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- Convenors:
-
Javier Ruiz del Rio
(University of Cambridge)
Kevin Yildirim (University of Cambridge)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to reassess theories of alienation in order to account for contemporary experiences of estrangement – whether from oneself or one’s surroundings. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches that address issues including (but not limited to) precarity, burn-out, identity, and freedom.
Long Abstract:
Alienation has long been a core concept in critical analyses of modernity. Alongside its roots in Christian thought, and links to German idealism, alienation is also more widely used to describe contemporary conditions of estrangement among those living through precarity, burn-out, isolation, and identity crisis. For anthropologists interested in these (and other) conditions of estrangement, is there a common experience of alienation at play? If so, what might this be, and how can theories of alienation help us understand relations between self and society? In response, this panel aims to develop theories of alienation through ethnographic studies that allow for interdisciplinary and interregional dialogue.
We welcome submissions that treat alienation not only as a negative condition but also as a state of possibility. If alienation can be defined as the lack of a relation that might be expected to obtain, then its more emancipatory prospects can also come into view. While being alienated from oneself, one’s peers, or society can certainly be damaging, the experience of separating oneself from exploitative professions, oppressive relations, or stifling identities can be liberating. We welcome proposals that attempt to orient anthropological understandings of estrangement within this wide spectrum of phenomena and ethnographic analyses. Applicants are encouraged to engage in relevant debates from all areas of anthropology and in dialogue with concerns in other disciplines as well.
Accepted papers:
Paper short abstract:
Older men's sexuality is medicalised as a symptom and dismissed as deviant within institutional care. Using Kristeva's concept of abjection, I show how some male residents tactically leverage stereotypes about elderly sexuality to maintain agency within highly regulated spaces.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a residential care facility, this paper examines how male residents navigate sexuality and masculinity within spaces of institutional care. Through the theoretical framework of Kristeva's abjection and contemporary approaches to alienation, I analyse how elderly men's expressions of sexuality become simultaneously medicalised and delegitimised, creating a form of "abject sexuality" that exists in a liminal space between acceptance and rejection. The paper focuses on two key empirical cases: First, the complex dynamics between a male resident's flirtatious behaviours with young care staff, revealing how such interactions are alternatively framed as harmless personality traits or potential threats requiring management. Second, the emergence of romantic/sexual interest between residents with varying degrees of cognitive capacity, highlights how staff navigate consent and autonomy while maintaining safety. I argue that male residents experience a unique form of alienation wherein their sexuality is simultaneously acknowledged and denied, treated as both natural and deviant. This creates a form of "tactical abjection" where some residents leverage stereotypes about elderly sexuality to assert agency within the constrained space of care. The paper contributes to discussions of alienation by examining how institutional spaces produce new forms of estrangement from one's sexual and gendered identity, while also considering how subjects might reclaim agency through strategic deployment of their "abject" status.
Paper short abstract:
In the offices of an association in Lisbon, alienation and lack of recognition mirror each other in the figures of the migrant and the front-line worker, punctuated by moments of social connectivity and a sense of achievement. How might this change the way we think about the migrant citizen divide?
Paper long abstract:
In the offices of a Luso-Cape Verdean association in the Lisbon area, precarity and burn-out mirror each other in the figures of the (undocumented) migrant and the front-line worker providing legalization, job and citizenship applications and other outsourced services for the state. At one level, an intersectional analysis guards against identifying a common experience of alienation. Yet both migrants and front-line workers experience precarity and burn-out, albeit to different degrees, for diverse reasons and in different contexts. The paper draws on the empirical data collected though the observation of appointments between January and July 2024 in which reflexive dialogue was possible with both migrants and front-line staff, illuminating their commonalities of experience. Beyond their socio-economic disparities, there is a mutual sense of alienation and lack of recognition. In the case of migrants, this is due, in part, to their undocumented and/or unemployed status as well as due to experiences of racism and exploitation. In the case of the association staff, it is due, in part, to limited financial and human resources for the outsourced services they provide and a sense of how their skills might be put to better use. However, these feelings of estrangement are also punctuated by moments of social connectivity and a sense of achievement, when, for example, needs for sociability and recognition are met informally through encounters in the appointments and when migrant rights are upheld. The paper concludes questioning how these insights may change the way we think about the migrant citizen divide.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores key findings from a two-year mobile ethnographic study on vanlife culture in the United States. It raises particular attention to the reason as to why individuals in the United States have sought solace in the solitude of vanlife since its inception in 2011: Alienation.
Paper long abstract:
Vanlife is a lifestyle mobility that has been seemingly overlooked amongst anthropologists on the move or otherwise. This paper explores key findings from a two-year mobile ethnographic study, with particular attention to the reason as to why individuals in the United States have sought solace in the solitude of vanlife since its inception in 2011: Alienation. The narratives that emerge from this ethnographic study show a correlation between generational categories of vanlife nomads and predominant types of Karl Marx’s description of alienation. Yet as these alienated nomads embark into such a mobile lifestyle the experience itself can also amplify the feelings of alienation that manifest in the form of burnout from the precariousness of being on the road in the pursuit of what is perceived to be freedom in “living the dream.” This then raises the question if vanlife nomads in the US are actually living a new American dream, or instead trying to survive a nightmare alienation?
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork in Istanbul’s recyclable waste import sector, this presentation examines workplace alienation among an ethnically diverse labour force. It argues that alienation can arise when workers judge profits to benefit members of ethnic or political 'others.'
Paper long abstract:
In this talk, I analyse inter-ethnic tensions among workers in a recycling depot in Istanbul that imported and processed plastic waste from the United Kingdom. Owned by a Kurdish businessman, the depot had a diverse workforce that included irregular migrant labourers from Syria, qualified Turkish workers hired from the formal labour market, and ethnically Kurdish piece-rate workers who were also relatives of the owner. I focus on instances of severe workplace frustration among the Turkish employees, who were convinced that the owner was pocketing their wages and redistributing them to his relatives. However, rather than express their frustrations through a class critique—or a negative appraisal of the global trade in waste—these Turkish workers condemned their boss on the basis that he was an ethnic Kurd. I suggest that this calls for new perspectives on theories of alienation in contemporary capitalism. My intervention is to show that these experiences can emerge when workers evaluate acts of profit generation with reference to political contexts that extend well beyond the workplace. In this case, alienation occurs among pro-capitalist workers when they judge profits generated in a contentious sector as benefiting ethnic or political 'others.'
Paper short abstract:
Living with physical and cognitive changes is a major challenge for many older adults. Focusing on the lived experiences of ageing in Brazil, I discuss alienation as a social and psychological process, characterized by changing social ties and internalized struggles of how to relate to the world.
Paper long abstract:
The continuation of everyday life in the face of physical and cognitive changes is a major challenge for many older adults. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among older adults in Brazil, I explore in this paper how moments that cause a rupture in the everyday become points of reference from which my interlocutors reconfigure their lives and orientations to the future. I show that this often involves a process of withdrawal and alienation; of letting go of specific aspects of life, and of making their worlds smaller. Many of my interlocutors feel they no longer fully belong in this world and expressed a sense of disconnection. At the same time, they keep the future open by emphasizing the possibility to, once again, take up the activities they have suspended. Focusing on these lived experiences, I discuss alienation as a social and psychological process, characterized by changing social ties and internalized struggles of how to relate to the world. In this process, people may lose the ability to participate in everyday life as they become unable to conform to normative notions of what would be a meaningful life. Yet, in analyzing how my interlocutors refuse to foreclose the future by narrating possibility and aspiration, I show how older adults may both embody and resist a scenario of frailty and withdrawal. In so doing, I highlight the theoretical implications of the politics of aging as a particular site of alienation.
Paper short abstract:
Using ethnography about trans and non-binary people’s engagements with Welsh language revival, this paper explores the relationship between alienation and epistemology, its simultaneously oppressive and liberatory potential, and its capacity for impact beyond those directly alienated.
Paper long abstract:
Using ethnography about trans and non-binary people’s engagements with Welsh language revival, this paper explores the relationship between alienation and epistemology. My research demonstrates that non-binary people are excluded from Welsh language revival both literally and politically; first due to grammatical restrictions on Welsh as a language structured around the gender binary, and second due to Welsh government and language industries’ failure to develop and promote more inclusive ways of using Welsh. This exclusion leads to alienation. Participants feel that speaking Welsh is incompatible with their non-binary identities, complicating relationships with a language that the Welsh government claims is “for everyone” (Welsh Government 2017). I draw on Fricker’s theory of “epistemological injustice” to illustrate the violence of not knowing how to articulate an experience. Yet I also use Ben-Moshe’s concept of “dis-epistemology” (2014) to explore how “not knowing” can “aid liberatory struggles”. Despite alienation from mainstream language revival, non-binary people create and popularise more trans-inclusive ways of speaking and being Welsh through grassroots and community methods. Consequently, non-binary people perform linguistic creativity and activism, which, although symbolically, historically, and emotionally central, have been largely absent from Welsh language revival since it became government dominated post-devolution. This paper considers what theories of alienation can tell anthropologists about contemporary linguistic, national, and cultural revivals. Alienation can allow people to refashion a sense of self outside of normative collective identities, challenging dominant ways of knowing. This paper provokes questions about how alienation transforms power dynamics and generates impact beyond those directly alienated.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the outsourcing of art-making in Italy. Looking at the experiences of artisans and artists, I suggest that any analysis of economic alienation needs to take a strong constructivist approach. Otherwise, the surplus value that is supposedly extracted is not fully accounted for.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the conditions of authorship in Western high art by looking at the experiences of sculptors in the Apuan Alps, a region known for its marble industry, built around the famed “Carrara” stone. I start by presenting an ideal case of outsourcing, where the artisan has a clear model to follow. I suggest that any description of alienation (of labour) necessarily involves interpretative choices. In fact, the separation between production roles upon which such ideal case is predicated is far from the rule in the Apuan industry or the Western art world. I show how this neat distinction can suffer multiple breaches, where sculptors question the authorial relation originally assumed, meaning that it is not so clear where the surplus being extracted should be coming from. This is a question that must be clarified if we want to avoid an input-output error that would derail any economic analysis. My contention is that ethnographies of artistic labour can help us better understand those negotiations involved in controversies over alienated labour, especially in the case of authorship. Contrary the philosophical and legalistic need for a verdict, I suggest to look into the supposed “relevant” social practice not as a given, but a negotiation that can be problematized. The picture of authorship that emerges is one of labour negotiations where each party’s position is different, rather than the all-encompassing function theorized by structuralist theory.
Paper short abstract:
Responding to a debate on migrant family’s fear that Norwegian childcare protection will “steal” their children and estrange senses of self and belonging, I argue that a non-essentialist view of alienation can be used to guide politics to support immigrant self-actualization and belonging.
Paper long abstract:
This paper responds to a heated political debate concerning Norwegian childcare protection services with a focus on migrant families reporting fear that the childcare protection will “steal” their children, ruin their family, thus violate senses of self and belonging. Based on in-depth interviews with parents and childcare protection workers, and inspired by critical phenomenology, the paper points towards reflexive and embodied experiences of structural injustice, estrangement and un-belonging. Here, the sense of self is based in the human disposition to act and to be aware of being acted upon (Merleau-Ponty). Self-actualization is not merely personal but is intersubjective, as well as economic and political since self-actualization takes place in active participation with others. The crossing into one another of self and other, as well as their holding apart, lends itself to both a commonality and a plurality of perspectives. Senses of belonging and alienation are not only products, but also ‘do’ things as they mobilize actions, decisions and interpretations, and are thus lively actants in the childcare protection process. Reflecting on the assessment management that guide childcare workers, the making and sustaining of self and belonging are here at stake, and I suggest, tend to create senses of alienation and un-belonging among migrant families as their views, narratives and truth are largely neglected. However, I argue alienation as non-essential and attempt to make the case that this non-essentialist view can be used to guide politics towards counteracting structural violation and injustice and rather support immigrant self-actualization and belonging.