Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Jane Macnaughton
(Durham University)
Tom Widger (Durham University)
Jed Stevenson (Durham University)
Andrew Russell (Durham University)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Identities and Subjectivities
- Location:
- Elizabeth Fry 01.08
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 4 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We invite anthropological insights to the additions that people make to the air, from pollutants to perfumes, and their perceptions and lived experiences across local contexts. How are these substances translated - in an embodied sense - into harm or benefit to individuals and communities?
Long Abstract:
Ever since Hippocrates' Airs, Waters, and Places, fresh air has been associated with health. Growing awareness of the serious health effects of air pollution have reinforced this association, dovetailing with the modern anxieties described in Sloterdijk's Terror from the Air. But additions to the air are not always terrifying. Along with chemicals and other pollutants that might be deliberately (or unwittingly) introduced are many substances that are willingly breathed. Smokes, smells, ions and particles - in forms such as incense, drugs, medicines, fumigants and fuels - support lifestyles and experiences that are variously seen as desirable, detestable or unavoidable, despite the dangers inherent in their use and abuse. A commodity infrastructure has developed around many of these products (e.g. the aromatherapies, frankincense, tobacco, agarbathi, even oxygen) as well as means of monitoring or preventing the flow of unwanted airs into our homes and/or our bodies. This panel seeks contributions from people who have anthropological insights to offer about additions made to the air and people's perceptions and lived experiences of them. How are these substances translated - in an embodied sense - into harm or benefit to individuals and communities? By taking a global view on substances that problematize 'fresh air' as the sine qua non of health and well-being, can we reach any conclusions as to how best to address the challenges these elements raise that are both contextually specific but globally relevant?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 4 September, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the embodied complexities of navigating airborne allergens, looking specifically at how different kinds of accountability shape how different types of knowledge are operationalized in efforts to advocate for safe air.
Paper long abstract:
Airborne food allergens are a topic of much debate, concern, and fear in parts of the food allergy community in the UK. Whilst there is scientific consensus that airborne reactions to shellfish and fish proteins can occur due to the release of the allergenic protein when cooking, airborne reactions to peanuts are highly contested. Medical advice asserts that airborne peanut allergies do not culminate in severe allergic reactions. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that they do occur for some. This has led to increasing calls by parent advocates to ban peanuts on airplanes. Meanwhile, patient advocacy organisations in the UK have maintained, through interaction with their medical advisory boards, that airborne allergic reactions on airplanes are highly unlikely and related more to cross-contact with allergenic proteins left on seats and trays. Peanuts remain, however, an inflammatory topic. Those that add peanut proteins to the air may be understanding and refrain or they may be highly indignant, complaining in some cases that it's against their human rights to be asked not to eat what they want. Some airlines remove peanuts from sale and ask passengers to refrain for the duration of the flight, others have removed passengers - or refused to board passengers - who have disclosed severe allergies to peanuts for fear of reactions and culpability. This paper thus explores the embodied complexities of airborne allergens, looking specifically at how different kinds of accountability shape how different types of knowledge are operationalized in efforts to advocate for safe air.
Paper short abstract:
The skin is a body's largest organ, both metaphor and materiality. It constitutes a person's exteriority on which meaning is inscribed. My contribution challenges the modern idea of the skin's imagined solidity by returning to an older set of ideas that approach the body as porous and atmospheric
Paper long abstract:
The skin is a body's largest organ, both a metaphor and a materiality. It constitutes a person's exteriority on which meaning is inscribed. My contribution challenges the modern idea of the skin's imagined solidity by returning to an older set of ideas that approach the body as porous and atmospheric. I offer an understanding of the body that is based on its glands, crevices, pores and holes that blur dichotomies of inside and outside. In other words, a breathable skin that channels air and makes emotion and affects contingent on the body's relationship to air.
Individuated bodies tremble upon realisation that they are open, holey from both the inside and the outside, atmospheric, regardless of culturally constructed myths of groundedness and boundedness. As borders of self and world start to blur and permeation becomes a possibility, upon "mingling" (Connor 2004) with scent, air, wind, forms corrupt and emotions turn weird and eerie. "We" become anxious as historical delimitations of the physical world affectively and materially 'unground' familiar feelings and expectations of order, sense and stability. When the body is holed it surrenders to and is possessed by affect and atmosphere. Holes, however, never constitute a finite loss, but instead are the openings for the arrival of new meanings, forms and relations.
Paper short abstract:
London often rings air pollution. Comparing the growth of London in size and the dissimilarities of air pollution with the Victorian times provokes a field-practice based anthropological research in understanding the changing dynamics of the olfactory awareness of pollution and the scents.
Paper long abstract:
Olfactory could be taken as a medium of understanding the pollution once taken away from a reduced means of telling the smells. The changing concepts of air pollution have also had subconsciously manipulated such sensory responses. Therefore, studying the smell in the air can deeper elaborate on the olfactory understandings of pollution and freshness. The 19th century London is known with industrialisation that resulted in 'the air pollution' issue. The literature also refers to it with olfactory terminologies. Also, the fragrance industry has also developed more sophisticatedly and gained further popularity. Both of these trends have changed in different ways since then. The 19th century London had significantly more polluting particles in the air. However, this is not just the amount of pollution that matters, but the quality of the pollution and the diversity of the particles. The cultural understanding of the olfaction, its social determinism along with its well-being associations, can further help to investigate the often unconscious purifying, therapeutic, aesthetic and hereditary trajectories of 'being good' in London in terms of smells. It could be done by comparatively reflecting the prospects and the practices of the 19th century London on contemporary times and observing the similarities and differences between these practices in the daily life of people of London. The paper maps the 'invisible' olfactory data along with the cultural and historical data from the field to develop its anthropological investigation of the dynamics of olfactory awareness on the issue of the fresh air.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the key organising metaphor of 'dust', that is used by South African miners to understand Tuberculosis less in terms of bacterial infection and more in terms of dusty conditions of life underground, as a form of slow violence.
Paper long abstract:
South African miners have among the highest rates of tuberculosis in the world—four to seven times higher than the general population of South Africa. Most gold miners work at depths up to 3500m and are constantly exposed to silica dust as they blast through and drill into the hard rock. It is against this background, I explore ideas about dust and tuberculosis from the perspective of South African miners. Despite definitions of dust as a "fine, dry powder" that consists "of tiny particles of earth or waste matter lying on the ground, on surfaces or carried in the air", dust has far more pervasive, socially embedded meanings. Metaphors of dust are widespread throughout the English language, yet its social and 'cultural' significance remains largely unexplored. Scholarship reveals a focus on scientific studies centred on technology to control dust and its adverse effects on the health of mine workers, while information regarding socially and 'culturally' specific understandings of dust particularly within the mining sector is sparse. Using ethnographic methods, I explore the key organising metaphors—'dust', 'my TB' and 'we are like bubble gum'—used by miners to understand TB in relation to infection and the impact it has on their lives. I argue that miners understand TB less in terms of bacterial infection and more in terms of dusty conditions of life underground, as a form of slow violence. Their concept of 'dust' demonstrates that there is an inter-relationship between tuberculosis and dusty working environments.
Paper short abstract:
Former tobacco growers and workers in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand remember and reflect on the aerial- and ground-spraying methods for managing their crop.
Paper long abstract:
Among former tobacco growers in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, moral ambivalence about their crop exists less in the nature of the crop itself, since it was always legal and frequently remunerative, and more in the chemicals (or 'poisons', as they are often called) used to manage its cultivation. Products abounded to sterilise the seedbed soil, to fertilise the ground, and to control the various plant and animal pests which, despite nicotine having evolved as a powerful insecticide in its own right, were quick to capitalise on a farmers' lack of protection in this regard. Most of these products are now banned, but they are remembered for the different and frequently dramatic ground and aerial means and times they were administered, and above all for their distinctive smells. Commercial cultivation of tobacco finished in 1995 (Aotearoa/New Zealand) and 2006 (Australia). As time passes, and due to the fact that the health legacy of these different noxious substances is a matter of risk and probability rather than definitive causation, concerns over their long-term legacy are only infrequently and speculatively voiced. When the issue is raised, it is more often in terms of the likely consequences of chemical residues for smokers' lungs rather than the dangers the products may have posed for tobacco workers themselves and their families. A restitution narrative is developing whereby the toxic legacy of these poisons is being replaced by a new ethos of organic farming methods free of chemical inputs.