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Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork conducted in the German-speaking Swiss Alps, this paper looks at the ambiguous power of tourism, as a simultaneously rooting and uprooting force, allowing locals to lead a dignified life in their valley while perpetually threatening their well-being and heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The German-speaking Alps present long histories of obsession with rootedness. A rich intellectual tradition of Romantic and existentialist thinkers saw the Alps as the last resort for an alienated, uprooted Mankind, corrupted by the processes of industrialization transforming Europe. Inhabited by those they described as last rooted autochthons of the continent, the Alps recalled irretrievable times of harmony and authenticity. Over the last centuries, it is paradoxically thanks to intense tourism development and global connection that many Alpine dwellers have been able to stay put in their home valleys, in mountains regions that are generally prone to outmigration. Based on fieldwork conducted in the German-speaking Swiss Alps, this paper looks at the ambiguous power of tourism, as a simultaneously rooting and dislocating force, allowing locals to lead a dignified life in their valley as Alpine ‘natives’ while perpetually threatening their well-being and heritage. Focusing on the experiences of Alpine dwellers I met between 2017 and 2023, I discuss how locals reasoned along scenarios of up-/rootedness as they both yearned for a ‘purer’ past and were involved in a disorientating race forward, to attract more guest and compete with rival touristic destinations. I thereby combine Marxist and existentialist scholarships on alienation to reveal their imbrication in the current globalized-yet-nativist global context.

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Paper short abstract:

Transnational migration involves mobilization of ‘roots’ as an ‘inscription’ into (home)lands and shared pasts. How such an ‘inscription’ is reproducible, reclaimable or un-done by different generations of Lithuanian migrants in the USA, Kazakhstan and Russia due to conditions in their homeland.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational migration involves enactment of human agency in mobilization of ‘roots’ as an ‘inscription’ into particular connections to (home)lands and shared pasts.

I will deal with three cases of how such an ‘inscription’ is reproducible, reclaimable or un-done by different generations of both forced and voluntary Lithuanian migrants who are resident in the USA, Kazakhstan and Russia due to the social conditions created by communism and post-communism in eastern Europe. Firstly, I will explore the experiences of the first generation’s up-rootedness from their homeland. Secondly, I will consider re-rootedness of the subsequent generations in the host lands through the heritagization of diasporic memories and pasts. Individuals in the descending generations often become interested in their families or their own ancestral roots deriving from overseas and manifested for politics of subjectivity (Collier 1997). Thus the diasporic obligation to be a ‘link in the chain’, in which heritage culture must be retained, is intricately linked with the ways in which ‘roots’ are individually re-done, re-invented or shaped as ‘cosmopolitanism with roots’ or used for ‘roots tourism’. In the third case, the mobilization of ‘roots’ reveals itself in the diasporic form of homeland nationalism (Glick Shiller 2005) that was used in rebuilding nation states in the post-communist Europe of the 1990s. Currently this process is changing into a moral economy of remitting social capital and social norms by (re)migrants transferring social remittances (Ciubrinskas et al. 2023) as one of their reciprocal obligations to those "left behind' in homelands.

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My paper explores practices of rooting as a political, spiritual and personal doing in Khenana, a shack settlement in Durban/South Africa which emerged from an occupation by landless activists. In an extremely violent climate, the local dwellers find ways to (re-)create their place of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

Most shack dwellers in Durban have moved to the city from rural areas in search of education and job opportunities. Having left their rural homes and thus the places of their ancestors, they often only find underserviced and overcrowded shack settlements as their only affordable housing option in the city. For many, these are initially temporary makeshift solutions that are to be overcome either through municipal interventions or personal economic advancement. However, given the political ignorance towards the marginalised, many shack dwellers remain stuck for generations in (often informal) settlements without proper access to electricity and water. In this paper, I explore the rooting practices of Khenana, a community that has built itself up as a socialist commune in the notorious township of Mayville. Having cleared and occupied unused land, they became a "branch" of the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo which organizes urban shack dwellers in a grassroots democratic way. Since Khenana's foundation in 2018, the local dwellers have been exposed to extreme violence. After three of their leaders were murdered by hitmen in 2022, the vulnerable community has taken even deeper political, spiritual and personal roots in the soil soaked with the blood of their fallen comrades, who are considered as ancestors of their movement. Based on my ethnographic research, I think through rooting as an entangled practice that negotiates tensions and asynchronicities to (re-)create a place of belonging in the midst of a brutal environment.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the erosion of alternative spaces of belonging in China during the Covid-19 pandemic, following the lives of young Chinese women who felt uprooted yet simultaneously constricted by the intensifying reach of the state through pandemic-related regulations and surveillance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper interrogates the notion of un/rootedness through examining the lives of a collection of young Chinese women whom feel increasingly alienated from mainstream Chinese society, primarily founded on their aversions to gender and familial norms. These women had all moved from across China to three sites in Southwest and Southern China, in search of new places and forms of belonging. These three sites, where I conducted fieldwork in 2020-2021, have all acquired certain utopian reputations across China as focal points for alternative and “hippie” communities to exist within the restricted parameters of the Authoritarian Chinese state.

My research maintains that the potentials of these three places as sites of alternative belonging had already begun to unravel before the pandemic, via gentrification, tourismification, cultural homogenisation, and the suppression of underground cultural spaces by authorities.

For my interlocutors, the ruptures and precariousness heralded by the pandemic across China crystalised the demise of these sites as places of freedom and alternate belonging, particularly as places of distance from the state (and the family). This was magnified through the ever-invasive reach of the state through new surveillance technologies and stringent pandemic regulations, which rendered every individual visible. By 2021, my interlocutors saw the “dream” of these places already lost, and many decided to “uproot” themselves and move elsewhere, leaving them feeling adrift. This paper therefore provides sharp insight into the rapidly-changing social conditions of current China, beneath the state’s ongoing attempts to regulate and determine ways of being and belonging within its borders.

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Paper short abstract:

Drawing from different cases of multiple migrations, this paper seeks to explore and understand the complexities underlying the migration patterns and dislocation(s), in relation to the (in)voluntariness and (im)mobility exercised and experienced by the Afghans migrants.

Paper long abstract:

Afghanistan has, for decades, remained one of the leading countries of origin of refugees and asylum seekers, starting from the first major wave of emigration following the Russian invasion in 1979. Afghanistan has also witnessed one of the largest refugee returns, particularly in early 2000s. However, the Taliban coming to power in August 2021 led to another significant outward flow. More than 600,000 individuals migrated to Pakistan alone. These included not only the first-time arrivals but also those who had already lived as refugees in Pakistan almost two decades ago. Furthermore, this also included Afghans who lived as refugees in Iran and after repatriating to Afghanistan, found themselves in a situation where they decided to undertake migration, but this time to Pakistan. In many of these cases, Pakistan (despite being the first country of asylum) was not intended to be the (final) destination. Caught up in bureaucratic struggle and uncertainty, some of them chose to return to Afghanistan while others succeeded in travelling to the Europe or America. However, their countries of entry in Europe or America also did not become the countries of permanent residence for many. Drawing from different cases of multiple migrations, this paper seeks to explore and understand the complexities underlying migration patterns and dislocation(s), in relation to the (in)voluntariness and (im)mobility exercised and experienced by the Afghans. This study is based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Pakistan between March 2022 and May 2023, complemented by the mediated (online) communications, carried out afterward.

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This paper gives insight from ongoing research in the postcolonial context of Vanuatu where genomic knowledge produced from ancient remains raises issues for community stakeholders’ ancestry narratives.

Paper long abstract:

More than ever before, humans have access to new specialist knowledge involving genetics (e.g., ancestry genomics, social epigenomics). Crucial questions are at stakes as this newly accessible knowledge grants individuals with an objectifying image of their ‘identity’, their ‘roots’, their ‘ancestry’. At the crossroads of archaeology, bioanthropology, & population genetics, human paleogenomics (or ancient DNA research) entered a golden age in its contribution to untold facts on past societies & the way it changes how past populations are perceived. While this field is growing rapidly, in-depth understanding of social & political consequences arising from practices & knowledge produced are still needed. Little is known about what exactly citizens or community stakeholders (CS) do with genomic histories they receive from aDNA researchers. This paper gives insight from ongoing research in the postcolonial context of Vanuatu where knowledge produced from ancient remains raises issues for community stakeholders’ ancestry narratives. This paper will contribute to the panel’s discussion on the experiences and social conditions of up/rootedness when mediated through science (human paleogenomics). My contribution will mostly address the following questions: how community stakeholders do perceive such scientific narratives? How does DNA knowledge, particularly its linear historicizing interact with local cultural understandings of the past, ancestry, & genetics, including traditional, postcolonial, Christian or other approaches? Ni-Vanuatu articulate narratives that contest aDNA knowledge & how do they do this?

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Paper short abstract:

The paper argues that while rootedness in postsocialist East Central Europe very often creates exclusion and intolerance to otherness, the post-socialist development in winemaking and valuation of wine also shows how market and globalisation serve for the inclusive ‘emancipation via rootedness’.

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes to look at the experiences and social conditions of rootedness under post-socialist transformations of East Central Europe among amateur and professional wine makers. The empirical focus is on wine value and wine rituals in Slovakia, the post-socialist country where the category of people defined as post-peasants, nominally urban employees of factories and dependents of bureaucratic institutions, prevail in the society and very much value the country. Three rituals related to rootedness -- the regional exhibition of hobby wine makers, the celebration of village wines, and the international wine competition -- pave the way for an argument about how global transformation emancipates the people by rooting them in the country. The paper argues that while rootedness in East Central Europe very often creates exclusion and intolerance to otherness, the post-socialist development in winemaking and valuation of wine also shows how market and globalisation serve for the inclusive ‘emancipation via rootedness’.

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This paper argues that among the minority Muslim Tatar community in Poland roots are discursively called upon to connect individuals and stabilize group identity formations, while also serving as an affectively dense form of resistance and disruption of exclusionary national narratives of belonging.

Paper long abstract:

The rhizome has become an enduring metaphor of the modern age as identity is often analysed by social scientists as a fragmented, mercurial process of becoming (Deleuze and Guattari 1980). In this paper I call for a return to the arborescent imagery of tress and roots to understand how identity can both be experienced as a stable, enduring aspect of people’s lives and simultaneously contain the possibility of change and fluidity. This paper argues that among the Muslim Tatar community in the borderlands of Poland, roots are discursively called upon to connect individuals as members of a minority collective and stabilize identity formations, and yet these roots disrupt deeply held notions of belonging to the Polish nation at large. Roots of place-belonging describe the group’s historical ties to the region of Podlasie and thus integration to the Polish nation, while family trees bind kin with past and present ties both within Poland and across national borders. I argue that these roots serve to discursively hold members together in a time in which the future of the group is seen by participants as increasingly uncertain, threatened by emigration to the West and exogamous marriage practices. This process of root-ing produces affectively dense resonances, as shame of difference during the socialist past has been transformed into current expressions of pride in alterity. These roots of place and kin serve as a sort of resistance to the dislocations of modernity, disrupting exclusionary national narratives of belonging.

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Paper long abstract:

My research focuses on the legal recognition of religious minorities and the management of religion in the Germany, France and Turkey. I examine the case of Alevi belief by focusing on how Alevism is legally recognized as a religion in these countries, and the legal rights Alevis have in Turkey. My research follows the theoretical argument that it is the state who ultimately decides what counts as religion, and it investigates how the actions of the state reconfigure religious life in accordance with a secular conceptual order. Departing from the conventional legal and sociological definition of secularism as the separation of state and religion, I explore how secularism, through the agency of the state, becomes integral to the self-conceptions, practices, institutions, and ideals of religious life; and how in this process, the religious life gets transformed with the participation of the believers.

Alevi recognition, which started in 2012 in Hamburg, Germany, and Basel, Switzerland, gave Turkish Alevism the same legal status as Sunni Islam for the first time. Currently, Alevism is also recognized in Austria, the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark. Based on my preliminary ethnographic fieldwork at the Alevi organizations in Paris and Berlin, I demonstrate how this process triggered an intensified debate within the Alevi community in Europe and Turkey on the definition and practices of Alevism – while their major question is where to situate Alevism, in Islam or outside of Islam. These debates in the circles gravitate quickly towards the question of roots -- against which the authenticity of the practices is tested or claimed. In my talk, I will discuss how the question of tradition, belonging and connectedness to Turkey (and Islam) becomes an important topic for Alevis in their struggle for legal recognition and the very attempt to get rooted in Europe.

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Paper short abstract:

Through ethnographic material collected in the Pergamon World Heritage Site, this paper conceptualizes the notion of world heritage as a practice of rooting into the earth that reflects both the extractivist ways to relate to the world as well as communities’ attempts to cultivate earthly belonging.

Paper long abstract:

This paper conceptualizes world heritage as a practice of rooting into earth that reflects both the multilayered violence that national and international heritage regimes impose, as well as communities attempts to undo given discursive frameworks. The notion of World Heritage promoted by UNESCO suggests a type of earthly belonging by turning selected locations into world property. This process includes multilayered processes of uprooting these locations from their existing local and national property regimes in order to manufacture a heritage site that supposedly belongs to everybody. In this sense, breaking the chain of inheritance the making of the world heritage embodies extractivist practices.

The heritage regimes that has shaped Pergamon has been formed at the intersection of German, Ottoman and Turkish cultural politics as well as the UNESCO conventions. Through archival and ethnographic material collected in Bergama (today’s Turkey) during 2023, the paper examines different local, national and international attempts of rooting into ancient history. Firstly, it examines how uprooting and rerooting of Pergamon has been discursively and materially constructed by multiple national and international heritage regimes. Secondly it analyzes how local, national and international communities’ attempt to claim Pergamon as a way to root into earth beyond the extractivist heritage regimes. It argues that the notion of world heritage reflects practices of rooting into the earth in extractivist terms while simultaneously generate communities seeking to cultivate earthly belonging by undoing the given frameworks of meaning and history making.