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- Convenors:
-
Raluca Bianca Roman
(Queen's University Belfast)
Alex Archer (University of Cambridge)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites ethnographic and theoretical contributions concerning the aspirational striving for that which cannot be realised. The aim is to understand the everyday experience of living in the shadow of hopes that go unachieved and the social consequences this effects.
Long Abstract:
The definition of 'aspiration' is 'the hope or ambition of achieving something'. To aspire, to hope, to want is common to people across social, geographic, and historical settings. But what of the failure to realise an aspiration? The experience of not quite succeeding, of not entirely living up to, of being less than one might perhaps wish, is similarly common. A failure to realise an aspiration should not simply be regarded as the opposite of its achievement, but as complementary to it: each may be seen, in fact, to derive its character and force from the other and to gain greater meaning from their interaction. In this panel, we explore that human experience of hopeful striving and the everyday reality of living with aspirations that go unrealised. We invite papers that examine ethnographically the nonachievement of aspiration and the sociality that ensues, from across any range of social-cultural contexts. How might we, for example, engage with situations in which people strive for that which cannot be reached, yet those aspirations nevertheless provide motivational force? What kinds of insights may be drawn from the interaction between such hopeful imagining and its everyday frustration? What is it to live in the shadow of unrealised hope and how might it be described ethnographically? The aim is that this panel will provide a forum to consider the experience of reaching for that which cannot be grasped and the wider theoretical and ethnographic implications in the study of unmet aspirations.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines unrealised hopes in experiences of forced migration in Samos, Greece. The role of hope is explored in leading interlocutors to risk their lives in dangerous sea crossings, and in navigating unanticipated and devastating material and social hardships upon arrival in Samos.
Paper long abstract:
What happens when one stakes her life and the lives of others on hope? And what happens when that hope does not materialise in ways that are imagined, nor desired? This paper looks at experiences of forced migration as it exists in the Aegean Sea, where people take great risks crossing from Turkey to Greece in a smuggler’s boat and upon arrival, commonly express disappointment and despair at conditions and processes of asylum on the Aegean islands. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Samos, Greece, this paper explores hope as an orientation to deeply held values and the fallout of hopeful actions that do not result in desired outcomes. Specifically, this paper focuses on how ideas of ‘Europe’ as symbolic of a good and safe life led interlocutors to risk their lives in dangerous sea crossings and how hope is [re]evaluated in light of devastating material and socio-political hardships in Samos. Explorations of daily life in Samos while awaiting asylum decisions illuminate the ways in which unrealised values continuously exist in hope as it is navigated, altered, and maintained in both ordinary and extraordinary actions. This paper thus examines unrealised aspirations in social and temporal extremes, through a lens of hope in the everyday of protracted temporariness, violence, and material hardships of forced migration.
Paper short abstract:
By following migrant hospitality workers in a Swiss touristic resort, I explore how their aspirations for a better life were tied to the promises of tourism development, while experiencing failure in the present as they described their jobs as deeply dissatisfying, painful and entrapping.
Paper long abstract:
Modern tourism has been associated with positive imaginaries of the good life and ideals of mutual benefit between travelers and inhabitants of touristic destinations. At the same time, the tourism industry has been regularly described as environmentally and socially destructive, exploitative and based on gender and racial inequality. In this paper, I look at what working in this ambiguous field feels like for migrant hospitality workers living and working in hotels of a Swiss touristic resort. On the one side, I explore how their aspirations for a better and more stable life were tied to tourism development and migration policies. On the other, I look at how their lives were often shaped by the pervasive experience of failure in the present, as they described their jobs as deeply disappointing, painful and entrapping. By zooming in on the everyday experiences of these workers, I propose to understand the coexistence of these two affective states - feeling hopeful for the future and feeling deeply disappointed in the present- beyond the lens of contradictions. Migrant workers developed strategies to accommodate these feelings by for instance separating the times and places where they allowed themselves to feel hope and despair. Others chose to “swallow” the disappointment accompanying bad working conditions in the present in order to lead a bearable life and build a better future. Looking at how these strategies shaped the migrant workers' biographies, I call for a nuanced understanding of the affective dimensions of tourism development between failure and aspiration.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation considers the activism of the bereaved families of the Sewol Ferry Disaster in Korea, and their ethical and political striving for accountability and justice in the face of demoralization, and waning hope.
Paper long abstract:
The 2014 sinking of MV Sewol incited a widespread social movement in South Korea, founded upon condolence for the victims, guilt in having condoned corrupt power structures that failed the citizens, and collective determination that ‘things had to change’. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I reflect on the activism of the bereaved family members of the Sewol Disaster, who have been calling for investigation into the sinking, as well as justice for the victims for the past eight years. In particular, I consider the impetus for their continued political activism, even in the face of waning public interest and disappointment in the state which has failed to deliver its promise of truth and justice; I deliberate why it might be that they continue the work they often see as extremely taxing, without a foreseeable guarantee of a hopeful turn. Situating my interlocutors’ activism within the anthropology of ethics, I push for an understanding of ethics not just in relation to projects of and on the self, but in conversation with affective and ethical entanglements –– articulated through guilt and obligation –– between the deceased and the bereaved, as well as with the structural and political conditions that might mold, challenge, and/or impede the aspirations of our interlocutors.
Paper short abstract:
For Salvadorans and Romanian Roma alike, aspirations do not function in a vacuum, but are a function of kin relations. Beyond the binary of realization or failure, aspirations instantiate social processes; as such, they are shared ethical projects shaped by obligations and value conflicts.
Paper long abstract:
Our paper examines ethnographically and comparatively how aspirations shape the sociality of two distinct communities: rural Evangelical Salvadorans and urban Roma from southern Romania. Whether because they are materially deprived or socially excluded, for both of these groups aspirations are functions of kin relations, which are instrumental in realizing or hindering them. In this paper, we therefore analyse how kinship ties interact with our interlocutors’ aspirations to create a space of potentiality, an imaginary of a ‘good life,’ and especially a shared ethical project that goes well beyond the binary of realization and failure that usually frames discussions of aspirations. We argue that, even though the people we worked with are well aware of the many obstacles, both structural and intimate, that complicate or hinder their aspirations altogether, aspiring remains a type of emotional labor that they employ to imagine better futures and that consequently infuse and shape their relations with kin, both near and far. Taking issue with Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism,” we posit that a better way to analyze the contradiction between a group’s aspiration and managing good kinship relations is through the lens of obligation and values conflicts. We then conclude by asserting that our interlocutors do not fully ever expect to rectify the contradictions with which they live; rather, it is precisely through engaging with them that they live out (in their own terms) ethically good lives.
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on how expectations in artisanal gold and diamond mining in Eastern Sierra Leone were managed, this paper ethnographically explores how mining continues to seed hopes despite its inability to fulfill its promises of social mobility.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I engage artisanal mining in Eastern Sierra Leone as an aspirational striving for that which cannot be realized. Artisanal gold and diamond mining is at the core of the regional identity. While accessible deposits have shrunken, hopes for sudden wealth have not. For many, mining is perceived as the only means of social mobility. Paradoxically, while many turn to mining for social mobility, mining itself is marked by constant waits for sponsors of mining operations acquiring the resources to continue mining.
Amidst constant waiting, how are expectations managed? I engage this question from two angles. Firstly, I follow young men’s waiting for mining operations to continue. Their waiting is marked by finding alternative livelihood sources and ways of getting by. When speaking of waiting, literature on youthhood acknowledges that youth’s waiting is not empty, but full of movement. I look at these movements and how they engage mining as a milieu through which one has to “navigate” (Vigh 2009), establishing new networks and managing expectations. Secondly, I look how sponsors manage expectations as well by seeding hopes to accumulate economic and social capital through an “economic of appearances” (Tsing 2005). Through spectacular performances and magic tricks, expactations are manipulated and exploited. On the one hand, instead of social mobility, social hierarchies perpatuate in mining milieus. Despite this, though, mining never lost its attraction. By investigating how this contradiction is practically endured, I shed light on how moments of stagnation are hopefully navigated through.