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- Convenors:
-
Michael Stasik
(University of Basel)
Gabriel Klaeger (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Kurt Beck
(University Bayreuth)
- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V406
- Sessions:
- Thursday 12 July, -, -, Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
Everyday life is characterized by recurring states of uneventfulness and inactivity. In this workshop, we seek to explore these allegedly trivial times of waiting, and the possible modes and moods by which they are filled and experienced.
Long Abstract:
Anthropology, its neighbouring disciplines as well as the media have the tendency to describe human and social life as full of action, busyness, events and incidents. People are always depicted as doing something, things are always occurring - be it in the contexts of crisis and conflict, consumption and production, appropriation and creativity, migration and mobility, or religion and ritual.
Contrary to these perspectives, the everyday life of many is characterized by recurring states of uneventfulness and inactivity. In fact, rather than being involved in activities and events, and in actively struggling to cope with changing situations, much time is spent waiting for events to occur and for situations to change. These waiting periods permeate all spheres of everyday life around the globe; including the spheres of labour and trade (waiting for employment, goods, costumers), travel and transport (waiting for the bus to depart/arrive/be repaired), media and technology (waiting for connectivity, electricity, novelties), ritual and performance (waiting for the event to commence/proceed/end), and metaphysics (waiting for faith cure, redemption, theophany).
In this workshop, we seek to explore these allegedly trivial times of waiting, idleness and inactivity. In particular, we invite contributions that provide ethnographic insights into situations and experiences of the uneventful, and into possible modes - and moods - by which people fill these waiting periods (e.g., im/patience, boredom, amusement, frustration, conversation, compliance). Furthermore, we want to raise the question whether there is a tendency in current anthropological studies to focus on the exceptional and to neglect the ordinary and unexceptional.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 12 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
The phrase ‘getting it over with’, which encapsulates both aspects of Gasparini’s analysis of waiting, pervades juveniles’ accounts of their court experience. Uncertainty ensures their primary focus is on the case outcome and creates a desire to terminate their engagement with the system as quickly as possible.
Paper long abstract:
The phrase 'getting it over with' permeates juveniles' accounts of their experiences in the criminal justice system from the moment of their apprehension and charging by the police to the finalisation of their court appearance and serves as a rational underling their actions such as confessing to the police and pleading guilty in court. The phrase encapsulates both aspects of Gasparini's (1995) analysis of waiting: waiting or the temporal aspect and expectation or the event aspect. As Courts, for most defendants, are generally unfamiliar organisations and their experiences are usually fleeting and episodic; defendants typically experience 'reality shock' and are faced with the problems of 'learning by doing' as they perform social identity. The resultant stress and uncertainty ensures that their primary focus is on the outcome of their case and not on the processes whereby the outcome is reached and creates a desire to terminate their engagement with the system as quickly as possible. When defendants choose to exercise their rights and contest the charges, waiting can be used as a 'time tax' by the prosecution to further penalise them (Schwartz 1975, Gasparini 1995). In addition to added costs in time, defendants also face further costs in 'reputation' and 'good will'. This paper examines the experiences of juvenile defendants in four courts in Western Australia within the context of the wider criminal justice system and people processing organisations where waiting is endemic.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ongoing PhD research on the legal (rights) consciousness of asylum seekers in Austria, the presentation will discuss meaning-making-processes as a major activity during an imposed waiting time, that accounts for the (un)successful transformation from 'asylum seeker' to 'refugee'.
Paper long abstract:
The label "asylum seeker" imposes a new identity on the individual and structures his_her everyday life through highly restricting regulations: Asylum seekers are practically not allowed to work or choosing their place of living; limited resources constrain them from participating in trainings, consumption, mobility, etc. Contrary to people of the majoritarian society asylum seekers are mostly depicted as "doing nothing". Until their claim is decided asylum seekers seem to live in a "standby mode".
The image of passive asylum seekers is also perpetuated in the media and in societal discourses. Though, asylum seekers' time of waiting is everything else but trivial. Great effort is put into time-consuming, energy- and resource-extensive meaning-making-activities; active strategies have to be developed to endow the waiting time and the legal experience with meaning; various discourses linked to asylum and asylum seekers have to be understood, adopted or resisted to enable (re-)action within the legal system.
Focusing on three aspects, the suggested presentation will take a closer look at these meaning-making-processes as a main activity during the (imposed) waiting time: Firstly, the legal and social situation of asylum seekers in Austria and therein conveyed meanings of asylum and asylum seekers will be outlined to trace the framework of the waiting time. Secondly, I will exemplify why meaning making is such a complex and specific matter in the given context. Thirdly, (referring to preliminary findings) possible meanings of law, rights, and the Self will be presented as possible products of the allegedly idle waiting time.
Paper short abstract:
Through an ethnographic exploration of the temporal aspects of perceived uneventfulness and absence of change in a provincial town, the paper argues that in post-revolutionary Georgia, the modes and moods of the uneventful shapes real and perceived absences of political agency and transformation.
Paper long abstract:
The republic of Georgia is, in particular since the 2003 Rose Revolution that brought the present government into power, often depicted as a place of rapid and radical political transformation and development. This imaginary is particularly nurtured by the government, but also, albeit with certain reservations, international actors such as the EU, US, NATO etc.
In this proposed paper I explore how practical and discursive manifestations of this seemingly radical change are accompanied and countered by perceptions of presently uneventful and unchanging lives. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in the provincial town Gori, which was an industrial Centre during Soviet time. Today however, most of the former industries and factories are closed down, and unemployment rates are high. From outsiders as well as locals, Gori is - contrary to the government discourse on a rapidly changing country - depicted as a place where little happens and little is changing. The paper will discuss how narratives and practices of people's perceived uneventful and unchanging lives oftentimes dwell on nostalgic and melancholic engagements with the past while disengaging from the politics of the present and passively waiting for an unpredictable future.
Through an ethnographic exploration of these temporal aspects of modes and moods of un-eventfulness among my interlocutors, the paper argues that in post-revolutionary Georgia, such modes and moods of the uneventful shapes real and perceived absences of political agency and transformation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the indefinite waiting of asylum applicants in the UK, for Refugee Status and the 'normal' life that it symbolises. People's reflections on this period and the methods by which they filled time indicate that waiting is not such a passive, idle state as we might think.
Paper long abstract:
Waiting is a universal condition which punctuates everyday life at all stages of the life course. However, waiting events have proliferated with the complexity and interdependency of modernity, where the individual plays a small part and exercises limited control. Rather than focusing on "quotidian waiting events", which are part of everyday corporeal experience (Bissell 2007), this paper is concerned with long-term, metaphysical waiting for a 'normal', secure life. It provides an ethnographic account of a group of asylum seekers who sought protection in the UK and waited 2-9 years for an ultimate decision: either refusal and deportation to a precarious existence in the country of origin, or the chance to start anew in the UK.
Living under restrictive policies, excluded from productive activities such as work, and limited ability to effect a change in their circumstances, the asylum seekers in the study articulated a sense of passivity, 'lost time', boredom and being out of sync with social rhythms. However, they also pursued multifarious methods for filling time, such as socialising, praying, immersing themselves in daily routines, gathering information about the asylum process, and eliciting support from peers, which challenged the notion of waiting time as inactive and 'empty'. Although painfully uncertain, the waiting period was sometimes retrospectively understood as 'preparatory' for the future. This indicates that more may be taking place during seemingly uneventful periods than meets the eye; they may offer possibilities for reflection, creativity and change. It is argued that waiting should be understood as an engaged activity.
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on the situation of Somali refugees in Kenya different modes of waiting will be explored. In particular it will be asked what difference it makes if waiting is not aimed at something (waiting for) but arises from the in-ability of action.
Paper long abstract:
When the Kenyan Army invaded Southern Somalia in October 2011 the reaction of Somali refugees in Kenya was rather composed. On the one hand the events in 2011 inspired hope for peace in Somalia, something many refugees had given up already for a long time. The question if it is worth to wait for the right time to go back or to move on in a different direction became valid again. On the other hand the awkward and insecure situation of refugees inside Kenya leave many migrants in a position of inactivity or indiscernible activity, no matter if they are staying in the refugee camps or are living, often illegally, in the cities. However for people who have experienced war this time of apparent inactivity is not necessarily a waiting period that needs to be filled, as the very existence can be an event in itself. That leads to the question who is defining what is eventful and what is ordinary, what can be seen as actively taking part in change and what is mere idleness. Last but not least it will be asked how to write about the uneventful or even boredom. While the empirical material presented will be concerned with an anthropology of waiting, theoretical questions will be asked in how far waiting, the uneventful and the ordinary can be discussed together or whether they deal with different questions altogether.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how digitality and discourses grow in Indonesia during uneventful times. As Indonesian ‘play’ (main) internet during their waiting time, the play itself has grown into a constituent part of everyday life experience.
Paper long abstract:
"We have to wait for everything; bus, red lights, service in banks, and nothing is better than chatting or browsing.", said my informant in the small city of Solo, Indonesia. Daily life in Indonesia is characterized by waiting time, presenting uneventful possibilities during which most cell phone users in Indonesia would rather go online and chat in their virtual community. This is their conception of 'doing nothing'.
Internet arrived in Indonesia in the 1990s as part of education and modernization programs, and with the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT), it has blossomed into a popular medium of personal communication and leisure. The 2011 ICT National Survey illustrates that most Indonesians access internet for social mediating. In a culture where personal communication is a vital cultural need, uneventful time is filled with 'playing' (main) internet and online chatting.
Here, the word 'play' and conception of 'doing nothing' represent a simple practice, however, the new media communication via Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry Messenger Groups, and online communities now are also filled with social debates, opinion exchanges, and social action. Politics, economics and other social concerns are becoming part of these simple chats and part of mediated emotion. Online chatting is actually shaping something new; either discourses or something tangible such as social movements. The paper and presentation will describe how inactivity and uneventfulness provide an opportunity for social engagement which emerges from online chatting and wasting time on the internet in Kaskus online community in Solo, Indonesia.
Paper short abstract:
The waiting room can be regarded as a space that is sometimes saturated with stories making the waiting time bearable. My aim is to explore the narrative dimension of the uneventful in the specific setting of an iridologist´s waiting room.
Paper long abstract:
My aim in this paper is to explore the narrative dimension of the uneventful, by analyzing stories told in the waiting room of an iridologist in a town of Romania. Waiting is seen as an integral part of going to the doctor, as waiting time can extend anywhere from 10-20 minutes, to 3-4 hours. How do people manage this waiting time is one of the questions I seek to answer. Despite its irregular character, waiting time is ordered by the construction of waiting lists - mental, or written, that makes it more predictable.
Waiting time is also shared time, as one waits after others and along with others. One shares not only the waiting time, but also the space - the waiting room. This sharing of time and space facilitates the sharing of stories, giving the uneventful a narrative dimension. I want to explore what is shared in the waiting room, sometimes through stories, and sometimes through silences, or through bodily signs - like finger tapping, or pacing up and down.
I will proceed by describing this waiting space, and how people give it, or not, a narrative dimension by sharing stories while waiting to be received in the consulting room. I want to argue that "wasted time" is transformed through the sharing stories into "passed time". The sharing of stories makes time bearable and reduces boredom or anxiety.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the concept of purposive inaction through analysis of doing nothing among US 'drop outs' in Hawai'i. By focusing on its embodied dimensions, I seek to shift the analytical frame from doing NOTHING to DOING nothing and draw out the creative and political potential of inaction.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the meaning of doing nothing in a community of US 'drop outs' who have been relocating form the US mainland to a rural backwater of Hawai'i since the late 1960s. It frames doing nothing as an active process and one in which 'nothing' becomes its own achievement and its own reward. The analysis rests on a bifurcated conception of 'doing nothing' - as both doing nothing and doing nothing. For a group who self-consciously position themselves as 'countercultural', 'alternative' or having 'dropped out' of US 'mainstream' society, doing nothing can be read as an embodied response to the active, goal-oriented, upwardly mobile values of the society that they have chosen to drop out of. In this forgotten corner of Hawai'i, slowness is celebrated and time spent in the seemingly uneventful no-thing of doing nothing valued. It is more than simply an absence of action.
Yet it is also doing nothing and in this paper I argue that this is a far from passive process. Rather, a state of doing nothing has to be learned and is one that requires active acclimatisation, cultivation and maintenance. It requires, as Mauss (1934) would say, 'techniques of the body'. This paper, then, frames the phenomenon of 'doing nothing' as active, deliberate purposive inaction, and proposes that it is through a focus on the embodied dimensions of doing nothing that the purposive qualities of this particular form of highly celebrated inaction come most clearly into view.
Paper short abstract:
Through an ethnography of “inactivity” in urban China, this paper advocates the study of “ordinary” situations in anthropological research. By tracing out social processes from the observation of such practices, it shows that the boundaries of the “eventful” and “uneventful” are not so clear-cut.
Paper long abstract:
The ethnographer of forms of daily life in Chinese urban outdoor spaces often witnesses situations of people sitting or standing, waiting during long moments, alone or in small groups, sometimes side by side but without talking to each other. The discourse on inactivity and idleness ("mei shi'r gan", literally "nothing to do") is recurrently used by the citizens involved in these situations to describe their everyday social experience. Based on ethnographic observation from such temporalities and spaces in central Beijng, this paper intends to show that apparently meaningless practices provide insightful material. First, a thorough description of arrivals and departures, interactions or co-presences is conducive to better understanding social organization and interaction orders in a changing urban context. I more particularly consider the "construction and deconstruction of anonimity" and facelessness relationships (Hertz, 2001) through micro-level observations. Second, ethnographies of these "ordinary" situations enable to inquire into the actors' discursive construction - through narratives and conversations - of their evolving environment.
From a methodological aspect, I argue that such focus on so-called ordinary visible aspects of social experience is unvaluable for immersion and exploratory work needed in anthropological research. However, I also advocate the fruitfulness per se of the study of alledged inactivity, as it brings into question the delineation of the "uneventful" and "eventful".
Paper short abstract:
By focusing on the generative and threatening potential of waiting and inactivity, the paper traces ethnographically the significance of the uneventful in Central Morocco, where migration and movement play a fundamental role in the imagination of existence.
Paper long abstract:
This paper traces the ontological implications of 'a life of waiting' in an ethnographic context where movement and migration play fundamental roles in how existence is imagined. Based on extended fieldwork in a rural area of Central Morocco where emigration to Southern Europe is pervasive, the paper explores emigration and movement from the standpoint of those who neither migrate nor move. Focusing on how emigration inevitably and incessantly produces 'waiting beings' as much as 'mobile' ones, the paper explores how uneventful waiting for documents and visas to come through, husbands to return, remittances to arrive, houses to be built, weddings to be celebrated and children to be conceived are constitutive elements of what emigration in Central Morocco is and does. The paper shows how 'waiting' and 'sitting' in Central Morocco are fraught with dangers and ironies and have the power to engender specific types of people with specific types of social relations. It focuses in particular on how inactivity and immobility can be ontologically threatening, tracing how young men speak of 'sitting' (i.e. non-movement) as 'nothingness' and how women married to absent emigrants conceptualise their years of inactivity as wives and lovers as having the power to transform them into 'partial-women'. By focusing on the generative and threatening potential of waiting and inactivity, the paper aims ethnographically to trace the significance of the uneventful in Central Morocco.