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- Convenors:
-
Domenico Copertino
(University of Basilicata)
Vita Santoro (University of Basilicata)
Luigi Stanzione (Università della Basilicata)
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- Stream:
- Methodology
- Sessions:
- Thursday 17 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The transnationalist perspective in anthropology, geography and linguistics makes it possible to tackle the growing awareness of groups of people (e.g. migrants, the religious communities, the heritagescapes, and the like) to be part simultaneously of different sociocultural contexts.
Long Abstract:
The growing awareness of people to be part of "world-systems" (Marcus 1995), namely globally interconnected sociocultural contexts, brings about historical changes anthropology, geography and linguistics can tackle from a transnationalist perspective (Ong 1999; Glick Schiller, Basch, Blanc-Szanton 1992, Blommaert 2010, De Fina, Perrino 2013). Such approach makes it possible to reconsider the classic equivalence culture-society-State and to analyze the dimension of simultaneity (Levitt, Glick Schiller 2004). Examples of transnational communities belonging simultaneously to different sociocultural contexts, are the groups of migrants that move (and are linked) through more than two countries; the global religious communities, such as the Islamic Umma; the heritagescapes (Di Giovine 2009), namely the communities of knowledge involved in heritage-making, that produce fluid interconnections and heritage frictions within the policies of transnational organizations such as Unesco. This panel is an invitation to deepen the theoretical and methodological implications of the anthropological, geographical and linguistical study of simultaneity, with reference to specific case-studies.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 17 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
This paper defends the methodological interest of associating ethnography and mapping to study the mobilities of transnational religious actors, such as the Hindu Brahman priests who emigrated from India and Sri Lanka to work in Hindu temples founded by the Tamil diaspora.
Paper long abstract:
This paper defends the methodological interest of associating ethnography and mapping to study the mobilities of transnational religious actors. It is based on biographic interviews conducted with Hindu Brahman priests who emigrated from South India and Northern Sri Lanka to work in overseas Hindu temples founded by the Tamil diaspora. I shall argue that such a methodological combination provides information not only about these migrant ritual actors, but also about some important trends and mechanisms of the current transnationalisation of Hinduism that cannot be revealed by other means. On the one hand, ethnography makes it possible to address a major change in Hindu representations of migration. Indeed, it allows us to understand the personal motivations of Brahman priests who work abroad, whereas they have long been forbidden to emigrate due to classical considerations presenting migration out of India as a "polluting" and demeaning activity. On the other hand, mapping these priests' migrations shows how these circulations concretely take place in the main countries of the Tamil diaspora (Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, but also Toronto or Paris), and that these host countries are not isolated from each other but linked by the mobilities of these religious actors. This combination of ethnography and mapping also demonstrates that these priests' migrations fit in transnational social fields and circulatory territories structured by specific places and social networks. In the end, all this bears wider witness to the relevance of such a methodological combination for studying the stakes and concrete modalities of transnational migrations.
Paper short abstract:
In many Muslim societies, reformist intellectuals establish transnational communities of knowledge in order to promote Islam-oriented education. This paper examines the essence of this transnationalism as well as epistemological and ideological premises that give a foundation to the communities.
Paper long abstract:
Islamization of knowledge is a new epistemological paradigm in Muslim education policy and practice around the globe. This trend is proposed and supported by Muslim reformist intellectuals who are transnationally interconnected through institutional networks, associations, and educational practices. Geographically, these intellectuals belong to different sociocultural backgrounds, however, they create transnational 'communities of practice' (Wenger, 1998) to advocate Islam-oriented knowledge and to (re)structure education in the Muslim world. This paper ethnographically examines the nature of this transnationalism and investigates how these knowledge-based networks function on the ground. What are the epistemological and ideological premises that interconnect and bind members of the communities together? What means of communication they use to establish and sustain these transnational networks and how?
Paper short abstract:
Our analysis of both human and environmental dynamics showed that climate forcing is responsible for physical and cultural landscape modifications. The wandering of sites since prehistorical times in a large segment of the Ionian coastal belt of southern Italy can be used as a climate change proxy.
Paper long abstract:
In the ancient Chora of Metapontum, analyses of environmental dynamics and spatial-temporal evolution of prehistorical to Roman sites were carried through an integrated approach that, starting from a detailed geomorphological analysis, tried to highlight how socio-economical events can be triggered by landform evolution and climate changes. This study was performed in a ca. 400 sq. km large territory to validate human and territorial dynamics. A model of interactions between ancient sites location, geomorphic parameters, land use, and distances from rivers was constructed and framed within the most likely paleoclimate scenarios.
Site occupancy and destination change occurred through time as settlers and autochthonous occupied sites, often changing their destination. The preferential occupation of mid-altitude marine terraces, and the consequent spreading of agriculture on these territories, is likely due to the existence of well-developed soil profiles: colonists recognized that on these landform units there were the better conditions for the development of massive agricultural practices. The increase in farmhouses on marine terraces and the modifications of settlement distribution is likely related to the acceleration of alluvial processes. The role played by the increase in flooding occurrence in the coastal plain/floodplains of the main rivers in triggering the abandonment of these territories should not be neglected. Productive areas are preferential set along the fluvial incisions, thus implying that their setting is strongly linked to the presence of rivers, and of their lower rank tributaries, both as an intrinsic need of manufacturing and to facilitate the spreading of products.