Paper short abstract

Based on my fieldwork experience in Cape Verde, I will analyse the transition from silencing discussions about race based on the concept of 'creoleness', to openly discussing and understanding the historical and social dynamics of the country using the 'R-word'.

Paper long abstract

In times of antiblack feelings, how can talking about race help us to understand the past and build the present? To answer this question, I will build up my analysis on ethnographic data produced throughout the last decade conducting fieldwork in Cape Verde, with research focused on nation-building discourses and migrations.

Impacted by intra-West African immigration, the dissemination of pro-black discourse by the Brazilian media in the archipelago, and intense communication with its diaspora, the country's history is being retold. Rather than being told from the perspective of Creole/mestizo exceptionalism, which would erase racial inequalities in discourse, it is now being told from the perspective of the persistence of racial hierarchies in its structure.

This movement has led to significant changes in the way the nation is understood, specially by the lens of anthropologists such as Cláudio Furtado, Eufémia Rocha and José Carlos Gomes dos Anjos. These scholars challenge the national ideology of a post-racial nation in their work by addressing where racial logic persists. Starting from this context of intense transformation, my goal is to demonstrate how discussing the 'R-word' (race) can help us to overcome the racism that structures post-colonial societies.

Starting from everyday situations of racial violence in the context of epidermal similarities, I explore the significance of identifying race as a fundamental aspect of Cape Verdean society, providing meaning to lived experiences and facilitating change. While silence perpetuates inequality, speaking out creates space for subverting the established order.

Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Moroccan youth use Instagram to challenge racialized tourism narratives. Drawing on Cultural Studies, it analyzes digital storytelling as a form of cultural resistance that reframes Moroccan cultural tourism beyond exoticized and minoritizing representations.

Paper long abstract

Tourism has long played a central role in the production and circulation of cultural representations, often reproducing racialized and exoticized imaginaries of non-Western destinations. In the case of Morocco, dominant tourism narratives have historically emphasized timelessness, tradition, and otherness, contributing to the marginalization and simplification of local cultural identities. Drawing on Cultural Studies and tourism scholarship, this paper examines how Moroccan youth engage with social media—particularly Instagram—to challenge and reframe these racializing processes through alternative forms of cultural storytelling. Therefore, this paper adopts a qualitative digital ethnographic approach, analyzing Instagram posts and reels produced by Moroccan youth, cultural content creators, and grassroots tourism

initiatives. Through visual and thematic content analysis, this study explores how everyday cultural practices, local aesthetics, and lived experiences are mobilized to construct counter-narratives of Moroccan tourism that foreground agency, contemporaneity, and cultural plurality. Rather than presenting culture as a static spectacle for consumption, these digital narratives emphasize relationality, community, and situated meanings of place. By treating social media

content as cultural texts, the study highlights how youth-led digital tourism practices function as spaces of symbolic resistance, where racialized representations are negotiated, contested, and re-signified. The findings suggest that social media operates not merely as a promotional tool, but as a cultural arena in which power relations embedded in tourism discourse are actively reworked.

Keywords : Cultural tourism, social media, youth digital storytelling, racialization, cultural representation, Moroccan tourism, Instagram

Paper short abstract

To subvert the racializing processes is a challenge itself. In this paper I reflect on how gathering the lost memories of African people that settled in Spain from the last quarter of 19th century and during the 20th century offer new narratives and tools to empower Afro-European communities today.

Paper long abstract

I will expose the case of the Krio Fernandino that started in 1880, and that was reinforced by the case of the Bubi and the Fang people settled from the beginning of the 20th century. I propose to gather these African imprints by oral and written sources to put invisible and marginal voices and people in the centre, given that to demonstrate their large presence in Europe can reinforce their rights, demonstrating that they have been part of European societies for more than two centuries.

The interest of studying Afro-European lost memories in Spain is based on Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies and its final aim is to neutralize the perverse effects of the racialization processes activated from colonial times.

To empower Afro communities by tracing their Afro-European past using different methodologies from Anthropology and History will be supported by gathering interviews to reconstruct oral history, documentation related to list of passengers from African countries to European, personal permissions to travel, reading some sections of colonial press, etc. From my point of view, the combination of oral history with the consultation of data in the press, archives, etc., presents an interesting way to put into circulation other narratives useful to neutralize racism and racialization processes.

This paper is a result of the R&D Project “Africans, Maghrebis and Latins (1808-1975). Blackness, resistance and deracialization of elites” (BLACKSPAIN) (PID2022-138689NB-I00), funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa.

Paper short abstract

The paper argues that Aadhaar biometrics in India act as racial surveillance, reviving colonial anthropometry and deepening caste–tribe exclusions. Using multi-scalar, decolonial, and PAR-based anthropological methods, it proposes community-led, anti-racist alternatives to current ID policies.

Paper long abstract

Aadhaar's biometric system (12-digit ID linked to fingerprints, iris scans, and facial recognition) functions as racial surveillance in India by systematically encoding, monitoring, and differentially controlling bodies marked by caste, tribe, religion, and ethnicity—reinforcing India's colonial racial legacies under a digital guise. Due to this Aadhaar, there is a major issue arising again and again that is Enrolment Barriers in which the Poor lack clean fingerprints (manual labor), lack of stable addresses (migrants), lack of knowledge and accessibility to smartphones for updating data by the poors where as the Rich have access to smartphones, urban centers/private kiosks. And finally, these barriers lead to hunger/starvation deaths in poor families.

Aadhaar revives 19th-century anthropometry (e.g., Risley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal) where biometrics measured skulls/noses to racialize Indians (upper caste = Aryan; lower = Dravidian/Aboriginal). Modern facial algorithms inherit this flawed taxonomy.

Multi-Scalar Analysis needs to be used in this case, where Macro analysis, like policy-level criticism, is essential, where we can say that Aadhaar biometrics is a racial surveillance. Instead of this we can advocate for prioritizing community-defined categories by using Decolonial and Critical Race Theory, which view race as a social construct with no biological basis.

In such a situation, anthropologists by using both qualitative and quantitative research methodology like; Participant observation and case study collection, along with Participatory Action Research (PAR) can co-create anti-racist interventions with communities, which can further help both academicians and civil society organizations for advocacy and government as well to revise their policies.

Paper short abstract

This paper advances antiracializing ethnography by critiquing colonial epistemologies and fieldwork asymmetries. It proposes reflexive, relational methods informed by ethnopsychiatry and Lacanian theory to humanize inquiry and deepen understanding of racialization through affective, lived engagement

Paper long abstract

The paper I propose seeks to contribute to an ongoing process of transformation toward antiracializing ethnographic methods and practices. The epistemological entanglement between anthropology, colonialism, and the construction of race is extensively addressed in the literature (among others Harrison 1997; Baker Lee 1998; Clifford, Marcus 2017; Simpson 2018). Similarly, the push toward the decolonisation of ethnography has been driven by numerous scholars (including Bajerano et al. 2019; Dutta 2020; Kaur, Klinkert 2021; Tripura 2023). Nevertheless, once into the field, tacit orders, those asymmetrical social structures underpinning the inquiry relationship (Bourdieu 1992), tend to reassert themselves when observing, collecting data or conducting interviews. These dynamics risk reproducing a research method that de-humanise interlocutors, reducing them to mere repositories of information (Kaur, Klinkert 2021). This becomes even more evident for white researchers (Egharevba 2001; Gordon 2005; Chadderton 2012). Thus, I believe intertwining reflexivity, critical studies in ethno-psychiatry and Lacanian theories may serve as valuable guide for grounding an inquiry relationship, attentive to the unconscious structurations shaping the interaction between researcher and participants. This approach I practiced during my PhD, can produce an unconventional and deeper understanding of racialization processes, merging academic knowledge with everyday experience. Such understanding emerges through getting to know the participants from an interpersonal and cultural, as well as historical and political, perspective. The unfolding trajectory of the relationship becomes the unfolding trajectory of the research itself (Tillmann-Healy 2003), thereby conferring ethnographic value on the affective and relational dimension, as well as on practices of social support (Picozza 2021).

Paper short abstract

This paper, utilizing critical race theory, examines a flagship scholarship program implemented within the school education system to reduce dropout rates and increase student enrolment, particularly among students from marginalized communities.

Paper long abstract

This paper, utilizing critical race theory, examines a flagship scholarship program implemented within the school education system to reduce dropout rates and increase student enrolment, particularly among students from marginalized communities, such as Adivasis or Indigenous communities in India. Beyond its economic support, the programme also aims to promote conscientisation by enhancing students’ awareness of their rights and educational opportunities. Government initiatives targeting indigenous or Adivasi learners aim to create a bridge between marginalized communities and the mainstream education system, while also preserving their cultural identity within the broader social framework.

The study is based on an empirical framework and data collected from two purposively selected districts in West Bengal. Data was gathered through interview schedules and in-depth case studies conducted with programme beneficiaries and key stakeholders. The paper seeks to critically analyse how such government initiatives both humanize and, at times, inadvertently dehumanize the classroom environment, thereby shaping the educational experiences of indigenous or Adivasi students of the eastern Indian state.

From the recommendations of various education commissions, Indian educational reforms have consistently articulated a commitment to addressing the structural disparities faced by disadvantaged and marginalized groups. This paper critically examines how such government initiatives operate within classroom spaces, arguing that while they seek to humanize education by promoting inclusion, recognition, and opportunity, they may also inadvertently reproduce forms of dehumanization through standardized curricula, dominant cultural norms, and deficit-oriented pedagogical practices.

Keywords: Marginalized community, Indigenous or Adivasi, Conscientisation, Oppression, Liberalism, Government initiative, Eastern India