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“No Pizza without Migrants”: Between the Politics of Identity and Transnationalism

Published on October 2, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, Europe, globalisation, journal articles / papers, migration, Us and Them

Why are there such different patterns of identity and community formation among second-generation migrants? A transnational perspective with focus on the migrants’ relationship to their (or their parents’) homeland is neccessary, argues anthropologist Susanne Wessendorf in her paper “No Pizza without Migrants: Between the Politics of Identity and Transnationalism: Second-Generation Italians in Switzerland”:

“Politics of identity, transnationalism and integration should not be regarded as mutually exclusive, but as complementary strategies or reactions of migrants to the challenges of and tensions between mobility and settlement”

Wessendorf has among others studied Italian migrants in Switzerland and their political Secondo movement that fights against the negative image ascribed to them (They designed and sold T-Shirts as a way to communicate their pride in being members of the second generation, and to show that even if you do not look like a foreigner, you might well be of immigrant origin).

Wessendorf critizes concepts which describe fragmented second-generation integration as simply ‘bicultural’, moving ‘between two cultures’:

“But these new spaces can neither simply be called ‘transnational social spaces’, she writes: They are clearly embedded in the political, economic and socio-cultural realities of the nation-state in which they emerge. Rather, they are counter-hegemonic attempts to deal with both a national legal system and, sometimes, the nostalgia for the homeland.”

>> read the whole paper

PS: This one of the Working Papers of the Center of Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford

Why are there such different patterns of identity and community formation among second-generation migrants? A transnational perspective with focus on the migrants' relationship to their (or their parents') homeland is neccessary, argues anthropologist Susanne Wessendorf in her paper "No…

“Knowledge of the bigger context is crucial for successful fieldwork”

Published on September 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, fieldwork / methods

Wolfgang “Anthronaut” Wohlwend has returned from his two month fieldwork in a warehouse in Istanbul. He summarizes some of his experience with short-time fieldwork and gives us the advice: “Start at the general and go into the specific!”:

Two months are a very short period of time. The first half of this period I spent on becoming acclimatized to either climate, language and culture which numbed my senses to a big extent. When my senses awoke again in the remaining two weeks in the warehouse and another two weeks travelling in Turkey were simply not enough to build up anything sensible.

(…)

What I was doing – participatory observation in a small scale enterprise – over two months can in my opinion only be succesful, when one knows the “bigger context”, i.e. the cultural frameworks, from general to specific, where the people working there move in.

(…)

On my small trip around Turkey, I had the impression, that I gathered much more insights and observations than in all the six weeks before. So I conclude, that one should do it exactly the other way round – Get to know the culture, then study the enterprise. Start at the general and go into the specific.

>> read the whole post

PS: Strangely enough I haven’t mentioned this blog earlier here (it has been part of the anthro-newspaper for a while, though), I really enjoyed following his fieldwork, many well written posts!

Wolfgang "Anthronaut" Wohlwend has returned from his two month fieldwork in a warehouse in Istanbul. He summarizes some of his experience with short-time fieldwork and gives us the advice: "Start at the general and go into the specific!":

Two months are…

New issue of Pro Ethnologica: The Russian Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia

Published on September 14, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

Pro Ethnologica is – as far as I know – the only anthropology journal that is published both on paper and is freely available on the web for all of us.

Their new volume is now online. The papers in their new volume were presented at a workshop in August 2005 on the Russian speaking minority in Estland and Latvia and deal among others about “How the Russians Turned into the Image of the “National Enemy” of the Estonians” on “Strategies of Identity Re-construction in Post-Soviet Estonia”, “Experience of Estonian-speaking Students from Fieldwork in Narva” and “Work as the Focus of Socialist Everyday Life”

>> to Pro Ethnologica 19: The Russian Speaking Minorities in Estonia and Latvia

Pro Ethnologica is - as far as I know - the only anthropology journal that is published both on paper and is freely available on the web for all of us.

Their new volume is now online. The papers in their…

American Ethnologist – New book reviews on Indian Resurgence in Brazil, Anthropology of Britain, Race and Transnationalism

Published on September 11, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, books, Europe, indigenous people / minorities, Latin- and Central America, migration, music, Native American, Northern America, Us and Them

The August reviews of the journal American Ethnologist are now online.

Among them we’ll find:

Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. By: Kamari Maxine Clarke
Kamari Clarke is an Afro-Canadian who joins several African American anthropologists in examining how Africa and African heritage are understood by contemporary African American communities. Clarke exemplifies the best of 21st-century anthropology as she offers an insider’s sympathy without romanticism, step-back objectivity without arrogance. Clarke presents multisited research among “Yoruba” and Yoruba in South Carolina and Nigeria. >> continue

British Subjects: An Anthropology of Britain. Edited by Nigel Rapport
The articles address a wide range of topics, including the royal family (Anne Rowbottom), the London ballet (Helena Wulff), the postindustrial landscape of a former mining village (Andrew Dawson), British Quakers (Peter Collins), and Rapport’s own literarily inflected work on the worldview from a British village. The collection reflects a view of Britain as largely white, tranquil, and middle class >> continue

Racial Revolutions: Antiracism and Indian Resurgence in Brazil. By Jonathan W. Warren
Jonathan Warren examines the shift in which people who might once have claimed mixed-race status instead reconstruct themselves as “post-traditional” Indians. Simply because Warren explores qualitatively Brazil’s contemporary indigenous resurgence, Racial Revolutions is a must read. >> continue

Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship. By Nicholas De Genova and Anna Y. Ramos-Zayas
This book represents a unique collaboration between two anthropologists who did fieldwork separately in Chicago during the 1990s. >> continue

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race. By Maureen Mahon
Right to Rock focuses on the Black Rock Coalition (BRC), founded in 1985 as a network of African American musicians “sick and tired of being sick and tired” from the frustration of racial segregation within the music industry. >> continue

>> all August 2005 book reviews

The August reviews of the journal American Ethnologist are now online.

Among them we'll find:

Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. By: Kamari Maxine Clarke
Kamari Clarke is an Afro-Canadian who joins several African American anthropologists in…

Radio interview on African Village/ “Germans&Japanese less sensitive about race”

Published on June 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Europe, Us and Them

The African Village at the zoo in Augsburg, Germany is still debated in the international media.

“An African culture festival creates a storm in Germany. Critics say it’s like shows in colonial times that degraded Africans. The flap has sparked a broader discussion about racism in Germany, and what it’s like to be both dark-skinned and a native German”, the National Public Radio (NPR) summarizes the debate around the african village in the zoo in Augsburg. >> listen to the radio report by NPR

On L’express and several other news sites comment the African Village like this: “Germans and Japanese are less sensitive about race in general and about Africa in particular than, say, people in France or the United States, where a significant minority of the population is of African descent >> continue

The African Village at the zoo in Augsburg, Germany is still debated in the international media.

"An African culture festival creates a storm in Germany. Critics say it's like shows in colonial times that degraded Africans. The flap has sparked a…