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Paper short abstract

Examining the format and veiled assumptions of conference panels, this presentation show the moral panic present in academic-scientific discourse when referring to schismogenic-driven social dynamics as in the case of the Ballermann, the well-known German party tourism in Mallorca, Spain.

Paper long abstract

How does anthropological discourse position itself in relation to social dynamics marked by polarization? How can anthropological understanding fall into the trap of victimization? Does the panel of experts tend to exacerbate polarization in a social phenomenon? In this presentation, I seek to challenge the anthropological discourse on party tourism in Majorca, Spain. It is based on 15 months of fieldwork among tourist and local communities between 2019 and 2023 (including over 500 hours of recordings in party settings and 2,000 photographs). In the particular case of German Ballermann party tourism, due to the maximization and specialization of the party, the anthropological discourse paradoxically tends to deepen the polarization instead of offering a global understanding of the festive phenomenon and its participants. Faced with this unusual “desperate denial of recognition” (Graeber 2005, 415) that anthropology experiences in the face of certain problems, it is necessary to explore its own epistemological assumptions and fallacies (Bateson 1972, 495). Exploring the conference panel, the quintessential space for communication, is a viable option. That is why, using the aforementioned audiovisual material, as well as "lost objects" from fieldwork, I seek to combine communicative modalities to, in a single movement, convey the phenomenological intensity of the Ballermann festival, while simultaneously dismantling the epistemic and moralizing assumptions that hinder a true understanding of the phenomenon.