Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to show how the actors involved in the Venice Ghetto try to find their lost and «authentic» ghetto, also considered like their «home». They reconstruct this feeling of belonging by upgrading the notion of ghetto and the meaning of this ancien urban enclave.

Paper long abstract:

The ghetto of Venice was created in 1516. This institutionalized enclave lasted until 1797. It has thus been a long time since the ghetto was a coerced living space. The ghetto is an ambiguous place, it is an object of tension and a space for power negotiation due to the discordant meanings attached to it, as an historical site and a public space. Preoccupied by the noticable shrinkage of the community, local jews consider the ghetto more and more a historical and primary location but they also say that the Ghetto is their « home ». The future of its material space and of its heritage comes into question when Venitian Jews want to unearth « yesterday's ghetto ». They are in a kind of nostalgia. What they want to find is not the coercitive underpinning of the enclave, but an authentically lived ghetto, the recurrence of the religious practices, and the lost cohesion of the community. All these elements lead to the « home » idea even if the jews live outside the ghetto. The feeling of belonging to the ghetto is not defined by their actual residence buy by the continuous reactivation, in their speeches, of their genealogical link to the place. The ghetto is a place of emotion but also a place of conflict. By reactivating the past of the place in the process of upgrading its present, Venitian Jews must come to terms, and not without some difficulty with the negative image of the old enclave.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the feelings attached to place, belonging, and heritage in Derry/Londonderry’s UK City of Culture festival through the prism of theatrical engagements with the city’s foremost heritage icon, Columba/ Colmcille.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013, Derry/ Londonderry was the first ever UK City of Culture. The second largest city in Northern Ireland, close to the border with the Republic of Ireland, is home to Catholics and Protestants and had seen its fair share of the Troubles in the 1970s and beyond. So "telling a new story" became the city's mantra for the City of Culture events. The main events focused on Columba/ Colmcille, a 6th-century saint and symbol of identity on both sides of the sectarian divide. The Return of Colmcille, a 3-day open-air pageant written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, blended the different traditions of Columba/Colmcille into a "shared narrative". The Return of Colmcille drew on the practices of community-based theatre in involving amateur actors, thus encouraging an emotional connection between spectators and performers and the creation of a temporary community. While it was praised for creating connections and enhancing a shared sense of place, its new narrative of Derry/Londonderry was not unproblematic, not least because it quite literally dis-placed other representations Columba/ Columcille.

This paper approaches City of Culture festivities (broadly) from an anthropological and performance studies perspective. Based on fieldwork in Derry/Londonderry, it explores how cultural practitioners promoting a less secularised representation of Columba/Colmcille experience their displacement from (or sometimes placement within) the new official narrative by investigating the feelings they attach to the figure of Columba/ Columcille and his role as a cross-community focal point, and the aesthetic dialogue of community-based theatre.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is focusing how formal and informal power structures and authorities are created, negotiated and sustained in a Swedish rural setting by investigating the phenomena of locally organized surveillance-groups and their conduct. Keywords: Belonging, Gathering, Othering, Appearing, Worlding.

Paper long abstract:

The issue of locally organized surveillance-groups is interesting in connection to the on-going civil debate concerning vigilantes and the lack of resources to serve and protect the public from experienced threats. I am discussing the subject in relation to history, collective memory, identity and objects, senses and feelings of safety and uncertainty related to space and place in a time of transition and transformation. The area of investigation is Knäred in Halland, a small in-land village in the south of Sweden. Traditionally the inhabitants have been subsisting on farming, forestry and small scale crafts and industry. In resent time it is also common that villagers are employed in the local well-fare services or commuting to jobs in the neighbouring area. In the beginning of the 1990th this relatively calm place was afflicted by settlers using drugs and the following criminal activities that followed in the wake. As a result of iterate break-ins in stores, work-shops and deposits some of the local entrepreneurs took the matter in their own hands and organized a private night-patrol that since then are driving around specific routes, watching for suspicious people and cars dwelling in the area. This patrol engages 60 to 70 villagers who take turns driving in accordance with a fixed schedule. The purpose is to disturb worrying elements and report activities to the police. The paper investigates this phenomenon in relation to self-representation and kinship, homeliness, gender roles, affects and the conflicting state between the urban and the peripheral.

Paper short abstract:

The paper sheds light on the German Commissions For Hardship Cases which may grant exceptional rights of residence to people subject to deportation. It focuses on the contested processes of constructing and negotiating notions of belonging and home based on the categories of merit and need.

Paper long abstract:

Thousands of people live in Germany with a precarious status of residence. Often, they have been living in the country for years or even decades, they have built a life and made plans for a future in Germany. But: They are subject to deportation and never know how long their stay might last.

In an attempt to take these efforts of home-making into account, the federal states have established so-called Commissions For Hardship Cases: They evaluate petitions and grant those exceptional rights of residency who would supposedly 'suffer most' from having to leave the country. My paper focuses on the contested processes of constructing and negotiating notions of belonging and home based on the categories of merit and need.