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- Convenors:
-
Bojan Baskar
(University of Ljubljana)
Cathie Carmichael (University of East Anglia)
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- Discussant:
-
Jane Schneider
(CUNY)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 430
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 August, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
The workshop will investigate- ethnographically, historiographically and comparatively-diverse derogatory depictions of landscapes, presumably characterizing some European peripheries (the Balkans, southern Italy etc.), as an important dimension of imperialist discourses on European peripheries.
Long Abstract:
European peripheries, as imagined by travelers and other commentators from core 'Western' regions, have often been depicted as depressing (ugly, rugged, desolate, sterile, volcanic, lunar...) landscapes, always proceeding on the assumption that the landscape and the people dwelling in it determine one another and thus share basic features. Images of cursed landscapes, invested with allegorical meanings and moral implications, are central to a variety of discourses on European peripheries, inhabited by 'semi-' or 'non-European' Others: the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Southern Italy (or Southern Europe in general), the Celtic rim (in the past), and so forth. These derogatory depictions are as a rule phenomena of longer duration since they are part and parcel of imperialist projects of subjugating other populations, both external and internal, of various empires and nation-states. The workshop will aim at exploring, both ethnographically and historiographically, a variety of imagined geographies linked with these discourses (balkanist, mediterraneanist, meridionalist…); common procedures of their construction (e.g., inventing cultural boundaries); interactions between landscape representations, regional ecology and relief (e.g., the prominence of the highlands-lowlands dichotomy) and dominant aesthetic sensibilities in the core areas; the regional impact and other regional/local refractions (e.g., 'self-balkanizing') of these discourses of 'intra-European' Others; contrasting perceptions and evaluation of the same regions by local communities, their own ways of constructing landscapes; and so forth.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
Taking different peripheries in Europe's West, East, and centres, geographical and cultural frontier landscapes are considered as theatres of subversion.
Paper long abstract:
Taking its title partly from an art-based project I am involved with at present, partly from an art exhibition to mark the German EU presidency in 2007, this paper looks at some imagined and actual, geographical and cultural frontiers in Europe. Starting from the Celtic peripheries of the British Isles, the paper considers the Sarmatian coast and northern inland parts before moving on to peripheries in the centre of geographical and political Europe. A key focus is on how peripheries have been, and are being used as theatres for the performance of different visions of Europe, sometimes consolidating, sometimes challenging the hegemonic vision, played out by local actors as well as outsiders. This raises issues of locality and "from-here-ness", highlighting the ambivalence of authenticity and the subversive potential of the concept. In conclusion the paper considers the ethnographer's role in the process of creating, defending and destroying moralised landscapes.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims at presenting different narratives on Calabria what leads to a more general discussion on the process of construction of ‘peripheral landscapes’.
Paper long abstract:
The idea of this paper arose thanks to a project carried out in 2005 in a Calabrian town. The research was thought as a comparison of varied narratives on the Southern Italy. Contrasting everyday life stories with scientific and mass media discourses, I aimed at exploring different ways in which people create representations of certain social realities.
Building on this research experience, I would like to contribute to the workshop with a paper composed of two parts. In the first one I would like to present different accounts about Calabrian landscape I encountered in course of my fieldwork, putting a special attention to the comparison between 'locals' and 'outsiders' perspective. Then I am going to say a few words about the influence of the media on both social imaginary of Italian South as well as on self-representation of the inhabitants of the Southern regions. Finally, I would like to briefly comment on some scientific depictions of the South European landscapes.
All those reflections will constitute an exemplification of the issues I intend to talk about in the second part of my presentation. Considering variety of understandings of the very word landscape - its social, economic, cultural, and physic dimensions - I would like to follow with a discussion on contemporary ways of construction of 'peripheral landscapes'. This process will be analyzed with a focus on: various strategies of creation of 'the Others'; conceptions of 'orientalism' and 'etno-orientalism'; moral and mythical components of the narratives on landscape.
Paper short abstract:
An ethnographic analysis of the moralised contrasts between urban and rural landscapes and the movements of opening and closure associated with them in everyday manifestations of Balkanism in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia.
Paper long abstract:
For sound reasons, many studies have critically deconstructed Western-imperialist representations of South-East Europe as semi-orientalist attempts to position 'the West' on a superior plane. Importantly, such work on 'Balkanism' has undermined misplaced attempts to explain the post-Yugoslav wars with reference to atavistic hatreds between tribes fighting their perennial vendettas in the wild Balkan mountains. Yet what is often forgotten is that Balkanist representations are widespread in the region itself, reproducing patterns of Eurocentrism well outside the EU. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, Balkanism emerges in many different, contradictory ways, from celebratory expressions of defiant Otherness, over somewhat embarrassing yet comforting experiences of cultural intimacy, to resolute distancing practices from the less savoury dimensions of life in the region and especially from the 1990s wars and their consequences. These internal Balkanisms serve as social commentaries on the morality of violence, politics, inequality and 'modernisation'. Whatever their substance and political orientation, their underlying matrix converges on wider understandings of villages and cities, of mountains and plains, of purity and mixing, of authenticity and sophistication. This presentation ethnographically addresses the tensions inherent in everyday manifestations of Balkanism, placing them against the background of Yugoslav urbanisation and post-Yugoslav violence. Particular attention will be paid to the moralised contrasts between urban and rural landscapes and the role of movements of opening and closure associated with them.
Paper short abstract:
Bosnia and Hercegovina has been divided and united as a historic region by theories that have stressed the difference as well as similarities of its peoples. Here I discuss the impact of these theories suggesting why it might be instructive to remember how important topography is for human settlement.
Paper long abstract:
During the last hundred or so years, Bosnia and Hercegovina has been subjected to a number of influential geographical and anthropological theories. Jovan Cvijić placed the area within a 'patriarchal' order or regime, which had been influenced by other civilizations, especially the 'Turco-Oriental'. He wrote extensively about the 'Dinaric' characteristics within this region. Later writers continued with Cvijić' speculation about the 'Dinaric' character including Dinko Tomašić and Stjepan Meštrović. More recently, the geneticist Damir Marjanović (Annals of Human Genetics (69) (6) 2005) has cooperated with other scientists to discuss the composition of the region, concluding that 'the three main groups of Bosnia-Herzegovina...share a large fraction of the same ancient gene pool distinctive for the Balkan area'. Marjanović et al (Documenta Praehistorica XXXIII, 2006) have also discussed the problems associated with of 'nationalistic manipulations and distortions of the facts'. In this paper I will discuss some of the ways in which non-scientific agendas have continued to direct the study of people and communities in this region. In particular, I stress the continued importance of understanding Bosnia and Hercegovina in terms of micro-regions and the geography of the Dinaric Karst, as well as rivers and towns.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how the peripherality of the eastern Adriatic, long imagined by outsiders in negative terms as “backwards,” becomes viewed as a positive “natural” resource. The analysis focuses on debates around a marine protected area (MPA) declared off the Croatian island of Losinj in 2006.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the ways in which the peripherality of the eastern Adriatic, long imagined by outsiders (as well as many locals) in negative terms as "backwards," becomes viewed as a positive resource, with backwardness reinscribed as "uncontaminated" and "natural." The analysis focuses on debates around a marine protected area (MPA) that the Croatian state declared off the island of Losinj in 2006. The declaration of this MPA followed out of the efforts of the NGO Blue World, which contends that the waters off of Losinj constitute a critical dolphin habitat. In the paper, I examine various perspectives on the MPA, including those of the scientists at Blue World, local tour operators, tourists to the island, and fishermen.
I situate the ongoing reconceptualization of the waters off of Losinj in a long history of discourses about both the Mediterranean and the Balkans as sites of archaic forms of nature and culture, primitivism, and vitality. I inquire into the historical erasures (particularly of socialist industrialization) required to sustain this vision and the ways in which a vision of an undeveloped nature and culture becomes positioned by various social actors as forward-looking and a critical asset in Croatia's EU candidacy. At the same time, the reality of a MPA remains hotly contested in local politics, suggesting that some local actors do not embrace a newly valorized understanding of "undevelopment" as a positive resource but instead fear that the realization of the MPA will keep the eastern Adriatic a "backwater."
Paper short abstract:
This paper attempts to frame a discussion of different moralities of landscape within a processual framework, trying to de-construct the presumed intrinsic positive moral value of official representations, and point to the indubordinate practices of implicit alternative moralities.
Paper long abstract:
Rural development programmes sustained by European Union agricultural policies devote much attention to rural landscapes worth of preservation as well as to people living in it. According to this view rural areas are still depositary of a traditional way of life, ideologically represented as good and positive in oppositions to the now disrupting and polluted modern one. Rural people are depicted as guardians of a (once more) vanishing civilization. Folklore studies and ethno-national rethorics had before nourished such image of rural autenticity as a strong source of legitimation - in a way that has been termed 'internal orientalism'.
During the last century relevant demographic and economical processes have brought about significant change in rural landscapes. Migration flows, mechanization in agriculture, market integration have changed considerably the ecological and socio-cultural features of many areas. Southern European countries have experienced massive migration toward the northern countries, and from rural to urban areas, whereas the agricultural economy declined considerably. Anthropological studies have shown how even the smallest sheperd community had to deal with some macro-dynamics, and how the latters have forcibly influenced new strategies to fit in with the new changing conditions.
This paper try to provide an ethnographic account of the way local views and perceptions (or moralities) of landscape can be better understood in a processual framework, and how within local comunities contrasting moralities of landscape, together with internal social stratification, reveal to be quite problematical. Ethnographic materials are provided from fieldwork in Greece (Epirus) and Italy (Sardinia). A comparison will be attempted between two different rural areas that have experienced different historical pasts.