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Focusing on material justice and queer activism, my paper proposes a theoretical frame based on an embodied unwriting of the past that can guide ethnographic research in the present. This unwriting with/through the body is rooted in queer and decolonial perceptions of temporality and focuses on how practices of bodily remembering could transform shared histories.

Paper Abstract:

The contribution discusses how an embodied (re-)thinking of queer histories and memorial practices can open up alternative ways of doing ethnographic research. My project focuses on economic justice, investigating how queer movements put into question how we understand labour struggles, and how these demands are linked to struggles for physical integrity and gender self-determination.

Combining frameworks of redistribution activism and politics of safety and care as they pertain to practices of queer activism, my project seeks to build a theoretical-methodological framework that allows for research based on bodily thinking and -remembering. Researching corporeal matter as both meaning making and material reality opens the possibility for an inquiry that is epistemologically and politically engaged. Here, I develop a research framework that puts queer and decolonial temporality into dialogue with feminist new materialism.

How could a practice of opacity (Glissant 1990) based on an embodied remembering that emerges from a queer and decolonial epistemological perspective look like? Trough Freeman's „erotohistoriography“ (2010) as another way to understand time outside a western chronotemporality, I aim to delve into the practice of remembering the past as a political act that is not only invested in the register of trauma and exclusion, but turns toward the pleasure of remembering and desiring (differently) with our bodies.

Bringing new materialism into dialogue with queer temporality means advancing a body-informed ethics of difference to explore possibilities for transformation. This dialogue aims to direct ethnographic research toward expressions of transformative material justice outside a dogmatic and linear perspective.

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My presentation explores situations arising from the anthropologist’s age, gender, class, ethnicity, and language. I connect these to the dichotomies of insider and outsider, home and field, stability and mobility, and through them I discuss broader hierarchies between East and West in anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

Starting out from three personal memories of situations that took place during fieldwork or in academic institutions in different locations, in Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Norway, my presentation and paper explore some of the difficult and often unspoken/unwritten tenets of anthropology as a discipline: age, gender, class, ethnicity, and language. Through discussing how the researcher’s stance in these respects position them vis-à-vis the choice of the topic, the objects of the research, and the methodologies used to explore it as well as to interpret the data, I aim to unpack the (false) dichotomy of the insider and the outsider position, the distinction between the “home” and the “field”, and the (in)visible opposition of stability and mobility as key aspect of anthropological research and/or neoliberal academia. Through reframing researchers’ individual/private experiences, opportunities, and limitations into narratives of collective and structural positions in academia, the broader object of the presentation and the paper is to (un)write (about) issues of knowledge hierarchies between East and West in anthropology.

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This paper responds to Britain’s 2024 ratification of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) (2003). It showcases the ICH of Scotland’s Gypsy/Traveller communities, showing how ‘creative ethnology’ can bring academic insights into ICH and more meaningful dialogues with the communities who cherish it.

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In February 2024, Britain’s parliament ratified UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) (2003), and this paper showcases pioneering research that will lead to one of Britain’s first inscriptions on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. UNESCO inscription means ensuring worldwide visibility of the ICH, encouraging dialogue, and recent theoretical approaches to the study of ICH stress the importance of emic experience rather than etic discourses (Kockel and MacFadyen 2019). I therefore introduce the panel to the emerging field of ‘creative ethnology’ where ICH is linked to close collaboration with tradition-bearers, synergies with other fields, and consciousness raising. Creative ethnology allows not only for the study of ICH from an academic perspective but fosters more meaningful engagement with the communities who cherish it (UNESCO 2024).

The paper focuses on the ICH of communities known to officials as ‘Gypsy/Travellers’. Now a legally recognised ethnic minority, these diverse communities have existed in Britain as distinct from mainstream society since at least the twelfth century (Kenrick and Clark 1999). Their itinerant lifestyles and working practices have resulted in distinctive yet marginalised sociocultural identities, and a deep reservoir of ICH. The contemporary communities continue to experience marginalisation, yet their participation in discourses around ethnicity and sociocultural inclusion is emerging (McPhee 2021; Conyach 2024). Some members of the communities self-identify as ‘Nacken’, and this paper demonstrates how dialogues with the communities can help us understand what it is that sets Gypsy/Traveller/Nacken (GTN) and their ICH apart.

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The proposal aims at unwriting (the notion of) nostalgia: not only that the term nostalgia bears mostly negative set of values and that it is heteroglossic, but it also works in promoting neoliberal goals (worldwide) and (when linked to the notion of post-socialism) in orientalizing the SEE.

Paper Abstract:

“A specter haunts the world of Academia: a study of Post-Communist nostalgia,” wrote Maria Todorova in 2010. This proposal aims to unwrite the notion of nostalgia: not only that it carries a largely negative set of values and is heteroglossic, but it also serves to promote neoliberal goals on a global scale.

When linked to the notion of post-socialism, it acts as a tool for the (self)orientalization of Southeast Europe: as some researchers have shown (Boyer 2010, Lankauskas 2015), the concept of post-socialist nostalgia has become part of a discourse that could/should be recognized as a post-imperialist, practical tool that helps anchor SEE in the pre-neoliberal past. It is intriguing to note that in many other (“Western”) neoliberal societies, nostalgia is perceived as a part of populist political appeals, (or) a longing for times that are forever gone and, fortunately, will never return (industrialization, centralized economic measures, etc.). Using ethnographic material (“Eastern” and “Western”) on the topic of work and employment, we aim to show that a significant part of “nostalgic longings” reflects pure facts (and not /just/ feelings), which is most often neglected due to the perpetuation and naturalization of global hierarchies of knowledge (Triglava 2024). Comparing ethnographic material from the “East” and the “West” reveals the true nature of the mainstream use of the term nostalgia: despite the vast amount of relevant literature (or precisely because of it), this term still wins the battle for an unjust, competitive, socially insensitive, individualistic global society.

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This paper examines shifts in Argentine anthropology through decolonial perspectives. Through a bibliometric analysis of 290 publications and the study of institutional practices in Argentine anthropology departments this paper critically evaluates the real scope and limitations of the processes of “unwriting” of Western hegemony in the production of anthropological knowledge in Argentina.

Paper Abstract:

This paper examines the epistemic and methodological transformations that Argentine anthropology is undergoing with the incorporation of decolonial perspectives. Based on a critical analysis of the discipline's historical complicity with the modern/colonial project, it explores how the liminal spaces generated in contemporary Argentine anthropological practice are allowing the emergence of border epistemologies and subalternized knowledges.

Through a bibliometric analysis of 290 publications and the study of institutional practices in Argentine anthropology departments (2008-2024), this paper critically evaluates the real scope and limitations of the processes of “unwriting” of Western hegemony in the production of anthropological knowledge. Thus, this paper examines whether these decolonial initiatives have effectively succeeded in transforming the dominant epistemic structures or, on the contrary, have remained as superficial attempts of change. The results reveal complex patterns: while some academic spaces show significant transformations in their research and pedagogical practices, others maintain traditional hierarchical structures under a decolonial veneer. In this sense, this paper seeks to contribute to the debates on the decolonization of anthropology by offering an empirical and situated assessment of the actual impact of decolonial perspectives on the transformation of the discipline.

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This paper wishes to start critically examining one of the strongest conceptual hegemonies of social sciences: the Conflict Theories. We will question if they are still sufficient for our current needs, and explore an alternative look into a more nuanced, agency and cooperation focused approaches.

Paper Abstract:

For the past many decades, social sciences have been deeply moulded by the thoughts of scholars such as Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault or the members of Critical Theory, shifting the focus of the field towards relationships of power and conflict, in what is now widely known as the Conflict Theories (CT) paradigm.

While inspiring many important or admirable social changes and academic outlooks, we have now reached a point where Conflict Theories have grown into a powerful hegemony of its own, dominating the majority of the academic discourse and narrowing our perception of social dynamics, at times even stifling criticism and innovative avenues of thought. All the while, CT-generated narratives can carry some hidden aspects of ethnocentric and enlightenment-rooted influences that may be of concern. I aim to explore the hegemonic role CT has gained, demonstrate some of its limitations and wester-centric biases, and show how it may be at odds with the projects of Decolonization and Pluriversal Anthropology itself.

After outlying the possible issues of CT, I will briefly introduce a possible paradigm modification, tentatively called Cooperation-Oriented Approach. Rooted in extensive-multidisciplinary library of studies of cooperation, I wish to expand our methodological and epistemic tools of analysis of human social dynamics, with emphasis on mutualism, co-dependency and individual agency, that could enrich and transcend the limitations of the older, power-and-conflict-focused paradigms. I will argue that the need to cooperate may be underappreciated in our understanding of social dynamics, and propose new ways to study and reflect it.

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This presentation aims to provide a panoramic view of the artistic and intellectual production of Brazilian Amerindian thinkers and their fundamental contributions to unwriting established and hegemonic narratives, such as anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

In recent decades, Brazil has witnessed a proliferation of Indigenous thinkers, activists, and artists who not only affirm their ethnic origins but also often draw upon them as the driving force behind their work. Moreover, these thinkers contribute decisively to a critique of Brazilian society and modern Western modes of thought, as well as to the specific frameworks that structure these worldviews, such as history, philosophy, and anthropology.

Visual artists like Denilson Baniwa, Jaider Esbell, and Daiara Tukano—who is also a curator—writers like Daniel Munduruku and Eliana Potiguara, and Ailton Krenak, an activist and thinker who is the first Indigenous member of the prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters, expand upon the fundamental legacy of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa. Kopenawa is one of the world’s leading environmental activists and a fierce critic of capitalist-driven destruction. Together, these Indigenous thinkers not only advocate for their respective ways of life and highlight the disastrous consequences of the Anthropocene but also engage in what could be called a symmetrical anthropology, a counter-anthropology, or, in Krenak's words, an anticolonial critique.

This presentation aims to provide a panoramic view of the artistic and intellectual production of Brazilian Amerindian thinkers and their fundamental contributions to unwriting established and hegemonic narratives, such as anthropology.

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Paper Short Abstract:

In Understanding Deaf Culture (2003), Paddy Ladd compares Deaf oppression to colonialism, showing how both involve cultural and linguistic suppression, and instead raises a Deaf cultural view through the culturo-linguistic model. This paper examines how to conduct anthropological research on Deaf experiences while centering Deaf perspectives, challenging traditional hearing hegemony in academic approaches.

Paper Abstract:

In his book Understanding Deaf Culture (2003), key Deaf thinker Paddy Ladd draws an important parallel between colonisation and the past and present oppression of d/Deaf individuals, communities, and cultures. While the claim initially sounds controversial, Ladd lays down the background for the systematic and systemic subjugation of Deaf identities, language and culture in many parts of the world, similar to how colonial powers have suppressed indigenous cultures and languages.

Ladd challenges traditional medical views of deafness, which focuses on hearing loss as a condition to be fixed, and instead establishes the culturo-linguistic model. This model moves away from the audism, oralism, and medicalisation, and towards the idea of being Deaf as a cultural and linguistic experience. This understanding of audism, oralism, and the removal of Deaf cultures and languages worldwide through the lens of colonialism allows us to understand the world through a different, Deaf cultural perspective.

This paper discusses the researcher’s attempts of unwriting the audist hearing hegemony in their anthropological research into d/Deaf experiences with the Australian accessibility system. The centering of Deaf thought and Deaf culture remains at odds with the centrality of the hearing hegemony in academia and the limitations it places on the production of anthropological knowledge. This paper focuses on a reflexive look into methods of study, dissemination of knowledge and the negotiation between perpetuating audism and oralism and creating Deaf-led, Deaf culture centered research.

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This paper revisits and contests some of the decolonial arguments raised in relation to the standing of East European academics vis-à-vis their Western academic counterparts. It focuses on: (1) the presumed hierarchies of knowledge; (2) the standing of scholars who do not participate on Western "economies of credibility"; (3) the notion of the West; and (4) some of the premises of decolonial critique.

Paper Abstract:

After 1989, Eastern European (EE) academe has been increasingly exposed to international academic flows. Western academe that had been viewed as possessing almost magical qualities during the socialist era began to be approached as the paragon of science with scholars being increasingly required to participate on Western “economies of credibility” (Mills & Robinson 2022). Writing in English, publishing papers and books in established publishing houses and journals, preferably high-ranking ones, employing Western theories, or being quoted by foreign scholars, all of this became an ideal for aspiring scholars in EE. However, this placed these scholars in an uneasy situation. By default, they had an unequal starting position vis-à-vis their Western colleagues. Their writings were scorned upon with a touch of condescension for a variety of reasons including English language competence or deemed theoretical and thematic irrelevance, all of which contributed to a feeling of inferiority. Naturally, facing such a situation, EE scholars found an ally in decolonial perspectives that help to explain the inferior standing of EE scholars and offer adequate remedies (Moore 2001, Buchowski 2004, 2012, Hrešanová 2022). Or so a common decolonial narrative goes. My presentation, based on my research in the history of Czech ethnology, revisits some of the decolonial arguments and offers their mild critique. I would like to focus on: (1) the presumed hierarchies of knowledge, (2) the standing of scholars who do not participate on Western economies of credibility, (3) the notion of the West, and (4) some of the premises of decolonial critique.

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Paper Short Abstract:

Building on the relation between the history of anthropological knowledge-production and the historical context of Western imperialism and colonialism, this paper argues for decolonizing ways of knowing in the discipline through the ‘de-worlding’ of epistemic structures of representation by means of recognizing multiple interconnected worlds and countervisualities.

Paper Abstract:

Building on the relation between the history of anthropological knowledge-production and the historical context of Western imperialism and colonialism, this paper argues for decolonizing ways of knowing in the discipline through the ‘de-worlding’ of epistemic structures of representation by means of recognizing multiple interconnected worlds and countervisualities. Underlying epistemic structures that shaped the logic of representation in early anthropological writings indicate how theoretical formations primarily contributed to the ‘worldling’- of lifeworlds, spaces, and knowledge of the people under investigation. Through the narrative reconstruction of distanciated fields and exoticized objects of inquiry, representation engaged in the production of objective and standardized worldviews or dominant visualities, based either on ideas of evolution, or differentiation and Othering. Reading such attempts at worlding or hegemonizing ways of knowing as epistemic injustice, the paper explores the epistemological formations and undercurrents in the discipline that became prominent with the writing culture debate and thereafter, to deliberate on the possibility of decolonization. Projects of decolonization, in the academy, as well as outside, are inherently political. Decolonizing anthropology then remains committed to challenging and transforming the conventional conditions of knowledge production, which, in the name of objectivity, engaged in the development and prominence of generalized, ahistorical perspectives and stereotyped ways of knowing and seeing. Critically reflecting on the politics of knowledge-production in anthropology, I therefore argue for an epistemic decolonization of the discipline through the incorporation of contextualized, ordinary, and peripheralized histories as countervisualities that work towards dismantling colonial worlding(s) and privileged positionalities.

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Accessing an archive that in many ways is unique to the fabric of Britain’s decolonial history has allowed me to begin graphing ethno-kinships. This has been possible due to a participatory encounter with Firth's family and colleagues, thus re-tracing alternative outlines of our disciplinary methods.

Paper Abstract:

Is there a relationship between talking about developed photos (versus negatives) and then making a link to colonialism and de-colonialism? How can archives, as places of lived sensorial experience, help us ‘unwrite’ and re-write the histories of colonial pasts, so to rethink collection places in a hyper-modern and multi-cultural world? Whose materials are kept? And whose are left behind, destroyed, or erased? Which material is censored or concealed from view – awaiting a time when it’s fine to reveal a different narrative. And who does what during these different phases of storing/storying ethno-biographies.

This presentation shall try to answer some of these questions. Based on short-term access to both personal and professional archives, it offers some shallow musings on a centenarian’s life. I will suggest, however, that as sensory (s)places, archives could be seen as a kind of ‘zone of interest’. In other words, they reveal and conceal layers of disciplined/undisciplined history that can help us (re)tell delicate, sensitive, or taboo stories -- ones existing under the darker recesses of the anthropological/ethnological imagination.

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Grounded in decades of research with Indigenous Peoples in Canada and Peru, in this oral-visual narrative, we share ethical challenges, cultural protocols, and reciprocal methodological practices of researching across different worldviews, knowledge systems, languages and geographies as we work together to recuperate our human-damaged planet.

Paper Abstract:

With climate change the defining crisis of our time, there is a need to re-story modernity's ‘progress narrative’ that privileges mind over body-heart-spirit and human over non-human and more-than-human, while overlooking Indigenous knowledges and ways of being. There is an urgency to move beyond prescribed Western-centric paradigms by regenerating collaborative, collective, recuperative cross-species relationalities urgently needed for mutual survival. In our oral-visual narrative, we share learnings from decades of research with Indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada and the upper Amazon of Peru who follow their original instructions, moving to the rhythms and sounds of the Earth’s beating heart, despite centuries of settler coloniality working to silence them, devalue their ancestral ecological wisdom, and desecrate their lands and cross-species relatives. Our research partnerships are guided and shaped by the Indigenous communities who are co-creators and co-narrators of the research. This honours their ancestral values of humility, compassion, gratitude, and kinship relationality, and respects their right to self-determination. To ensure that the Indigenous communities are primary beneficiaries of the research, we foreground narrativity-orality-performativity as equivalent epistemologies-evidentialities-processes to Western-centric models of knowledge generation, data collection, analysis/synthesis, and dissemination. This requires time for reflective co-constructed conversation and place for grounded collaboration, engaging community-specific forms of evaluation, relationality, and reciprocity. Hearing the global rallying cry to heal our planet, we re-learn together how to become ‘with’ the world as we re-generate ancestral ecological wisdoms that profoundly affect life and cycles of regeneration on Earth.

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Paper Short Abstract:

Unwriting has the potential to be a political process that can raise difficult questions about anthropology’s development and its institutional framework, challenging hierarchies of knowledge and power.

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The theme of the present conference is challenging and paradoxical. While on the one hand, the process of writing is anthropology’s core business, the challenge posed by the conference is to unwrite this business, where exactly the paradox lies too.

The question that I would like to raise in the present conceptual contribution is whether anthropological writing is capable of unwriting itself. What further complicates the enterprise is that a challenge to any established practice is political for its focus on unseating power of an institution, in this case a University.

The appetite for universities to undertake such an undertaking is suspect. (Mogstad and Tse, 2018) In his book Orientalism, Said used the term ‘Orientalism’ as a critical concept to describe Western conceptual lens through which non-western societies have been understood and their societies and histories constructed. This could have been an apt starting point to address colonial foundations of anthropology.

However, writing about the impact of Said’s work, Thomas (1991) noted “polarisation of views” within anthropology with several critics of Said demonstrating misgivings towards reflective anthropology. The concern with decolonising anthropology has its own history and trajectory. However, any conversation to decolonise anthropology must content with anthropology's history that is entangled with colonisation of a large part of the world and rationalisation of colonisation within the liberal tradition. (Mehta: 1999) The present contribution thus is a reflection on the challenges of unwriting within anthropology and explores options available to those who have come to accept its necessity.

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This paper aims to understand how Ernesto de Martino's thinking became the epistemological basis of ethnopsychiatry in Italy through the dialog between anthropology and psychoanalysis, and how his theory can be regarded as a “decolonial” framework for cultural interpretations of subjectivity.

Paper Abstract:

The role of culture in the conceptualization, development, and treatment of mental disorders became a global topic during the Cold War. However, this mediation between social aspects and psychopathology varied, following different paths.

This paper aims to understand how Ernesto de Martino's thinking became the epistemological basis of ethnopsychiatry in Italy, especially through the dialog between anthropology and psychoanalysis. Demartinian theory can be regarded as a “decolonial” foundational framework for cultural interpretations of subjectivity, as well as for the expression and management of psychological suffering. This perspective transcends the diagnostic manuals established by Anglo-Saxon psychiatry.

In this paper, I will analyze some of his publications regarding the mythical-ritual aspects of the Italian South (tarantism), specifically his book entitled “The Land of Remorse”, published in 1961. The Italian anthropologist established an epistemological break with the psy sciences of the time by understanding tarantism as an autonomous and legitimate symbolical-ritual language used by a population struggling to cope with subjective suffering, instead of considering this phenomenon as a physiological or mental pathology. De Martino is recognized for his historical contributions to anthropology and ethnopsychiatry, and as a forerunner in the Italian context of what I call a “decolonization of mental health”.

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This paper explores how academic activism addressing gender-based violence disrupts neoliberal masculinist culture of science and higher education. Drawing on ethnographic research and affect theory, it argues these initiatives reclaim academic spaces, reimagining power and knowledge production.

Paper Abstract:

This paper examines the affective texture of academic activism addressing gender-based violence, shedding light on how these efforts challenge the patriarchal underpinnings of the institutional structures. While the neoliberal university operates through an affect of competition, prioritizing market-driven values and efficiency, activism on gender-based violence disrupts these frameworks, foregrounding what I call a queer culture of knowledge production based on mutual aid. Drawing on ethnographic research in Eastern European academia, this paper highlights how such activism works to “unwrite” the university's hegemonic narratives, revealing the unseen and untold power structures shaping education. Informed by affect theory and queer phenomenology, the paper argues that such movements offer an alternative vision of education and knowledge production—one that resists the masculinist culture of science and traditional academic spaces by interrogating dominant gender and power hierarchies. This paper focuses on the unwritten side of universities, not only as sites of learning but as arenas of resistance. In doing so, it uncovers untold causalities in how education has been shaped, historically and structurally, by gender-based exclusion and marginalization. Within the local apolitical discourse rooted in the specific intersection of post-socialist and neoliberal transitions, activism is seen as inherently suspect. The paper un-writes this notion and proposes an oppositional thesis: for academia to become a safer and more resilient space for all, it needs academic activism. Ultimately, the paper argues that feminist and queer activism within the university have the capacity to reconfigure academic hierarchies, creating more equitable and resilient higher education environments.