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- Convenor:
-
Roger Norum
(University of Oulu)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Aula Magna-Spelbomskan
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 15 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
This panel examines how the production and consumption of mobile experience, and the new media technologies that enable them, create novel subjectivities and subjects.
Long Abstract:
More than three decades ago, James Clifford (1986) wrote that travel is not merely about going places; it is a conceptual and geographic displacement intended to catalyse new experiences. More recently, while scholars have identified a rise of so-called experiential travel, many have left unconsidered the production, consumption and mediation of the travel experience itself as a core component of travel desire. This panel will examine how narrativised and prosumed forms of mobility, and the new media technologies that enable the, create novel subjectivities and subjects. A shift in focus from travel as place/destination to travel as self-fashioning/self-dissemination reflects the changing nature of contemporary mobility. Today, travelers are no longer just driven by dreams of checking off the sites and sights on their bucket list of adventures; rather, such mobility is now-sometimes primarily-driven by the desire to self-promote. Travellers make use of apps and real-time social media to imagine place and to produce texts with which they narrativise their travels. Papers will address the role which the instantaneous production and consumption of place/self plays in new performances of identity. The more that moments of experience can be captured and fixed, thereby losing their immediacy and fluidity, the more the subjective experience of the present itself begins to erode (Simanowski 2017).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 15 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
This paper is an ethnographic details of the culture of migration and the transformation of gender roles in a patriarchal Muslim society in rural Bangladesh. The study explores the continuity and changes in the discourse and practices of traditional gender roles in the village.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is an ethnographic account of the culture of migration and the transformation in patriarchal structure of a Muslim society in rural Bangladesh. In doing so, the study explores the continuity and changes in the discourse and practices of traditional gender roles of men and women of Rashidpur village in Munshiganj district, Bangladesh. It pays especial attention to local and global interconnections of the aspirant migrants and their household members, changes in their gender based mobility and their contribution to the changes in patriarchal ideology. The study is conducted from January to December, 2017, applying ethnographic method, which examines gender based career planning and the lived reality of the villagers. Especially, the study focuses on the determining factors, which shape the migration decision of men particularly, the grown up boys. Though the findings of the study indicate the diversity and multiplicity of rural life, women's career plans are, in many cases, submitted to the will of patriarchy to retain the honor of their men. On the other hand, men's career plans are fulfilled by the household members to ensure their bread winning. In such situation, many women change their ambition and want to be the wives of the migrants to enjoy freedom when husbands are abroad. Overall, migration aspiration and the linked activities of the villagers transform the local social structure as a whole. The study contextualizes structure and agency to understand how patriarchal structure influences individuals and how individuals play a role to transform the structure in exchange.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores anthropology of prosumed experience in contemporary scientific tourism. The research focuses on the new forms of social mobility of international students from three prestigious universities of England.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores anthropology of prosumed experience in contemporary scientific tourism. A concept of scientific tourism could be defined as 'a niche within alternative forms of tourism that shares specificities of learning, adventure, cultural, and experiential tourism' (Bourlon & Torres, 2016). The traveler/international student becomes an actor of this tourism experience and not just a consumer. The future student uses social media to imagine place of higher education and to produce texts which he or she narrativises their travels abroad. They consume an experience (Holbrook, Hirschman, 1982) with a personal or collective appropriation of visited places or universities and request thus specific services to meet their expectations.
The main source of this work derives from ethnographic fieldwork in the UK and Lithuania in 2017. The paper examines certain issues: how the new forms of social media create the consumption of mobile experience through studies abroad, and how the prosumed experience of international students create the new subjectivities and identities. The research focuses on the prosumed experience of international students from three prestigious universities of England, also, it explores the new forms of social mobility of academic youth.
In summary, the scientific tourism, as a prosumed experience, is a way forward in appropriate development strategies because it builds new productive systems based on the value of local cultures and identities, ecological assets and an effective appropriation of science and technology (Leff & al, 2002) by local actors.
Paper short abstract:
I’m interested in the « new cultural practices » gravitating around food preparation and consumption in Sofia’s (Bulgaria) urban space. By « new cultural practices » I mean those activities where the boundary between the consumer and the producer, between labour and leisure are fluidized. Those new practices are often « imported », ‘foreign’ and therefore could possess a degree of prestigiousness.
Paper long abstract:
Food has always been considered as a substance possessing magical forces and therefore capable of transforming the one who consumes it. In times of uncertainty, intensified mobility and accelerated temporalities, the composition of what we consume and the act of consumption itself become more and more of a primal importance. The way taste is represented and narrated becomes crucial to the process of redefining the role of food in contemporary societies as preparing, tasting and consuming food within the urban space is revealed as a central ingredient of the construction of social relation.
I’m interested in the « new cultural industries » gravitating around food preparation and consumption in Sofia’s (Bulgaria) urban space. By « new cultural practices » I mean those activities where the boundary between the consumer and the producer, between labour and leisure are fluidized. Those new practices are often « imported », ‘foreign’ and therefore could possess a degree of prestigiousness.
My research is focalized around the new forms of festivity and people gatherings around food consumption and preparation in contemporary urban Bulgaria. I'm particularly interested in the different ways urban space is appropriated through practices of food consumption or food sharing and how notions of sustainability, ethics and morality are knitted around food. Those practices happen at the border between private and public events and are often represented as a response to the capitalism and are even staged as its critique (of the abundance, of the industrialisation process, anonymisation…). However, their relation with new capitalism is more complex and integrating some sort of critique acts as an added value to the experience.