Month: March 2024

ETHNOGRAFEIN
Critical dialogues, epistemological challenges, 
field experiences, creative texts

“Borders and boundaries revisited: 
Anthropological perspectives and public engagement”

“Borders and boundaries revisited: 
Anthropological perspectives and public engagement”

The 4th period of the ETHNOGRAFEIN online seminars, starting in October 2023 with the title “Borders and boundaries revisited: Anthropological perspectives and public engagement“, sets the study of geopolitical borders as its point of departure to examine the diverse phenomena and processes that abound in the contemporary state border regions and have multilevel consequences for the border populations. 

By definition, studying borders and boundaries involves exploring the relationship between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’, or the “Self” and the “Other”. However, this is not a study of clear-cut dichotomies but an analysis of the interplay of multiple, multilevel, coexisting, but not necessarily interconnected processes. Boundaries are configured and take shape within a historically determined frame. They are subject to transformations in socio-political and economic contexts and are characterised by institutionally organised asymmetrical power relations. The complex making of borders and boundaries often emerges as a continuous interaction between mobility and enclosure, communication, coexistence, exchange, interaction, sameness and otherness, separation, exclusion, segmentation, connection and disconnection.

The anthropological study of geopolitical borders and their populations by anthropology was systematised in the mid-1990s. It was initially based on two paradigms: the study of the USA-Mexico and European borders. Nowadays, analysing social phenomena and cultural processes concerning borders and boundaries transcends disciplinary boundaries. Novel approaches such as the crοsslocations framework and the current discussion on decolonising methods and epistemologies have expanded the analytical and conceptual significance of the concepts of border and boundary. New methodological and interpretative tools have been created to study politics, trans-border mobility, materiality, transnationalism, topologies and genealogies of migration and refugeeness, border economics, and nation-state policies concerning spatial and cultural diversity, minority rights, and performative culture. 

Based on detailed explorations of ethnographic research and anthropological insights, the 4th cycle of the ETHNOGRAFEIN online seminars critically examines the theoretical, epistemological and methodological complexities surrounding the study of geopolitical borders and their imposed dichotomies. Moreover, it discusses anthropology’s potential to bring forth the subtleties of human voices often overshadowed by macro narratives and create an inclusive, comprehensive dialogue in the public sphere that demonstrates the multiplicity of lived experiences.

8 April 2024

“The Georgian-Russian Border: Perspectives from the Periphery”

Florian Muehlfried 
Professor of Social Anthropology at Ilia State University (Georgia)

8/4/2024

Florian Muehlfried:  The Georgian-Russian Border: Perspectives from the Periphery
In my presentation, I will trace the transformation of the border between Georgia and Russia from soft to hard based on the example of the Georgian highland region Tusheti. After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the border region was managed flexibly and “from below”. This was followed by an internationalisation of border guarding and attempts to its spiritual fortification. These three phases of border guarding can be related to three different models of the state, and of being a citizen. 

Florian Mühlfried is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Ilia State University. His publications include the monographs Mistrust: A Global Perspective (2019) and Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia (2014), the edited volume Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximwations (2018), as well as the co-edited volumes Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces: Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus (2018) and Exploring the Edge of Empire: Soviet Era Anthropology in the Caucasus and Central Asia (2011).

Only those participants who wish to receive certificates of attendance register in the following form: https://forms.gle/gk4SijYeUL4rj2NS9

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar, that is from 1/4/24 to 8/4/24.

 The seminars are held on Mondays from 16:00-18:00

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Seminar Platform: ZOOM

Link  https://zoom.us/j/8364531775?pwd=OVg3YVZlbmVCYWs3S0JYcEFGYlV1QT09
Meeting ID: 836 453 1775     Passcode: KB2JKa

PROGRAM ADJUSTMENT
4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

“Borders and boundaries revisited:
Anthropological perspectives and public engagement”

Performance oikade (Aleksandros Plomaritis)
[provided by Dr. Christina Grammatikopoulou]

The seminars of the 4th Cycle of Ethnografein (2023-2024) that were scheduled for March 11 and April 1, 2024 will not take place and the lecture schedule is adjusted as follows:

8 April 2024

“The Georgian-Russian Border: Perspectives from the Periphery”

Florian Muehlfried 
Professor for social anthropology at Ilia State University (Georgia)

15 April 2024

“ΝΕΑ ΜΟΔΑ-НОВА МОДА-NEW FASHION: 
Materialities, cultural performances and crosslocations 
on the border between Greece and North Macedonia” 

Ιoannis Manos
Associate Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia

22 April 2024

“Actions from below and exit from the Cypriot liminality” 

Pafsanias Karathanasis 
PhD in Social Anthropology

Abstracts – CVs

8/4/2024

Florian Muehlfried:  The Georgian-Russian Border: Perspectives from the Periphery
In my presentation, I will trace the transformation of the border between Georgia and Russia from soft to hard based on the example of the Georgian highland region Tusheti. After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the border region was managed flexibly and “from below”. This was followed by an internationalisation of border guarding and attempts to its spiritual fortification. These three phases of border guarding can be related to three different models of the state, and of being a citizen.

Florian Mühlfried is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Ilia State University. His publications include the monographs Mistrust: A Global Perspective (2019) and Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia (2014), the edited volume Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximwations (2018), as well as the co-edited volumes Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces: Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus (2018) and Exploring the Edge of Empire: Soviet Era Anthropology in the Caucasus and Central Asia (2011).

15/4/2024   

Ioannis Manos: ΝΕΑ ΜΟΔΑ-НОВА МОДА-NEW FASHION: Materialities, cultural performances and crosslocations on the border between Greece and North Macedonia
The regions of Florina (Φλώρινα) and Bitola (Битола), situated along the border between Greece and North Macedonia, constitute border locations where various and simultaneous economic, political, cultural, and social processes coincide. Amidst these processes, hegemonic discourses with different temporalities collide, various social practices with significant material implications are articulated, and multiple communities are constructed, signified, and experienced. These processes manifest across multiple fields of action and interact with each other or coexist concurrently in the same geographical space without necessarily being interlinked. This presentation uses the Florina and Bitola frontier region to explore the interplay between cultural performances and geopolitical borders.
This borderland is approached as a crosslocation, where different classificatory logics and asymmetric forms of power compete to impose their meanings on the significance and value of a place. While the two regions are politically and economically separated by distinct border regimes, including those between nation-states, EU boundaries, and the Schengen zone, they are also geographically, culturally, and historically interconnected. The presentation draws upon ethnographic material to discuss how border populations dynamically and actively produce varied experiences of the place through cultural performances, including language, dance, song, and music.

Ioannis Manos (imanos@uom.edu.gr) is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology of the Balkans at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied History and Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Social Anthropology in Hamburg, Germany and Sussex, Great Britain. He holds a Certificate in Social Research Methods from the Graduate School of Social Sciences of the University of Sussex. He has worked as a Full Time Visiting Research Fellow at the Sussex European Institute. He is the Europe regional editor of the journal Teaching Anthropology (Royal Anthropological Institute, London). He is also a founding member of the academic network on Anthropology and the Balkans “Border Crossings”, a member of the Advisory Board and co-editor of its publication series. His research interests focus on SE Europe and include borders and border regions, dance and music as performative aspects of culture, nationalism and ethnicity, politics of culture and difference, migration, human and minority rights, educational structures and processes, the teaching of anthropology and the epistemology and methodology of research. His publications include chapters and articles in Greek and English edited volumes, journals and conference proceedings, and co-editing of Greek and English edited volumes.

22/4/2024

Pafsanias Karathanasis : Actions from below and exit from the Cypriot liminality
The presentation draws on my ongoing research experience in the divided Cypriot capital, which aspires to add a piece to our understanding of the otherwise complex Cyprus Problem. Focusing on the Cypriot division, and on the boundaries that it creates, it examines the ways in which social subjects attempt to cope with the official restrictions. These can be social, political or geographical, but they are also expressed as restrictions to the development of the imagination for a different future. Following contemporary anthropological approaches to the concept of liminality, the analysis begins from the old town of Nicosia, a liminal urban space – next to the Green Line – and attempts to place the processes taking place there in a broader context of analysis of Cypriot society within the conditions created by the controlled reconnection of the two sides after 2003. Drawing on a spatial analysis of political and cultural activities situated in the geographical and symbolic in-between, it attempts to approach the continuation of Cypriot division as the maintenance of an uncertain and precarious in-between state and proposes an interpretation of these activities as examples of efforts aimed at exiting the prolonged Cypriot liminality; efforts, that is, aimed at ‘life in Cyprus without the Cyprus Problem’, even if its official solution never comes.

Pafsanias Karathanasis holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of the Aegean. His research interests include the anthropology of space and cities, visual culture, and political anthropology. Specifically, he is concerned with urban cultures and contested spaces in cities and border areas. He has conducted research on urban practices such as street art, public art, and activism, and has conducted participant observation with political and artistic groups active in Athens, and in the borderscapes of Mytilene and Nicosia. His articles have been published in academic journals and edited volumes, and he has participated in international conferences in Greece and abroad, and in the organization and scientific curation of panel discussions at conferences and festivals. He has collaborated as a postdoctoral researcher with the University of the Aegean, Panteion University, and the University of Amsterdam, as a lecturer with the University of Macedonia, as a coordinator of academic and educational activities with the Athens Ethnographic Film Festival-Ethnofest and he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Greece-SKAE.