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6th seminar of the 4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

by

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

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

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

The online seminars series ETHNOGRAFEIN, since its inception in the spring of 2021, aims to contribute to a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about the theory and practice of ethnography, the epistemology of research, the significance of embodied experience, and also the modes of dissemination of the anthropological knowledge produced to both academic and non-academic audiences. The anthropological endeavour, both as a mode of research practice and a form of political writing, is based on the fundamental epistemological premises of critical evaluation, empathy, reflection, and self-referentiality and highlights the significance of a multifaceted analysis for the understanding of the local to the global. 
Organisation and coordination: Fotini Tsibiridou – Ioannis Manos – Eleni Sideri

“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.

26 Ferbuary 2024

“Transgressing Realities: Desire and Borders in Southern Balkans” 

Rozita Dimova 
Social Anthropologist, professor, Prof. Dr. Rozita Dimova, Institute for Advanced Studies (iASK), Kőszeg Center for Interdisciplinary and Advanced Studies, University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje

26/02/2024

Rozita Dimova: Transgressing Realities: Desire and Borders in Southern Balkans
In my presentation, I explore the productive role of borders in the Southern Balkans, specifically focusing on hotel-casinos and beauty consumption practices in the Greece-North Macedonia border region. Gamblers who frequent Macedonian casinos use gaming as a means to break free from rigid class constraints imposed by their rural backgrounds in Northern Greece. Financial privilege allows them special treatment, turning gambling into an escape that enables them to reinvent themselves within a new reality. For urban consumers from Thessaloniki, the border provides access to affordable beauty services in Gevgelija, which enables them to reclaim their femininity and middle-class status. This raises questions about how crossing the border influences gender and class perceptions, and intersects with other consumer elements like luxury, comfort, and status, all of which contribute to redefinition and transgression of their “old” selves. 

Rozita Dimova, PhD (Stanford, 2004) is a Social Anthropologist with a distinguished record of achievements, including the prestigious Robert Texture Award for Outstanding Creativity in Anthropology. Rozita has held research positions at prominent institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (2003-2006), Free and Humboldt Universities in Berlin (2007-2015), and served as an Associate Professor in Southeast European Studies at Ghent University in Belgium (2013-2020). A Founding and Permanent Board Member at the Center for Advanced and Interdisciplinary Research at the University Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, North Macedonia, Rozita is currently also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Kőszeg, Hungary. Her research portfolio includes materiality, consumerism and aesthetics, ethno-nationalism, borders and migration studies. A prolific author, Rozita is the author of the monographs, Ethno-Baroque: Materiality, Aesthetics, and Conflict in Modern-day Macedonia (Berghahn, 2013) and Border Porosities: Movements of People, Objects, and Ideas in the Southern Balkans (Manchester University Press, 2021).

Only those participants who wish to receive certificates of attendance register in the following form: https://forms.gle/6vVWdrM3HKLSLfAF9

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar.

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

————————————————————————–

Seminar Platform: ZOOM

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

6th-seminar-of-the-4th-Cycle-of-ETHNOGRAFEIN-Online-Educational-SeminarsDownload

5th seminar of the 4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

by

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

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

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

The online seminars series ETHNOGRAFEIN, since its inception in the spring of 2021, aims to contribute to a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about the theory and practice of ethnography, the epistemology of research, the significance of embodied experience, and also the modes of dissemination of the anthropological knowledge produced to both academic and non-academic audiences. The anthropological endeavour, both as a mode of research practice and a form of political writing, is based on the fundamental epistemological premises of critical evaluation, empathy, reflection, and self-referentiality and highlights the significance of a multifaceted analysis for the understanding of the local to the global. 
Organisation and coordination: Fotini Tsibiridou – Ioannis Manos – Eleni Sideri

“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.

12 February 2024

“Everyday Diplomacy and Crossing Boundaries: Case of Georgia” 

Ketevan Gurchiani 
Professor of Anthropology, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia

12/2/2024 

Ketevan Gurchiani:  Everyday Diplomacy and Crossing Boundaries: Case of Georgia
In her talk Ketevan Gurchiani analyzes the practices of boundary crossings that are shaped by everyday diplomacy. Based on an example from a village, she discusses how religion, the main dividing line between groups, becomes a site of boundary crossings. The research shows how everyday peace is constantly reaffirmed through the tradition of inviting Muslim godparents to baptize Christian children. These practices also find their continuation in urban milieus. The city provides religious and non-religious buffer zones where dividing lines are easily blurred. The talk explores tactics people employ in their everyday lives to allow for peaceful coexistence, but also imbalances this kind of everyday diplomacy entails.

Ketevan Gurchiani is a professor of anthropology at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is particularly interested in the domesticated and non-domesticated nature of the city, materiality and religion, and informal practices of resistance. Ketevan Gurchiani is also involved in research projects that focus on diversity, migration, and peace practices. Her most recent publications include A Gallery of Ghosts: Death and Burial in Lands Marked by Trauma, Material Religion (with Catherine Wanner, Zuzanna Bogumił, Sergei Shtyrkov) and Die verborgene Macht der Bäume. Urbaner Widerstand in Tiflis. In:  Verdeckter Widerstand in demokratischen Gesellschaften in Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie und Sozialphilosophie (2022)

Only those participants who wish to receive certificates of attendance register in the following form: https://forms.gle/zNpUFtrY5Rrvhh6i9

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar.

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

————————————————————————–

Seminar Platform: ZOOM

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

5th-seminar-of-the-4th-Cycle-of-ETHNOGRAFEIN-12-FEB-2024-2-1Download





4th seminar of the 4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

by

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

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

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

The online seminars series ETHNOGRAFEIN, since its inception in the spring of 2021, aims to contribute to a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about the theory and practice of ethnography, the epistemology of research, the significance of embodied experience, and also the modes of dissemination of the anthropological knowledge produced to both academic and non-academic audiences. The anthropological endeavour, both as a mode of research practice and a form of political writing, is based on the fundamental epistemological premises of critical evaluation, empathy, reflection, and self-referentiality and highlights the significance of a multifaceted analysis for the understanding of the local to the global.
Organisation and coordination: Fotini Tsibiridou – Ioannis Manos – Eleni Sideri

“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.

22 January 2024

“ Crossing borders as a musician: artistic work and border regimes“

Aspasia (Sissie) Theodosiou
Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, Dep. of Music Studies, University of Ioannina

22/01/2024:

Aspasia (Sissie) Theodosiou: “Crossing borders as a musician: artistic work and border regimes”
Drawing from my recent ethnographic research in Israel, but also from ethnographic material starting from the late 1990s and up to the present day, concerning cultural-musical performances and crosslocations on the Greek-Albanian border, this presentation discusses a distinctly different modality of interconnectivity and cross-border mobility than that usually found in the relevant literature or public discourse on borders (e.g. migration/refugee ‘crisis’, trade, tourism): this modality concerns the phenomenon of musical labour as performed by Albanian/Northern Epirot traditional musicians on the Greek-Albanian border in Epirus and by Greek musicians and singers in Israel (with the latter particularly intensifying since the economic crisis).

 Through the perspective of artistic work – and  more especially its modality as cross-border mobility- as it is reflected through the discourses and practices of musicians and the audience’s perceptions, the presentation will highlight the “burden of ethnic/symbolic representation” that musicians are called upon to bear in a context of entertainment cultures, which in their historicity have acquired the weight of an “authentic” affective legacy. At the same time, the presentation will engage critically with the literature on artistic/creative work. The border regimes under consideration and their imprints on the labour regimes of the participating musical subjects, highlight structures, practices and understandings of the phenomenon of musical labour that have not been adequately studied until recently.

Aspasia (Sissie) Theodosiou is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor at the Department of Music Studies of the University of Ioannina. She obtained her MA and PhD from the Dept of Social Anthropology (University of Manchester). She was a member of MC of the international research network “Remaking eastern borders in Europe” and participated in the “Crosslocations” project of the University of Helsinki, as well as ιν numerous other international research projects, while she has also served as an evaluator in European projects. She is also a co-founder of the initiative dëcoloиıze hellάş

Her research experience includes long term fieldwork with Roma/Gypsy musicians in Epirus (Greek-Albanian border) and more recently with Mizrahi people and the policies and practices related to “Greek” music in Israel. Her research interests revolve around the anthropology of music, issues of nationalism and  sovereignty, borders and ethnic groups, cultural racism and the legacies of ethnic purity and white supremacy, as well as critical Romani studies; furthermore, she studies the politics of culture and affect around popular music, and issues related to artistic labour. Her current ethnographic projects focus on female music labour and  artistic labour in migratory contexts. Finally, she is currently co-writing an ethnography on Glykeria’s artistic career in Israel since the 1990s.

Only those participants who wish to receive certificates of attendance register in the following form: https://forms.gle/9Vu2pxoR61LFdBb5A

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar.

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

————————————————————————–

Seminar Platform: ZOOM

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

4th-seminar-of-the-4th-Cycle-of-ETHNOGRAFEIN-22-JAN-2024-1-1Download





5th International Doctoral Research Seminar

by

Exploring complexity:
Multimodal methodologies in a diverse, glocalised world

February 23-24, 2024
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

CALL FOR PAPERS

Studying human societies and cultures in the contemporary globalised world, simultaneously interconnected and fragmented, demands a nuanced and multifaceted methodological approach. The 5th Doctoral Research Seminar organised by the Laboratory for the Study of Culture, Borders, and Gender in the Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, on February 23-24, explores how the layered and nuanced aspects of social reality are unravelled. We believe exploring the intricate nature of human experience is best achieved through diverse methodologies. These multimodal methodologies span various analytical, interpretive, and interactive techniques and offer a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of diverse contexts of social action. 
Furthermore, the seminar explores the dynamic relationship between traditional ethnographic methods and the emerging challenges and opportunities of digital technology and AI. We are concerned with the ways these innovative tools can support the interpretation of social phenomena and reshape the ethnographic practice and the production of anthropological knowledge. Our objective is to discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise for ethnographers and social researchers from these technological developments, as well as the tools and perspectives required for their productive utilisation.
We invite PhD candidates and early-stage social sciences and humanities researchers to engage with us in this seminar. We encourage submissions of case studies that may include, but are not limited to, the following themes and their intersections:

  • Cultural practices, rituals, symbols, and institutions
  • Border areas, identities, diversity, and cross-border mobility
  • The experiences of minority groups, immigration, and refugees
  • Gender dynamics, relations, and the concept of embodiment
  • Studies in literature, art, language, and translation
  • Analyses of material culture, space, architecture, and monuments
  • The influence of digital technologies on digital and audiovisual cultures

Invited Speakers

Friday, February 23
“Multimodality and an ethnography of ‘going beyond’ ” [in Greek]
Dr. Eleni Sideri
Associate Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

——————————————–

Saturday, February 24
“Co-design as ethnographic method”
Dr. Fabio Mattioli
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Sciences
Associated Researcher, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics,
The University of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract Submission

  • Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.
  • Please provide a short biography, emphasizing your academic qualifications and research interests, along with your contact details
  • Submission Deadline: January 10, 2024
  • Submission email address: cbg-lab@uom.edu.gr
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: January 20, 2024
  • For any inquiries, contact Mrs Anna Moumtzoglou: anna@uom.edu.gr

Conference format, location and other significant information

  • The seminar is primarily scheduled to take place on-site with in-person attendance
  • The presentations from our guest speakers can be attended online through the ZOOM platform
  • Online paper presentations will be accommodated in exceptional circumstances
  • Paper presentation: It should not exceed 15’
  • Working languages: Greek, English
  • Seminar venue: Conference room (1st floor) – University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
  • A Certificate of Attendance will be issued to all participants of the seminar

Publication Prospects:

Selected papers will be considered for publication in a special section of the CBG LAB’s online, open access and peer reviewed academic journals:

Scientific Committee

  • Fotini Tsibiridou (Director), Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Ioannis Manos, Associate Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Eleni Sideri, Assistant Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Aleka Ioannidou, Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Stavroula Mavrogeni, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Eleni Gavra, Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Loukretsious Soutsiou, Professor, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Dr. Christina Grammatikopoulou, Fellow, Culture – Borders – Gender /LΑB

Organizing Committee

  • Fotini Tsibiridou
  • Ioannis Manos
  • Eleni Sideri
  • Christina Grammatikopoulou
  • Anna Moumtzoglou, Special Technical Lab Personnel, Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies
  • Paka Pinelopi, Administrative personnel


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3rd seminar of the 4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

by

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

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

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


The online seminars series ETHNOGRAFEIN, since its inception in the spring of 2021, aims to contribute to a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about the theory and practice of ethnography, the epistemology of research, the significance of embodied experience, and also the modes of dissemination of the anthropological knowledge produced to both academic and non-academic audiences. The anthropological endeavour, both as a mode of research practice and a form of political writing, is based on the fundamental epistemological premises of critical evaluation, empathy, reflection, and self-referentiality and highlights the significance of a multifaceted analysis for the understanding of the local to the global.
Organisation and coordination: Fotini Tsibiridou – Ioannis Manos – Eleni Sideri

“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.

4 December 2023

“Borders, Paradox and Power”

Yiannis Papadakis
Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus

04/12/2023

Yiannis Papadakis: Borders, Paradox and Power
Border studies have grappled with, on the one hand, the need for the use of common themes or concepts while, on the other, the need for contextual specificity. Borders are sites that embody different potentialities: division and contact, conflict and cooperation, security and anxiety, creativity and oppression, among others. In short, they are sites of the paradoxical. Paradox, it is argued, is the common overarching conceptual characteristic of borders but which specific potentialities are embodied in a border and what prevails as a result of the ensuing power struggles requires contextual specificity.

Cyprus, a divided island lying on various border lines, partly inside and partly outside the EU, presents a useful socio-political space in order to illustrate this argument by outlining the specific paradoxical aspects of its own border and the results of the ensuing power struggles.

Yiannis Papadakis is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus. He is author of Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (I. B. Tauris, 2005, also translated in Greek and Turkish), co-editor of Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Indiana University Press, 2006) and Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict and Identity in the Margins of Europe (Bloomsbury, 2014), and editor of a 2006 special issue of Postcolonial Studies on Cyprus, among others. His published work has focused on ethnic conflict, borders, nationalism, history education, cinema, post-colonialism, migration and cemeteries. His recent work engages with issues of migration and social democracy in Denmark and the comparative study of cemeteries in Cyprus, Denmark and currently Japan

Only those participants who wish to receive certificates of attendance register in the following form: https://forms.gle/JBJ8KUSJjg1sBW2c9

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar.

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

————————————————————————–

Seminar Platform: ZOOM

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

3rd-seminar-of-the-4th-Cycle-of-ETHNOGRAFEIN-4-DEC-2023Download



2nd  seminar of the 4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

by

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

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

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


The online seminars series ETHNOGRAFEIN, since its inception in the spring of 2021, aims to contribute to a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about the theory and practice of ethnography, the epistemology of research, the significance of embodied experience, and also the modes of dissemination of the anthropological knowledge produced to both academic and non-academic audiences. The anthropological endeavour, both as a mode of research practice and a form of political writing, is based on the fundamental epistemological premises of critical evaluation, empathy, reflection, and self-referentiality and highlights the significance of a multifaceted analysis for the understanding of the local to the global. 

Organisation and coordination: Fotini Tsibiridou – Ioannis Manos – Eleni Sideri

“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.

13 November 2023

“Animal Crosslocations: more than human encounters with European border regimes”

Sarah Green 
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki, Finland

13/11/2023

Sarah Green: Animal Crosslocations: more than human encounters with European border regimes
In March 2021, a giant container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking traffic for six days. Twenty ships that could not pass were transporting livestock. Live animal transport has quadrupled over the last fifty years, with the EU becoming the global leader in that trade: more than two billion animals are transported across borders annually. International airports and sea ports have veterinary services and quarantine facilities.

While all that is going on, wild boar numbers have massively increased across the European region, and they wander across borders at will, triggering suspicions that the people on the other side of the border are somehow causing the problem. Elsewhere, the barbed wire and fences that were put up in parts of the European hinterlands in 2015 in efforts to discourage human migrants were ensnaring many wild animals that normally crossed these regions to do whatever they needed to do.

Then there are the many and various visitor animals, often called invasive species, such as lion fish in the Mediterranean, parakeets in Madrid and Canada geese just about everywhere: they are also border crossers, who sometimes attract the deadly phrase, “invasive species.” And finally, there are trillions of microbes, some of them pathogens (SARS, MERS, Ebola, Dengue, SARS-CoV2, etc), that accompany many animals, including the humans, across these borderlands and across bodily borders; they sometimes cause serious consternation for people. This presentation will take an overview of the encounters between more than human entities human borders as a means to think otherwise about the implications of current border transformations.

Sarah Green is professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She is a specialist on the anthropology of space, place, borders and location. Her regional focus has been Europe, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, Greece and the UK. In recent years, she led an ERC Advanced Grant project called Crosslocations, which experimented with what ethnography would look like if ‘the field’ was understood as a place of overlapping connections with, and separations from, other places: a dynamic and relational understanding of location, one with many crosscutting borders, rather than as a fixed place with fixed borders. Her own part of this project involved studying the way that nonhuman entities encounter human borders: livestock, wild animals and microbes. This talk is based on that research.

Only those participants who wish to receive certificates of attendance register in the following form: https://forms.gle/31tSiiNHSTt7AzUF9

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar.

 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

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1st  seminar of the 4th Cycle of ETHNOGRAFEIN Online Educational Seminars (2023-2024)

by

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

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

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


The online seminars series ETHNOGRAFEIN, since its inception in the spring of 2021, aims to contribute to a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about the theory and practice of ethnography, the epistemology of research, the significance of embodied experience, and also the modes of dissemination of the anthropological knowledge produced to both academic and non-academic audiences. The anthropological endeavour, both as a mode of research practice and a form of political writing, is based on the fundamental epistemological premises of critical evaluation, empathy, reflection, and self-referentiality and highlights the significance of a multifaceted analysis for the understanding of the local to the global. 

Organisation and coordination: Fotini Tsibiridou – Ioannis Manos – Eleni Sideri

“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.

30 October 2023

“The Spirit of the Convention and the Letter of the Colony: Refugees defining States in a British Overseas Territory” 

Olga Dimitriou  

Professor in Political Anthropology, Durham Global Security Institute,  
School of Government and International Affairs, UK

30/10/2023

Olga Dimitriou: The Spirit of the Convention and the Letter of the Colony: Refugees defining States in a British Overseas Territory
Whereas asylum policy is predicated on the assumption that states define refugees, this paper examines how refugees define states. Through the legal case of refugees stranded on a British military base in Cyprus since 1998, I show how refugees and the states that grant them or deny them protection become co-constitutive. The processes involved in judicial activism delineate the modalities through which sovereign governance and refugee agency operate. I argue that modalities of sovereignty (colonialism, exceptionalism, and diplomacy) interact with modalities of agency (protest, vulnerability, and endurance) to redefine issues of refugee protection, state sovereignty, and externalisation of migration management. The case shows the risks that denial of protection entails for states and not just refugees. Methodologically, I propose that a nuanced, ground-level understanding of the role of law in activism allows us a clearer view to these imbrications of sovereign governance and agency, and thus to the ambivalent and multivalent aspects of activism.           

Olga Demetriou joined the Durham Global Security Institute at the School in 2018 and has been its Programme Director since 2019. She has trained in social anthropology and has led projects on minority rights, gender, displacement, and refugeehood, for the last two decades.Her current interests focus on activism in refugee reception sites in the Mediterranean, specifically in Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus. 
She has authored two monographs, Capricious Borders: Minority, Population and Counter-Conduct between Greece and Turkey (Berghahn, 2013/2017) and Refugeehood and the Post Conflict Subject: Reconsidering Minor Losses (SUNY Press, 2018). She was previously affiliated with PRIO, the University of Cyprus, and Amnesty International, where she was the organisation’s researcher on Greece and Cyprus.

Attendance certificates will be given to participants who register in the form below
Google form: https://forms.gle/69hMA5zH6Ji6nGtF7

The registration form will receive answers one week before the seminar.

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

————————————————————————–

Seminar Platform: ZOOM

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

1st-seminar-of-the-4th-Cycle-of-ETHNOGRAFEIN-Online-Educational-SeminarsDownload