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- Convenors:
-
Salim Aykut Ozturk
(University College London (UCL))
Zoë Goodman (University of Warwick)
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- Stream:
- Migration
- Location:
- ZHG 002
- Start time:
- 28 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
By following James Clifford's definitions of travelling-in-dwelling and dwelling-in-travelling (1997), this panel aims to account for the simultaneous constitution of mobility and stasis through an ethnographic lens on the people who make a living in constant movement.
Long Abstract:
In his seminal work, Routes, James Clifford (1997) suggested to distinguish between travelling-in-dwelling and dwelling-in-travelling. He introduced the former in order to specifically refer to the circulation of cultural narratives and representations, and the ways these are negotiated, adapted, co-produced or rejected. Meanwhile the latter referred to maintaining a life in constant mobility. It was dwelling-in-travelling that Clifford regretted having not elaborated as much as the former, and in this panel we aim to take the issue from where he left - that is to account for the simultaneous constitution of mobility and stasis, and to decipher the contexts in which dichotomies of "travelling" and "dwelling" collapse.
For this panel, we invite papers based on extended ethnographic research among travelers and dwellers of all sorts. We will primarily put effort to identify various dwellers-in-travelling who make a living in constant mobility such as bus drivers, shuttle-traders, smugglers, refugees or flight crews. We expect to learn more about distance and place making in a terrain unspecified other than routes, roads and networks through which people and things move on and stay or left behind - or a terra infirma that simply cannot be defined by current national borders. However, papers dealing with novel and critical definitions of travellers-in-dwelling are also welcome. This is why, we encourage participants to think about travelling-in-dwelling and dwelling-in-travelling as widely applicable contexts. Yet at the same time, we expect papers to playfully demonstrate the extents to which current definitions of travelling and dwelling can be replaced, invalidated and possibly re-defined.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
My paper is about a truck stop on the A104 highway in Kenya, and the truckers and traders who deal in illicit commodities there. I examine the moral frameworks around illicit trade and consider the truck stop as a site that facilitates and constrains the interaction between highway and hinterland.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is about activities that some consider theft, as they appear in a truck stop called Karaar. The practices I describe—dealing in fuel extracted from the tanks of passing trucks, and trading in goods spilled onto the highway by crashed lorries—take advantage of Karaar's position along East Africa's main commodity transport corridor, the A104 highway. Karaar is also known as a "black spot," a site where accidents happen with unusual frequency, and many people attribute these accidents to the desire of truckers and Karaar-based brokers to profit illicitly off the commodities that travel along the highway.
The truck stop attracts entrepreneurs from nearby rural areas, who are drawn by truckers' spending money and the possibilities for trade—both licit and illicit. These rural entrepreneurs also mediate between truckers and the "hinterland"—the vast expanse of rural space defined by and against the "foreland" space of the highway—which serves as a market for illicit commodities and a source of labor for the truck stop. In this paper I examine the truck stop's notoriety and the way it is linked both to its accidents and to the illicit trades that mediate between the infrastructure of the trade route and rural populations who wish to access some of its bounty.
Paper short abstract:
Based on several months of ethnographic research onboard internationally traveling cargo-ships with mixed national crews, this paper explores the dynamics of dwelling-in-traveling, immobility and mobility, for contemporary seafarers.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the dynamics of mobility and immobility in contemporary seafaring. Ships are mobile sites built to connect, yet often have the consequence of isolating the people who work and live onboard. With globalization, as goods travel faster and faster with increased transportation technologies and more efficient ships, seafarers travel less as they find themselves stuck onboard the ships on which they work. They become "prisoners of passage", caught in the mobility which they work to perpetuate.
I also explore the dynamics of dwelling and place-making onboard ships. Ships are worksites that are also homes to people. Yet, compared to many other forms of migration, seafarers do not "move" to a new place, but rather their home remains in their country of origin. On the other hand, many seafarers have contracts that last between 9-12 months and spend a majority of time away from their homes in the floating non-place of the ship. Moreover, as maritime labor becomes increasingly flexible, seafarers' sense of belonging onboard is undermined, which also changes practices of place-making and feelings of home onboard, and of belonging within the ship community.
Finally, due to the long absences from home, many sailors feel they do not belong in their homes either, often feeling disoriented and out-of-place upon their return to their families. While many try to make up for their long absences by bringing home expensive gifts, the expensive life-style just pushes the seafarers to return to sea in a never-ending cycle of labor and consumption.
Paper short abstract:
Dwelling in travelling is a crucial question for those working away from home. By exploring a variery of situations, the paper aims to define what a dwelling in travelling can be, and how in that case dwelling and inhabiting merge and what is tells about the nature of the travels undertaken.
Paper long abstract:
Dwelling in travelling is a crucial question for those working away from home several nights per week. Indeed, the cheer possibility is questioned as soon as there is a necessity to sleep away from home. It depends of the materiality of the place of stay (a flat, a rented room, an office, a hotel room, a cabin, etc.) but materiality is only one of the aspects and while some dwell in hotel room others are not able to dwell in their flat. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in France of a variety of French and UK workers (from executives to workers) as well as temporal modalities of being away from home (to three nights a week to three weeks in a raw) who for most of them are parents of young children and lives in couples, the paper will explore what dwelling away from home means, what is negotiated, what can't be, what kind of relations need to be sustained, the nature of the comfort and sensory experience needed to feel at home away from home. By exploring those situations, the paper aims to define what a dwelling in travelling can be, and how in that case dwelling and inhabiting merge and what is tells about the nature of the travels undertaken.