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- Convenors:
-
Stefanie Lotter
(SOAS)
Robert Thornton (University of the Witwatersrand)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 5
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
This workshop explores 'loss' as a conceptual frame to analyze change and to seek to understand it as constitutive of meaning rather than simply as absence.
Long Abstract:
We wish to re-imagine the apparently ´missing' as paradoxically present by exploring loss as an absence that is also a defining presence. We would like to examine loss as in decline and undoing of relations, the unlearning and forgetting of abilities and the loss and destruction of objects.
In general we tend to describe change with the beginning of a new paradigm, epoch or possibilities. However, loss may happen at the beginning, middle or ending of processes. For this workshop and a subsequent publication we would like to invite papers that focus on:
The loss of personality, mind, identity, for instance:
• loss of a past through the decline of memory or the loosing of ones
mind
• loss of a future with its missed chances or closed options
Loss as central/defining absence, for instance:
• Loss of a parent, virginity - redefining your kinship role,
• loss of love in rejection or death
The loss of objects, values, knowledge and goals, for instance:
• loss of knowledge about material culture
• loss of 'heritage' objects as loss of culture
• loss at games or of money and the experience of defeat
The loss of past or future for instance:
• decolonisation as the undoing of colonialism rather than a state of
post-colonisation
• finality of loss in war or violence as loss of an expected future and
condition for alternative futures, or the unrecoverable future.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 August, 2008, -Peter Phillimore (Newcastle University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper, based on recent fieldwork in Ludwigshafen, explores the paradoxical ways in which industrial skills, management styles and practices, pollution of air and water, public services, demography and immigration all get interwoven in a narration of change, loss, hope and unease, involving nostalgia and evasion.
Paper long abstract:
In a town dominated for over a century by a single industry and a single corporation, popular reflection in the German chemical centre of Ludwigshafen has tended to stress long-run continuities, typified in families where generation after generation has worked in the same firm and place. Yet concealed by such cyclical imagery of enduring stability is also a less noticed rumination on the balance sheet of profound social and economic change, in which loss and a sense of the missing is a pervasive motif. This paper, based on recent fieldwork in Ludwigshafen, explores the paradoxical ways in which industrial skills, management styles and practices, pollution of air and water, public services, demography and immigration all get interwoven in a narration of change, loss, hope and unease, involving a degree of nostalgia as well as considerable evasion.
Joshua Rickard (Kumamoto University)
Paper short abstract:
Issues of isolation, disrupted social structure, and conflict have profound affects on cultural identity and family structure. This paper examines the cultural perception and identities of university students living in the occupied city of Nablus in Palestine.
Paper long abstract:
I spent the summer of 2007 conducting ethnographic research and filming interviews in Palestinian refugee camps in the besieged city of Nablus, the West Bank. Questions addressed included how cultural identity has been shaped and changed as a result of the occupation, and how traditions and family structure have been maintained in the refugee camps and other isolated communities. In seeking a modern perspective, I chose to interview young people, particularly university students, to gain their insight on the difficult political and economic forces on the issues that form the identity of Palestinians living in these communities. Some of the major themes that emerged during interviews were cultural sustainability, education, psychological trauma, and family structure. As a result of the reflections and testimonies of personal and collective identity given by the contributors to the research and the time in which it was conducted, immediately before and during the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the study gives in depth insight into issues of cultural change, conflict, and a future in modern Palestine.
Laura Huttunen (Tampere University)
Paper short abstract:
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 meant enormous personal and collective losses for most, if not all Bosnians.There are various discourses and practices within post-war Bosnia that seek to harness such losses for political ends. In this paper, the focus of investigation will be on tensions between private, narrated memories of loss and public commemorative practices. The collective appropriations of loss are compared with private practices of grasping loss and imagining future.
Paper long abstract:
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 meant enormous personal and collective losses for most, if not all Bosnians. Many lost their loved ones, their family houses and other material belongings, and further their previous occupational positions and the like. The violent nature of the war meant also that many people lost their neighbourly relations, and the social fabric of most local communities was damaged or destroyed altogether. The social, cultural and political repercussions of the war changed social life to the extent that many Bosnians claim that they have lost "the world as they used to know it".
There are various discourses and practices within post-war Bosnia that seek to harness such losses for political ends. Memorial sites commemorating various events of the war are among such practices. In this paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, I will look at specific memorial sites within Bosnia, such as a burial site of victims of shellfire in Tuzla, and the ways in which they are commented upon by Bosnians, both by locals and by Bosnians visiting from diaspora. The focus of investigation will be on tensions between private, narrated memories of loss and public commemorative practices. The collective appropriations of loss are compared with private practices of grasping loss and imagining future, such as writing poetry in the diaspora.
Chiara Garattini (Intel Corporation)
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on pregnancy loss and infantile death as the relationship between death, memory, and parental identity formation. The loss of a child is a journey into becoming a parent and a processes of imaginative encounters between parents and the absence/presence of their lost child.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws on my research on pregnancy loss and infantile death in the context of Irish cultural history. In situations of infantile death parents construct a personhood for a baby who never lived and "create" memories through the use of material culture and space. The (supposedly) imagined relationship with their babies represents an interesting crossroads where materiality, immateriality, imagination and reality seem to meld. Parents experience a feeling of "presence", "intervention" and sometimes the "apparition" of their child's "ghost" while they are reconciling themselves with loss. Through these encounters—spatial, material and imaginative—parents construct an identity for their deceased child, while simultaneously articulating their own identities. The loss of a child for these parents is the beginning of a journey into "becoming" parents. Furthermore, for some young parents this event also becomes an occasion for personal "change". Infant loss is often their first encounter with the "finality" of death and this can influence their life expectations, plans for the future, and the way in which they approach subsequent pregnancies. Through an analysis of the spatial and material dimensions of loss I argue that the relationship with their absent/present child becomes a way for parents to form a new identity.
Anne Brydon (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper concerns narratives of loss manifest in Iceland’s debate over hydroelectric dams, heavy industry, and the future of the highland. They exemplify how pasts and futures fold into the experience of the present: as loss or gain, but also as contingency or necessity, rupture or continuity, chaos or order.
Paper long abstract:
Environmental politics constellate diverse experiences and conceptualizations of temporality, yet tropes of loss have brought forth moments of conjuncture between their different constituencies. This paper emerges from the conjuncture of several narratives of loss manifest in Iceland's debate over hydroelectric dams, foreign-owned heavy industry, and the future of the country's highland moors and rivers threatened by both. Loss of habitat, diversity, wilderness landscape, and history are projected into the future, countering the modernist trope of (monetary) gain through progress and development. These narratives exemplify how pasts and futures can fold into the experience of the present: as loss or gain, but also as contingency or necessity, rupture or continuity, chaos or order. The projection of loss made visible to urban Icelanders the little-known landscapes of Eyjabakkar and Kárahnjúkar, two sites of hydroelectric development, and in so doing instigated the country's first environmental movement. Artists critical of the changes wrought by dam projects have attempted to make loss a palpable presence for urban audiences in such diverse locales as Reykjavík, Venice, New York, and Winnipeg. The art object thus becomes a possible site for the experience of the presence of an absence, yet to experience it as such remains contingent upon the recognition of mutual concerns within transnational ecological thought. This paper examines how time and narratives of loss figure in the making of landscape, political consciousness, and art.
Fruzsina Feketene Cseh (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The final disappearance of the practice of wheeler craft in Hungary can be dated to the 1970s. Even so, it would be a mistake not to think about the masters and craftsmen who are still alive and can recall their experiences in this profession.
Paper long abstract:
Taking into consideration the lives of the craftsmen, as influenced by the changing social and economical conditions, and being aware of their memories are beneficial not only for understanding the technique of wheeler craft but also for following the loss of workmanship in lifestyle and attitude. How they have lost their experience in the craft is different in the case of each master, depending on their circumstances, their level of knowledge and the community they have worked in. Accordingly, the events they attach importance to in retrospect also differs. The process of losing the craft incorporates different memories and experiences, and takes much more time ─ 50 to 90 years ─ than the loss of practice. This process is worth following, as the ways the craftsmen have lost their knowledge also says a lot about wheeler craft, and beyond the changing memories, about the varied range of values and social relations of craftsmen. Studying the loss of knowledge raises new questions regarding the research methodology of disappearing and sometimes incomplete knowledge compared to an active and live craft. How and what should we ask, what kind of aspects are to be researched during the analysis of the life courses? The author of the paper tries to answer these questions with the help of her own new researches and experiences and by using other earlier researches in this subject.
Liam Campbell (Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
Globalisation has tended to reinforce the detachment from the environmentand much needs to be done to compensate for this effect. But we musr firstly recognise the loss and grief and deal with it appropriately if we are to move forward with any confidence.
Paper long abstract:
Much of the research in Europe on the notion of landscape in nature tends to focus on the large diversity of cultural landscapes, currently losing their ties with the land-use systems that formed them. Reports show a large commitment to this decreasing diversity and appear characterised by a strong sense of loss and grief. Globalisation has tended to reinforce the detachment of people from their environment and much needs to be done to compensate for this effect. However how are we to move forward with confidence and consistency if this grief and loss is not recognised and dealt with appropiately. Land is a tangible, physical resource that can be worked, sold ,built upon and its importance is more functional than beautiful. However landscape is an intangible resource, whose definitive characteristic is its appearance ; landscape isviewed not worked. Land is personal ; Landscape is communal. How is this move from a tangible cultural heritage to an intangibleheritage perceived and dealt with ? There can be no agreement even about what to preserve or create, if there is no agreed upon reference images of landscape and land.
Aleš Lamut (Institute for Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia)
Paper short abstract:
Stigma regarding men who have sex with men (MSM) is related to sexual risk behavior. Stigma can be subdivided into perceived, experienced and internalized stigma. Each contributes to the loss of future and therefore it increases mechanisms by which stigma leads to negative outcomes, including sexual risk behavior.
Paper long abstract:
Stigma regarding men who have sex with men (MSM) is related to sexual risk behavior. Stigma can be subdivided into perceived, experienced and internalized stigma. Social pressure is reducing the options of choice, influencing MSM partner search and their sexual behavior. "Coming out", the act of declaring one selves as gay in context of Slovenian heteronormative society, can become an act of closing ones options in future, regarding sexually transmitted infections. Since MSM are difficult to reach, the central question is how to gather most relevant data to inform future disease prevention and sexual education policy efforts. Development of specific and adequate methodological approach for the study of "hidden population" is the central question of the paper. Author discusses the use of different sociological and epidemiological approaches in MSM sexual behavior research. In that context the possibilities of anthropological qualitative research are presented.