Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn the conflict betweenBedouin representatives and government authorities in the southernIsraeliNegev, the term 'insurgent building' refers to the construction of buildings erected in the full expectation that they will be demolished by theIsraeli police shortly thereafter. This article analyses how insurgent building is employed as a spatial practice by emerging political actors to claim contestedBedouin landownership. Importantly, insurgent building relies on the ability of media and advocacy organizations to mobilize behind the issue. Most of the relevant scholarship takes the interpretative categories advanced by these actors at face value. Following anthropological debates regarding objectification and categorization, I examine the context of a specific case of insurgent building. Emerging political actors who employ insurgent building often rely on predefined ethnic categories and clear‐cut people–state polarities. This case demonstrates the need for a more differentiated understanding of multilayered local dynamics than the one offered by mainstream linear interpretations. At a more abstract level, political actors contribute to the reproduction of the very categories against which they mobilize.

If knowledge is considered as incorporated in activities and events, a monolithic reality is no longer waiting to be uncovered, but multiple realities are coming into being through different sets of practices. In the Israeli negev desert, home demolition of unauthorized Arab-bedouin villages is a contested issue, enacting multiple and contradictory realities. The tents and shacks of el-Shams, for instance, have been demolished nearly ten times in one year by the Israeli police, but each time they have been reconstructed with the help of human rights activists. Surprisingly, and in contrast to nearly all circulating discourses, nobody ever lived in the demolished buildings - what at one level becomes a humanitarian catastrophe, at another becomes a "ghost village."
Drawing on recent reflections on global ethnography, this article seeks to follow "zones of friction" and connections among people, money, discourses, and emotions that developed around this specific case: relations that range from solidarity activities to the discursive practices of journalists and dislocated officials of international organizations. On a more abstract level, the emerging contradictions between these levels reveal the implications of an uncritically reproduced idea of "local community." I claim that by following such connections, we gain important insights into how transnational power relations are shaping multiple realities around a political conflict.

With the acceleration of the neoliberal management of academic institutions, the rules of evaluation change continuously in unpredicatable ways. In this contribution, we analyze the changes in evaluation criteria in two cases, one Italian and one in the UK. Despite the diversity of contexts, both are characterized by technologies of self designed to create a new human type: the "flexible academic person".

In this introduction to a Special Section, we outline three recent interrelated research tendencies with regard to how to understand the practices and politics of 'nature': 1) a major attention towards non-anthropocentric environmental ideologies; 2) more complex analyses of environmental movements; and finally, 3) attention to unconventional every-day practices of environmental justice. In all three tendencies, we argue, a renewed attention to socio-economic power relations of the wider context becomes crucial for a better understanding of environmental dynamics. Ethnographically engaged studies from the European context offer examples of how it becomes possible to assess the impact of new grass-root practices, to pay attention to good micropractices, and understand the unexpected outcomes of the engagement with nature.Key words: Environmentalism, social movements, power, conflict.

In this introduction to a Special Section, we outline three recent interrelated research tendencies with regard to how to understand the practices and politics of 'nature': 1) a major attention towards non-anthropocentric environmental ideologies; 2) more complex analyses of environmental movements; and finally, 3) attention to unconventional every-day practices of environmental justice. In all three tendencies, we argue, a renewed attention to socio-economic power relations of the wider context becomes crucial for a better understanding of environmental dynamics. Ethnographically engaged studies from the European context offer examples of how it becomes possible to assess the impact of new grass-root practices, to pay attention to good micropractices, and understand the unexpected outcomes of the engagement with nature.Key words: Environmentalism, social movements, power, conflict.

This essay discusses poses of identities available for anthropologists in relation to increasingly salient issues of contemporary anthropological knowledge-making. Starting with a critical evaluation of the idea of the anthropologist as a witness by George Marcus (2005), we outline cornerstones in current debates on the positionality of the researcher, such as the implications of the end of meta-narratives, the call for epistemological openness, the crisis of representation, the delimitation of fields and the discussion on human rights. In a second step, we highlight how, at first glance, the concept of witnessing seems to provide a solution for these dilemmas. Yet, witnessing entails blind spots and other limits which are often overlooked. These concern relationality, memory, involvement, understanding, and the question of how to intervene in the scenarios we observe. In sum, the essay redefines the conditions of anthropological knowledge production in an age of witnessing.

Le recenti politiche della standardizzazione messe in atto in campo agroalimentare incidono in maniera profonda su come si definiscono agricoltori, su che cosa è considerato alimento "sicuro" e su come è gestito il paesaggio agrario. Spesso percepite dai soggetti in questione, come strati di complicazioni kafkiane, esse nascondono tuttavia interessi politici specifici. Il Peasant Activism Project indaga queste politiche della trasparenza, intese come un modo di ristrutturazione del controllo sociale attraverso pratiche, come certificazioni e standardizzazioni, incentrate intorno all'imperativo morale della trasparenza. Improntato da una prospettiva di antropologia politica, l'obiettivo del progetto è quello di mettere in luce gli effetti sulle relazioni sociali che si nascondono dietro l'apparenza oggettiva del paradigma di trasparenza, e di comprendere in che modo si rimodellano le relazioni di potere. In questo senso, il progetto mira a ridefinire le prospettive classiche dell'antropologia alimentare rimasta prevalentemente incasellata in una prospettiva culturalista. In questo report di ricerca presentiamo una conversazione circolare e collaborativa, incentrata sulle garanzie partecipative, viste come una riscoperta di forme orizzontali e neo-umanistiche di fronte alle politiche della standardizzazione, e che fanno parte di una più ampia tendenza di rivitalizzazione delle pratiche alternative di certificazione.