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- Convenors:
-
Sarah Craycraft
(Harvard University)
Petya Dimitrova (Sofia University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Resistance
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel explores (re)attachment to place as a form of resistance, to better understand "counter-progressive" lifestyle choices and the renegotiations such choices necessitate. We also address the dialectic between moving and staying. How might "staying put" and moving be forms of resistance?
Long Abstract:
Progress is often conflated with urbanization, globalization, and the pursuit of affluence and security, in which the idea of uprooting and replanting oneself in an urban space is a presumed solution to marginality and precarity. Yet, the neoliberal model of progress often obscures other reasons for claiming a place as home. Why do people choose to make homes in fraught landscapes or places that transgress normative narratives of a progressive lifestyle? What are the forms of expression that result from reimagined attachments to place?
This panel seeks to explore (re)attachment to place as a form of resistance. We wish to discuss frameworks for understanding why a person may choose a lifestyle which is deemed counter-progressive, as well as the renegotiation such a choice might necessitate. Further, we are interested in the dialectic between leaving and staying - how might staying and moving be understood as forms of resistance which work similarly to claim a new self-narrative and relationship to institutions and power, through a redefined attachment to place?
We welcome papers that explore the ideas of home, place, sustainability, and place-making "against the grain," so to speak, and especially those papers which seek to explore the relationship between lifestyle and place as a speak-back to power. Further, we would welcome papers that explore the aesthetic and creative forms of resistance communities use to (re)frame and (re)negotiate the meaning of 'home' amongst the fraught decision to stay put or move on from their places of attachment.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
I describe lifestyle migrants’ practices and representations concerning their identities and the identity of the village where they buy a property. The paper critically examines three different types of lifestyle migrants’ identities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws on a recently collected ethnographic study within a community of lifestyle migrants established in the village of Zhelen, 50 km away from Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. A common perception among inhabitants is that acquiring a property in Zhelen means starting a long-term personal project on changing and developing both the property (and even the village) physically and the owner’s lifestyle and identity. In order to understand the values and motivations behind this claim, I describe peoples’ practices and representations concerning their identities and the identity of the village itself. The paper critically examines three different types of lifestyle migrants’ identities:
(1) the identity of the civic person who eagers to learn about traditional rural lifestyle from the local community and live according to it;
(2) the identity of the civic person who eagers to introduce contemporary civic concepts and practices in the village;
(3) the identity of the civic person who views the village as an ‘empty’ territory and focuses mostly on her own project and not on the village and the community.
The central research question is what are the characteristics of these identities and how are they dependent on the identity and the standard image of the village itself and of living in rural areas in general.
Paper short abstract:
Based on a case study, the paper aims to examine strategies and practises of people settling in villages located within or in close proximity to protected natural areas in their strive to take advantage of protected regimes and to develop their family business in rural areas.
Paper long abstract:
Local population of villages located within or in close proximity to protected natural areas faces both constraints and opportunities for economic activities, which are created in result of conservation policies and regimes. Such is the region of the village of Bulgarevo, situated in the Northeast part of the country. Being near the Black sea, it is also a newly developing tourist destination. Therefore, the village, thanks to its geographical and natural characteristics and its location away from the major sea resorts, attracts not only tourists, but also people who buy properties here, as well as returnees who were born and raised in the village. Some of these new-comers use it as a get-away (permanently or for the warmer months) from the noise, polluted air and hectic lifestyle in bigger cities. Many of the settlers, however, are also business-oriented - farmers and tourism entrepreneurs, striving to overcome the obstacles and to take advantage of protected regimes. Namely, cases of people who choose to develop their family business in this particular rural area and thus make place for themselves in the village are in the focus of the here proposed paper.
The information was gathered in 2020 and 2021 within the scope of the ethnographic research project "Life in protected zones and areas: challenges, conflicts, benefits" (КP-06-N40/12, 2019-2022), supported by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria.
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers village revitalization projects in rapidly depopulating Bulgaria as a mode of resistance. I investigate rural revitalization as a generational project with ethical implications, and how resistance for some raises concerns for others.
Paper long abstract:
Bulgarian villages have experienced numerous transformations throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries following transitions from Ottoman rule, socialism, and European Union integration. The effects of these transformations yield drastic population and cultural shifts for villages, which correspond to changing meanings of place for different generations. This paper considers project-based village revitalization interventions which imagine the village as an experimental alternative to contemporary urban life for young Bulgarians. These projects position depopulation as a symptom of broken relationships between generations and place, enabled by corruption, failed transition, and policies that disenfranchise marginalized places. In order to better understand ambivalence toward urbanization, globalization, and westernization, I suggest 'the project' as a complex genre and site of analysis which provides insight into how broader concerns find solutions in the rural, and what these solutions offer young people. Of course, such initiatives are complex and ethically murky in the solutions they offer to generations coming of age in contemporary Bulgaria. As young people find respite and new meanings in villages through short-term residencies, questions of belonging, right to space, and the balance between tradition and change arise. Thus, my paper will also consider the ethical entanglements of revitalization projects. What are the implications of renewed attachments to place? My paper tries to understand and investigate rural revitalization as a generational project with ethical implications, and how resistance for some raises concerns for others.
Paper short abstract:
Many young adults in Barcelona are not able to find a job (adequate to their qualifications) at “home” and are thus strongly pushed to “move”. This paper argues that the imperative for labour mobility, however, is increasingly challenge by counter-narratives of care and interdependency.
Paper long abstract:
Despite living in an international metropole, job opportunities for highly educated young people in Barcelona are very limited. While many of them were willing or even enthusiastic to move for education or work in younger years, the wish to put down roots tends to get stronger when they are around thirty years old. Consequently, they have to negotiate between professional opportunities and aspirations, and personal and emotional attachment to place.
For the highly educated young adults, geographical mobility is closely tied to biographical or existential mobility (Hage 2009) and staying put often comes together with feeling stuck professionally. Having grown up with a strong emphasis on work as a means for self-fulfilment and personal independence, not being able to comply with the socially inculcated expectations towards professional success is experienced as very challenging. Young women additionally struggle with a tradition of feminist thinking that relates women’s independence and equality to their participation in the labour market and the ability to maintain themselves. Staying put in order to live with a partner or start a family thus has a smack of backwardness and women’s subordination, and of feminist “failure”. In this paper I argue that in trying to reconcile their inculcated values regarding work and personal autonomy with a reality of lacking job opportunities and high demands toward labour flexibility, the young women I met in my research developed a counter-narrative of care and interdependency against the (neo)liberal ideology of work and individual independence.