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Contribution short abstract

This session explores the potential for commons-based, non-hierarchical research models in academia. It will discuss how these models can unlearn traditional academic structures in psychological anthropology and what implications this might have for the field.

Contribution long abstract

This session explores the potential for commons-based, non-hierarchical research models in academia based on practice both inside and outside institutions. Through each model, the project will also study the potentiality for immanent critique of the idea of discipline. It will discuss how these models can help to unlearn traditional academic structures in psychological anthropology and what implications this might have for the field. The leading questions are: How can commoning research practices create pedagogical moments to navigate institutional frustration, grapple with traumatic remnants of colonial legacies, and confront the challenges of building meaningful allyship across differences? How might these pedagogical processes pave the way for reimagining academic hierarchies and fostering the emergence of a new working class grounded in principles of solidarity and collaborative knowledge production?

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Contribution short abstract

This outdoor workshop, drawing from the inclusivity at the heart of the ‘commons’, explores how we can challenge species hierarchies within (psychological) anthropological research and pedagogy.

Contribution long abstract

The framework of the ‘commons’, when applied to the pedagogic methods of (psychological) anthropology, invites us to imagine less hierarchical and inclusive ways of imagining and teaching, the ethnographic methodology. This outdoor workshop will explore the possibilities, and problems, of making the discipline more inclusive to non-human beings. If, following the multi-species turn and a recent shift towards post-humanism, we accept that the ‘human’ can be co-constituted through non-human entanglements, how do we prepare students to include non-humans in their analytical frameworks before they enter the field? What epistemologies, embodied techniques, or interdisciplinary collaborations can we find to challenge the current human-centric focus of anthropological pedagogy? We will use our own bodies as sites to explore these questions, practising techniques that could be used to invite non-humans into our classrooms, or more importantly, students into non-human outdoor realms.

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Contribution short abstract

This project examines the role of social relationships in psychiatric crisis care. By attuning to familial and social networks in practices of listening and recognition, recovery is revealed to be a re-commoning of traumatic experience, held in relation and reimagined through the collective.

Contribution long abstract

This project examines the role of social relationships in psychiatric crisis care. By attuning to familial and social networks in practices of listening and recognition, recovery is revealed to be a re-commoning of traumatic experience, held in relation and reimagined through the collective.

In this laboratory contribution, participants will engage in short but powerful exercises designed to explore our capacities to listen, and to heighten our attention to words and emotions in order to more complexly engage the experiences of others. These exercises are derived from a dialogical therapeutic approach and reconceptualized to speak to the ethnographic as well, revealing a compelling resonance between anthropolgical modes of disciplinary listening and those of actors in psychological and caring spaces. Following the exercises, we will discuss this and other ideas that surface for participants.

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Contribution short abstract

This paper examines how Latinas in San Diego build networks for career support and mutual psychological aid. It explores how these networks foster resilience and prepare participants for capitalist market challenges, while also standardizing behaviors and imposing conformity pressures.

Contribution long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in San Diego, this paper explores how Latinas striving for social upward mobility in the US-American society build networks to support women in their career paths and to learn from successful role models. In these networks, practical skills and knowledge are shared, and a sense of community is established. Many of these groups also emphasize mutual psychological support and address both individual and collective hardships and traumas arising from personal experiences as well as collective experiences of racism and sexism. In these groups, self-help is collectively organized by creating spaces for the expression and recognition of psychological distress. Additionally, these groups invite experts who draw on various spiritual, religious, cultural, and psychological resources to engage participants in collective practices of 'taking care,' 'healing,' and 'recovering.' This aims to find acceptance of common burdens, to create awareness of shared hardships and to strengthen resilience. In the context of career development, however, it is also about preparing participants for the challenges of the capitalist market and imparting positive attitudes toward life, which are deemed necessary for social mobility. This paper problematizes how the commoning of traumatic experiences and the commoning of practices of care create community and belonging but also foster standardization and impose pressure on individuals.

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Contribution short abstract

This contribution considers the tensions between the desire for connection, community, collective care and emotional well-being and the increasing commodification of these experiences; and their implications for understanding the commons in psychological anthropology.

Contribution long abstract

This contribution considers the tensions between the desire for connection, community, collective care and emotional well-being alongside the increasing commodification of these experiences in this particular contemporary moment. Drawing on examples from 'wellness' spaces and economies in Southeast Asia, questions about the boundaries of the psychological commons are raised with regard to inclusion and exclusion - whose well-being and at what cost? - and the links between wellbeing as labour, service, and experience. While the commons are often seen as an antidote to commodification and exclusionary capitalist dynamics, this project reflects on their frequent, if uneasy, entanglements in the quest for psychological wellbeing.