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:
-
Corine Vedrine
(National School of Architecture of Lyon/ CMW-CNRS)
Manos Spyridakis (University of Peloponnese)
Send message to Convenors
- Chairs:
-
Manos Spyridakis
(University of Peloponnese)
Corine Vedrine (National School of Architecture of Lyon/ CMW-CNRS)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- R1A
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
This framework includes the anthropology of post-welfare capitalism as a system and as a discourse producing a myth of prosperity, creating common values and identities with notions of mutuality, diversity, welfare state, ecology and heritage.
Long Abstract:
Anthropology of policies and ideology of capitalism in the EU
Exploring citizenship, diversity and production of common values in the social, urban and market post-welfare state context
In the recent period there has been a critique and a strong concern about the way EU citizens are becoming alienated from an augmented distancing and commercialised policy-making procedure in social and economic terms. It seems that a 'new spirit of capitalism as described by L Boltanski and E Chiapello, developed from the 80s onwards, produces new professional, social and urban effects and practices entailing the creation of new employment forms, new social ethics and new urban practices but also increasing precariousness. The hallmarks of these trends concern flexibility, mobility, network, risk, civil society, new entrepreneurialism and a great deal of competitiveness leading to a debatable social cohesion and creating new divisions among the privileged and the non privileged. In this framework welcomed papers include aspects concerning the following: the analysis on ideology justifying the narratives of the myth of prosperity and of sharing common values and identities, the research towards the notion of welfare state, mutuality, diversity, ecology, authenticity and heritage as political technologies of the capitalistic system of governance, the question of how anthropologists work with capitalism as a system producing marginal life levels and as a discourse creating norms and charter for social actors' consent as well as a new urban order, articulating the notions of capitalism in the urban space.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses institutional EU contexts and documents in which 'discourses and practices' of valorisation and protection of cultural heritage has been developed in last decades. Cultural anthropology is questioning this idea of cultural heritage, particularly immaterial, as a common european 'property', but also as an economic engine.
Paper long abstract:
Focussing on European Programmes on research, protection and valorisation of Cultural Heritage the paper starts from an analysis of the key-words used in the official documents, in the programmes guidelines, in the already evaluated and financed projects. An 'institutional thinking' on immaterial cultural heritage emerges: ritual expressions, traditional practices and ceremonial systems are important elements of local development, but also of interaction among different cultural contexts in the EU space. Many documents and programmes, for example, concern cooperative research, dissemination projects and trans-national training and education on these topics. A 'discourse' on common European identity has been elaborated in these institutional processes, especially concerning traditions and ritualised relations to territories. At the same time a 'discourse' on European pre-Christian common roots begins to be developed as a way of cross-cultural dialogue and of internal cohesion besides religious, political, ethnical diversities.
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to discuss the production of discourses of heritage, ecology and authenticity as technologies of the capitalistic system of governance, and their potentiality to produce common values and identities. It is based on data gathered through long term ethnographic fieldwork focusing on recently emerging service economies in the Catalan Pyrenees.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to discuss the production of discourses of heritage, ecology and authenticity in the Catalan Pyrenees, which has undergone deep changes in the last decades. It will focus more specifically on a valley that has recently seen a progressive substitution of former agricultural and livestock production sectors by service economies including tourism, property development and public service. The emergence of this new economy implied a reorganisation of the social structure, as well as of forms and styles of life within this valley. It was accompanied by a process of societal crisis and depopulation.
We will argue that discourses of heritage, ecology and authenticity can be thought of as technologies of the capitalistic system of governance that has accompanied the development of a new productive system. In this sense, the creation of a natural park, museums, the revalorization of heritage, etc. is preceded by the production of such discourses. These elements allowed the implementation of a new economic system based on tourism and the construction of second residences in the villages. The cultural production is in the core of this new economy. But it's not just about economy, but of political economy.
We will explore how these discourses were developed, taking into account not just the official production of its meanings but also how they have been adopted, contested and rejected by the local population.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I analyse the entrepreneurial ideology that values heritage as a key 'hegemonic device' in the neoliberal urban policy agendas of EU cities, by bringing up data collected through research on the re-urbanization process on public land at Tigné, in the Maltese local council of Sliema.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I analyse the entrepreneurial ideology that values heritage as a key hegemonic asset in the neoliberal urban policy agenda of EU cities. The 'new spirit of capitalism' entails the commoditisation of the urban; such as in development and marketing of property through the logic of the visualisation of heritage (thus landscaped heritages). Far from being just images, heritage and landscape become very material 'hegemonic devices' since not only they anchor on particular places (and space them out by setting their population adrift) but also erode whatever contentious reactions take place with regards to the dominant values of land use.
I focus on this problem at a theoretical level by bringing up ethnographic data collected through a research centred on the re-urbanization process on public land at Tigné, in the Maltese local council of Sliema and opposite the World Heritage Site of Valletta. By drawing attention on this case, I pop the assumption that takes for granted that heritage and landscape are mere 'cultural' givens beyond their everyday political-economic framing. Moreover, and taking into account the specificity of Malta in the EU, I argue that alongside the interested construction of these 'hegemonic devices', there has to be a slackening of 'hard-core civil society', either by eradicating it or by making it 'environmentally friendly'. Hand in hand with this process there is a propelling of property marketing as a view-point for the few, which can only be achieved by taming the territory through neoliberal urban policies that pave the way for the privatization of public land.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I show how the reshaping of Berlin contributes to convey values and standards particular to capitalism. Then I underline, for the East Berliners, many ways available to reconsider the capitalism and to adapt themselves to the reorganizations consecutive to the reunification.
Paper long abstract:
Since the reunification, the territory of Berlin is the object of a plural staging. This staging comes with the transformation of Berlin into a centre of economic and political power. It also takes place in order to increase the attractive character of the city, in terms of tourism and demography. Manipulation of urban landscape in the east part of Berlin also aims at making the enforcement of a liberal and democratic order as well as making visible the transition to a capitalist system after the reunification.
In this context, ex-citizens of GDR are supposed to adopt the ways of thinking and the ways of doing inherent to capitalism. This conversion is commonly expressed in terms of change of mentality and hardly leaves place to the recognition of an East German identity.
In this paper, I will consider the urban space as a support on which the capitalist model establishes itself. With the example of Berlin, I show how the reorganization of the urban space (constructions ex nihilo, rehabilitation, removal of traces of the past, etc.) contributes to convey values and standards particular to capitalism. Then, I will explain how the East Berliners react, answer and adapt themselves to the changes generated by the disappearance of GDR and the imposition of a capitalist way of life through the development of the "new Berlin".
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to give a perspective on the ideal type 'new man' that ideological systems as communism and capitalist democracy imposed on the Albanian citizen through the primary obligatory socializing public institutions.
Paper long abstract:
Ideology is an important tool not only for groups and governments political action but also for individual behavior. It is difficult to see how individuals can live without some adherence to values and beliefs which make up their own ideological system and define their actions. The role of ideology in the lives of individuals, groups and nations may well be inconsistent but it can also be quite significant and dramatic at times, especially in defining the citizen ought to be related to the state and the way round. For the Albanian collectivity, the crumbling down of Berlin Wall signified, in one hand, the end of the communist project of citizenship, based on collective justice, and the triumph, in the other hand, of market-economy democracy project of citizenship, based on materialist freedoms. Though, both projects, were, in overall, part of the big Western project of citizenship and interdependent on each other, they differentiated, in content, from the way political ideologies make use of the public space as a mode in which signification is corporate as part and parcel of what one does in daily life as a citizen. Therefore, the 'Ideal type' of citizen is manifested and imposed on the individuals through the primary obligatory public socializing institutions i.e elementary schools and secondary educations, aiming that from the ideological realm to produce in the public space the 'new man'.