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- Convenors:
-
Manpreet K. Janeja
(Utrecht University)
Bani Gill (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Manpreet K. Janeja
(Utrecht University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/011
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers that explore societal changes as mediated through sensory transformations of the postcolonial urban migrant body. It foregrounds practices of bodily transformations in proliferating urban sensory contact zones as key to the study of 'new' postcolonial cultural encounters.
Long Abstract:
This panel invites contributions that explore societal changes as mediated through sensory transformations of the postcolonial migrant body in migrant-receiving urban landscapes. Cities as diverse as Amsterdam, London, and Delhi, are increasingly characterised by sensory contact zones, eg beauty salons, food outlets, specialised grocery stores, that are operated by, and cater to, specific migrant and diaspora communities. From hair extension salons run by African migrants in Delhi to eateries operated by Surinamese migrants in Amsterdam, there is a proliferation of new contact zones that act as interfaces of sensory and bodily transformations, and are integral to the (re)making of migrant identities, desired futures and forms of co-existence. In foregrounding the myriad activities, material practices, and sensorial exchanges unfolding at such sites as well as people, places, and things through which they are mediated, this panel invites papers that offer insights into bodily transformations as effectuating wider societal changes of identity and belonging in colonial/postcolonial centres of power. The panel considers questions of gendered labour, informality, and cultural ownership as central to discussions of such contact zones as offering possibilities of hope and transformation. While such relations, exchanges, and practices are embedded in unequal power relations, this panel foregrounds material and cultural practices of bodily transformations as key to the study of 'new' postcolonial cultural encounters. Inviting contributions that explore sensory approaches/methodologies in the anthropology of migration, this panel highlights how the body becomes integral to the articulation and manifestation of hybridized/contested identities that criss-cross realms of the regional and (trans)national.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at olfactory encounters in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Berlin, ‘ethnic’ perfume shops as embodied contact zones and fragrant practices in relation to processes of racialization, distinction and homemaking.
Paper long abstract:
Fleeting and emphemeral in their materiality, smells and fragrances are affect-laden and transgressive in the way that they intrude on embodied boundaries. Olfactory othering plays an important part in the emergence and history of European racism (Kettler 2020) and ‘smelly immigrant tropes’ (Manalansan 2006) continue to cast aspersions on racial and ethnic minorities in postmigrant urban settings. Similar to what Martin Manalansan describes for Asian Americans in New York City, Turkish immigrants and their children in Berlin may compromise their food preferences or impose upon themselves olfactory self-regulation out of the anxiety of being (mis-)recognized as ‘smelly’. On the other hand, fragrant practices are commonly tied to processes of distinction and homemaking and are part of a person’s self-fashioning as moral, proper and beautiful. Drawing on archival research and ethnographic research in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Berlin (and, to a lesser extent, Istanbul), this paper looks at olfactory urban encounters, ‘ethnic’ perfume shops as embodied contact zones and fragrant practices in relation to processes of racialization, distinction and homemaking. By doing so, it investigates a neglected field in the study of postcolonial cultural encounters, bringing together debates from sensory history, critical race studies and the anthropology of migration, gender, and the body.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I explore how practices of beautifications by Christians and Muslims in the Somali-Dutch and Ghanaian-Dutch communities in the Netherlands are important to their sense of self and sense of belonging.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I explore how practices of beautifications by Christians and Muslims in the Somali-Dutch and Ghanaian-Dutch communities in the Netherlands are important to their sense of self and sense of belonging. I show how contemporary political discourses in the Netherlands constructs religious ‘Others’ and discuss how this discursive positioning impacts on how practices of beautifications become a response to current debates on religion and migration but also how people challenge certain assumptions about religion and migration through bodily practices. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss how Othering impacts on people’s sense of belonging thus creatively and selectively priveledge certain identities. Similarly, I explore the ways in which participants redefine what beauty means at certain times in their life such as being married, unmarried or as parents. Although beauty practices may be primarily religiously symbolic practices, they are also influenced by practical concerns such as gendered and social understandings related to perceptions of respectability, propriety and belonging. Beauty practices are thus entangled with people’s sense of belonging or being included to either social or religious communities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how ‘new’ contact zones such as African hair salons in urban India and the accompanying consumption and trade in Indian hair by African migrant women located in Delhi ascribes anew racialised values of beauty, ‘blackness’, and ‘Indianness’ through bodily and material encounters.
Paper long abstract:
Practices and expressions of bodily transformations - intimately linked to questions of values and valuing, beauty and desire, the senses and sensuality - are embedded in varied local cosmologies as well as global capitalist flows. To this extent, this paper explores how African hair salons in urban India and the business in human hair constitute 'new' contact zones that connect postcolonial subjects in corporeal and material ways; hair, as organic molecular matter produced by the human body, not only informs meaning-making as a sociocultural bodily signifier, but once disembodied, is also a highly globalized and specialized commodity used for weaves, extensions, wigs and toupees. Several African migrants arrive in India today for the purpose of doing business in Indian hair, with migrant women from countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon and Uganda establishing and running hair salons across Delhi that cater to an African clientele. ‘Indian’ hair, procured through a range of sites such as temples and hair salons in India, is especially desired as a luxury commodity for use in hair weaves and extensions by African women. This paper is based upon ethnographic research conducted with West African migrants in Delhi since 2015. It explores how ‘new’ contact zones such as African hair salons in urban India and the accompanying consumption and trade in Indian hair by African migrant women located in Delhi ascribes anew racialised values of beauty, ‘blackness’ and ‘Indianness’ through bodily and material encounters.