Antropologia Pubblica

Camminare in campo aperto… Esperienze di mappatura partecipata nel Messico indigeno ed eco-politica delle lingue-terre native nella crisi eco-climatica globale

Cristiano Tallè — 2024-04-29

The production and distribution of maps have not been the exclusive monopoly and competence of Nation-States for several decades. At least since the 1970s, indigenous and afro-descendant populations in the Americas have begun to use participatory mapping as a tool to claim their land rights against Nation-States, accompanying the progress of international law, such as the ILO Convention 169 (1989). In the last twenty years, this research-action tool has begun to assume new ecopolitical values starting from the crucial position of indigenous peoples in the contexts of the current planetary eco-climatic crisis, between vulnerability and sustainable management of their living environments.
In this article I will illustrate my research experience in the context of a participatory mapping project of the “ancestral” territory of the Ikoots of San Mateo del Mar, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Oaxaca, Mexico). On the one hand I will reflect on the intertwining of ethnographic experience, participation, intentionality and return of research in a context of growing socio-environmental conflict; on the other hand I will reflect on the radically non-cartesian and non-naturalist ecopolitical positionality that indigenous language-knowledges express in the current global Anthropocene crisis, which goes beyond the notion of geo-political sovereignty at the heart of colonial/ national cartesian cartography and challenges global perception of the crisis and the actions to be pursued to get out of it.

“Sulla soglia”. La spazialità delle relazioni nelle istituzioni prescolastiche durante la pandemia di Covid-19

Manuela Tassan — 2024-04-29

Based on research conducted with teachers from municipal infant-toddler centers (0-3 years) and preschools (3-6 years) in Milan and Reggio Emilia (Italy), this article examines the changes in educational practices brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, with a particular emphasis on people’s relationship with school spaces and places. The article demonstrates how the measures implemented to contain the virus, such as creating “bubbles”, enforcing physical distancing, and limiting the use of objects, have highlighted the essential role of “spatiality of relationships” within educational services. By “spatiality of relations”, I mean those relationships that are shaped by and cannot be fully understood without considering the specific spaces, also with their architectural peculiarity, in which they occur. On the one hand, the text explores the feeling of having to remain “on the threshold”, as teachers said, in a literal and metaphorical sense, since teachers and children could not fully experience the spaces and places of the school and could not build or deepen the usual relationships with teachers and children from other classes due to health restrictions. On the other hand, the article also analyzes their resilient agency in redefining relationships with places precisely through movement in space, which became essential with the obligation not to create assemblages. These processes of resemantizing places made it possible to keep alive inter- and intra-generational relationships, continuing to build a sense of identity belonging to infant-toddler centers and preschools even in a critical period of suspension of the usual forms of sociability.

“Se tutto è mafia, niente è mafia”. Riflessioni antropologico giuridiche sulla criminalità organizzata nigeriana

Stefania Spada — 2024-04-29

Starting from a description of the characteristics identified by the Italian legal system for the recognition of the crime of mafia-type association (force of intimidation, associative bond, subjugation and code of silence) as defined by the 416 bis c.p., the contribution aims to produce an ethnography of the documents (Riles 2006; Hull 2012) - such as judgments, DIA reports, intelligence services reports, acts of the Parliamentary Commission - in which the patrimony of information concerning Nigerian organized crime has been untextualized (Cabot 2011). The objective of this hermeneutic analysis is attempts to understand if – and how – stereotypes and prejudices have informed the process of evaluation of behaviors recognized as mafia; is it appropriate to speak of culturalist rationality in this specific case? The proposed reasoning seems necessary because the imaginaries developed towards Nigerian criminal groups appear to be as much a structure as an outcome of the criminalization process mentioned by Wortley (2009). Is it possible to detach the imaginaries referring to the criminal sphere from those existing in society in a general sense?
In other words, is it possible for criminal groups of non-native people to emancipate themselves from the logic of subordinate differential inclusion (Castles 1995; Ambrosini 1999; Mezzadra 2004; Donatiello, Moiso 2017)?

Violenza di genere, stranieri e servizi assistenziali. Un’indagine etnografica sulle rappresentazioni degli operatori e delle operatrici professionali

Raúl Zecca Castel — 2024-04-29

This article presents the results of an ethnographic research conducted within the framework of the project “Families. Rinforzare i legami territoriali per sostenere famiglie vulnerabili” (Strengthen territorial ties to support vulnerable families), funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration
Fund (FAMI 2014-2020). The survey aimed at detecting the operators’ socio-cultural representations of gender-based violence within the interinstitutional anti-violence network in the Territorial Areas of Treviglio and Romano
di Lombardia (province of Bergamo), where the project was activated. Data collected via ethnographic method (questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus-group meetings) have highlighted some weaknesses and potentially prejudicial criticalities for the fulfillment of the mandate to which professional operators are called for, especially when users with foreign backgrounds are involved. The article unravels the ethnographic results and attempts at sketching out some suggestions for the creation and implementation of a more effective user-oriented framework of intervention, targeting
the victims of gender-based violence.

Dall’Etiopia al Medio Oriente. Pratiche, retoriche e discorsi sulle esperienze delle lavoratrici domestiche etiopi

Silvia Cirillo — 2024-04-29

Drawing on field research conducted in Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, this contribution reflects on the ambiguities and contradictions of the discourses and practices promoted by the Ethiopian government and national and international organisations on the topic of women’s domestic work. On the one hand, there is a constant focus on the exploitative experiences of female workers abroad (particularly in the Middle East), with the simplistic distinction between migration routes defined as “safe” or “dangerous”, “legal” or “illegal”. On the other hand, there is an absence of debate on the experiences of domestic workers in Ethiopia. This scenario emerges from the analysis of the evolution of Ethiopian migration policies over the last two decades and from the testimonies of female domestic workers. The specific case of Saudi Arabia will be illustrated at the conclusion of the article, in order to better understand the sense of “confusion” described by many women as a consequence of the ambiguous changeability of migration policies.

L’Aquila, smart city medievale. Ossimori resilienti e intime allegorie di una ricostruzione post-sisma

Rita Ciccaglione — 2024-04-29

In the public debate, catastrophe is a destructive and crisis-maker event; complementarily, the culture of resilience turns the disaster into a window of possibility for building a better future. Also in L’Aquila, some strategies for resilience are moved in the post-earthquake by an international expertise team, whose mission is to offer a proposal and a plan of change and transformation to the town. A natural analogy between urban resilience and smartness and its plurality of contents create the conditions to develop a kaleidoscopic imagine of the city by placing the emphasis on one aspect rather than on another. Urban regimes overlap generating oxymoric representations and guiding principles and spatializing growth recipes and models in the downtown or in the polycentric territory. The smart approach becomes synonymous with a (technologic) innovation to be expanded to the internal areas and the medieval city focuses on historic and cultural heritage localized in the old town and rebuilt where it was and how it was. By materializing in the urban space prototypes of figurability, the recovery process can be represented as a change that looks to the future or as a continuity with the past. Intimate ways of representation ascribe to the smart or to the medieval city some allegoric meanings that describe the changement or the endurance of a local social organization based on real estate property.

Processi di inclusione attraverso la prossimità interculturale. Cittadinanze solidali e istanze di ospitalità

Sebastiano Ceschi — 2024-04-29

During the last decade, especially after the “refugees crisis” of 2015, a number of diversified collaborations between public and private stakeholder and resident local population addressed to migrants have developed in some Italian cities. According with contexts of experimentation, these initiatives can take different forms and intensity - such as voluntary guardian, mentor, buddy, tutor, foster or welcoming family - but all share a common focus on the interaction between reception, integration and interpersonal and intercultural relationships and the aim of promoting migrant inclusion in local society through individual and community engagement. Somehow contrasting and challenging Italian and European political and social trends under the sign of security and control in migration/immigration issue, residents experiment and open new spaces for exchanges between people with different backgrounds and for practising forms of substantial and acted citizenship. Thus creating a multi-faced process involving the ideal polarity host/citizen and at the same time calling for the raise of municipal hospitality and solidarity.

Abitare liminale permanente. Pratiche di lotta e negoziazione quotidiana degli spazi in un’occupazione abitativa romana

Chiara Cacciotti — 2024-04-29

The article explores the notion of stretched and permanent liminality by foregrounding the ways in which people living in a Roman organized squat deal with it in their everyday lives. It focuses on the case of Santa Croce/Spin Time, a squat occupied by the Housing rights movement Action in 2013 characterized by both a residential and a socio-cultural part. Relying on extensive ethnographic observations and interviews undertaken within the building, the article mobilizes and grounds in the field the Turnerian notion of communitas as anything but a short-term and temporary condition. By describing inhabitants and activists as capable of finding creative ways to negotiate their domestic and common spaces and elaborating on new political instruments to deal with their liminal condition, the article contributes to debates around liminal homing practices in conditions of alleged uninhabitability.

Vivere e riparare lo “squascio” nella città vecchia di Taranto. Un’etnografia dell’abbandono e del recupero degli spazi urbani

Vincenzo Luca Lo Re — 2024-04-29

This proposal analyses the recovery practices of urban spaces and how they reflect social meanings and ways of organizing settlements and relationships. The research on the context of the historical centre of Taranto (Apulia, Italy) aims to deepen the link between an urban area affected by historical phenomena of abandonment and the industrial development of the steel industry and the consequent spatial expansion of the city. In the context of Taranto’s environmental and economic crisis, the number of abandoned buildings in a state of physical decay in the old town centre represents an opportunity to reconstruct a new space for living, relating, and working. For these reasons, the ethnographic research focused on the organization of regeneration initiatives for abandoned areas promoted by an informal group called “I ragazzi della città vecchia” (The boys of the old town). These practices highlight the centrality and importance of space as a fundamental resource for the social reproduction of inhabitants, relationships, and economies. Abandonment and the absence of infrastructures are addressed through the reproduction of specific social infrastructures based on the kinship and neighbourhood relations of the inhabitants involved in the recovery. The complex networks of connections, spaces, and people of I ragazzi della città vecchia reflect a specific spatialisation of the social infrastructure. By recovering the abandoned spaces of the old town, the inhabitants are defending themselves against depopulation and abandonment.

Displacement come condizione esistenziale. Riflessioni analitico-metodologiche tra autoetnografia ed etnografia retrospettiva

Silvia Pitzalis — 2024-04-29

I treni di Arturo (15 anni dopo). Movimento personale e politico nell’università neoliberista italiana

Francesco Zanotelli — 2024-04-29

Inquiete. Dialogo tra antropologhe

Irene Falconieri — 2024-04-29

Precariato presente, impegno futuro

Berardino Palumbo — 2024-04-29

Vuoti o pieni di memorie? Un progetto di antropologia applicata al patrimonio

Marta Pascolini — 2024-04-29

Nella città delle mosche

Riccardo Bononi — 2024-04-29

Mantener viva la memoria de donde uno viene. Un caso di foto-elicitazione a partire dall’archivio fotografico di una famiglia italo-uruguaiana

Alice Gangemi — 2024-04-29

Deconstructing the Family Album. Domestic Violence in Sensory Ethnography, Postmemory and Photography

Gemma Lynch — 2024-04-29