The role that Social and Cultural Anthropology is playing in the current Spanish academic context is an essential concern for the discipline. There are many reasons that motivate its approach as well ...as considering where its future should be directed. Here, Schriewer et al reflect on the present and future of Anthropology.
Alarming environmental shifts and disasters have raised public awareness and anxieties regarding the future of the planet. While planetary in scale, the negative effects of this global crisis are ...distributed unequally, affecting some of the already most fragile communities most intensely, thus contributing to rising global inequality. The pairing of environmental crises and a sense of inadequacy facing hitherto celebrated models of citizenry informs a current spirit of the times. The contributors to this volume place ethnographic or world cultures museums at the centre of these debates - these museums have been embroiled in longstanding debates about their histories, collections, and practices in relation to the colonial past.
This open access book explores the deep connections between environment, language, and cultural integrity, with a focus on Indigenous peoples from early modern times to the present. It illustrates ...the close integration of nature and culture through historical processes of environmental change in North, Central, and South America and the nurturing of local knowledge through ancestral languages and oral traditions. This volume fills a unique space by bringing together the issues of environment, language and cultural integrity in Latin American historical and cultural spheres. It explores the reciprocal and necessary relations between language/culture and environment; how they can lead to sustainable practices; how environmental knowledge and sustainable practices toward the environment are reflected in local languages, local sources and local socio-cultural practices. The book combines interdisciplinary methods and initiates a dialogue among scientifically trained scholars and local communities to compare their perspectives on well-being in remote and recent historical periods and it will be of interest to students and scholars in fields including sociolinguistics, (ethno)history, linguistic anthropology, cultural studies and cultural anthropology, environmental studies and Indigenous/minority studies.
This open access book presents a series of speculative, experimental modes of inquiry in the present times of environmental damage that have come to be known as the age of the Anthropocene. ...Throughout the book authors develop more nuanced ways of engaging with the environmentally vulnerable Arctic. They counter distancing, exoticising, and even apocalyptic imaginaries of the Arctic by staying proximate with mundane places and beings of the north. The volume engages and plays with familiar tourism concepts, such as hospitality, visiting, difference, care, openness, and distance, while expanding the focus from binary and human-centric approaches of hosts and guests to questions of wellbeing among multispecies communities. The transdisciplinary group of contributors share a curiosity about how staying proximate may provide theoretical depth and epistemological openings to attend to current tensions and to diversify the ways we do and enact research. Thus, each chapter provides a methodological experiment with proximity, developing diverse ways of envisioning and storying more-than-human worlds.
In this work we contend that studying dance syntax systematically is essential to gain a deeper understanding of dance practices. The reason is that syntax has to do with an essential aspect of ...dance, music and action in general, namely possibility. To the best of our knowledge, the efforts towards a systematic method to study dance syntax are scarce. Therefore, this work proposes the method of Finite-State Automata, borrowed from computer science, and presents three case studies of progressive complexity were the method is applied: (1) learning the basics of salsa, (2) diachronically comparing hip-pushing action in Afro-Ecuadorian Bomba del Chota, and (3) characterizing improvisation in Afro-Peruvian zapateo. While the first case is didactic and introduces the method progressively, the second and third cases are based on several years of fieldwork conducted by the authors with the Afro-Ecuadorian and Afro-Peruvian communities. The precondition for the application of the method we propose is structural analysis itself; that is, that the dance can be analyzed into small movement units that are combined progressively into more complex units. In regards to syntax, however, structural analysis is only the first step. The goal is a synthesis that brings forward the possibilities that arise from structural analysis; that is, the possibilities that are available to dancers and agents in a dance event. We trust that the approach to syntax this work presents will stimulate a renewed interest for researchers in dance, music and movement in general.
Taylor, Mary N.: Movement of People: Hungarian Folk Dance, Populism and Citizenship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2021. 316. ISBN 978-0-253-05783-9
This study explores the life-mode of Hungarian migrants in their destination country, England, particularly London in the last decade, focusing on their housing conditions and working experiences. ...Relying on her participant observations and interviews, the author formulates a picture through the eyes of Hungarian migrant laborers regarding how both the real estate and labor market exploits them (micro level). She explains the motives of the main economic actors (entrepreneurs, real estate and employment agencies, employers) leading to exploitations (meso level) in addition to discussing how all of these fit into the wider socio-economic context (macro level).
While focusing on the phenomenon of “extended youth”, this paper presents the results of anthropological research on coming of age: classical and contemporary. The paper questions the parameters of ...“normality” when it comes to “extending” phases, youth in particular. While examining what it means to be young, the paper emphasises anthropological contributions to life course research. First of all, the paper focuses on research that highlights concepts seen as universal and biological. Moreover, it approaches classical anthropological research that analyses lifecycle customs and rites of passage. By emphasising classic anthropological works, such as the contributions of Margaret Mead, the paper shows how ethnographic examples have helped present the diversity of the perception of “adequate”, “normal”, and “good” when it comes to life stages or transitions from one life stage to another.
In addition to the work of Mead, special attention is paid to the work of Arnold van Gennep, whose research on rites of passage had a great influence on generations of Serbian ethnologists and anthropologists. Van Gennep's scheme of successive stages made up of the pattern of rites of passage (separation, transition/liminality, and aggregation) has been particularly important in the context of the transition into adulthood. Finally, this paper analyses how young people in Serbia perceive their youth and life stages in the contemporary context. The presented results are part of a qualitative research study based on in-depth interviews conducted in 2019 and 2020. The results highlight the cultural representations of the “normal” life course and life stage transitions, then present how some young people manage their transition to adulthood in order to perceive their youth as “well-spent”. The conclusion examines how time, life phases, and expectations have been constructed in the local context. Moreover, the paper highlights the layers of the transition to adulthood and autonomy (residential, financial, emotional etc.) that, furthermore, show the complexity of the phenomenon of “extended youth”. By questioning the mainstream explanations of extended youth as an exclusive consequence of structural factors and political crisis, the paper offers an alternative explanation of extended youth through the analysis of cultural logic.
In 1858 a leading Hungarian literary critic as well as collector and editor of folk poetry started a debate about the possible literary career of women, arguing that literature and other forms of ...public artistic activity are fields that should not be open to women as it may cause serious moral and social problems. Yet, he noted that in case women still insist on becoming literary authors, they should turn only to certain genres, such as tales. The article investigates how the tale became a gendered genre, and presents women tellers, collectors and writers of tales as well as the diverse ways they were represented in Hungarian culture in the 19th century.
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