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- Convenors:
-
Jonatan Kurzwelly
(Peace Research Institute Frankfurt)
Marta Kluszczynska (Adam Mickiewicz University)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 21 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore and theorise essentialism, its diverse logics, uses, and meanings, through a comparative ethnographic juxtapositon. We are interested in both different nationalist and xenophobic discourses, practices and movements and the 'strategic essentialism' of identity politics.
Long Abstract:
Study of different types of grouping and othering has gained a new sense of urgency and relevance for anthropology. Globally, on the one hand, we are faced with a rise of nationalistic and xenophobic political movements and social practices which systematically prey on essentialist and reductionist representations of the social world. On the other hand, movements of resistance often seek unity and legitimacy through 'strategic essentialism' and 'identity politics'. This panel will comparatively debate the reasons for, uses, meanings and logics of different current essentialisms, such as new nationalisms, new racisms, new emergent forms of xenophobia and religious neofundamentalisms; but also essentialism of indigenous and ethnic resistance groups, political autonomy movements, ethnic or racial 'consciousness' projects, and other forms of 'strategic essentialism'. Through such comparative juxtapositon, our aim is to explore and theorise essentialism and the qualitative and axiomatic differences of its diverse uses. We ask what does it mean to 'essentialise' a social identity; whether and how one might distinguish between essentialism perpetuated by victims of historical abuse and inequality, and that of those in positions of power and privilege; how to understand the allure of essentialist thinking; what are the alternatives to essentialist 'groupism,' national rootedness and sedentarism; and other different analytical and philosophical takes on the phenomena. We invite papers from all ethnographic regions and theoretical perspectives which contribute to the debate.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 21 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
I focus on the establishment of group boundaries, identities, and belonging taking place among migrants in South Africa as a response to or alongside the formation of a new national(-ist) boundary among (most) South Africans amid the recurrent xenophobic violence.
Paper long abstract:
Recurrent xenophobia in South Africa, whether in its 'heightened form', as distinguished by Crush and Ramachandran, or in more commonplace practices, as migrant narratives have increasingly exposed, has led a scholar like Achille Mbembe to ask himself 'Why has this country historically represented a "circle of death" for anything and anybody "African"?' With this, he reflects upon how a large part of the South African population is socialised, or nationalised, in every time new ways while mostly, yet not exclusively, African 'others' continue to be antagonised, potentially victimised, within the same project, and territory. As shown in one of Horowitz's studies, to understand the complexities entangled in large-scale episodes of ascriptive violence such as those taking place in ethnic riots, it is important to observe how group boundaries are established in the first place. According to Barth, whether subjectively or as a consequence of the interaction between groups, ethnic boundaries emerge to give way to particular 'ethnic identities', and belonging. In this article, I focus on the establishment of group boundaries, identities, and belonging taking place among migrants in South Africa as a response to or alongside the formation of a new national(-ist) boundary among (most) South Africans. I engage with the published narratives based on the life stories of individual migrants in South Africa and interview their authors to discuss their perspectives around boundary formation among non-South Africans, and their aspirations in terms of the establishment of said boundaries, whether or not subjectively (or strategically) constructed.
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes how developmentalist critiques of local culture in China underlie person-centred projects of 'self-improvement'. Through an ethnography of workshops for interpersonal 'soft' skills, I present pedagogies where participants experience their overcoming of Chinese 'culture'.
Paper long abstract:
Despite recent socioeconomic transformations in China, discourses that associate 'Chinese' social norms with 'underdevelopment' continue to dominate educational and intellectual arenas in contemporary China. Correspondingly, individuals who engage in projects of self-improvement in China often endeavour to shed off tendencies of social interdependence, saving 'face', filial piety, and other practices that often symbolise social backwardness. This paper draws on an ethnography of workshops for interpersonal 'soft' skills in urban China where participants try to foster their autonomy while envisioning the constitution of new norms of sociality. In these activities, participants pursue and perform self-improvement through adopting critical rhetoric that identifies a 'Chinese' character as the root of the emotional and economic problems they face. They perceive an ideal of personhood, characterised by individual autonomy, on the other hand, as transcending their social conditions. This pedagogy ultimately emphasises participants' inherent implication in seemingly immoral social mores, while at the same time it facilitates distinct forms of social interaction where participants experientially overcome 'culture'. This apparatus contributes to the affective qualities of self-improvement in China as spaces and moments where individuals experience their distinction from the contours of their present-local reality.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from examples of Saharawi refugeehood, this paper will expose essentialism of the situation of prolonged forced displacement. I will also discuss Sahrawis' mobility strategies which both oppose and fit in their essentialist representations and legal, as well as the administrative framework.
Paper long abstract:
Over the last forty years, a Sahrawi migration culture - aspiration, desire and tendency of mostly young people to emigrate or start a circular migration - has developed (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2011). Nonetheless, the increase of migration barriers set by law and institutional practice significantly affects their mobility (Belloso 2016). These legal and institutional practices are based on forms of essentialist thinking, dividing spatial mobility into voluntary migration and forced displacement. A prolonged refugeehood of Sahrawis is a good example to analyze how the idea of "the refugee" has been reconstructed in the last decades.
In the second part of my paper, I will describe the strategies which Sahrawis developed to cope with the situation of prolonged forced migration and the image of "the refuge" and "the refugeehood". Sahrawi migration toward Spain, representing a spectrum of migrants' strategies (e.g. naturalization in Spain, the status of stateless person, refugee status, employment visas) shows how a legal figure of refugee and the refugeehood as an important part of national identity are (not) recognized.
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the double-edged sword of strategic essentialism employed by the Tibetan diaspora's elites to win the support of the "West". On the one hand, it is a self-affirmative project of politically aware and agentic refugees. On the other, it works as a tool for exclusion.
Paper long abstract:
In the paper, I discuss the double-edged sword of strategic essentialism of the Tibetan diaspora's elites as being a source of both political empowerment and a tool for exclusion. The Tibetan diaspora, with its centre in India, enjoys the moral support of the "white West". This support is won through the self-representation of Tibetans as peaceful, spiritual Buddhists who patiently pursue their non-violent struggle for a free Tibet. It is a self-affirmative project, proof of the refugees' political awareness and agency, which has let them to skilfully reinterpret the refugee status as a source of pride and self-esteem. However, the identity politics of the diaspora's elites, based upon "neo-Puritanical" (Nowak 1984) and essentialist assumptions of the uniqueness of Tibetan culture, may have the opposite effects to that intended. On the one hand, it results in racist attitudes towards other minorities, especially African-Americans, as observed by Emily Yeh and Kunga T. Lama (2006) among Tibetans living in the United States. A similar phenomenon occurs in India, where I conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork, in regards to the Hindu majority, which is looked down on by Tibetans. The latter have developed strategies of resistance to any integration in India because they simply believe that their culture is "better". On the other hand, limiting articulations of identity to a single, authorised self-representation has proven to be a regulatory regime which classifies certain actions - such as applying for Indian citizenship or being non-Buddhist - as non-Tibetan.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates how the Overseas Chinese Academics in South Africa interact with the Rainbow Nation's diverse cultures and how they negotiate with the mechanisms that continue to safeguard their Chinese identity, contributing a Chinese voice to the debate on contemporary essentialisms.
Paper long abstract:
The soaring economic development of China following its 'opening to the outside world' policy has established the country as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and has provided valuable opportunities for its people to explore the globe and for the world to understand Chinese culture. The Confucius Institutes are China's central mechanisms for the constitution of soft power. By 2017, over 500 CIs have been established worldwide. The Confucius Institute is a fine example of what Jean and John Comaroff (2009) point out as the commodification and corporatisation of cultural identities. What is considered to be Chinese culture is packaged into the essentialist corporation of CIs as commodities to be promoted worldwide.
Drawing from my ethnographic study on the Confucius Institutes in South Africa from 2017 to 2018, Being Chinese in a Rainbow Nation investigate how the Overseas Chinese Academics in South Africa interact with the Rainbow Nation's diverse cultures, but more importantly, how they reflect on and negotiate with the mechanisms that continue to safeguard their Chinese identity, as many of them ponder for the first time: what does it mean to be Chinese, and can they be more than Chinese? The issue will be approached from perspectives of culture, space, censorship and self-censorship, contributing a Chinese voice to the debate on contemporary essentialisms.
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of the paper is to present the process of building the social identity of members of right-wing movements. Based on essentialist assumptions, activists are creating self-image which may help them to achieve the goals and bond the group.
Paper long abstract:
A properly created self-image seems to be crucial not only for shaping the interaction between independent individuals, but also for the functioning of entire organizations. Strategic construction of identity, based on opposition to members of other groups is clearly visible among members of right-wing groups. By creating their image, individuals and groups try not only to make a specific impression, but also to achieve control over the behavior of others by influencing their definition of the situation. In the context of the analysis of self-images constructed by the members of Polish right-wing movement, I will present strategies aimed at raising public support and trust or arousing fear among groups identified as hostile or threatening.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines strategies of identification and self-organization of disabled people living precarious lives in Sierra Leone. It explores the political possibilities and limitations of strategic essentialism and the theoretical potential inherent in the concept of "class intersectionality".
Paper long abstract:
Between 2008 and 2015 I studied a group of disabled people living in extremely precarious conditions in the heart of Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital. Abandoned by public policy, they organize themselves in autonomous self-managed collectives, maintaining porous boundaries with the non-disabled world. The same people, often stereotyped as "disabled beggars", became an important collective political force as members of officially recognized disabled people's organizations where disability is not only the organizing principle but the necessary condition of belonging. In a book published early this year I described and analyzed the tension between these two dimensions of their existence.
In the present paper, I propose to revisit some arguments of the book and discuss the possible larger political implications of disabled people's self-organization based on these two modalities, which I identify as strategic biosociality (Rose:2008, Rabinow: 1996), on the one hand, and strategic essentialism, on the other. While strategic biosociality organizes social relations around a particular biological condition, it does not create exclusive, homogenous groups. In contrast, the strategic essentialism of the official disability movement emphasizes ideas of self-sameness, homogeneity, fixed boundaries and invariability. The theoretical question which I wish to address here concerns the potential of this hybrid form of organization to develop toward what Hardt and Negri (2019) call a "multitudinous class", a new form of class based on shared experiences of subordination able to accommodate the variegated struggles of distinct identity groups.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on populism, ascetism and religious fundamentalism in India to demonstrate the critique of essentialism from within and shows that Hinduism can essentially create its own criticism especially with respect to essentialism.
Paper long abstract:
In South Asia, the ascetic has always had a unique position that put him/her outside or above social relations; which means that the ascetic was often external to the essentialized religious self, internalized by the fundamentalist. Whereas fundamentalism is about drawing boundaries, asceticism is about breaking or transcending them. Contemporary populism in India has succeeded in creating an essentialized Hindu core identity that is also upper caste and patriarchal and is now being equated with the nation. Yet South Asia has always eulogized the ascetic, the person without any social markings, gender, caste or religion. Even today there are both individuals as well as cults and communities that identify with, or otherwise follow an ascetic sacred entity that does not subscribe to the essentialized religiosity of the fundamentalist; of any religion. In this paper it is proposed to show how ascetism has always played a role to critique religious essentialism providing a platform for both rebellion and contest in South Asia. The ascetic saint has been particularly eulogized by the marginal and the low castes but they cannot be denied by the upper castes and dominant groups either. Therefore the kind of essentialism that the present populist state is trying to create has its own internal contradictions and ideologies that cannot be 'othered' with impunity. In this paper the internal rather than external challenges to essentialism will be discussed within a South Asian perspective.