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- Convenors:
-
Younes Saramifar
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Sana Chavoshian (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO))
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel follows hope in postwar conditions and reconstructions when hope is co-opted by increased governmentality, regimes of death, conflicts' wreckages and survival revolves around morality and precarity.
Long Abstract:
Is hope a matter of present or does it orient social actors toward future? How do hope and survival function in former warzones where splintered affectivity frames the landscape of feelings? Former warzones and borderlands are fertile grounds of remembrance, infrastructural claims, securitization, extraction and abandonment of military waste and they host broken socialities and ecologies. They are claimed by states as security sensitive and commercially viable borderlands, appropriated by veterans as sites of remembrance and reclaimed by locals as everyday spaces in need of development. Hence, this panel thinks through former warzones in broad terms to follow interlinkages of politics of hoping, hope, survival and transformation.
The panel follows hope in postwar conditions and reconstructions when hope is co-opted by increased governmentality, regimes of death, conflicts' wreckages and survival revolves around morality and precarity. We look at the intersection of spatial and emotional belonging, infrastructural breakdown and scarcity of resources (water, soil) to find how hope is salvaged in communal debates on security, solidarity and conflict. The panel unpacks constituting components of hope and survival and how the flow of power relationships amongst them shapes future. We aim to traverse hope as a sense of resilience and sustenance that delays/triggers solidarity and promotes in/actions. We seek dialogue on how hope is the emergent quality of local conditions. The panel focuses on three themes, first, how future-forward postwar reconstruction is shaped by past; second, ecology and survival in former warzones; third veteran justice and belonging.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Eleana Kim (UC Irvine)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, ecological studies of the Korean DMZ region provide ethnographic basis for theorizing "biological peace," or, peace beyond geopolitics. I argue that biological peace impels a reorientation in anthropological theorizations of peace, toward cosmopolitical and more-than-human worldings.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines areas in the South Korean borderlands, along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has separated the two Koreas for nearly 70 years, since the end of the Korean War (1950-53). Based on ethnographic research with ecological scientists and citizen scientists who conduct fieldwork in heavily militarized areas near the DMZ, this paper analyzes how ecological studies of the flora and fauna of the DMZ region exemplify "biological peace," or, peace beyond geopolitics. Biological peace informs the sensibilities of South Koreans who are drawn to the rare ecology of the DMZ, which introduces a reorientation toward the division and Cold War politics. Hiro Miyazaki has called reorientation a "key operation of hope." In the case of the Korean DMZ, this hope does not lead to a hope for unification, but for a more expansive understanding of peace, one that can include and even center nonhuman life forms and the habitats that are crucial to their survival. I discuss how biological peace can likewise help to impel a reorientation in anthropological theorizations of peace, to include both the cosmopolitical turn of feminist STS and the more-than-human worldings of multispecies ethnography.
Katharina Lange (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Paper short abstract:
This paper maps forcible changes in land use and agriculture following the Turkish-led occupation of Afrin, Syria in March 2018. Tracing temporalizing effects of dispossession and displacement, it asks where the place of “hope” may be in this setting that is marked by violence and ongoing conflict.
Paper long abstract:
The occupation of Syria’s Afrin region by Islamist militias under Turkish control in 2018 has brought about far-reaching demographic change. Displacing a large part of the region’s Kurdish population, it brought an influx of Arabic-speaking settlers opposed to the Asad regime, many but not all of whom have been forcibly displaced themselves. In this borderland marked by past conflict and ongoing violence, future-making projects are deeply intertwined with despair, loss and dispossession experienced by the original inhabitants. In this region, agriculture and notably olive cultivation have long provided income, work, and stood for local and even ethnic identities. After 2018, among other transgressions, local farmers have been violently dispossessed by the seizing or “taxing” of the olive harvest and other crops; orchards have been damaged by grazing livestock, fruit trees have been cut and sold for firewood or uprooted and removed for infrastructural projects such as housing and industrial constructions. These dynamics have profound temporalizing effects, as the short-term profits made by dispossession and looting, but also the claims to future political and demographic domination expressed through construction, are juxtaposed to decades of past care invested in fruit trees and agriculture. Drawing from published reports and accounts on social media as well as conversations with (former) inhabitants of the region, this paper maps these violent changes before the backdrop of agrarian practices and social relations prior to 2018, and interrogates where the place of “hope” may be in this setting.
Munira Khayyat (New York University Abu Dhabi)
Paper short abstract:
This paper dwells-with two trees resistantly rooting two landscapes in the seasoned battlefield of South Lebanon. Exploring in counterpoint two landscapes of war, one docile, one untamed, it turns on the Arabic word maskun to describe the way landscape both enfolds and unsettles present power.
Paper long abstract:
This paper dwells-with two trees resistantly rooting two landscapes in the seasoned battlefield of South Lebanon. One tree anchors a museumized topography that celebrates the military victories of the Resistance. Gathering in its hoary fibers the multiple and heterodox traditions of dwelling in a landscape still alive with more than human presences, this tree is made to submit to a hegemonic politics of the present that seeks to (yet fails to) singularize and silence its multivocal nature. The other tree, twisted, deeply grooved and gnarled, lives steadfast atop a hilltop on a borderline and front and has witnessed and weathered countless seasons of war, dispossession, occupation. The hollow oak, though scorched and haggard by now, still houses lively spirits and stories. Its fire-resistant constitution continues to vitally resist the leveling encroachments of capitalism, nationalism, war. Maskun is an Arabic word describing the recognized presence of “spirits” in nature (and other forms). Rooted in the three letters s-k-n meaning silence, and simultaneously evoking silence and presence, habitation and hauntedness, maskun describes the power of landscape to unsettle predatory present orders.
Emmanuel Chidozie (Leuven Catholic Univerity, Belgium)
Paper short abstract:
This paper traces the production of ‘hoping subjects’ through the lenses of hope and survival practices. In doing so, it depicts how Christian religious practices are shaped through the prism of everyday experiences of anticipation.
Paper long abstract:
Within a decade after the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the lives and limbs of a great majority have been severed leaving in its wake a sustained precarious experience for survivors. How do survivors carve or anticipate hope amidst precarities? Through an understanding of trauma that is constantly shifting between uncertainty and certainty; disorientation and potentiality, amongst survivors who have been displaced by the violence of Boko Haram in Nigeria, this paper traces the production of ‘hoping subjects’ through the lenses of hope and survival practices. In doing so, it depicts how Christian religious practices are shaped through the prism of everyday experiences of anticipation. Building on Christian religious practices such as ‘symbolic healing’ as well as the existing debate on hope, this article argues that hope may appear at a first glance to be a religious expression of futurity or an idea that conforms to Christian teaching. However, in line with participant-observation and interview with the Boko Haram’s survivors at the International Christian centre, I show that hope is a mode of ‘world-making’ and feeling, living in the ‘meantime’ as well as survival tactics that is aimed at enduring traumatic experiences or uncertainties and challenges of everyday life at the centre. In other words, this paper corresponds to the literature on Hope, wherein hope pertains to the constellation of feelings and socio-religious imaginaries which are anchored in everyday mundane or present practices (such as storytelling, dancing, etc.) at the International Christian Centre.
Ivona Grgurinovic (University of Zagreb)
Paper short abstract:
The goal of this presentation is to confront past hope and tentative present hopelessness, on the example of ethnographic research in a village in central Croatia.
Paper long abstract:
The goal of this presentation is to confront past hope and present hopelessness, on the example of ethnographic research in a village in central Croatia. The village is situated in a somewhat secluded forested area at the intersection of several regions, bordering them but not belonging to any, geographically. Partly due to this position, this locality was a scene of fighting and resistance during the Second World War, and was also the site of a partisan hospital situated in the forests surrounding the village. Its role in the antifascist resistance earned the village an important symbolic place in the ideological imaginary of the socialist Yugoslav state and represented a source of pride for the inhabitants. However, according to the inhabitants, the promises and hopes of the socialist modernizing project were not fulfilled. The post-war period was marked by depopulation, and today the village numbers a little more than the fifth of its 1948 population. Presently, it faces further depopulation, exploitation of the most abundant resource (the forest) and a looming infrastructural project which the inhabitants fear will endanger the delicate karst landscape and cause flooding. This presentations seeks to look into the discrepancy between what was once a hopeful projection into the future and the tentative present state of hopelessness in a region strongly marked by depopulation.