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- Convenors:
-
Hande Birkalan-Gedik
(Goethe Universität)
Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Gabriele d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara)
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- Chair:
-
Fabiana Dimpflmeier
(Gabriele d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara)
- Discussant:
-
Ulf Hannerz
(Stockholm University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Great Hall
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
There has been too much weight on the center-periphery positions although anthropological theory has been about hybridity, provincial thinking, and vernacular traditions. We challenge the center-periphery model vis a vis the transformations within anthropology on the world, periphery, and center.
Long Abstract:
The anthropologies of the less-mapped traditions introduced new ways to think about anthropological locations, which were once defined as four-ways (Barth et al. 2005). Scholars from "non-Western" traditions—commonly called "national" anthropologies (Gerholm/Hannerz 1982) and "other" anthropologies (Bošković 2010)—ushered several critical questions. In this panel, we will critically revisit the earlier accounts, question their models, and focus on the transformations within and among the so-called peripheries. We argue that there has been too much weight on the center-periphery positions so far; and that anthropological theory production has been indeed about hybridity, provincial thinking (Chakrabarty 2007), and vernacular anthropologies. The center versus periphery model and various other versions of colonial authority versus the colonized continue to pose and reproduce knowledge hierarchies, letting national traditions speak from/to the European and North American perspectives. How can we challenge the center-periphery model in the face of other transformations within anthropology? What about the capitalist system which enables hegemony to escalate as a part of the global academic system? How about the multiple relations within and beyond several peripheries? At the least, the new generation of anthropologists have been producing anthropological knowledge, questioning the de-limitability of self-other-halfie, thus challenging this model. What hopes and thoughts can we present to overcome this defect in thinking about anthropology and the world, periphery, center in the future of anthropology? In this panel our ambition is not to provide definite answers but to widen our perspectives on the past, present, and the future of anthropology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
I argue that contrary to the received wisdom, kinship is not marginal or withering away in Europe but at the core of the society. Western intellectuals from 19th century to this day keep on reproducing European kinship model disguising it as part of universal social fabric.
Paper long abstract:
Western anthropologists invented the concept of kinship to describe the "other" which seemed to be integrated by kin ties. While European (broadly speaking) kinship principles rested on the assumption that birth-related ties must be re-evaluated and replaced by choice-based ones during the process of growing-up, the societies with strong "kin ties" seemed to be lingering in social childhood. I use Western social theories not as sources of intellectual wisdom but as ethnographic artefacts produced by the intellectual elites of the societies under scrutiny. Theoretical assumptions like status-contract, Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, some of Durkheim's, Weber's, Freud's and Parson's ideas, Granovetter's strong-weak ties, Putnam's bonding-bridging social capital) reiterate the same vision of social change whereby the past, and early social life is associated with ties produced through birth and the future is associated with choice. Similar framework (flesh vs spiritual kinship) was advocated by European Christians since early Medieval time. Many of these theories draw direct parallels with (European) assumptions of individual development: if birth-related ties are not severed, pathology of sorts results. The fear (or prediction) of constantly disappearing European family also is a part of the general narrative of growing up in Europe. I argue that we need to start looking at European kinship not via theory that was developed to describe the "rest" but as an integral part of European social fabric and consequently evaluate the stream of global theories (e.g., proposing ends of history) in a world where Europe heads towards periphery.
Paper short abstract:
The emergence of the so-called LGBT-free zones is an effect of the historical inter-imperial positionality of Poland. From a post- and decolonial, race-critical perspective, they emerge as part of global as well as European race and gender dynamic that has been present in Poland for a very long time
Paper long abstract:
Since early 2019, around 100 municipalities, counties and regions (voivodeships) in Poland have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones.” Documents passed by the local councils under titles like “Local Charter of the Rights of the Family” or “A Resolution Against LGBT Ideology” refer to “gender ideology” or pledge “defense” of the “fundamentality” of the binary-gender family, a structure that is allegedly anchored in the Polish legal order and a condition for prosperity in Poland. These documents – which have no legally binding power – have been passed through the initiative of a globally networked, fundamentalist Catholic organization, Ordo Iuris, with active support from the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. However, in late 2021, after the EU Commission announced that regions where these resolutions were passed will be cut off from EU funds, some of them have withdrawn them. Debates in local parliaments preceding these withdrawals have shown that the arguments that led to the resolutions’ initial passing are still very much present in public discourse.
In this presentation I want to show how the emergence of the so-called LGBT-free zones in Poland is entangled with global racist dynamics which are perpetuated by processes of Europeanization. The establishment of these zones is also an effect of the historical inter-imperial positionality of Poland. If we look at these zones from a post- and decolonial, race-critical perspective, they emerge as part of a global as well as European race and gender dynamic that has been present in Poland for a very long time