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Accepted Contribution:
Radical Emplacement: Regional Belonging as a Site of Political Contestation
Annika Lems
(Australian National University)
This contribution aims to inquire into the ambiguous ways regional pride and belonging can act as catalysts of societal critique. Focusing on radically localised, 'anti-mobile' placemaking practices, it makes visible the powerful role ideas of regionality occupy in the current political moment.
Contribution long abstract:
In my contribution to this roundtable, I aim to reflect on the ambiguous ways ideas of regional pride and belonging can act as catalysts of societal critique. Drawing on village ethnography in the Austrian Alpen-Adria region, I will shed light on placemaking practices in rural communities that are at once characterised by long histories of cross-border mobilities and a pronounced support for radically localised, “anti-mobile” (Lems 2023) worldviews. By zooming in on the ways village inhabitants use ideas of regionality to contest the perceived horizonlessness of the liberal paradigm, I will discuss the ambiguous and often-times exclusionary ways people create a sense of belonging to place. I argue that rather than writing such radically regionalised placemaking efforts off as backward, traditionalist ways of relating to the world, anthropologists need to pay attention to them. They make visible a deepening chasm between scholarly imaginaries about mobile, cosmopolitan identities and people’s lived experiences in an increasingly fragmented global political arena.