Paper short abstract:

Considering the Kurdish democratic movement as an example of the radical imagination, this paper will discuss the challenges of moving beyond established narratives. The paper will also demonstrate how anthropology has a crucial role to play in the process of imagining such alternative futures.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years the Kurdish democratic movement has developed a new, radical political ideology built on progressive ideas such as direct democracy, gender equality, and ecological sustainability. This ideology, described as democratic confederalism, or democratic autonomy, is also presented as an explicit rejection of the 'ideological foundations of the nation-state' identified as: nationalism, patriarchy, and religiousness (Öcalan, 2011). This attempt to imagine an alternative future for the homeland of the Kurds, and to move beyond established narratives within the Kurdish movement, such as the need for an independent Kurdish state, has faced some resistance from the wider Kurdish community.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Kurdish diaspora in Berlin, this paper will explore some of the challenges faced by activists promoting this 'utopian vision' for the future of Kurdistan, and how they seek to overcome these established narratives.

This paper will also consider how anthropology is ideally suited to explore such a project of the radical imagination; just as social movements, such as the Kurdish democratic movement, are demonstrating that 'another world is possible' the anthropological record reveals that 'other worlds are (already) possible' (Escobar, 2009). Moreover, by providing us with a perspective which 'allows us to see how we can be radically other to ourselves' (Hage, 2012), this paper will demonstrate how anthropology has an important role to play in the radical, and increasingly necessary, quest of imagining alternative futures.

Paper short abstract:

This paper provides a brief history of and theory on utopia within anthropology arguing for its theoretical utility in propelling our discipline forward and away from dystopian inevitability, an alter-anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

In concert with Ortner's (2016,66) call for "studies that emphasize thinking about alternative political and economic futures" this paper interrogates the role of anthropology in the 21st century by invoking the literary and political frame of utopia. "Utopia" is a bad word; we critical theorists inherited our knee-jerk reaction to the word from Marx. But what exactly irks those of us trained in the era of "dark anthropology" about practices toward an ideal vision or "the good"? This paper provides a brief history of and theory on utopia within anthropology arguing for its theoretical utility in propelling our discipline forward and away from dystopian inevitability, an alter-anthropology. I do this by fusing history of utopian thought with ethnography from a religious utopia project in India. I analyze everyday narratives of Bengali and international converts to a Hindu fundamentalist religious movement located in Mayapur, a village in West Bengal. Theirs is a conversion nested in renunciation of the "material world" and investment in a city-making project designed to showcase to the world a "spiritual United Nations." Mayapur has survived over fifty years with its third generation of children born in the community—a rare feat for utopian and intentional community projects. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research, this paper interrogates the everyday narrative of mothers who migrated to Mayapur to give their children a "higher taste" of life. How can intentionally designed communities impact anthropology's critical theory on the future, change, and feasibility of the good life within dark times?

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research with Marxist reading groups in Lebanon to make the case for the cultivation of utopian imaginativeness, or a radical political imaginary, as politically productive in counter-revolutionary times.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research with Marxist reading groups run by a Lebanese revolutionary socialist organization. I examine the labor that Marxist theoretical practice is doing in this post-Marxist political conjuncture, looking at the infrastructures of affect that continue to make the linking of theory and praxis, and the cultivation of a revolutionary subjectivity, worthwhile in a context where "to be revolutionary in the old Marxist or Sartrian sense is to be 'vulgar', 'impatient', 'uncivilized' and 'unable to wait properly'" (Hage, 2015, p. 30). Drawing on Moten and Harney (2013), I frame this intellectual labor as a form of 'dissonant', 'disorganized' study - a mode of preparing for revolution by being together in 'brokenness'. I situate my work within a Lebanese activist scene dominated - like many other anti-status quo milieus at this particular political conjuncture - by a pragmatic conception of politics, in which the critical labor of the radical left is largely considered 'sterile', mired in something akin to what Berlant (2011) calls cruel optimism. Drawing on Munoz (2009) and his defence of utopian imaginativeness, I challenge this linking of political praxis and tangible successes, arguing that for radical leftists in counter-revolutionary times, cultivating solidarity and camaraderie by maintaining a space of study that enables technologies of both self and collective does constitute a productive political act.

Paper short abstract:

The transformation of the Kurdish utopia from independent statehood to self-rule and urban governance in Turkey brings revolutionary sacrifice into intimate contact with the messiness of the everyday life and further displaces the meaning of utopia.

Paper long abstract:

The protracted conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) slowed down in the early 2000s. The PKK's initial goal to establish an independent Kurdistan shifted to urban civil democratic governance within the Turkish system. Between 2009 and 2015, a fragile peace process took place. In this period, Kurdish activists saw something akin to the utopia of self-governance: the pro-Kurdish governors ran the municipalities, Kurdish cultural expression strengthened, and the transformation of the politics, with feminist and multiculturalist undertones, even shook the Turkish nationalist hegemony.

My eleven months fieldwork between 2011 and 2015 in Diyarbakır, a center of Kurdish politics, documents the ascent of the utopia while it also reveals a deep disconnect the lay Kurdish activists perceive between their political histories and the impending future of the Kurdish polity. I examine this disjuncture through the central value in Kurdish politics, bedel, a Turkish word meaning the price to be paid for something. I trace bedel's transformation from designating biological death to loss in life. That shift has enabled an intimate yet acute connection with the Kurdistan; the utopia previously designated as the future independent state, otherworldly because other than here and now, became the litmus test against which Kurds measured their current lives. Though infuriating and deeply unsettling, such measuring of bedel was deemed necessary in order for it to be made relevant. Such calculi also inserted a form of moral chaos into the everyday fabric of postconflict Diyarbakır with numerous affective consequences.

Paper short abstract:

My paper focuses on Esperanto speakers and supporters in France, exploring how the weakening of Esperanto associations and the growing use of this language online seem to have diverted Esperanto from its initial project to create an alternative world through international communication.

Paper long abstract:

My paper aims to debate perceptions of past, present and future among Esperanto speakers and supporters. Many Esperanto supporters based in associations in France regard Esperanto as the language of the future; as a tool aimed at gathering peoples together through neutral and equitable communication one day. These same supporters, however, tend to regret the way this language lost momentum and how it can be easily conveyed as a failed project, situated in the past and no longer spoken. Along these lines, my main ethnographic question is: between Esperanto being a thing of the past and a utopian project for the future, what is currently happening and being done among its supporters, in the present?

Through a study conducted mostly in Paris and based on participant observation, interviews and archival research, I critically approach the weakening of Esperanto associations, the ageing of many of their long-standing members and the simultaneous strengthening of the online use of the language among young people. Older supporters equal the decline of associations with the failure of Esperanto, as, in their view, younger speakers perceive Esperanto as an intellectual game, rather than as a tool to create an alternative world through international communication. Focusing on the Paris-based left-wing Esperanto association SAT-Amikaro and debating mostly with the literature on hopes for change (Jansen 2015, Ringel 2012) and generational lifetimes (Jordheim 2018), I discuss how Esperanto became a fully-fledged language, but is seen as having been disconnected from political activism for a better world.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the way in which the Muslim community in France design an alternative future for mosques within the paradoxical context of laïcité. Through a person-centred ethnography, I intend to show how Muslim actors try to fashion themselves as French Muslims.

Paper long abstract:

Within various mosques in the suburbs of Paris, young Muslim actors are fighting not only the static management of mosques by the elders of the community who see these spaces solely as places of worship, but also the continuous state attempts to control mosques, imams and their discourse. Their utopian project consists of having mosques that "respond to the community needs, with committee members who represent the community and who engage positively in the French society." A project that is often described by the French political and media discourse either as 'communitauriste' or 'islamiste'. In this regard, the state's paradox of claiming neutrality while continuously defining the good/bad Muslim (Mamdani 2005) leads young Muslim actors to develop a "paradoxical utopia".

Drawing on twelve months of intensive fieldwork, this paper analyses the trajectory of Mourad in his process of mobilising the community to design an alternative future. After years of voluntary work as a young Tablighi member in a mosque located in the suburbs of Paris, Mourad became an expert in consulting, auditing and coaching mosques committee members‒as well as members of other Muslim based organisations. Today, against accusations of nurturing communitarianism and establishing an 'Islam in France', Mourad uses 'community organising' and the neoliberal model of the managerial enterprise in order to build an 'Islam of France'. Within the paradoxical context of laïcité, what Mourad fights against seems also his source of liberation.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on efforts to ‘speak for the river’, this paper considers indigenous and environmental activists’ campaigns for non-human rights and more sustainable human-environmental engagements. It asks how such values can be realised to support a Utopian vision that is vital for all living kinds.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on efforts to ‘speak for the river’, this paper considers the efforts of international indigenous networks and environmental activists to promote non-human rights. Place-based communities around the world have long expressed concerns about rampant environmental exploitation and the damaging effects on their sacred landscapes. The 1990s brought Kogi warnings to ‘Younger Brother’. Australian Aboriginal communities continue to critique European environmental practices. Recent years have brought protests against oil pipelines by the Dakota Sioux at Standing Rock; successful campaigns to give constitutional protection to ‘Pachamama’ in South America; and legal actions by Māori communities and others to establish the personhood and legal rights of rivers.

Such efforts mesh with campaigns by environmental activists to persuade the United Nations to issue a declaration on the Rights of Nature, and to push the International Criminal Court to define ‘ecocide’ as an actionable crime. Though highly diverse, these groups are united in envisioning an alternate future: a vital Utopia in which non-human rights are not sacrificed to short-term exigencies and desires, and which diverts humankind from its current trajectory towards anthropogenically-induced ecological collapse. Their passionate concern is echoed in scholarly discourses arguing for societies to rethink assumptions of patriarchal dominion over Nature, and to adopt more reciprocal modes of environmental engagement. Taking Māori innovations as an example, the paper considers how such a change in values might be implemented in mainstream environmental governance. It asks how anthropologists can assist dialogues promoting both human and non-human rights, and achieving a balance between these.