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- Convenors:
-
Jaka Repic
(University of Ljubljana)
Verena Stolcke (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
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- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 410
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
We propose to examine the contentious paradigmatic turnover of contemporary perspectives on migrations, focusing on crossing cultural borders and mixings of identities that purportedly neutralize the divisive effects of cultural differences, yet in fact reifying them.
Long Abstract:
There is now a vast amount of literature on the causes and consequences of transnational migrations in which the politics of identity and of socio-cultural exclusion and inclusion received privileged attention. Crossing cultural, social and political boundaries appears to result in establishing new ambivalent identities seemingly transgressing cultural differences but in fact often asserting them as essential and divisive. In this workshop we propose to examine the contentious flip side of contemporary perspectives on migrations. A whole range of new old notions have come into anthropological usage in recent years - hybridity, mestizaje, creolization, miscegenation, cultural mediation - to account for the confounding effects the crossing of political and cultural boundaries seem to have in engendering ambivalent identities by blurring original socio-cultural identities. Yet, this assumption entails a paradox. The crossing of political cultural borders and mixing of identities only in appearance dilute and neutralize the divisive consequences cultural differences may have. For the very notions of crossing borders or mixing identities, in fact, re-activate original cultures and identities which they presuppose. This is admittedly a provocative proposal which we hope to debate with the aid of comparative ethnographic and historical data.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the construction of social categories, such as “mestizo” and “criollo”, as interpreted from Society of Jesus’ viewpoint in colonial Peru. These ambivalent terms had nothing to do with “race”, but rather with genealogical arguments related to purity of blood and lineage as regards to unequal marriages.
Paper long abstract:
The objective of this paper consists of exploring the construction of social categories, such as "mestizo" and "criollo", as interpreted from Society of Jesus' viewpoint in colonial Peru (16th and 17th centuries. As I will show, this ambivalent term had nothing to do with "race", but rather with matters related to purity of blood, lineage and the quality of people as regards to unequal marriages. To understand the Society of Jesus' official position with respect to these concerns, I want to revise the Statutes of Purity of Blood, issued in the V General Congregation of Rome (1593), to critically analyze the political and historical conditions that blocked the "impure and illegitimate Jesuits" from entering the Ignatius Order. Generally speaking, in the mid-seventeenth century, the Society welcomed "criollos" to become capable and loyal Jesuits, while "mestizos" were definitely refused. Sexual limits turned into moral limits. The alleged "imperfections" - physical and intellectual ones, such as barbarous and evil customs - of Indians and "mestizos" did not affect "criollos" any more, because they related from now on to the dominant groups of power. Thus, by linking to the Spaniards, "criollos" gained access to ecclesiastical and administrative posts, while "mestizos" did not. To conclude, this paper will demonstrate that the Jesuit policy regarding "mestizos" and "criollos" did not blur these social categories. Rather the contrary, it helped to reinforce them, presupposing the existence of a "criollo" identity that will be claimed in the years to come.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I will explain how non western cosmologies, especially Amerindian ones, conceptualize unions between essentially different beings and their reproduction results, and under which forms of relationships is /is not possible to cross these immaterial borders.
Paper long abstract:
Transnational movements are as old as humanity, but what is not enough considered when scholars analyse its consequences are the ways in that otherness experience -meeting, knowledge, conceptualization of new people and new cultural spaces - are integrated in social organization, in humanity's notions, in cosmologies and in world's representation of societies. This otherness experience is very well documented in Europe from Ancient Greece. Greeks travelled and drew sophisticated maps of those distinct others. Their cartographies were as far away as illustrating immaterial universes they encountered in their cosmologies. Their myths constitute a complex classification of essentially different others - gods, mid gods, heroes -, with which humans were not capable of maintaining relationships outside very specific ritual prescriptions. Even though those rules, borders between categories were easily broken by the strong power of passion and love. And from those prohibited moment
s hybrids were easily engendered. We can not advance how the identity of those hybrids were conceptualized, besides their physical constitution, visible in iconography and in mythical narratives; but we could presume that when old western civilization linked beings of different assumed origins, the result used to be the conception of complete new ones. New beings for which humans created new specific places in the pantheon, separated in any case of humans even when humans were partially genitors. In sum, I will explain how non western cosmologies, especially Amerindian ones, conceptualize unions between essentially different beings and their reproduction results, and under which forms of relationships is /is not possible to cross these immaterial borders.
Paper short abstract:
This paper tries to examine the relevance of notions of mixture in the case of Catalan nationalist discourse, through the analysis of the use of the denigrate term “xarnego” to denominate the offspring of mixed marriage between Catalan and Spanish immigrants during the internal Spanish migration of 1960-70 years.
Paper long abstract:
Nationalist discourse appears as one privileged field to examine the relevance of notions of crossing cultures and/or mixed identities. Nationalism is a kind of socio-political discourse that usually implies a concept of "pure" nation and delimited cultural pertinence that appears incompatible with the idea of hybridity or mixed national origins.
This paper tries to illustrate these arguments through the analysis of the Catalan case, characterised by the absence of a state power to regulate immigration policies, national belonging and identity legally. This case has been traditionally used as an example of "integrative nationalism". The nationalist Catalan historiography and political discourse has advocated for an integrative image of Catalonia as a "land of passage" of different peoples (from the Greeks and Romans, to the Phoenician and Franks, etc.), and argues that from that mixture the supposed essence of Catalanhood arises. I would like to contrast this public political discourse with the reality of one kind of xenophobic reaction towards the wave of immigrants that results from the internal Spanish economic migration that received Catalonia in 1960-70 years. This social reaction was shown with the use of a pejorative term, "xarnego", to denominate and denigrate the offspring of mixed marriage between Catalan and those who arrived in Catalonia from other regions of Spain. This term was also used to denominate the first arrived immigrants that were considered as "not integrated" because they didn't used the Catalan language some time after their arrival.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is an anthropological-historical analysis of the process of the construction of a tragically ambivalent definition of Sephardim in modern Spain and its consequences for Sephardim in Spain and occupied Europe during World War II.
Paper long abstract:
From the middle of the 19th century Sephardim where increasingly thought as a cultural-historical "mix" of Jews and Spaniards in modern Spain. The construction of this ambivalent identity instead of favouring the reintegration of Sephardim to the successor state of the kingdoms from where their ancestors where expelled in 1492, in fact emphasized and reified the supposedly original, distinct and separate identities, "Spanish" and "Jewish". The consequence was that while a discourse of political inclusion developed, in fact Sephardim were never accepted as full citizens in Modern Spain. That had tragic consequences for those Sephardim that had enjoyed a pseudo-citizenship status from the middle of the 19th century at the outbreak of World War II, when Nazi Germany initiated the systematic extermination of European Jews. When those pseudo-Spanish citizens where in need for full protection from the state they thought they where members, Francoist Spain rejected to allow them to cross the geopolitical border to enter Spain to prevent those who "after all" where Jews to pollute the catholic purity of his ideal Spanish nation. Nazi Germany probably deported most of those abandoned by Spain to extermination camps, where they were murdered. In the refugee chaos provoked by the war in Europe, Francoist Spain also developed a silent policy of expulsion of Jews already living in Spain, among them Sephardim, from Spanish soil.
Paper short abstract:
Did Black Africans that reached Spain from Renaissance to the 19th century suffered the destruction of their own original cultures and adopted their captors’? In this Paper we will enlighten the memory of freed and enslaved Black Africans and their role in the social history of Spain as well as their attempts to maintain and defend their identities.
Paper long abstract:
People of black African descent, freed or enslaved, men or women, born in Spain or brought from Guinea, were thoroughly represented in historical and literary sources from the Renaissance to the 19th century, when the abolition of slavery was discussed at the Parliament. Black Africans have been part of the Iberian population for centuries and the number of plays, poems and narratives in which sub-Saharans come into view as secondary characters, but also as protagonists, is quite surprising. Equally astonishing is the paucity of studies that have been dedicated to them by Spanish scholars and the lack of awareness of present-day Spaniards about the presence of black Africans in Spanish culture and history, particularly as Spain probably had the largest black population in Europe. For instance, most contemporary Spaniards do not realise that the stepfather of Lázaro, the orphan rogue child who narrates his autobiography in the classic picaresque novel (Life of the Lazarillo de Tormes, his misfortunes and adversities, 1554) was a black man, even though the text is a compulsory reading in secondary schools. Moreover, in spite of being christened and having adopted Spanish traditions and costumes, they held a particular celebratory character in civil and religious ceremonies. This was due to the fact that they were not perceived as a threat, and therefore, were allowed to keep on practicing African dances and songs (cadena de congo, minuetes de guineo, etc) that became particularly popular, especially on public holidays but also on religious ones such as the Corpus.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between migration and identity of transnational migrants through the notion of home. It explores the ways the concept of home is perceived by Slovene returned emigrants and their descendants.
Paper long abstract:
Migration presents a complex phenomenon not solely related to geographical mobility, but at the same time influencing variety of personal and social transformations while depending on diverse internal and external factors. While considering these factors, my intention is to approach the remigration through the frame of transnationalism that indicates processes, activities, individuals and their identifications across national borders and connects them in broader space, both physical and cognitive. In the last century, many Slovenians emigrated to various locations around the globe, both as political and economic emigrants. In recent decades, especially after Slovenian independency, many of them or their descendants have returned.
In this paper, I would like to consider the effect that migrations have on constitution of 'selves' and 'others' in relation to home. Migrations involve a splitting of home as place of origin and home as place as the sensory world of everyday experience. An essential point of this paper relates to the fact that globalisation, transnationalism and the concomitant creation of transnational social spaces have greatly affected the meaning of home for returned migrants and have consequently influenced on their construction of identity. I intend to present the understandings of home that reflect the reality of living in social worlds that span two countries and the development of decentred multiple attachments and feelings of belonging in more than one place. In response to above described circumstances, Slovenian remigrants tend to experience home as multi-dimensional, pluri-local, and characterized by regular movement across the state borders.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is about crossing religious boundaries in the different contexts of Denmark and Brazil. It explores the ways social actors by converting to ethnic minority religions experience and relate to sameness and otherness in their `hybrid´ constructions of self-identity.
Paper long abstract:
Religion shares features with analytical categories such as race and class; consequently religious conversion may be conceptualised as a transformation of identity in several ways. In particular the act of converting to an ethnic minority religion tends to be perceived as a means of cultural critique, a revolt against the national community, and thus as a dissent that unsettles the boundaries by which selfhood, nationhood and community are defined. This perspective also indicates creation of new and hybrid identities. The proposed paper is based on a comparative field study of ethnic majority populations´ conversions to ethnic minority religions, i.e. Danes´ conversion to Islam in Denmark and white middle-class Brazilians´ conversions to Afro-Brazilian Candomblé in South East Brazil. The aim of the paper is to explore and compare how the different social actors (the converts) deal with otherness represented by respectively immigrants and descendants of former slave populations and the different ways they relate to and experience sameness and otherness, inclusion and exclusion in their constructions of self-identity. By that the paper aims to show how ways of conceptualising sameness, otherness and hybridity is conditioned by different national contexts for constructing ethnic and racial identities.
Paper short abstract:
"Wantok" is an ambivalent social category that emerged in Papua New Guinea during the colonial era and had been later reinforced through internal migrations, urban interactions and the need of establishing specific identities pertaining to original community, place and culture.
Paper long abstract:
The paper explores ambivalency of contemporary urban identities among Okapians in Port Moresby and the role of the "wantok system" in the social life of their translocal urban community. I will present the case of Okapians in an urban settlement in Port Moresby and their continuous negotiation between traditional notions of community and place of origin on the one hand and migration and urban strategies on the other hand. Being Okapian in Port Moresby represents a dynamic, non-essential social category that incorporates new urban identifications as well as traditional notions of community, broadened affinity, descent and place of origin. In an urban space these notions are transformed into a new social category called "wantok system" that incorporates social networks of co-ethnics, co-villagers, relatives and friends. "Wantok" is made through social interactions and since the category is unclear, it can be ambivalently used either for socio-cultural inclusion or exclusion. Migrating to Port Moresby entails establishing new relations with "wantoks" and new urban identities but among Okapians and other residents of informal urban settlements it also strengthens the role of original place in establishing interactions and asserting divisive cultural differences to other communities in the city.