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- Convenors:
-
Mary Hawkins
(University of Western Sydney)
Helena Onnudottir (Western Sydney University)
Bel Harper (Australian National University)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- Hancock Library, room 2.27
- Sessions:
- Monday 2 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel considers the value in shifting attention toward an anthropological focus on, rather than a focus from, Europe. We invite papers that explore the challenges now facing the continent and that generate new insights amid periods of social, political, economic and environmental uncertainty.
Long Abstract:
Europe has been regarded within anthropology as an area of social, political and economic stability and a centre of anthropological knowledge production (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012). This observation has proliferated since the inception of the discipline, sustained through fieldwork, undertaken in local and global "peripheries", that has distinguished anthropology as a discipline and served to establish Europe's geographic, cultural and intellectual superiority, as the authoritative 'knower' of the peripheral 'other'. Yet, in recent years, the wider European continent has faced the effects of fiscal and border crisis and ecological decline. These threats continue to affect the social imaginary of Europe (Loftsdóttir, Smith and Hipfl 2018), destabilising it by real or imagined challenges to liberal democracy, neoliberal economics, environmental sustainability, social harmony, and national/European identity. Such adversity continues to bring into question the values that underscore life across the continent and the ways they are being challenged in a contemporary moment of unprecedented uncertainty. In this panel, we consider the value in shifting attention towards an anthropological focus on, rather than a focus from, Europe. We invite presentations that explore political, social and cultural challenges facing the continent, and its constituent nations. We particularly encourage papers that draw ethnographically on how these challenges are being experienced on the ground and how they are leading to new insights into contemporary challenges within and outside of Europe. We also encourage papers that highlight how such challenges are repositioning global and/or local power relations, as well as giving rise to new ones.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 2 December, 2019, -Timothy Heffernan (University of New South Wales)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the rise of a discrete protest culture in Iceland after the country's 2008 economic collapse. In response to a perceived lack of government credibility over the last decade, it argues that new political discourses & social relations are being built through protest participation.
Paper long abstract:
Recent incidences of fiscal and border crisis over the last decade has profoundly affected a secure sense of identity, community and polity across areas of the European continent. This context provides an opportunity to shift attention northward to not only explore the ways that crisis has indelibly marked the European social imaginary but to also highlight the ways that communities have uniquely responded to periods of adversity. Bringing into focus the 2008 Icelandic banking collapse and its aftermath, this paper explores the emergence of a discrete culture of protest in Iceland that has been mobilised in response to a perceived lack of government credibility and leadership over the last decade. Motivated by ongoing revelations of government corruption, growing political contention between sections of the public and the government continue to be rehearsed today through small and large protests. Through ethnography with members of the public and civil society actors, this paper shows how protests have become a significant site to highlight and challenge dominant political narratives all the while producing new sets of discourse and social relations through the promotion of political and economic transparency.
Helena Onnudottir (Western Sydney University) Mary Hawkins (University of Western Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Protests and counter-protests: challenges to political ideals and images of a harmonious Iceland.
Paper long abstract:
During several days in March 2019, a group of asylum seekers in Iceland staged protests against the treatment they faced by the authorities; problematic housing and lack of work and educational opportunities, as well as access to the medical system. The asylum seekers camped out in the harsh conditions of an Icelandic winter, facing the use of pepper spray and verbal threats by the local police, and soon attracted the attention of the small Nationalist Party of Iceland, Þjóðfylkingin, which decided that the they were going to stage their own protest in front of Parliament House; 'protesting the violence that asylum seekers have projected on Icelandic society and the Icelandic police'. As the Nationalist Party's intentions were brought to the attention of the public, Facebook and other social media fired up with calls for counter-protests in support of the asylum seekers. A number of people headed these calls, flocking together in front of Parliament House. People waved flags - the national, anti-fascist, environmental, and rainbow flags - and Icelandic bands played, creating a jovial atmosphere which drowned out the activities by the National Party. Reflecting on this case study, this paper draws on some key foci of the 2018 publication Messy Europe: Crisis, Race, and National State in a Postcolonial World (eds. Loftsdóttir, Smith, Hipfl) questioning the nature of political and national ideals and images in Iceland in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe.
Mary Hawkins (University of Western Sydney) Helena Onnudottir (Western Sydney University)
Paper short abstract:
Tourism has been integral to Iceland's recent economic recovery. However, governments have failed to manage the social and environmental challenges of mass tourism. This paper explores the tourist boom and recent decline within the context of a nation that remains in political and social crisis.
Paper long abstract:
After more than a decade of spectacular increases in tourist numbers, reaching 2,195,271 in 2017, or six visitors for every local, tourism to Iceland is now declining, and it is expected that 2019 will witness an overall drop in visitor numbers. There seem to be two immediate causes for this decline. With the collapse of the low priced carrier WOW Air, and with other airlines increasing their fares, getting to Iceland has become more expensive. At the same time, as the Icelandic economy has recovered - largely due to tourism - the prices of hotels and tourist activities have increased. The purpose of this paper is not to dispute the suggested causes, but rather to explore other, far less obvious, factors associated with both the tourist boom, and its recent decline, most of which centre around considerations of value. What do tourists value in Iceland? Is this congruent with the symbols and values Icelanders have been consistently deploying to promote themselves and their nation to the world? How does the Icelandic emphasis on 'pure nature' reconcile with the environmental degradation that has accompanied the last five boom tourist years? In considering these questions, this paper suggests that while Iceland may be characterised as in economic recovery, the governmental failure to fully grasp the challenges, environmental and social, that recent mass tourism has brought to Iceland is evidence of ongoing crisis in both social and political domains.
Bel Harper (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
Icelanders live in a harsh and powerful environment which does not appear to be conceived of in the binary categories of nature/culture that we are accustomed to think with. Based on fieldwork in 2018, I examine the value and meaning of nature in Iceland, focusing on the horse-human relationship.
Paper long abstract:
Iceland challenges us to broaden our conventional anthropological scope and think through the mingling and overlapping of different ways of worlding; human-centric versus non-centred or relational, where humans are a small part of a wider world, and agency is assumed rather than assigned. These wider relationships and values can be demonstrated by and are mediated through the complex entanglements between Icelanders and horses. Horses in Iceland are often represented as a manifestation of Icelandic nature: pure, authentic and free. They have occupied Icelanders' imaginaries and lived experience of land, place, and nation-building, and remain a central part of Icelandic identity. Icelanders also identify as being "sentimental but sensible" towards non-human creatures, adding further complexity to their relationship with nature and the non-human. Based on fieldwork conducted in Iceland in 2018, I examine the value and meaning of nature in Iceland through the horse-human relationship and beyond.