critically analysing the connections
between sex work and factors like migration regimes, global inequalities and (gendered)
labour politics, anthropology can provide vital contributions not only to the scientific study
of this topic, but also to public discourses, policies and interventions related to sex work.
However, engaging in public debates and/or sex work activism can hold certain dangers for
researchers: Critical voices contradicting the full abolition of sex work are often countered
with defamation such as associations with a supposed „pimp lobby“ that can limit
opportunities for engagement or research and might keep researchers from engaging
publically at all. At the same time forms of engagement by scientists themselves have to be
critically reflected to avoid them becoming part of the exclusion of sex workers from these
discourses. Drawing on some examples from the European context I want to illustrate the
problems associated with critical public engagement in the area of sex work and how they
are embedded in various power structures to open up a discussion about how
anthropologists and especially young scholars could engage in these debates without
reproducing the very structures they want to criticise.
A collaborative ethnographic research studying the relationships between social work
practice and migrant women suffering domestic violence
Marina Della Rocca
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Summary:
The paper describes a collaborative ethnographic research that investigates the relationship
between social workers and abused migrant women to identify related structural and power
dynamics and to integrate the perspectives of women clients in order to improve social
work practice.
Abstract:
The paper is based on a PhD ethnographic research project that investigates the relationship
between social workers, social work practice and migrant women suffering domestic
violence. Following a personal work experience in a women’s shelter in the north of Italy,
the researcher identified a number of critical issues attributable not only to the
interpersonal violence experiences of the women clients, but also the structural violence
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associated with migration policy and approaches to social work practice. Following the
definition of these critical topics, the paper goes on to analyse the role of the researcher
and its coexistence with the role of social worker, and the personal engagement of the
researcher as an activist for women’s rights. The project commences with a review of the
researcher’s own work experience with abused migrant women, which provides an
opportunity to understand critically the ways in which work habits and their power
dynamics become embedded practice, and identifies relationships between the structure of
social work practice and the actions of the subjects involved. At the same time, the
researcher is called into question with respect to the political implication of her own work
practices. The paper goes on to suggest that the collaborative research approach as a
methodology has potential to foster the integration of migrant women perspectives into the
transformation of local social work practices. This research perspective is also linked with
the feminist approach, which underlines social power relationships in order to promote
women’s rights and empowerment.
Queering Knowledge: Academia in the hands of the Activist
Anita Datta
SOAS, University of London
Summary:
This paper considers the effects and implications when activists and others outside the
academy engage with academic literature. Understanding anthropological literature as a
necessary engagement with the world it posits ethical responsibility for anthropologists to
produce accessible representations.
Abstract:
The lively debate concerning academic engagement has typically focused on the figure of
the anthropologist, struggling to negotiate an ‘ethical’ or ‘activist’ relationship with his/her
informants. Such discussions rarely consider how those identifying as ‘activist’ might engage
with scholarship independently, as part of their own strategies and practices. This paper
draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2013 with an activist organisation working
for the rights of lesbian, bisexual women, and female-to-male transgender persons in
Kolkata, India. It is part of on- going research to investigate how those outside the academy
engage directly with academic material. It will set out an exploration of the motives activists
have for turning to academic literature, and of the new forms of knowledge and pedagogy
that are created through these engagements. Anthropologists have not always welcomed
the realisation that post-publication interpretations and uses of their work are quite beyond
their control, not least when picked up by informants or others outside the academy.
However this paper moves beyond intellectual claims of understanding or ‘misunderstanding’ and explores the implications for academia if academics recognise readers’
engagements with their work as potentially transformative or productive of knowledge,
17
understanding and even power. In doing so, I suggest that it is important, and even ethically
imperative, to take seriously alternative readings and mobilisations of academic texts as a
form of engagement. Looking forward, the paper calls for a more open and accessible form
of anthropological writing that responds to a world hungry for knowledge and power.
Session Two – A
2.30-4.00 pm
Law, Rights and Citizenship
Convener: Maria Salazar
African Personality: A tool for understanding the legal personality of the African individual
in international law making
Joycelin Chinwe Okubuiro
University of Liverpool
Summary:
The imposition of Western principles as universal has continued to raise tension between
Western and non-Western scholars. This paper aims to highlight such debate by exploring
diverse understanding of African personality as a counter-hegemonic tool for the purpose of
international law-making.
Abstract:
The concept of African personality has been perceived as Western effort to dominate
Africans. Despite anthropologists and ethnographers acceptance of Darwin’s evolution
theory that is based on one primordial root, a hierarchy was created which placed Africans
(and other non-Europeans) at the bottom. Such classification created an unequal
relationship in international activities. This was obvious during the colonial encounter
between Africans and the Europeans leading to the imposition of Western principles as
universal. However, Africans have challenged the above negative perception by Europeans
as being racially biased. It has led to the exploration of African personality by Africans
themselves. Notably, Edward Blyden refuted the negative comments made by the
Europeans concerning Africans. He asserted that ‘every race has a contribution to make
towards the welfare of mankind that no other race can make.’ Blyden’s and other African
authors aimed to rewrite the misinformation about Africans and their ability to make
positive contribution to the world. Such resistance to the earlier perception of African
personality provided a counter-hegemonic tool which is vital for the understanding of
human diversity. This paper aims to explore these scholarships on African personality to
demonstrate the capacity of the African individual in international law making. In particular,
it intends to use African scholarship to reveal a deeper understanding of theory and practice
of African Individual and their legal capacity to participate in international law making.
18
Settler Indigeneity and the Eradication of the Non-Native in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
James J. A. Blair
City University of New York
Summary:
Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork, this paper engages historical, political and affective
qualities of nature, race and colonialism in order to understand how settlers of the Falkland
Islands (In Spanish, Malvinas) are reinventing themselves as natives through practices of
environmental management.
Abstract:
Margaret Thatcher is deceased, but her legacy continues to thrive in the Falkland Islands (in
Spanish, Malvinas). Thirty-one years after Thatcher’s military trounced Argentina’s junta in a
violent conflict over the South Atlantic archipelago, its residents confirmed their desire to
stay British. In a March 2013 referendum on self-determination, 99.8% voted “Yes” to
remaining a British Overseas Territory, with just three naysayers among the 1,517 valid
votes. Most of the Falkland Islanders are white settlers, making their invocation of selfdetermination different from that of other former colonies with aboriginal claims. Unlike
comparable “settler colonies” predicated on the elimination of the native, there is no
historical evidence that an indigenous population inhabited the islands during European
colonization. To understand how the Falkland Islanders are reinventing themselves as
natives by claiming self-determination, this paper engages historical, political and affective
processes of naturalizing heritage and belonging. It draws on a mixed-method, multi-sited
program of research that incorporates observations, interviews and document analysis
conducted in the Falklands, Argentina and the UK. Towards a theory of “settler indigeneity,”
the paper captures a customized narrative of environmental stewardship that selectively
reinforces Western agroindustrial and technoscientific norms and values. Specifically, it
articulates modes of non-native invasion and eradication, as well as native resurgence and
restoration, which have become proxies for the establishment of a particular moral and
social ordering. It then examines sentiments of disgust and authority that: dehumanize
particular peoples; entangle the more-than-human; reshape the islands’ landscape; and
ultimately preserve the Islanders’ ecological dominion.
Session Two – B
2.30-4.00 pm
Making natures, making humans: Native worldviews on ecology and politics
Convener: José Luis Fajardo
The challenges of engagement
Rosalyn Bold
The University of Manchester
19
Summary:
Can engagement with indigenous ontologies challenge hierarchies of knowledge in
development? I consider the tendency of the ‘western’ eye to stereotype its non-capitalist
other through looking at climate change and the implementation of the Vivir Bien in
Apolobamba, Bolivia.
Abstract:
Can engagement with indigenous ontologies challenge knowledge hierarchies to bring about
alternative development? What happens when the people anthropologists work with
challenge the ideals we would have them exemplify? I will discuss climate change and the
Vivir Bien (VB) programme in Bolivia. The VB is an attempt to create an alternative axis of
‘development’ through codifying indigenous worldviews into legislation like the Law of
Mother Earth. Challenged to realise its ideals, the VB set up a project in Apolobamba, NE
Bolivia, in the highland villages where I was working. It aimed to help the villages adapt to
climate change through a tourism scheme that would be a non-hierarchical cultural
exchange between the ‘east’ (where indigenous culture is seen to spring from) and ‘west’.
Despite its thoughtful premises, the project swiftly came to reproduce existing cultural
prejudices and roles, spreading strict ideas about western hygiene, nutrition and technology
to the villages, whilst educating villagers into servile roles. Working on climate change in
these villages, I found that whilst their animistic worldview converge in surprising ways with
the cataclysmic predictions of environmental and climate science, which well merit a
meeting point of cultures, the non-human centred landscape the villagers live within did not
necessarily field the anti-capitalist indigenous superhero that the VB had sought. I consider
the tendency of the ‘western’ eye to reify and stereotype its 'other' whilst trying to engage
indigenous worldviews, at national and international level.
Writing as engagement: choosing whose voices to include
Sara Friend
University of St Andrews
Summary:
During the writing process I have come across an ethical dilemma: do I have the space to
coherently include all the voices I heard during my fieldwork in Orkney? Through this
question I wish to enter into a wider debate on ethical engagement in the field of
Anthropology.
Abstract:
Between October 2013 and October 2014, I lived and conducted fieldwork in the Orkney
Islands, an archipelago off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. The specific focus of my
20
research was the presence of renewables – i.e., the growth of the marine renewables
industry and number of wind turbines in the area –, along with the community’s reaction to
the development of this presence. After working with a number of renewables companies,
interviewing industry members and turbine installers, and spending time with the larger
community of residents, I began to pick up on a narrative, varied in its retellings, which told
of renewables’ historical and cultural coherence within Orkney. This narrative was not
omnipresent; I noticed absences both within and outside the industry. However, it is mainly
the presence of the narrative within the industry and the absences of the narrative outside
the industry that I will address in this paper. While I mean to discuss both the presence and
absences of this narrative in my thesis, I have come to an ethical dilemma. This dilemma
involves the comments of one, possibly two, informants, whom I came across late in my
fieldwork. These comments point to a particular experience, which I am not sure there is
room to fully explore in the scope of my thesis. The question(s) I want to address thus
become: how do we, as anthropologists, choose whose worldview to engage with, and how
far we engage in the worldviews we include? Also, how does my particular positioning as a
person affect the choices I make regarding whose perspectives I engage with? What are the
consequences? These questions are not new in the field of anthropology. However, I believe
they deserve continued attention, which is what I indent to do by exploring such questions
in this paper.
Land, living and global natural resource economy in the Northeast Madagascar
Jenni Mölkänen
The University of Helsinki
Summary:
This paper focuses on intimate engagements and technological and political choices in
environmental conservation and vanilla cultivation in Northeast Madagascar. The paper
elicits the contradiction between conserved and cultivated natures.
Abstract:
The paper focuses on the knowledge production and technological and political choices
made in environmental conservation and vanilla cultivation practices in rural Madagascar.
Madagascar is the “hot spot” for environmental conservation with 90 % of its flora and 80 %
of fauna being endemic. It is also world’s biggest vanilla producer, producing 70-80 % of
consumed vanilla. Vanilla cultivation is a work of care that from the Malagasy cultivators’
point of view and it enforces the intimate mutual relationship between people and a plant.
However, vanilla’s character as a consumed good enforces the image of its origins and place.
Here, the economic and social practices make it difficult to delimit biological nature outside
21
humans. At the same time in 2013, 10 % percent of the country’s land area was reserved for
conservation and excluded from agricultural use from the two thirds of Malagasy people
who get their livelihood from land. In ecotourism it is essential that exotic animals and
plants are experienced in the place fusing again human and unhuman. Focusing on practices
in vanilla cultivation and conservation I elicit a political contradiction between the cultivated
and modern conserved nature. This conflict is especially found in countries like Madagascar
where environmental conservation is a global interest. The aim is to focus on the relevance
of the intimacy in creating and experiencing Madagascar’s nature. Theoretically the paper
contributes to the discussions about agency, materials and politics about possible
sustainable futures.
Critically assessing notions of poverty in indigenous society
Boana Visser
University of Kent
Summary:
Based on ethnographic research conducted in Panama, this paper explores the complexity
of notions of poverty in an Amerindian society. It seeks to critique the application of a neoliberal notion of poverty to indigenous societies without considerations for indigenous
perspectives and values.
Abstract:
Do indigenous peoples consider themselves to be poor? This question is largely disregarded
in accounts on the state of the world’s indigenous peoples, in which they are simply
presented as the poorest populations worldwide without reference to their own
experiences or interpretations. These accounts, however, are based on a definition of
poverty grounded in principles of neo-liberal development and do not provide space for
alternative notions of poverty. In anthropological studies of Lowland South American
peoples the issue of indigenous poverty is often side-stepped as a main focus and studies on
Amerindian notions of poverty are virtually non-existent. This paper taps into emerging
debates on whether indigenous groups need saving from poverty, by critically assessing the
usefulness of the concept to describe living conditions among Amerindian societies. Based
on ethnographic research conducted in Panama, this paper explores the complexity of
notions of poverty in Amerindian society. Taking development theory as a starting point, it
critiques the application of Western notions of poverty to indigenous societies without
considerations for indigenous perspectives and values. If development is aimed toward
alleviating poverty, then organisations and governments need to consider indigenous
assessments of their own socio-economic conditions. What this paper calls for, then, is a
more emic view of poverty which an anthropological approach can help to provide. By
22
making poverty a greater focus of anthropological studies, and thereby examining different
notions of the concept, anthropology can provide fresh insights to the fields of economic
and community development.
Session Two – C
2.30-4.00 pm
Illness and its Discontents: Concepts and Narratives
Convener: Theodoros Kyriakides
A tale of good psychologist, insensible psychiatrist and terrible doctor. The perception of
polish medical system in the narrations of patients with phobias and neuroses
Karol Górski
University of Warsaw
Summary:
In this paper I will examine the personal narrations of people from Poland suffering from
phobia and/or neurosis. I focus on the perception of the contemporary Polish medical
system – paying attention to interlocutors' experiences with physicians, psychiatrists and
psychologists.
Abstract:
Phobias and neuroses are more and more common anxiety disorders in Poland. Somatic
symptoms (heartaches, dysponeas) often lead people to see the physicians, chronic anxiety
or panic attacks cause them to visit psychologists and psychiatrists. In this paper, drawing on
the in-depth interviews conducted between January and March 2015, I examine personal
narrations of Polish citizens with phobias and neuroses. I focus on the perception of the
contemporary medical system in Poland. This research is located within the field of medical
anthropology with the emphasis on the subjective experiences of suffering people
(Kleinman 1988; Frank 1995; Hyden 1997; Mattingly 2007; Corin 2010; Jackson 2010).
Research shows that physicians are seen as hostile (stigmatizing people with mentioned
disorders) and incompetent (not capable for going beyond the body dimension to localize
the patient's problems), psychiatrists are considered as mostly interested in prescribing the
drugs (swinging on them the whole healing process), whereas the psychologists (therapists)
are seen in the very positive light (offering comfort and understanding, providing language
to describe patients' problems). It results in undermining the trust into the physicians and
psychiatrists as a reliable sources of knowledge but it leads to elevate the prestige of
23
psychotherapists and psychotherapy itself (see: Jacyno 2007). Referring to Baer's idea of
“medical pluralism” (2004), the treatment of neuroses and phobias in Poland can be seen as
moving outside the control of physicians and psychiatrists into the surveillance of
psychologists.
Anthropology and sexual education: practices, critical perspectives and engagement
Nicoletta Landi
University of Bologna
Summary:
An anthropological action-research of an Italian public sexual education program for
teenagers reveals how sexualities are conceptualised and educated. It cues to discuss the
role of public anthropology engaging major ethical and political subjects like human rights
and sexual health promotion.
Abstract:
Aim of this intervention is to reflect on the chance, specifically for Italian anthropologists, to
get (or not) engaged in public interest topics working inside and outside the academia.
Starting from a specific case study – the participation to the development and to the trial of
a sexual education program for teenagers – I would like to think about anthropology’s
contribution in the debate on sexual education, health promotion and public policies
concerning human sexual rights. These issues are not just important anthropological topics,
but part of the public ethical and poliltical debate. Cooperation with Public Health
Institutions leads to develop and to articulate an engaged anthropological approach,
keeping a critical point of view in order to analyse and to reveal power relations in the
political social, educational and health public services. In the specific case of sexual
education, anthropology can suggest innovative questions and solutions. Ethical
engagement is a stimulating matter to deal with: self-positioning and values, which often
cross activism, can contribute to create a new scientific way to do anthropology and to be
anthropologists. Commending and defending sexual identities, practices and
representations plurality should be the goal of those Public Health Interventions that aim to
promote sexual and relational well-being. Anthropology has a fundamental and active role
dealing with professionals from many other branches of knowledge: renegotiating
methodologies and issues in order to empower anthropology’s public recognition and to
promote sexual education as human right.
24
The challenges and questions raised with ‘being-an-insider’ first, and then trying to be
anthropologist
Daksha Madhu Rajagopalan
University of Aberdeen
Summary:
A personal, reflexive piece on the challenges and questions raised with ‘being-an-insider’
first, and then trying to be an anthropologist, in regards to a holistic healing system called
Aura-Soma.
Abstract:
What does it mean to do ethnography with something you know intimately? If an
experience has passed by and you experienced it as a participant, is it possible to
turn back months or even years later and academically think through it with a ‘reflexive
ethnographic eye’? – Or, does engaged ethnography need to be more pre-planned an
encounter? This is a reflexive piece, which raises questions that I faced when thinking
through how to write anthropologically about Aura-Soma, a system of wellness, healing, and
colour-therapy, of which I am also a practitioner. Do my loyalties lie with being a
practitioner or an anthropologist, and what are the possibilities of being both,
simultaneously? Thinking through how my training, practice, and personal experience with
this holistic-healing system can ‘speak back’ to more academic, anthropological approaches,
I also revisit the discussion on the native anthropologist. How can I ask my reader to take my
experiences in Aura-Soma on equally credible footing as other anthropological work on
embodiment and health? This paper also probes at the extent to which academic credibility
comes with distance. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Martin Holbraad have asked in various
places how we can take others’ realities seriously; I would add the question of how to take
my own reality seriously, when it is a reality far-removed from the me-as-anthropologist self:
the tension of engagement and scholarship, but within the individual experience of
ethnographic thinking. There is also a dimension of ethics involved; is it even ethical to go
back and reflect on what I learned through interactions with others when they didn’t know
(and I didn’t know) I was an anthropologist?
Conceptual/ ising breakdowns
Peter Fusezi
Lancaster University
Summary: A paper dealing with assistive technologies developed in a university department.
Through ethnographic fieldwork I show how technologies operate outside market and mass
production logics.
25
Abstract
My presentation is an attempt to explore some of the key troubles that I have so far
encountered with the notion and definitional problems of assistive technology. I draw on
both particular stories and the more general reflection on the overall course of my fieldwork,
that was conducted in a university department, specialised in developing assistive
technologies. To start with a definition, one can see assistive devices a special class of
technologies, which, as their main feature, enable their users to do things. While this
improvised definition sounds vague and problematic, I am convinced that the problems are
not only definitional. First of all, the term assistive technology is a tautology, insofar as all
technologies are assistive in their effects. I propose that to resolve some of these
definitional problems, one has to appreciate that technology and dis/ability, the key
concepts of the above definition can appear unproblematic only as the result of extensive
socio-technical ordering. In what follows, fieldwork material is mobilised to demonstrate
how some of the practices, that normalise commodities, technologies and dis/abled bodies,
can become discernible. Assistive technologies, and the way they are connected to their
users, can offer an interesting comparison, or even a key, to better understand mainstream
technologies. Unlike the latter, assistive technologies usually serve small groups of users,
with individuals, whose needs cannot be typified and have often limited abilities to adapt
their behaviour as users. Further, assistive technologies are provided and evaluated by the
state or charities through the healthcare system. Hence, these technologies represent
trajectories of development and distribution, that run outside the standard territories of
both mass production and market exchange. This can be also demonstrated by tracing how
the metalanguage of frameworks, names and definitions, that were developed to describe
mass production and market exchange, breaks down when used to understand assistive
technologies
Session Three – A
4.30-6.00 pm
Critical Collaborations
Convener: Peter Fusezi
Engaged anthropologist, disengaged research: activist anthropologist amongst an antiimmigration movement
Annastiina Kallius
University of Amsterdam
26
Summary:
While engagement is often seen as the moral duty of anthropologists, it is also problematic.
Drawing on a case study from Hungary, I suggest that given the increasing salience of
extreme right, localized social movements in Southern and Eastern Europe, there is a need
for disengaged anthropological study
Abstract:
Despite the rise of extreme right movements that border vigilantism as a result of popular
disillusionment with the central state and austerity measures, anthropological accounts of
activism still mostly look at left-wing movements, leading to a problematic relationship with
engagement. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-immigration activists
in a small village in Western Hungary as well as the researcher’s personal history of activism
and engagement in the Hungarian No Border movement. What are the ethical
consequences of the simultaneous embeddedness in two seemingly antagonistic social
settings? How may an otherwise engaged anthropologist remain disengaged during
fieldwork, and what kind of responsibility does that carry towards one’s informants? I seek
to tentatively answer these questions by drawing attention to the similarities and
differences of the two social movements. The values of the anti-immigration protest and the
No Border movement, although seemingly contradictory, converge on multiple accounts:
their opposition to the centralized governance of the state, perceived dominance of the
European Union, and the resulting opposition to EU asylum policy. Economic policies set
aside, however, considerable friction remains regarding the desired nature of the state’s
border as well as policies relating to immigrants and refugees. The paper outlines the ethical
and practical reasons why, for an otherwise engaged anthropologist conducting research in
an antagonistic setting, disengagement becomes a pre-requisite for informed research. This
problematization engagement is important, given the increasing salience of extreme right,
localized social movements in Southern and Eastern Europe, and the need for disengaged
anthropologists studying them.
The Dynamics of Interactions between Archaeologists and Local Communities in Sudan
Rebecca Bradshaw
SOAS, University of London
Abstract:
This paper presents a selection of results from three seasons of ethnographic research that
sought to investigate the political economy of archaeological heritage sites in Sudan. The
results discussed here emerged from observations and conversations in which I asked, ‘In
what ways do archaeologists interact with the communities in which they live? Despite
repeated declarations of their ‘apolitical’ status, field archaeologists adopt multiple, highly
political and ‘un-archaeological’ roles when interacting with members of Sudanese
27
communities. They operate as ‘employers’, ‘humanitarians’ and ‘guests’, and often struggle
to reconcile one personality with another. Members of the community, too, find themselves
having to negotiate being at once ‘employees’, ‘beneficiaries’ and ‘hosts’; conversions that
are problematic as power dynamics shift significantly with each role. To take one salient
example, the practice of employing Sudanese (semi)nomadic men to work as archaeological
labourers affects the operation of informal economic loan systems such
as sandook and ishtrakiyya, which are typically controlled by the sedentary populations
living next to the Nile. New networks of economic inter-dependence (and new fiscal
calendars) are thus created and established power structures become distorted as
previously marginalized people achieve new forms of influence over the village economy.
This paper argues that the intersection of the roles described above --and more importantly
the specific impact these roles have-- fundamentally politicize the interaction between
archaeologists and members of Sudanese communities. Therefore, it is the author’s
conviction that the principles that underpin theoretical shifts in the object of excavation
should also apply to archaeological practices in the context of excavation.
Veiling the media: the case study in ethnographic journalism
Pina Sadar
Durham University
Summary:
The paper delves into the concept of ethnographic journalism through the prism of a PhD
study on Islamic veiling in the UK and media pieces that have emerged from it. Focusing on
methodology, ethics and impact of ethnographic journalism, the paper aims to explore
collaborative potentials between anthropology, media and the public.
Abstract:
The media have been increasingly attracting anthropological interest and attention, and
have turned into a nascent fieldsite for academic research. Whilst anthropological
engagement with the media is commonly a strictly analytical one, this paper focuses on
their collaborative potential. The largely overlooked concept of ‘ethnographic journalism’
(e.g. Aliefendioğlu, 2011; Hermann, 2014) builds upon the anthropological understanding of
complex relationships between people and the media. It moreover brings forth the
profound knowledge of and insights into the topics that are commonly subjected to
misrepresentations and over-simplified media discourses. As such, ethnographic journalism
represents a welcome alternative model for resisting and reforming conventional
journalistic epistemology based on neutrality and objectivity. It proposes a distinct mode of
28
narration, accentuates emic perspectives and offers a holistic approach towards framing the
topics. This ethnographic journalistic practice is explored through the prism of a specific
case study – my PhD project on Islamic veiling in the UK and media pieces that have
emerged from it. Following the trajectory of my own research, the paper explores the need
for ethnographic journalism, sketches methodological approaches and reflects on
theoretical and practical ethical dilemmas. It moreover focuses on the impact of
ethnographic journalism for the research participants, communities, anthropology and the
media.
Towards an Anthropology of Testimony: working against silence of Egyptian CounterNarratives
Sabine Bauer
The Austrian Academy of Sciences
Summary:
Four years after the revolution Cairo is shaped by military controlled narratives, which are
confronted by social media, the re-appropriation of public space or everyday practices of
resistance of the revolutionary youth. As these processes are silenced by the state, it is the
duty of anthropologists to bear witness and work against the process of silencing.
Abstract:
The revolution in 2011 in Egypt demanded the liberation of a corrupt system based on
military rule and its replacement by “bread, freedom and social justice.” This liberation from
stagnation and oppression was not realized during the past four years. However, the
activists on the square experienced the regaining of their voices after years of being silenced.
The many civil movements, artists and journalists, as well as “everyday resistance” proof
new spaces for cultural self-expressions. Despite the tries of their crackdown by the “new”
military rule through either direct force or the embedding into threat-to- national-securityframes and moral panic, these forms of civil activism are still ongoing and are now
connected to international audiences through social media, diaspora networks or new
alliances after the revolution, allowing for new forms of agency and transnational solidarity
and giving space for alternative encounters to what is happening in Egypt. As the most
powerful actor within the narratives about the legacy of the revolution and the
contemporary history of the country, the Egyptian Army became a gate keeper to choose
how the revolution should be remembered and which voices should be heard or neglected.
This process happens simultaneously with a process of violently silencing counter voices.
However, there is new agency that new social media provides in order to physically store
counter memories. I argue that in research contexts, where memories and narratives of
marginalized groups are threatened to be forgotten or silenced, anthropology becomes
more than just simple recording of behaviour patterns and meanings. Anthropology of
29
testimony becomes a moral duty in order to give voices to the once overheard by global
politics and media representation. By avoiding joining the canon of silencing and working
against forgetting, anthropologist can take an active role in knowledge production. This is
where our moral duty starts and where our presence becomes meaningful.
Session Three – B
4.30-6.00 pm
Methodologies and Explorations of Youth
Convener: Louise Laverty
A Space “In-Between”: Liminality and Landscape on the Thailand-Burma Border
Courney Wittekind
University of Oxford
Summary:
This paper explores the use of visual auto-ethnography as a means of mediating the
processes through which displaced children negotiate their social liminality, within the
liminal space of the borderland.
Abstract:
This article explores the experiences of migrating youth along the Thailand-Burma
(Myanmar) border through the lens of “in-between-ness,” seeking to understand how their
social liminality relates to the liminal spaces in which they move. I analyse young people’s
engagement with physical space and the built environment to establish how the experience
of existing between social categories produces—and is produced by— “liminal landscapes”
(Andrews and Roberts 2012), such as borderlands and state peripheries. I show how youth
find their way in a world of liminality, producing ambiguity between social and spatial
binaries, and embracing the sense of risk and power tied to the prospect of existing “betwixt
and between” (Turner 1967). In seeking to reconcile the materiality of space with the
immaterial processes by which it gains meaning for migrating youth, this research places a
particular emphasis on methodological questions associated with collaborative ethnography
and the utility of “auto-ethnography” in the form of photography. In this paper, I argue that
visual methods, as a particular form of collaborative research, invite an opportunity to more
fully integrate geographical and socio-cultural approaches to liminality, highlighting not just
the social nor the spatial elements of life “in- between,” but allowing both modes of analysis
to coalesce.
30
Potentialities and politics of youth-centered methodologies: Youth and tourism in the
Caribbean coast of Costa Rica
Carolina Meneses Zamora
Susan Frohlick
University of Manitoba
Summary:
In the context of global tourism in Costa Rica, I explore the potentialities and politics of
youth- centered methodologies, as part of my research engagement in critical discussions
about the cultural agency of youth, and the disruption of stereotypes about Afro- Caribbean
young people.
Abstract:
As both a researcher and community member of a Caribbean town in Costa Rica, my
(Meneses Zamora) academic interests have emerged within the context of economic
exchanges and cultural encounters that take place there. In this region inhabited in the
present by people of diverse nationalities, global tourism holds a particular promise for
youth. This is especially so for the local Afro-Caribbean and other ethnic minority youth who
historically, in comparison with youth from dominant Costa Rican society, have had limited
access to employment and educational opportunities. Aiming to understand the impacts of
tourism in the lives and subjectivities of this population, I explore the potential, and also the
ethical concerns, in using a youth-centered methodology. I am part of a project led by a
Canadian anthropologist (Frohlick), and together as a Canadian-Costa Rican team we aspire
to create and facilitate spaces and strategies for local young people to actively participate in
this reflection of their lives. With this aim, we are willing to explore the use of visuals
methods for meaningfully engaged local youth in our research process. In my paper I relate
our concerns to wider debates in the anthropology of youth, more specifically, a recognition
of non-adult centric discourses and also questions of youth agency. One of the main
questions we grapple with is whether or how youth-centered methodologies hold the
promise to disrupt and reformulate stereotypes about poor, racialized young people.
City Play in Cairo
Paloma Yáñez
University of Manchester
Summary:
This paper focuses on Mini-Medina, a simulated real-size city scenario for children to learn
about the mechanisms of a city, imagining their ideal city and their role in society.
31
Abstract:
Play, although very present culturally in Cairo, is seen as a form of entertainment rather
than an endogenous human characteristic. As such any debate of play is excluded from
educational policies and consequently from the schooling system. This came to my attention
in 2012 when I contributed to the creation of the first play-based educational scenario in
Cairo. This project was inspired by the mini city educational model, present in over 70
countries of the world, and took the name of Mini-Medina ('mini-city' in Arabic). The project
aims to create a simulated real-size city scenario for children to learn about the mechanisms
of a city, imagining their ideal city and their role in society. During childhood every child
goes through a process of discovery in which they make sense of themselves and the world
around using their experience and imagination. This film is a journey shown in two screens
contrasting the different roles children can take in the city and later how those roles
transform as they grow up. Exploring the different interpretations and desires towards
everyday life that children have in the city, revealing how in play the child learns to adapt to
culture while acquiring tools to recreate and reinvent society. The film, shot in Cairo, seeks
to portray the different ways children have of playing the city and play in the city,
experimenting with the thin line that distinguishes play from reality.
Engaging with Dolls and with Play in Rural Southwest Angola
Ines Ponte
University of Manchester
Summary:
Grounded in an eight-month fieldwork at an agro-pastoralist highland village in Southwest
Angola, I unsettle ideas of defining doll-related activities without an active engagement with
social uses of dolls. I locate children’s doll-related activities in the wider dynamics of play
and labour of a setting driven by a domestic mode of production.
Abstract:
Ritual has been up to now a central lens through which ethnographers have engaged with
the social and material lives of different kinds of handcrafted dolls in rural Southwest Angola.
However, this focus on ritual has defined a particular politics of (detached) engagement
with children and their doll-related activities. Grounded in an eight-month fieldwork at an
agro-pastoralist highland village (in 2012), I explore active engagements with social uses of
and discourses about dolls in this rural context, through analysing how age appears as a key
factor regarding play. I argue that, in settings driven by a domestic mode of production, it is
important to locate children’s doll-related activities in the wider dynamics of play and
labour.
32
Friday 5th June
Session Four – A
9.30-11.00 am
Embodied Knowledge
Convener: Hester Clarke
Unexpected emergence of naturally occurring data in the context of Open Gardens in
Scotland
Sho Shimoyamada
University of Edinburgh
Summary:
This research casts doubt about the existence of ‘naturally occurring data’, a widely used
mantra in ethnographic studies.
Abstract:
The term ‘naturally occurring data’ and other interchangeable terms have been a mantra in
ethnographic studies. Notwithstanding the common usage of such terms, there has been no
consensus on what ‘naturally occurring data’ really means. In addition, whilst ‘naturally
occurring data’ implies no intervention of researchers, the interviewer’s engagement in the
interviewee’s meaning construction has been presupposed and celebrated in ethnographic
studies to some extent. Having been inspired by the absence of any consensual definition of,
and the ethnographer’s paradoxical attitudes towards, ‘naturally occurring data’, this
research raises doubt about whether such data actually exists. As a cultural scene through
which this scepticism is examined, Open Gardens in Scotland were investigated. The
research conducted participant observations in 31 different gardens and 47 semi-structured
interviews with those who opened their gardens to the public, those who assisted them
with opening, volunteer organisers and workers of an organisation that runs Open Gardens.
Contrary to my scepticism, there was one case that I could not interpret as anything but
naturally occurring data. Specifically, the data were generated by one of the respondents
who was initially not included in the research sample. In keeping with the narrative of this
case, the concept of unexpectedness is suggested as an indicator of naturally occurring data.
The implication for further research is that ethnographers need to flexibly modify research
procedures in accordance with the unexpected emergence of naturally occurring data,
instead of arranging methods that are expected to be suitable for the collection of naturally
occurring data.
33
Titled People and Subtitled People
Cholé Faux
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Summary:
This paper and visual ethnography explore the stakes of conducting fieldwork in the context
of political asylum as a not-quite-native anthropologist.
Abstract:
For the native dweller “the landscape tells—or rather is—a story. It enfolds the lives and
times of predecessors who, over the generations, have moved around it and played their
part in its formation” (Ingold 1993: 152) Ingold says that this dwelling perspective should
guide anthropological research, “bringing to bear the knowledge born of immediate
experience, by privileging the understandings that people derive from their lived, everyday
involvement in the world' (Ibid)The anthropologist can therefore acquire knowledge
through participating-- engaging in the “labored viscerality of being in whatever's happening”
(Stewart 2011: 451). But what if the political landscape forecloses the possibility of one's
being entirely at home by imposing limits on those who dwell within it? Taking
engagement—political, intellectual, emotional, visual—as a starting point, I examine the
stakes of knowledge production, storytelling, and participation[-observation] in the context
of political asylum. How shared is the social experience that forms the basis of such research?
Drawing from my experience as an anthropologist, filmmaker, and activist of Sierra Leonean
origin, conducting research among Sierra Leonean asylum seekers in Normandy, I pay
special attention to the oscillation between marginality and inclusion central to both the
construction of citizenship and the experience of fieldwork. In so doing I not only
interrogate the role of empathy in social justice, but also in the production of ethnography
where « resonance of understanding ... between the ethnographer and the people under
study, which may perhaps be deeply felt by the former, but not necessarily the latter”
(Paerregaard 2002: 31).
Performing Relationship, Building Community: Chinese dance and cultural infusion in
Post-conflict Belfast
Wanting Wu
Queen’s University Belfast
Summary:
This work explores how the Chinese community in Belfast uses dance practice to assert
identity and demand cultural inclusion in the post-conflict city, and how these practices also
serve cultural inclusion more widely by providing shared space among hostile Catholic and
Protestant ethnic groups.
34
Abstract:
In post-conflict Belfast, cultural expressions are often perceived through the dichotomous
lens of the ‘Catholic’ versus ‘Protestant’ opposition. Since the Belfast Agreement of 1998,
‘culture’ has become a site of peace-building efforts. The participation of ‘other’ ethnic
groups, in cultural activity, such as the Chinese community, which has been established in
Belfast since the 1950s, has facilitated movement across the previously rigid boundaries
between Protestants and Catholics. Based on participant observation, and drawing on
theoretical perspectives of ‘Communities of Practice’ and ‘Cultural Inclusion’, this paper
follows Chinese dancers, through rehearsals and performance for the Spring Festival
celebrations for the Chinese New Year, which take place in an Indian dance studio, and in
which dancers of a number of ethnic origins learn to perform Chinese dance. The paper will
go on to examine the ways that the Chinese New Year celebrations in Belfast have become
more than an ethnic Chinese event, including not only Chinese dance, but also dances from
other ethnic groups such as Indians and Greeks. Moreover, Chinese dancers respond to a
demand from local Protestant and Catholic communities and schools for Chinese dance
performances during the Spring Festival Period.
Session Four – B
9.30-11.00 am
Mismanagement, suspended ambiguities and hope
Convener: Ximin Zhou
Are Gurdwara(s) in Manchester and in other British cities being mismanaged, or are they
experiencing cultural changes?
Daljit Singh
University of Manchester
Abstract:
My ethnography is about how Manchester and other UK Gurdwaras, or Sikh Temples
promote and manage their religious and cultural activities. Sikhs originated from the Punjab
(North India) and adhere to the teaching of Sikhism. A world religion which is 500 years old
and originated, developed from the conflict between Hindus and Moslems in the
15th century). Sikhs adhere to one God and unity of mankind, promoting tolerance,
emancipation and equality. Sikh ethos is communicated via the gurdwara through prayer
and voluntary service without recompense, which is called Sewa. According to some British
Sikhs the gurdwara is being mismanaged and bringing the faith and teachings into disrepute.
35
In today’s paper I will attempt to shed light on Gurdwara membership leadership disputes
and management which critics argue is in hands of a minority, which override the legitimate
rights and views of the majority. Critics argue that the minority use nepotism, intimidating
tactics, misinformation and harassment to sustain control. The right of the female to play an
active political role in gurdwara is undermined by the majority of the males. Sectarian
politics is fast becoming the norm and small but growing minority of Sikhs are abandoning
their Sikh teachings for other religions and avenues. I examine these accusations by
observing the religious, cultural, social and political activities and events in the Gurdwara.
My investigation starts at the Moss Side gurdwara Manchester, which is one of the first Sikh
Gurdwaras in the UK.I will attempt to provide participants at this conference with an
enhanced understanding of gurdwara management. The question I pose: Are Gurdwara(s) in
Manchester and in other British cities being mismanaged, or are they experiencing cultural
changes?
Critical approach to the governmental politics of including refugees to society
Aleksandra Reczuch
University of Warsaw
Summary:
The aim of this paper is to show how national state politic and the EU regulations influence
the process of entering the new society. My research examines the difficulties which occur
to the migrants and shows how the space and location of refugee camps in Poland influence
the social inclusion idea.
Abstract:
My research is based on long-term voluntary work with the refugees. I have spent 4 years in
Stowarzyszenie Interwencji Prawnej as an environmental translator, where I have had the
opportunity to observe the life of refugees in various camps in Poland. The great majority of
them is situated in small villages, quite far away from the bigger cities. The space round the
refugee camps mainly in all cases is very similar. They were projected as a temporary place
to stay, with interior very similar to places like hospitals. How does the space influence the
willingness to cooperate and integrate among the migrants? And why the space is designed
with strong accent on non-personal, temporary interior? I would like to point out how the
regulations of Bureau for Foreigners determine the difficulties for social inclusion, even
among those migrants who are very keen on building new life in Poland. I would like also
compare the case of two refugee camps in Biała Podlaska, where on a small territory are
situated two camps – detention one and open one, which is devoted to newly comers. This
comparison would accent the paradox of open space but exclusive regulations and activities
devoted to newly comers and quite good social conditions for people closed in detention
camp. Social work in various refugee camps and talks with refugees and social workers
36
during my fieldwork showed me how governmental point of view vary from the refugees
needs.
Out of Order: metaphors of control and social resistance in Exarchia, Athens
Anna Giulia Della Puppa
University of Venice
Summary:
Analysing rhetorics used by pro-memorandum Greek government during crisis and selfdeclared “objective criteria” to classify safety cities, I recount the political and moral
construction of Exarchia neighborhood in Athens, materializing the urban antithesis of autoorganized/disciplinary space.
Abstract:
The ongoing economic crisis is not just a financial juncture that could be solved by a sum of
economic measures, in everyday reality it takes the shape of the city. Through its usage
people experience crisis as a tangible fact. Athens, the capital, the “jungle”, well represents
this social change, but the city, as a cloth we wear, does not fray everywhere the same.
Urban space is, indeed, a total space where the different conceptions of what living means
take place and clash. In Athens there is a peculiar microcosm nestled in its very center:
Exarchia neighborhood. Known as “the anarchist neighborhood”, it is a much more complex
and historical terrain for urban practices and social diversity that are continually negotiated.
A very urban exception, a tear in urban fabric at its core. The aim of my ten months
ethnographic fieldwork was to understand how crisis affects this peculiar piece of urban
space. Exarchia, in fact, spatially materializes the conflict of antithetical perception of urban
space: one effervescent and auto-organized from the bottom, the other commercial and
“normalized”. To comprehend this dynamic I focused on both rhetorics and metaphors used
during the last period of pro-memorandum government in Greece, namely the debt as
economic but even moral concept and the medical discourse on the “ill city”, and “objective
criteria” to talk about what “safe city” means according to the hegemonic discourse, to
show how either of them impacts on the moral (and so political) construction of space.
Of Bodies and Documents: A case-study of humanitarian engagement and its ensuing
mimicry
Ana Chiritoiu
Central European University
Summary:
It is often asked what anthropology contributes to the “public good”. The present paper
builds on an ethnographic case-study in order to unsettle this normative trajectory and
37
show that, as engagement frames social processes in its own terms, anthropological inquiry
is necessary to unpack this framing.
Abstract:
The relation between anthropology and engagement is often formulated in terms of what
the former can contribute to the latter and, generally, to the “public good”. The present
paper seeks to unsettle this normative trajectory by tackling what kind of anthropological
knowledge engagement provides us with. My tentative answer builds on two sets of
fieldwork research that I did in one locality which had been subject to a humanitarian
intervention seeking to resolve a postsocialist conflict with ethnic overtones. The first time I
visited the place it was in my capacity of NGO-based researcher appointed to evaluate the
results of the said intervention; the second time, I visited it as a research student, looking to
understand not only why the intervention failed, but rather what it did while failing –
essentially, how the intervention resulted in its own mimicry on behalf of its subjects. I
argue that it was only due to my initial engaged capacity that later I could understand,
rather than take for granted, how the subjects of the intervention reflect (on) the
administrative language in which their experiences have been translated by civic
entrepreneurs. In this paper, I depart from this case-study to discuss how, inasmuch as
engagement frames social processes in its own terms, anthropological knowledge is called in
to unpack the practical outcomes and the pitfalls generated by such framing.
Session Five – A
11.30 am – 1.00 pm
Moral Economies
Convener: Rachel Smith
Volunteering Mothers: the Moral Economy of a Soup Kitchen in Northern Greece
Phaedra Douzina Bakalaki
University of Manchester
Summary:
In this paper, women’s voluntary labour put in the operation of a Soup Kitchen in Xanthi,
Northern Greece is argued to form an activity mediated by religiosity and blurring the
boundaries between the public and domestic spheres.
Abstract:
Schematic distinctions between paid and unpaid labour associate the former with the public
domain and notions of objectivity, while they view the latter as being diffuse and forming a
matter of the private/domestic sphere. European austerity’s implications, evident in the
38
increasing unavailability of paid work and the institutionalisation of voluntarism, could be
seen as unfortunate occasions for reconsidering the aforementioned bipolarities. This paper
examines unpaid labour through ethnographic data gathered from the soup kitchen of
Xanthi, Northern Greece. Operating under the authority of the Greek Orthodox church,
offering 150 meals to the poor daily, and run by unemployed and pensioner volunteering
women, the soup kitchen of Xanthi facilitates an exploration of unpaid and voluntary labour
with reference to gender, class and religiosity. Specifically, the paper argues that the soup
kitchen can be understood both as a collective (and public) household and as an opportunity
for (re)entering a (private) labour market. Similarly, the labour put in the soup kitchen can
be seen both as another example of (gendered) exploitation, and an opportunity for the
performance of solidarity and the acquisition of (philanthropic) power. Finally, while
voluntarism forms an epitome of unpaid labour, religiosity often becomes a vehicle through
which voluntary work is organised and perceived to have a meaningful exchange. In light of
Xanthi’s soup kitchen, unpaid labour emerges as austerity’s symptom and remedy at once, it
speaks of both public and domestic matters, and it becomes facilitated through expressions
of religiosity.
Making the State Wait: Risks and Strategies of Small Entrepreneurs in the Tourism Market
in Taj Ganj, Agra
Riddhi Bhandari
American University
Summary:
I examine the interactions engendered between state personnel and tour guides through
the practice of issuing guiding licenses. I argue that tour guides challenge the state's
regulatory authority by employing the existing bureaucratic framework to delay the
implementation of unfavorable regulations.
Abstract:
In this paper, I focus on one particular instance of state intervention: the practice of issuing
licenses to tour guides, and the interactions that this engenders between state personnel
and local tour guides. Here, I ask: how do entrepreneurs respond to state policies that seek
to regulate and monitor their work? Interactions between the state and its subjects have
been characterized as centered on the idea of "waiting" for the state as well as the
incomprehensibility or illegibility of the state, especially as ensconced in bureaucratic
processes (Auyero 2012; Das and Poole ed. 2004; Hull 2012). Similarly, bureaucratic
paperwork is infamous for being irrational, slow and cumbersome, famously portrayed as
the "iron cage of bureaucracy" (Weber 1930). Scholars have argued that the state displays
its sovereign power over its subjects through these characteristic features. I present an
ethnography of the state to argue that people subject to the state's regulatory authority are
39
able to challenge the state's regulatory authority by strategically employing these very
features of delay and waiting. Furthermore, I argue that bureaucratic paperwork is not
simply deemed as an incomprehensible or illegible red tape, but rather, people see it as a
useful tool to document and highlight the actions of personnel who harass them. This paper
is based on ethnographic research conducted in October 2012-August 2013 for my doctoral
research in the tourism market around the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. I focus on tour guides,
local tourism officials and security personnel.
Positionality in a Moral Economy: Engagement, Shame and Solidarity on an Autonomous
Farm
Carmen Leidereiter
University of Amsterdam
Summary:
A core question in engaged anthropology concerns its ability to make meaningful
contributions. This case study of an autonomous farm elaborates the participatory, actionbased field method as an ethically sound way of doing ethnography that can be insightful to
both, informants and researcher(s).
Abstract:
Casa do Burro is a group of farming families in the South-western Algarve, Portugal, whose
stated objective is autonomy as self-sufficiency. Wishing to interrogate this objective, I
inhabited this community as a resident volunteer-researcher for several months, doing
participatory, action-based fieldwork. I interrogate the group’s will to autonomy for its
translation into practices and discuss the contingent nature of resulting provisioning
regimes. Particularly, I focus on the gap between what is attempted and what is achieved, as
the enmeshment of monetary and non-monetary provisioning regimes and the resultant
cleavages, asking why these conflicts do not cause friction. Conceptualizing solidarity as the
entanglement of care, interest, dependency and reciprocity extrapolates the moral certainty
that residents have attained as producing self-legitimizing practices. These work to lace
together apparently contradictory practices in the everyday, while maintaining the
appearance of autonomously functioning self- sufficiency. Despite these contradictions and
the factual absence of autonomy, everyday practice and discourses of solidarity enable
continuous, yet conflict-laden work towards a hoped-for future, even in the face of lessthan-ideal practices. It was through my positionality as an actively engaged resident and
researcher that I was able to discover these self-legitimizing practices and participate in
conceptualizing ways by which the resultant conflicts might be mediated. This paper thus
shows that there can be space for ethically sound ethnographic insight in spaces of social
activism, not, as Maecklenbergh (2009) warns us, by deconstructing to the point of
meaninglessness, but by taking seriously the life projects of informants and recasting
40
problems within them to make different practices possible.
Moral Reasoning and the Grey Zone: Exchanging Favours in the Land of Mafia
Francesco Montagnani
University of Manchester
Summary:
I intend to investigate how a polarized vision of society, following from the construction of
morally charged dichotomies, inform the moral reasoning people undertake when they have
to determine if non-monetary exchange is acceptable. Doing this I aim to depict an inbetween grey zone of subjects that are neither good nor evil, but navigate the categories in
dynamic ways.
Abstract:
In the article I propose an ethnographic enquiry of networks of solidarity and non-monetary
exchange in the city of Palermo, south of Italy, with a particular focus on the process of
moral reasoning these activities generate in individuals (Sykes 2008). Three different
strategic forces (de Certeau 1984) shape this social, political, economic and cultural
environment: the mafia, the state, and the combination of NGOs known collectively as the
anti-mafia movement. The terroristic activity the mafia conducted between 1982 and 1992
fostered a strong widespread condemnation of the criminal phenomenon. The media
production on the matter contributed to create the stigma of the mafioso and of his peculiar
mind-set: beside criminal activities (extortion, corruption, drug trafficking), media labelled
specific concepts like honour, friendship, and familism as constituting the way in which a
mafioso acts in and upon society. On the other hand, NGOs created a well-defined
counterpart, the anti-mafia, with the specific aim to promote the moral awakening of civil
society and fight the mafia on the cultural and social level. Anti-mafia provides individuals
with a concept of legality that is not simply obedience to the law, but a total rejection of
certain cultural codes, in an attempt to fence off the mafioso mind-set and reduce its
contagious potential. Mafia and anti-mafia create a dichotomy good/evil used by media, the
state, and scholars to describe the Sicilian society. Hence, my question is: what kind of
influence does this dichotomous representation exercise on the moral judgement of people
when it comes to economic practices like the exchange of favours?
41
Session Five – B
11.30 am – 1.00 pm
Negotiating with the State: Political agency and engagement
Convener: Lana Askari
On Deference and Benevolence: the Politics of Parking in Beirut
Samar Kanafani
University of Manchester
Summary:
In the motorized urban thicket that is Beirut, Lebanon, parking is scarce and hence political.
When a civic society project tries to replace parking with accessible sidewalks, dissent
pervades multiple sites of power brokerage, making parking an object of formal and
informal political negotiability.
Abstract:
Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, is reputedly one of the most motorized and pedestrian unfriendly
cities in the world. Under-serviced public transport, traffic congestion, dense build-up, and
sprawling security zones have made on-street public parking a scarce and fiercely contested
commodity. In busy mixed-use neighborhoods such as Ras Beirut, residents, employees,
business owners, students, patients and clients try to control and compete over cheap
public spots, or else resort to expensive private parking lots. This article explores the various
power regimes and modes of encounter that govern the act of on-street parking in order to
contemplate the relationship between the production and consumption of urban space in
Beirut. First, I propose that the encounter between parkers and informal power brokers
over public parking space is governed by reverence and benevolence. Then, I look at what
role parking plays in a civic society institutions’ urban intervention, which proposes to
render one street more pedestrian friendly. Specifically, I explore the ways that the project's
proposal to eliminate a row of public parking spots is met with disapproval on the street and
contention among the city’s conflicted state authorities. Finally, I recall Michel de Certeau’s
distinction between tactic and strategy, or that between practices of ‘making do’ and
consuming the city versus those that produce and discipline the city. In so doing, I suggest
that parking, presumed a tactical encounter, is modeled at multiple scales of power
brokerage, and is strategically maintained as one among several objects of political
negotiability, inside and outside Lebanese state institutions.
Citizenship struggles of a stateless community: Pakistani-Hindu migrants at the western
borders of Rajasthan, India
Srishtee R. Sethi
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
42
Summary:
The study of borderlands as transitional zones is a significant starting point for this research
with the migrant community of Pakistani-Hindus forming a central part of it. It develops an
understanding through exploring the ‘everyday lived reality’ of this migrant community. An
attempt will be made to analyse the larger questions of identity formation at borders,
citizenship, shared culture along with the refugee policy in India and Southasia at large.
Abstract:
Terms such as borders, borderlands, frontiers and boundaries are all used alternatively to
describe the line that separates one country, state, province, etc., from another. They are
also considered as ‘transitional zones’ with specific territorial and spatial facets. More often
than not they are lines of contestation between nation-states. The India and Pakistan border
falls in the same category along with being highly militarised and securitised. Within the
historical context the present research looks at the identity and citizenship struggles of PakHindu migrants. The present ethnographic (social anthropology) enquiry into the
borderlands of the state of Rajasthan is an attempt to understand the flow of people that
takes place across the borders. This flow of people or migration is primarily being studied
through the three phases of migration namely the post 1965 Indo-Pak war, the post 1971
Indo-Pak war and the post 1992 phase after the Babri Masjid demolition that occurred.
These events had a significant impact at the societal level both in India as well as Pakistan
and hence the flow of people during these phases has been most pronounced from Pakistan
into India for permanent settlement. Within the current research study an attempt to
explore the socio-political context of the borderland has been carried out with the help of
the Pak-Hindu migrant community who primarily belong to the Bheel tribe. An
understanding of how these people construct meaningful narratives of the place; how they
at once establish and transgress the boundaries within which they are able to act as
meaningful agents’ is carried out (Ibrahim, 2008). Working within ethnographic exploratory
qualitative research perspective the present research makes an attempt to understand the
process of displacement and movement from the country of residence i.e. Pakistan for
resettlement to India. It further explores and uncovers meanings and patterns of social
interaction thereof. The use of ethnography (social anthropology) qualitative approach and
methods help locate the reality in context and most importantly provided depth and detail
to the analysis. Following an interpretivist point of view an attempt to understand a
particular social action and grasping the meanings that constitute that action is carried out
by the researcher. This premise helps us to understand the context of borderlands, whereby
the borderland community (Pak-Hindu migrants) makes meaning of their action which is
different from the policies framed by the State or the dominant discourse.
43
Ethnographic Encounters with the Politics of Poverty in Vietnam’s Northern Borderland
Peter Chaudhry
Australian National University
Summary:
Anthropology is increasingly coopted by the state in the modern governmental practice of
‘poverty reduction’: it is rendered technical and depoliticized and serves the projects of
power of both the state and local powerholders. The critical ethnographer’s role is to resist
cooption to this state project and to engage with the local politics of poverty and inequality.
Abstract:
This paper explores what a critical political anthropology of poverty means in the context of
Vietnam’s mountainous northern borderlands. Anthropologists have long been instrumental
in categorizing ‘ethnic minority’ people of the region for the state, and continue to be
engaged in upland state making today through ‘poverty reduction’, the state’s primary
modern governmental scheme for ethnic minorities. State agencies and international
organisations increasingly champion ‘anthropological’ approaches to poverty reduction, but
these are applied in a manner which renders both ethnography and poverty ‘technical’ (Li
2007). Consequently, instead of illuminating the local politics of poverty, these co-opted
ethnographic approaches serve only to ignore them. The paper draws upon recent
ethnographic research work from a commune in northern Vietnam to illustrate the
deficiencies in these approaches, and to show how state processes for poverty reduction in
fact serve the particular projects of power of local elites that dominate commune and
village politics. As a result of local politics, the powerless and most deprived fall between
two conceptions of entitlement: they are invisible in the moral economy of the village as
they are politically unconnected, but they are also ignored and bypassed by the very state
process for poverty reduction intended for their benefit. The paper concludes by arguing
that the task of a critically engaged political anthropology is not to collaborate with, but to
challenge these state projects and the assumptions about political agency and politics that
underlie them, and to illuminate the local inequalities and power differentials which they
sustain.
Métis and the borders of Canadian Aboriginality
Sinéad O’Sullivan,
University of Manchester
Summary:
Métis people have an ambiguous relationship with the Canadian state’s understanding of
who is aboriginal. As a people whose identity has been based on a mixed European/native
44
heritage and ancestry, they have not always fitted easily into the Canadian legal categories
of state-accepted aboriginality.
Abstract:
In Canada, legal definitions of aboriginality have developed through a process where the
state has, over time, shaped and applied its own criteria for what it is to be aboriginal, and
called this ‘Indian’, and the people it considers as fitting this as having ‘Indian status’.
Historically, this process has largely ignored the history and self-identity of aboriginal
peoples, and the relationships between various First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, at the
individual and community levels. Slowly, as international law and civil rights
movements, changes in social attitudes towards aboriginality and aboriginal activism have
shaped the state in turn, the state is beginning to address the disparities, inconsistencies
and ambiguities inherent in how it had previously organised and recognised aboriginality in
Canada. The location of Métis identity within this legal framework of aboriginality as staterecognised status continues to be a contested claim in the courts and in political and social
contexts. Where exactly Métis, as a group or as individuals, should fit into this status/nonstatus paradigm is being continually negotiated, between various Métis groups, other
aboriginal peoples, changing ideas of indigenous and aboriginal rights, the Canadian state
and civil society, and the court’s interpretations of law. The position of Métis on the
status/non-status boundary has changed over time, in relation to this ongoing negotiation.
My research has focussed on the how Métis have tried to negotiate a place for themselves
within the Canadian aboriginal legal framework, through political activism and constitutional
change, but more especially through using the courts to challenge the state and to broaden
the category of aboriginal to include them, with various degrees of success.
Session Five – C
11.30 am – 1.00 pm
Creativity, representation and engagement in visual and sensory methods
Convener: Rosa Sansone
Discover Visual Anthropology in the world of Augmentative & Alterative Communication
(AAC)
Mascha Legel and Bert Steenbergen
Radboud University Nijmegen
Summary:
The practical application of Visual Anthropological research knowledge to enable children,
45
who have no or limited speech, to tell their stories with the use of film. The aim is to give,
through the assistance of self-made films, children the opportunity to be seen and heard
through their stories; Film as a mean for Alternative & Augmentative Communication
(FaOC)”.
Abstract:
The project My Film, My Story aims to develop a learning-method called “My Film, My
Story”, based on the idea of FaOC to help children, with Complex Communication Needs
(CCN), in regular and special education with storytelling and narration. For children with
limited or no speech, because of a motor disability or chronic illness, storytelling can be a
complex process. If children have a speech production problem, they experience obstacles
in being effective communicators and expressing themselves. With the use of film, the
possibilities of Alternative and Augmentative Communication and storytelling can be
combined: “Film as a mean for Alternative & Augmentative Communication (FaOC)”. FaOC is
based on the idea of Feedback in Visual Anthropology (VA). In VA, film can be used as a
‘communication enabler’ for the purpose of research, collecting knowledge and opinions
through conversational narrative between anthropologist, participant and co-researchers.
Film is used as a thematic framework to find common ground: giving a context, details and a
storyline. In VA, audio-visual methods are used to support communication with participants,
where communication can be difficult through language or cultural challenges. Through the
process of ‘Interactive film-feedback’, film is used as a guideline for both storyteller and
communication-partner(s) since it will rise above the abstract modelling and complexity of
language. The practical application of this knowledge could enable children with CCN to
participate more fully in social interaction during storytelling.
Exploring sensorial narratives in participatory filming, using sound and music to attain
spontaneous creative engagement: A case study of Goma, North Kivu
Eugenio Giorgianni and Paloma Yáñez
University of Manchester
Summary:
Exploring the videoclip as a form of spontaneous creativity and active engagement, through
our research with young Congolese musicians in Goma, North Kivu, we propose a
revaluation of traditional documentary film techniques reviewing alternative forms of
artistic expression that serve to communicate and produce change at the local level.
Abstract:
Taking as engagement a distinct form of human disposition, where the interaction between
individual creativities leads to a collective flow of ideas and artistic expressions. In the
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context of North Kivu, on of the most conflictive areas of the Great lake region, we found
music as subversive method of communication. The young musicians of the city of Goma
use music as a tool to convey their message confronting the current dynamics of
marginalization, corruption, armed violence that compose the post-war scenario, but also to
transmit their message of future hopes and illusion to the people of Goma. The multiplicity
of voices converge in ideas, however, each one guards its uniqueness in expressivity and
strength. Revealing, through their voices and bodies the past histories that shape the
current sounds. A vision of Goma through the singing voices of its inhabitants represents
current assertions about the universality of art as means to attain freedom of speech and
overcome power imbalances. Participatory filming needs a degree of flexibility to allow all
participants to find their interest and motivation in collaboration, often transcending the
traditional documentary outcome of visual anthropology. A videoclip is not simply a
semiotic possibility of post-modern art (Wollen, 1986), for the young Congolese musicians it
is a means to a dream of consolidating themselves as musicians. The possibility of
transformation lies on increased visibility leading to increased financial stability, and wider
reach of their message. The artistic expression becomes in its process and outcome the way
to understand the actual purpose of engaging. The videoclip as an spontaneous creative
flow, that promoted the understanding of a certain temporal and spatial reality, but
endured an object of change valuable to the participants of the research, represents the
actual moment of engagement.
Socio-Technology of the Camera
Siddhi Bhandari
University of Dehli
Summary:
This paper examines the camera as technology and as an extension of the photographer’s
body; and how the relationship between man and machine is mediated through the process
of taking photographs. Data for this paper are drawn from my ethnographic research
conducted for my doctoral dissertation.
Abstract:
Social aspects of the process of photography cannot be denied on multiple accounts – be it
the social function of documenting that photography fulfills, or that the camera needs
human hands to work it, the interventions that are made through the photographer in the
form of what it is that the he wants to convey through a photo or adjusting the camera
components to give a particular kind of effect in the image. The camera too can be called
social because the camera technology exists because of human action. Socio-technology is
employed to highlight the sychronisation of the process of photography, technology of the
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camera along with the technique of the photographer. Among other things, a photographer
adapts his technique to the changing technology and size of the camera. In this paper, I
attempt to look at the camera, its use as well as its reference, as a technology and as an
extension of one’s body. The latter part I say in response to the camera often being spoken
of as if it were one with the photographer. Through the narratives in the field, I want to
analyse how this relationship between man and machine is mediated as often
photographers appropriate the camera by reference to their having an ‘eye’ for
photography and how their body techniques evolve with changes in the camera. Data for
this paper are drawn from my ethnographic research conducted for my doctoral dissertation
in 2012-2013.
A Researcher Divided: A Refugees' and Ethnographer's Tale of Film-making
Nicole I. J. Hoellerer
Brunel University
Summary:
The paper considers the ethical and empirical implications of participating in community
projects with groups of informants, and how informants use ethnographic research and
film-making to push their own agenda.
Abstract:
In the late 1980s and early 1990s about 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese were forced to
flee from their native country Bhutan, living in camps in East Nepal for almost 20 years.
Since 2010 about 400 Bhutanese refugees arrived in the United Kingdom (UK). During my
PhD fieldwork with a group of Bhutanese refugees in Manchester, informants were keen to
initiate a film project " A Heart Divided" in order to "tell their story" from their forced exile
from Bhutan and their lives in Nepalese refugee camps, to their experiences with refugee
resettlement and their new life in the UK., and I got closely involved in the process of
creating and realizing the project. During the making of this film as well as the subsequent
public screenings, it became evident that the aim of the film for my informants was not only
to create awareness of their lives and stories, but that narratives were carefully crafted in
order to fulfill the agenda of one particular refugee community organisation and 'advertise'
their 'cause'. Rather than creating an ethnographic or 'native' film, the final result is an
expression of internal hierarchies, shared narratives and perceptions, as well as the need of
my informants to 'compete' with other refugee communities for recognition, and ultimately,
funding. This paper discusses how the ethnographer, who supports these type of projects
becomes a middle man for some informants to push their own agenda in order to gain
advantages, and considers the ethical and empirical consequences for research.
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