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- Convenors:
-
Chiara Calzana
(University of Turin)
Elena Miltiadis (Roskilde University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Olga Demetriou
(University of Durham)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Online
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This panel welcomes ethnographic explorations of how timespaces are manifested, materialised, and performed through the doing and undoing of multiple intersecting forms of political engagement that animate temporal and spatial orientations. These dynamics are framed here as “crafting politics”.
Long Abstract:
Recent events, such as wars, disasters, the pandemic, and the environmental impact brought by climate change, have been experienced by communities across the world as sites of heightened political activity that animate multiple temporal and spatial orientations (cf., Bryant and Knight, 2019).
This panel welcomes ethnographic explorations of the ways in which timespaces emerge through "crafting politics". We use the term "crafting politics" as a way to indicate the doing and undoing of multiple intersecting forms of political engagement. These encompass but are not limited to the narrativisation of politics; the implementation of public policies; the impact and development of institutional interventions; the making of collective actions; the envisioning of political utopias and dystopias. Some examples include political processes of memorialisation; mobilisation and activism across physical and digital spaces; the planning and execution of projects of urban redevelopment, regeneration, and gentrification.
We encourage reflection on the following questions: how does the "crafting" of politics articulate different scales of pasts, presents, and futures (e.g., national, biographical, local)? How are intersecting timespaces produced, negotiated, and contested, through the doing and undoing of political engagement? How is politics "crafted" through the tension between temporariness and permanence? How are these emerging timespaces felt, experienced, and embodied? We are looking for contributions that consider the ways in which the "crafting" of politics becomes a site where temporal orientations and moods (e.g., anticipation, repetition, hope, uncertainty), as well as their affective resonance (see Gordon, 1997 on haunting) are manifested, materialised, envisioned, imagined, and performed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Alice Bellagamba (University of Milan-Bicocca)
Paper short abstract:
In the Upper Casamance of the late colonial period, the emerging time-space of decolonization resonated, politically and affectedly, with earlier experiences of freedom and slavery. Rural political mobilization drew on different scales of pasts, presents, and futures.
Paper long abstract:
Unexpected turns and dead-ends marked French West Africa decolonization process. When it ended in 1960, the metropolis and the former colonies found themselves entrapped into an unanticipated form of political organization, the nation-state. Both archives and oral history provide clues to the socio-political and cultural effervescence of this historical period. Hopes of change characterized disadvantaged social categories: youths, women, unskilled labourers, peasants as much as freed slaves and people of slave ancestry who expected the end of colonial rule to finish also the discrimination, exploitation and socio-political vulnerability that followed the abolition of slavery in the early part of the twentieth century. At variance with geographies and histories, the emerging time-space of decolonization thus resonated, politically and affectedly, with earlier experiences of freedom and slavery. The case study is the Upper Casamance of the late colonial period, where rural political mobilisation drew on living memories of late nineteenth century emancipatory struggles. Onto the corners of world- history, and through forgotten histories of hope and anticipation, historical ethnography follows the echoes of people’s dreams for the world-to-be.
Veysel Can Karakas (Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem (ELTE))
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to explore the creation & re-interpretation of squares by the political power in the interwar period in a comparative way. Comparative cases of this study will be Szabadság tér (Liberty Square) in Budapest and Taksim Meydanı (Taksim Square) in Istanbul.
Paper long abstract:
This paper intends to explore the creation & re-interpretation of squares by the political power in the interwar period in a comparative way. Considering the direct reflection of symbols of the political regimes to the creation of space in various cities in the interwar period, from Soviet Russia to Italy and Turkey to Hungary, the squares became representative spaces of these regimes which also shed light on the relationship of the political regimes with their imperial pasts.
Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923, and Kingdom of Hungary, founded in 1920, two nation-states after collapsing of multinational empires, respectively the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867-1918), set a striking example of opposite historical perception of their imperial pasts, during the interwar period (1918-1939). While Turkey, under the authoritarian leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), rejected the imperial heritage in the name of modern secular state as well as nationalized history against the minorities, Hungary, under the authoritarian leadership of Miklós Horthy (1868-1957) who governed the country with the title of “regent” did not only embrace its imperial past, but also strived to resurrect Kingdom of Hungary in many ways, not necessarily referring to Austro-Hungarian Monarchia, but rather to Kingdom of Hungary (1001-1541) lost its sovereignty to the Ottomans.
These opposite political motivations became evident through the squares, both in the way of carving them in stone with monuments and political gatherings performed by political power and citizens. Taksim Meydanı (Istanbul) was constructed from scratch in 1928, and everything about the square, represented a rupture from the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, Szabadság tér (Budapest), created in 1897, taking its name after the Hungarian War of Independence 1848-49 (Magyar Szabadságharc) in 1900, was inherited to the Hungarian nation-state from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and set a great example of continuity with the Hungarian imperial past, as being a space of Hungarian irredentism. In this paper, the story of both squares will be reflected by archival materials, such as construction plans, maps and newspaper articles as well as declarations of leading politicians of the era.
Katya Lachowicz (Goldsmiths, UK)
Paper short abstract:
The mountainous region of southern Spain, the Alpujarras, has long harboured utopian minds from Macquis to miners. A flood in 1996 created the ideal riverbed setting for 90s rave culture, and in its fight for survival, the incidental resurgence of civil war frontlines in an environmental battle.
Paper long abstract:
The remote region of southern Spain, the Alpujarras, has long harboured utopian minds, whose lives are inextricably woven with the landscape in which they live. These mountains witnessed the last rebellion of the Moors, and the last of the Macquis guerilla fighters in the aftermath of the civil war. Many who settled in these parts over the last decades, were involved in the British anarchist movement of the 80s, who along with new age travellers felt increasingly persecuted by Thatcherite policies. Most were back-to-the-landers and welcomed by locals. They started to build an alternative community in Cigarrones, accessible only via a rocky riverbed, puncturing many cars over its time. In 1996 a flood widened the riverbed birthing the Dragon Festival. Unkown to organisers, the annual rave was held on old political frontlines of the civil war and the quarry in the mountains still belonged in Falangist hands. In the years that followed, environmental protests merged with attempts to prohibit the festival. As the activists stood against police lines, an old villager exclaimed, he had not seen this in 70s years, except now it was the anarchists who had won. After a successful campaign, in 2009 the river flooded once again, putting an end to the festival it had created. I would like to present the story of the Dragon Festival as an example of a form of crafting politics in which the past, present and future collide, now also in the context of new battles against developing infrastructures.
Elena Miltiadis (Roskilde University)
Paper short abstract:
I analyse the Chilean right's discourses surrounding the Chilean social protests of 2019 and the ongoing constitutional process, by focusing specifically on the reshaping of calendrical time as a means to 'craft' politics and foster the emergence of alternative timespaces.
Paper long abstract:
In 2019, Chile witnessed widespread social protests, which culminated in an 'Estallido Social' (social outbreak) in October of that year. A constitutional process was opened to rewrite the nation's constitution; however, despite this, two proposed drafts for a new constitutional text were rejected in referenda held in September 2022 and December 2023. In this paper, I analyse discourses surrounding these events, by focusing specifically on the reshaping of calendrical time as a means to 'craft' politics and foster the emergence of alternative timespaces.
Calendars function as frameworks for structuring temporality, encompassing both a linear and a cyclical dimension. Linearity is expressed through the sequential progression of dates towards the future, while cyclicity is manifested in the recurrence of established events. Nevertheless, calendars and calendrical time can also become sites where politics is 'crafted', through the articulation, re-elaboration, and negotiation of temporality as part of political action.
Here, I reflect on ethnographic material collected during the campaign that preceded the second constitutional referendum (which took place in December 2023). I focus on the ways Chilean right-wing parties and groups reshaped calendrical time as a site of political action and for the (re)production of political narratives that extended beyond the confines of the referendum campaign itself. Through 'crafting' politics, these groups envisioned and enacted multiple alternative timespaces of the nation, especially in the context of drafting and voting for a new constitutional text.
Ilektra Kyriazidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the various ways timespaces are recreated in conditions of insecurity marked by austerity regimes and policies of hostile borders. It focuses on the participations of locals and refugees in collective actions as forms of spatiotemporalizing practices.
Paper long abstract:
The paper follows date entries of a fieldwork diary, narratives about daily life in the field, written during past research on the effects of austerity in a low-income neighbourhood in Thessaloniki, Greece (2015-2016). It describes a historical moment marked by two realities, the blocking of the passage of asylum seekers and the set-back of anti-austerity politics. A historical moment saturated by temporal insecurity and the defeat of hope, as people felt stuck under austerity regimes and hostile borders. The focus is on the common collective actions of locals and newcomers and the participation of the ethnographer in these actions. This form of mutual engagement that concerns a politics of the present, attending to and changing the everyday, depicts embodiments and negotiations of temporal structures and a life that goes on in a somehow hopeful way. Exploring the qualities and complexities of this sense of hope as a collectively recreated ‘timespace of the future’ (Bryant and Knight, 2019), hope emerges as an affective aspect of everyday living that is placed in the present.
Emma Lengle (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is developed from ethnographic engagement with urban planning in the Oslo City Government, where public health policy is marked by stability/instability and as pressing/not-yet-pressing. It asks how municipal politics animates temporal and spatial orientations of a city’s health.
Paper long abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the deadly implications of contemporary urban life in Oslo. Politicians and residents alike mapped past decisions, policies, and plans onto the unequal distribution of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in the city. A story of deeply rooted social inequality was weaved into a narrative of pandemic health inequity. Today, policy failures before and during the pandemic are discussed as the backdrop of contemporary urban inequalities and the foreground for future pandemic governance. In this crisis interim, the Oslo City Government crafts a public health strategy bridging an inequitable policy history to an equitable, healthy city future.
As Oslo municipality’s civil servants develop and implement the public health strategy, they negotiate the geographical and temporal span of the city's health disparities. Some describe social inequality in health as a pressing issue of today while others consider it to be a not-yet but potential pressing issue of tomorrow. The city government launches a public health strategy to reduce social inequality in health, yet its implementation is paused while the government focuses on more immediate worries. Funding for prevention and public health expertise is described as vital for sustainable welfare futures, yet it is not prioritized until budgets “stabilize”. What is it about the dynamics of local politics that crafts public health as, all at once, a missing past, an inconvenient present and an imminent future?
Leone Michelini (University of Messina)
Paper short abstract:
The Messina area in Sicily emerges as a migratory “timespace” marked by temporariness, transit and crisis, and produced relationally by the “entanglement” of “crafting politics” brought into play by the Catholic and Syro-Malabar Church, the State and the migrant worker communities from Kerala.
Paper long abstract:
The Messina area in Sicily, at the core of a significant migratory flow of Syrian-Christian caregivers belonging to Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in Kerala, emerges as a “vernacular timespace” (Bryant, Knight 2019) marked by impermanence, transit and crisis, and produced relationally by the “entanglement” (Fresnoza-Flot, Liu-Farrer 2022) of “crafting politics”. Interrelated political strategies cross different planes of temporality, craft from an uncertain present their “utopian” futures, and envision Sicilian reality as a crossing/transit place, in asymmetrical yet convergent ways. The Catholic Church (and in its own way the Syro-Malabar one) rules migration, in the long durée and transnationally at a global stage, in order to maintain its hegemony over the welfare system and open a new cycle of grandeur, via the idea of “missionary returns” (Napolitano 2015) as a counterbalance to secularization. The State, through policies of surveillance, carelessness and non-governance, “naturalizes” the emergency management of migration under socioeconomic crisis, reaffirming its apparent passivity and a governance model centered on the succession of different migrant groups as subordinate labor force. Migrants see themselves as “fleeting, in-transit and precarious presences” politically engaged mostly in informal practices of collective bargaining, and experience Sicily as the first hub, suitable precisely because of its structural weaknesses, of a migratory project imagined as multi-nodal and progressive. The “discreet charm” of this migratory timespace and its political game turns temporariness and crisis into the enduring of power relations in which the sum of multiple subalternities, marginalizations and systemic deficiencies transits to a permanent image of stability.
Manabika Mandal (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
Environmentally displaced people with a colonial history of migration along the banks of the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India, navigate various means for energy access. The politics and impacts of navigating services from state and non-state agencies is analysed through the lens of temporality.
Paper long abstract:
Material dispossession is a part of everyday life for people displaced by floods and riverbank erosion by the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India. As state and non-state agencies address challenges of natural disasters, emphasis is placed on electricity access for internally displaced people. This raises questions about the politics and impacts of such efforts. What does it mean for environmental refugees to have access to infrastructure when they have to migrate every few years? How does electricity access mediate legitimacy in the eyes of the state? How do periods of infrastructure stability come to inhabit memories and aspirations?
In Tengaguri village, by the Brahmaputra, where seventy percent of the village has been lost to erosion, displaced people narrate stories of dispossession and repossession in a dynamic flux. Dispossession transitions from earlier legitimate grid connections to improvised illegitimate hooking of new electric poles at present. Further, access to solar powered technologies is limited; with access controlled by a dense web of bureaucracy and development aid. Here, the past, present, and the future take a non-linear form that defies the normative progression of access to technology, as prescribed in India’s energy policies.
Analyzing ethnographic material, including vignettes of oral and visual stories, gathered during a year-long fieldwork in Tengaguri, this paper discusses people’s interactions with electric materials at the margins of the state. Through recollection of the past, a narration of the present, and aspirations imagined for the future, I examine the politics and temporalities of electrical materiality of displaced people.
Maria Runkel Cardoso
Paper short abstract:
Examining global Brazilian migrant groups, this presentation analizes political motivations amid Brazil's evolving landscape. Focused on Lisbon's Coletivo Andorinha, it unveils flexible activism projecting present morals into the future, exemplifying crafting politics in interesting times and spaces
Paper long abstract:
This presentation delves into the simultaneous emergence of collectives of Brazilian migrants in various global cities, without direct connections. The study seeks to comprehend the nuanced political assertion originating from diverse contextual exigencies. These include the protracted political discourse in Brazil since 2016, the imperative of maintaining affiliations with Brazil, and the exigencies intrinsic to the migrant experience, compelling the creation of groups characterised by security and affective bonds.
We analize the motivations underpinning this collective activism, exploring the challenges of migrant life and the moral obligation to engage in and denounce antidemocratic practices within the context of globalisation. Highlighting the flexibility inherent in all these collectives, activated at specific moments influenced by events in both Brazil and their resident nations, the activism takes diverse forms such as protests, debates, and meetings. This flexibility is construed as a forward projection, transposing prevailing moral convictions into future contexts.
The study zooms in on Coletivo Andorinha in Lisbon as an ethnographic example, examining the intertwining of individual motivations to shape collective actions. Notably, within the contemporary landscape, the emergence of an online collective assumes significance. This digital platform serves as a dynamic space that aggregates various migrant groups, fostering interconnection, and trying to ensure the sustained existence of these collectives. By elucidating the dynamics of both physical and virtual spaces, the research enriches our comprehension of how these collectives exemplify the concept of 'crafting politics' within the complex interplay of intersecting times and spaces.