Paper short abstract:

Fear of visuals plague social science scholarship in South Asia. Ironically, this is despite the abundance and prevalence of visuals in societies across the region. This paper builds up a case for enculturing social science scholarship in South Asia.

Paper long abstract:

Fear of visuals plague social science scholarship in South Asia. Particularly, in the field of sociology and social anthropology this fear is more pronounced. Ironically, this is despite the abundance and prevalence of visuals pertaining to art, cinemas, and performances in societies across the region.

This paper builds up a case for enculturing social science scholarship in South Asia by engaging with visual arts and performative politics. Bringing forth the cultural materials from the subtexts of scholarship, this paper performs an interpretative readings. Such materials from across the region, and particularly from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, enables this paper to argue for a culturally sensitive ethnography. The idea is also to underline the presence of precedence in dealing with cultural artifacts in the social science scholarship. Such an exploration, the paper proposes, hinges on the possibility of a nuanced interdisciplinary framework.

Paper short abstract:

Coloniality shapes everyday lives of Brazilian migrant women. Through the public performance of samba, Brazilian women in Leeds (UK) give back to dance its political sense, in a physical and emotional exercise of cultural resignification of what it means to be a Brazilian woman in the West.

Paper long abstract:

Among the wretched of Brazil, samba is the deepest expression of suffering and also of resistance. Conceived in the forbidden rhythms and prayers that Blacks professed in the secret of senzalas, it has transcended times and spaces.

The history of samba is the story of human and cultural dislocation. It travelled from Africa to the Nordeste. After abolition, it followed the former slaves to the southern cities peripheries; for crossing the seas again towards Europe, in the maelstrom of global economic restructuration and the consequent reconfiguration of migratory fluxes.

In performing samba, the body in motion becomes the community itself in demonstration. Through this long-time-marginalized cultural practice, the oppressed found a way of exorcizing the systemic violence that sustains racist domination and economical exploitation. The role undertaken by women in such a creative celebration is a passionate and subversive exercise of self-affirmation.

Thus, in the city of Leeds, Brazilian women sambam against cultural appropriation that threats to empty samba of its political meanings, reducing women's display to a shabby representation of their complex identities.

No sambar, these women restore their bodies as a powerful symbol which dares the colonial gaze that still objectifying them; therefore, they contest the hypersexualized image of Brazilian women in western imagery.

In doing so, not only they redefine their identities on the move, proving that cultural resistance is also physical, sensitive and affective, but they also create an opportunity of empowerment for other different women, avoiding borders of any kind.

Paper short abstract:

Based on qualitative research of immigrants this work aims to illustrate intersections between culture, citizenships, integration, (im)mobilities and transnationalism across the internal and external European borders.

Paper long abstract:

In the last two decades, many have been emigrating from Venezuela due to

the political and economic crisis in the country. As many of the

immigrants have European origins which provides them with the possibility

of obtaining a new and/or dual citizenship, one of the migration routes

leads to the countries of the European Union. Based on qualitative

research and the life stories of immigrants from Venezuela to the Republic

of Croatia and the European Union, this work aims to illustrate the

migrants’ intersections between culture, informality,

(im)mobilities, transnationalism and integration across the internal and

external European borders.

By studying the push and pull factors of migration and experiences of life

in a new environment, it aims to present the interconnectedness of

multiple forms of migration among both families and individuals, cultural

and social integration, employment, business practices, care and education

and transnationalism. Migrants compare between the possibility of

obtaining citizenship and using existing cultural capital, e.g. emigrating

to Spain with a Croatian passport due to lack of proficiency in the

Croatian language, or descendants of the German national minority from

Croatia who have a knowledge of German emigrating to German-speaking

countries with a Croatian passport etc.

Paper short abstract:

The ”refugee crisis” in 2015 and the adoption of the EU-Turkey declaration in 2016 have profoundly changed the human geography in the Aegean Islands. This paper discusses local perceptions of different categories of migrants on the basis of presumed cultural criteria.

Paper long abstract:

The ”refugee crisis” in 2015 and the adoption of the EU-Turkey declaration in 2016 have profoundly changed the human geography in the Aegean Islands. The main source countries of migrants are Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan but there are also migrants of other nationalities.

The local perceptions of migrants vary according to their country of origin, gender, and number. In many cases, interlocutors refer to presumed cultural criteria such as education, purity, religion, life quality, as well as economic factors when distinguishing between different categories of migrants. For example, Syrians are often qualified as educated, cultured, and economically well to do. The fact that many come as families is also to their advantage. On the contrary, some other groups are easily qualified as “poor” and “dirty”. Single male migration is also badly viewed.

This paper discusses local perceptions of different categories of migrants on the basis of presumed cultural criteria. Has the presence of historical and earlier migrant Muslim communities facilitated the acceptation of new groups of Muslim migrants? (1) How has the arrival of new groups of migrants affected the perception of earlier and established Muslim communities? The paper is based on field research conducted by the author in Kos and Rhodes in 2011, 2012 and 2018.

1.Kos and Rhodes are home to a historic Muslim minority of Turkish origin since the Ottoman era. Since the 1990s these islands also host Albanian and Pakistani migrant communities.

Paper short abstract:

An increasing amount of Swedish-speaking young adults are leaving Finland to live in Sweden. These immigrants picture a smooth integration, but in life history interviews they often talk about experienced differences in "culture". These differences sometimes make them more Swedish, sometimes less.

Paper long abstract:

Sweden has been a target for Finnish migration throughout the ages, and during the 2010s, an increasing amount of Swedish-speaking young adults has left Finland to live in Sweden. These immigrants find themselves in a situation where their mother tongue is no longer a minority language and they imagine an easy adaptation to the Swedish society. But still they experience a perceived difference in "culture", which they have a hard time to pinpoint when asked.

This paper is based on fieldwork in Sweden with interviews made with emerging adults from Finland living in Sweden. In many of the life history interviews, the informants use the word culture to describe their own place in the new society. When asked about this culture they try to find words for their experiences of moving to another country and becoming part of that, without really leaving their country of origin behind.

Culture is used both as a means of legitimising the move to another country, but also a way of expressing their identity and positioning themselves as something else than the Swedes, Finns or Finland-Swedes. It is both a case of feeling that your culture is not the right one, but also for some, that they finally have come "home to their own culture". By using the word "culture", the young immigrants find a way to put words to their feelings of belonging or alienation.

Paper short abstract:

In the paper I would like to raise the question of the teachers' perspectives on the theories and practices of intercultural education. Teachers' practices and strategies tell us a lot about how the Us/Other division is created, how they understand the nation and the (national) culture.

Paper long abstract:

In the paper I would like to raise the question of the teachers' perspectives on the theories and practices of intercultural education of "the foreign pupils" and the Roma pupils. The research was based on the interviews with the teachers of the primary schools in Granada (Spain) and Poznań (Poland). The goal I had set for the research was to understand and describe the multi- and intercultural education as it is conceptualised and practiced by the core agent of the integration at school. Schools' practices and strategies, visible in two school placetimes: festival and everyday, together with the teachers' concepts of the culture as an ongoing practice tell us a lot about how the school teachers create the Us/Other division, how they understand the idea of the Other, the nation and the (national) culture.

Paper short abstract:

Moroccan Jews, along with other Jews from different Muslim lands, constitute more than half of the Israeli population. This paper discusses the narratives of second-generation Moroccan Jews to explore the Israeli system of social classification in Israel. Also, we will study the portrayal of this local Israeli culture by Israeli academia.

Paper long abstract:

Through this paper we will discuss the personal narratives of the sons and daughters of Jewish-Moroccan immigrants that arrived in Israel between the fifties and the seventies. We will focus on the construction of a sense of self vis-à-vis the system of social classification in Israel. We will explore the way in which each individual recreated his or her upbringing at home as well as their narratives about their own experience in Israel.

Moroccan Jews, along with other Jews from different Muslim lands, constitute more than half of the Israeli population. The conflict between descendants of European Jews and those coming from Muslim countries has been the most critical conflict within the Jewish-Israeli society. Each group has created their own "others" and have their own version of and contribution to Israeli culture. Israeli academia has had its own contribution in framing this conflict and the definition of Israeli culture. Through this work we will examine the discourse of second-generation Moroccans and their relations, tensions, agreements and disagreements with the different versions of the conflict found in Israeli academia.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the inappropriate notions of culture which are mobilised in the social and State response to gender-based violence and the so-called «harmful practices». Focusing on Italy, it argues for a broader deconstruction of the culturalisation of the public discourse.

Paper long abstract:

Culture, particularly declined as «traditional», is evoked in public discourse and political agenda that discuss gender-based violence. Moreover it is one of the main concepts on which are rooted State laws and policies that target migrant people.

This proposal is grounded on an ongoing fieldwork that I'm carrying out since 2012 while working, as a researcher and a trainer, to Italian-based projects that tackle violence against migrant women and FGM/C. It aims to discuss how, along with different representations of cultural difference, multiple concepts of culture circulate and are promoted.

A genealogy of how the so-called harmful cultural practices became a topic in the Italian context will be outlined. I will then discuss the local ways that the essentialization, naturalisation and ethnicization of gender relationships take when institutions deal with this subject.

From a theoretical point of view, I consider that a major stake for anthropologists is promoting an appropriate notion of culture, which accounts for historicisation and agency. In order to do that, I argue that deconstructing biopolitical stereotypisation of others is not sufficient; a synchronous critical work must face how inaccurate notions of culture have been also used to create a «we» as national citizens. In this sense, I will consider the trope of the «anthropological shifting», that have since a long time characterised the Italian public sphere. We will explore how this unscientific invocation participates to the raising and consolidation of the racist hegemony.