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Paper short abstract:

Indigenous movements and Bolivia's self-proclaimed indigenous government promote a national agenda of well-being inspired by indigenous communality and reciprocity. Such ambitions do not necessarily coincide with the aspirations of indigenous communities in the Andes creating moral ambiguities.

Paper long abstract:

In heated debates the indigenous movements of Bolivia, NGOs and the state defined the country's moral compass: suma qamaña or vivir bien, live well. This national ambition is enshrined in Bolivia's 2009 Constitution and evokes the aspirations of well-being as lived by indigenous communities including spirituality and environmental sustainability. It is persistently promoted as an antidote to the destructive capitalist rationale of continuous economic growth, and a just future without neoliberalism. However, the virtuous national agenda does not always travel well. In line with contemporary indigenous intellectuals, the Andean villagers of Toracari, indeed, perform rituals establishing reciprocal relations with the earth, deities, fauna and flora. Accordingly, they produce a temporary community with all spheres of life which is vital to the well-being of all, including humans. In addition, they recreate proper relations of community performing a series of personal obligations and, importantly, working on and in the earth. Successful ritual practices and abundant harvests create the most energising experiences of individual and communal well-being and agency. Ritual skills and agricultural productivity make the indigenous farmers into worthy people, campuruna, setting them apart from the unproductive and exploitative patrones, q'ara or llajtaruna; powerful outsiders, urbanites. Yet, the indigenous population of Toracari also aspires to become q'ara and the urban progress it implies. That is why many of them are migrating to the Bolivian cities and beyond. This paper explores these moral discrepancies analysing the ambiguities generated by the confluence of a new national moral and incompatible local yearnings.

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This paper analyses aspirations for the good life within a community of Muslim Meskhetians, which reflect a reaction to the communitarian and managerial rationale of their deportation in 1944, expressed in an ethos of individual initiative, entrepreneurship and distrust of government(s).

Paper long abstract:

The notion of "diasporic return" brings to mind a range of ideas, from identity to memory, which anthropology has strived to interpret as collectively determined. However, fieldwork within a community of returnees - such as the Muslim Meskhetians with which this paper is concerned - can also supply material for a "cosmopolitan anthropology" of individual consciousness, creativity and accomplishment (Rapport 2012). This is not to say that a rural, close-knit community such as this epitomizes what Charles Taylor calls "liberalism of neutrality"- when a society decides that it must be neutral when it comes to defining the "good life". Rather, my purpose here is to convey, and admittedly pay homage to, a certain sense of "rugged individualism" and defiance towards authority, especially that expressed by the claims of modern centralized bureaucracies.

My fieldwork interlocutors experienced first-hand the Soviet policies of demographic engineering when, in 1944, they were deported en masse. Their aspirations for the good life reflect, therefore, a reaction to the communitarian and managerial rationale of their deportation, expressed in an ethos of individual initiative, entrepreneurship and distrust of government(s). These coexist, and certainly conflict at times, with the aspirations of a community seeped in narratives of older moral horizons, chiefly that of a conservative, patriarchal household. The ultimate aim is to offer an ethnographic account, strategically unsettled, of what aspiring for the good life means for a group of individuals, pioneers among their people's movement of return, with whom I shared an exciting and challenging time of my life.

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The paper discusses transnational conservation practices saving Madagascar's and globe's precious biodiversity and ways the Tsimihety strive towards good life through relations with different beings. I suggest to pay attention to continuities as well as to gaps

Paper long abstract:

Madagascar is the hot spot of transnational environmental conservation practices because of its unique biodiversity. Highlighting the understanding of the universal nature, the conservation agencies have been concerned that the Malagasy do not care about their environments but continue to practice swidden cultivation destroying precious forests. In order to secure the vital biodiversity in future and sustain environmental conservation processes economically, the Marojejy National Par, was established in 1998.

The people, mainly the Tsimihety ethnicity, living in the vicinities of the park strived towards good life by marking their landscapes and establishing multiple social relations. In the course of living as the people had established houses fields and tombs, the good place (tsara banja) that they had settled, was renamed as Manantenina, "the place with many tenina plants'. A good and prosperous life referred to a landscape filled with human activities that depended on the relations with kins, ancestors and spirits and required continuous work and respect but also knowledge of environmental processes, such as water flows and soils. Although ecotourism practices offered a relatively generous income and new social relationships for those involved, the Tsimihety pointed out that ecotourism practices did not allow people to spend enough time on their rice cultivations, some tourists did not respect places that could anger spirits causing misfortune and ecotourism did not make the Tsimihety rich. Striving towards prosperous living required an understanding of social relations and knowledge of landscapes inhabited. The paper suggests to pay attention to continuities as well as gaps.

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Aspirations of desirable future states of being inform local approaches to socio-economic and environmental transformation. Their moral connotations and the ways in which local aspirations are ridiculed or contested provide insights into how futures are shaped, in Southeast Asia for example.

Paper long abstract:

Similar to "hopes" and "imaginations", aspirations point to the ways in which futures are brought about rather than emerging miraculously (Appadurai 2013; Crapanzano 2014; Sneath, Holbraad and Pedersen 2009); they also point to possible anthropological engagements with "the good" and "the good life" (Robbins 2013; Fischer 2014). The notion of aspiration enables new vistas in exploring processes of socio-economic and environmental change in upland Southeast Asia beyond grand narratives (Li 2014).

Local perspectives are influential in shaping patterns of change, though they might be severely constrained by larger forces; vice versa, circulating narratives, such as of development and progress embrace, in fact, multiple meanings (Bulloch 2017). Aspirations, or "desires" (High 2014), might provide insights into historically framed images of worthwhile futures: in conversations, Southeast Asian uplanders such as the Khmu of northern Laos, reason about upcoming transitions and aspirations; some of these aspirations, notably house building projects, are local yet travel across the region. Conflicts between aspirations and local values show in how far socio-moral change is reflected upon and expressed - often in talk and gossip. Aspirations that are too high and hopes of prosperity that are prone to collapse are also frequent subjects of mockery and irony.

Based on my ethnographic work on the Khmu (Stolz 2017), I will show that local aspirations and the ways in which they become subject to irony or moral critique render visible how future hopes and fears are informed by past imaginaries as well as by a sense of newness.

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The paper problematizes heteronormative divisions of kinship and friendship within Italian migrant personal communities. Examining digital and physical co-presence, the paper argues all relationships develop through a shared affective fantasy for solid intimacy.

Paper long abstract:

Despite recognition of significant changes in the area of personal life, heteronormativity is often understood as a durable and highly pervasive force. Such understandings have reinforced analytical separations of kinship and friendship, leading to conceptualizations that equate friendship to the global and freedom, and kinship to the sedentary and semi-static. Instead, this paper views normativity as aspirational, demonstrating how fantasies of the good life linked to solid intimacy act a key force articulating a variety of relationships often subsumed between kinship and friendship. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography between London and Italy, the paper focuses on practices of digital and physical co-presence within the trans-local personal communities of highly skilled Italian migrants in London.

The paper employs Henrietta Moore's notion of the ethical imagination to argue that all relationships within personal communities are articulated through a fantasy of wholeness, a shared affective structure that mobilizes imagined intimacies of the good life, intertwined with an inter-subjective ethics of co-transformation of self. Rhythms of co-presence develop and become a means for self-actualization of life course projects, where informants leverage the affordances of ICTs and visits together in order reimagine selves through new forms of togetherness. As rhythms are normalized, differences between forms of co-presence melt together, reinforcing a common ethics of connectedness and a felt, authentic sense of intimacy. The paper concludes that the capacity for freedom, transformations of self and reimaginings of the togetherness do not derive only through divisions of kinship and Friendship but through a fantasy of wholeness constructed across migrant personal communities.

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With a point of departure in experiences of being incapable of moving towards becoming the men they aspired for before the war among Syrian youth in Jordan, I argue for an understanding of becoming in exile as a process of moral re-orientation, formative of aspirations and lives in radical ways.

Paper long abstract:

Through an ethnographic exploration of life stories and examples of struggles to live well among young upper middleclass Syrian men in exile in Jordan, in this paper I draw attention to the generative potential of displacement as a site of moral transformations (Mattingly 2014, see also Greenhouse 2002; Nordstrom 1997; Vigh 2006, 2008) formative of aspirations and perceptions of ways of living well. Being displaced from their families, social networks and life trajectories in Syria, in Amman the young men suffer from the experience of radical discrepancy between ways of being in Syria and in exile the Jordanian capital. Following Parish (2008), I suggest that these experiences of suffering result from the loss of selves that are no longer possible because of shifts in their existential beings. However, in Amman the young men respond to the situation by of developing their abilities to catch and cultivate "chances", locally understood as openings towards the future, and promises of something better. Hence, everyday work of catching chances is inherently practices of initiation and transformation of aspirations. Based on these observations, I argue for an understanding of becoming in exile as an ongoing process of moral re-orientation, that is learning to see new goods under radically changed circumstances (Murdoch 1970; Mattingly 2014). In a social and political environment largely characterized by unpredictability, I show how aspirations are taking multiple and fluctuating shapes as creative responses to suffering and experimentation with multiple ways of living well simultaneously.

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This paper analyses middle-class Romanians' reasons to remain in a country where dysfunctionalities and injustices jeopardise their aspirations to live a 'good life', materially and morally. The analysis reveals the tensed juxtapositions of aspirations and obligations in the decisions not to leave.

Paper long abstract:

In the recent years, middle-class Romanians have taken the streets to protest the incompetence, malevolence and corruption of the ruling party. The dysfunctionalities, injustices and illegalities to which they have so vociferously begun to react negatively impact on theirs and their children's possibilities of living a 'good life' in this country, now or in the future. In this context, the notion of 'good life' refers to more than hedonic happiness and material success, being close to Aristotle's notion of eudaemonia and indicating wellbeing, dignity, fairness and fulfilment, in brief, a meaningful existence (Fischer 2014). These dysfunctionalities, injustices and illegalities might become - and have indeed become for many middle-class Romanians - reasons to leave the country. This paper focuses on those who choose to remain in the country and on their discourses about the values and virtues of immobility. Guided by Das's (2010, 2012) argument that the central concept of ethical life is the care for the other, the analysis discerns in these discourses, and in the practicalities of the lives of those who utter them, an attempt to balance out aspirations of the self and obligations towards the other. These middle-class Romanians not only explain their reasons to stay to a curious or concerned audience, the anthropologist included, but also try to motivate similarly classed others to join them in their efforts to do good and in their attempts to change people and society for the better.

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Paper short abstract:

Most of my rough-sleeping informants in Paris had hopes for leaving the street behind, hopes for a better life in the future. These hopes were on the one hand translated into small steps - what I call daily home-making practices - but on the other hand regularly clashed with short-term desires.

Paper long abstract:

A better life for people who were homeless in Paris consisted first and foremost of leaving the street behind. Their projet de vie was often connected to working towards a (new or re-found) home in the future: they wanted to return to their homeland, be reunited with their family, find a stable job. On a daily basis they broke these hopes down into manageable steps - often with the work of social workers. Which documents did I need to apply for temporary housing? Which benefits was I eligible for? Often, less straightforward practices - e.g. begging or squatting - were also part of what I call daily home-making activities in order to 'keep the future open'.

In the daily struggle of the street, however, the long-term aspirations of (re-)making a home were often trumped by short term desires: forgetting the trauma that brought them to the street, checking out of the violence around them or simply feeling good by getting high. The result were many appointments missed, money wasted, rules and laws broken. It was often also guilt about a chance missed, the inability to focus on the 'important' things, the failure to work towards the longer-term future. I will start my analysis with examples of these moments of epiphany to unravel the underlying ethical conflicts - between the striving for a better life in the longer-term future and short-term pleasure.

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Drawing on a year of fieldwork within Stockholm's startup ecosystem, this paper will explore the tensions between the aspirations of social entrepreneurs to build better futures and the neoliberal underpinnings of the communities and infrastructures they move within as members and co-creators.

Paper long abstract:

The good life drives the work of social entrepreneurs as they strive to take advantage of the resources available to startup companies, including plentiful funding and well-established support infrastructures in startup ecosystems, to fashion futures free from the social and environmental problems of the present in the hopes of creating a collective good life for all. In this work, they also seek the good life for themselves by embracing their talents in technology and business as tools for their aspirations to do good. Among academics, social entrepreneurship is often dismissed as digital utopianism (Turner 2010), technological fetishism (Hand and Sandywell 2002), or technological solutionism (Morozov 2013), as these literatures rightly point out the contradictions of and the damage left in the wake of social entrepreneurship's assumptions (e.g. the Internet's inherent democratic qualities) and practices (e.g. surveillance and algorithmic mediation). However, these critiques obscure the creative and subversive work of social entrepreneurs as they negotiate the contradictions between their aspirations and the neoliberal underpinnings of the communities and infrastructures they move and operate within as members and co-creators.

This paper will examine the aspirations, obligations, and moralities of social entrepreneurs and the productive tensions, resistances, and adaptations that arise from their collisions. This paper will draw on a year of fieldwork within Stockholm's startup ecosystem, which is widely recognized as a leader in social entrepreneurship for maintaining its social and environmental aspirations while simultaneously producing the highest number of billion-dollar (USD) startups per capita outside of Silicon Valley.

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Paper short abstract:

Drawing from ongoing ethnographic research on patients with Turner Syndrome, their families, and physicians in Poland, this paper examines the notion of leading a "good" life in cases of women with TS, for whom becoming a mother is socially expected, but usually beyond their biological reach.

Paper long abstract:

Turner Syndrome (TS) is a rare disease (1: 2500 live female births) that nonetheless is the most common sex chromosome disorder in women. It is characterized by short stature, ovarian failure, and heightened risk for a number of health issues. In order to induce pubertal development and manage ovarian failure, girls with TS are put on estrogen replacement therapy for the rest of their lives. Drawing from ongoing ethnographic research on patients with TS, their families, and physicians in Poland, this paper examines the notion of leading a "good" life in cases of women with TS, for whom becoming a mother is socially expected, but usually beyond their biological reach. I thus address ways, often following a trajectory in which parents act on their expectations and aspirations in regard to their daughters with TS and their social role as women. Following the moment of diagnosis, they often want their daughters to become like other "normal" women and struggle with the looming issue of their daughters' infertility. On the other hand, parents often encourage their daughters with TS to lead a "good" life by excelling at school, university, and workplace. This may also include exercising care practices (as a nurse, kindergarten teacher, etc.) that would allow their daughters to embrace their female roles in a socially acceptable way.