15th October 2024, 4.30pm in Anthropology Seminar Room
Dr A. Jamie Saris
Title: On Varieties of Marginality: Hate, Class and Others in Modern Ireland "
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22nd October, 5.00pm in John Hume Boardroom
Professor Kathy Schultz
University of Colorado, Boulder
Title: Narratives of Dignity: An Inquity into what sustains Teachers in their Profession"
Drawing on narratives collected from more than 100 individuals and groups of veteran teachers in the US, in this talk I examine where teachers have found dignity in their work. These stories of small moments and larger structures provide a guide for re-imagining teaching as a more humanizing profession.
Professor Kathy Schultz is a professor and dean emerita of the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her scholarly work has focused on the research, development, and dissemination of practices that support new and veteran teachers working with marginalized populations in high poverty areas. Her most recent book, Distrust and Educational Change: Overcoming Barriers to Just and Lasting Reform argues that pervasive distrust undermines the possibility for meaningful and enduring change in a range of educational contexts.
This seminar speaks to two of Education Department research themes, that of Education, culture and social justice and Professional studies
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12th November, 4.30pm in Anthropology Seminar Room
Paul McCallion
Title: "Displacement in the context of the climate crisis: An anthropological perspective on a present day quagmire"
In August 2017, due to armed attacks, massive-scale violence, and serious human rights violations, thousands of Rohingya were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The neighbouring nation of Bangladesh generously provided 5,521 acres of forest land to host 32 new refugee camps. Currently, 1 million Rohingya are displaced and sheltering in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is approximately double the size of Ireland with a population of 170+ million. According to the 2023 World Risk Report – which indicates a nation’s climate vulnerability risk, while factoring in the complex interrelationship between climate crises, marginalized groups, global societies, global displacement and national resilience – Bangladesh is ranked 9th and Ireland 119th globally in terms of the risks they face due to the climate crisis. Needless to say, providing for displacement on this scale further complicates the risk picture. Stepping away from the manner in which this complex reality is represented in the daily global media stream, I will present an anthropological perspective on leading climate action teams and climate responses across development and humanitarian settings, including five years of climate project implementation by a UN agency in the context of the Bangladesh refugee response.
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26th November, 4.30pm in Anthropology Seminar Room
Dr Tatsuma Padoan,
Sensa Lab, University College Cork
Title: "Ritual as Enunciative Praxis: Some Reflections from Katsuragi, Japan"
Abstract:
This paper intends to introduce the semiotic concept of enunciation, showing its possible intersections with Michael Silverstein’s theory of ritual. I will explore these intersections through an analysis of ritual action, in a community of ascetic practice involved in the revival of the pilgrimage to the “Sutra Mounds of the Twenty-Eight Lodges of Katsuragi” (Katsuragi no nijūhasshuku kyōzuka), a mountain area in central Japan. Following these pilgrims, we will “walk” through different forms of ritualisation, from an informal “interaction ritual” to a highly metricalized “full-tilt ritual”, passing through examples of ritual apprenticeship involving improvisation and adjustment. I will argue that enunciation may offer an accurate framework to describe the metapragmatic dynamics through which social roles are performatively redefined via verbal and nonverbal semiotic acts. Finally, by looking at the way notions of personhood, subjectivity, sacred language, and the cosmos are conceptualised by members of the ascetic group, I will show how an impersonal and diagrammatic conception of enunciation better fits the idea of ritual remaking of the world enacted by these ascetic practitioners.
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3rd December 2024, 4.30pm, Anthropology Seminar Room, upstairs in Rowan House
Dr Magdalena Craciun
University of Bucharest
"Plastic in Romania: the conceptual plasticity of a material"
Abstract:
Pointing at the diversity of plastic materials and their affordances, forms, and trajectories, various studies have denaturalised the singularity of ‘plastic’ and institute the plurality of ‘plastics’. Yet, the plurality within singularity, namely, the different understandings of ‘plastic’, has been less approached. This presentation puts forward the claim that ‘plastic’ is not one concept, either. A conceptualisation of the notion of ‘plastic’ as a ‘regime of value’ premises this claim. Plastics are man-made materials that, from their invention, have had to be defined so that people can make sense of them and integrate them in their lives. Via ‘regime of value’, the notion of ‘plastic’ comes to the fore not so much as a discursive rendering of what this material is, but an invitation/instruction on how to value it. New understandings of ‘plastic’ keep being formulated. Via ‘regime of value’, the accumulation of notions of ‘plastic’ becomes evident as a matter of politics. Moreover, an ethnography of plastics in Romania substantiates this claim. In this society, several understandings of ‘plastic’ co-exist. ‘Plastic’ conjures up, variously, a disposable material, a recyclable material, a modern material, and a toxic material. People employ one or another instantiation of this concept in their everyday life, depending on experiences, circumstances, and agendas. The same person draws on one or another understanding in different moments and contexts. The concept gets pulled into the dynamics of social interaction and stance-taking, generating alliances and conflicts of all sorts (generational, classed, or geopolitical, including within the same person).
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10th December 2024, 4.30pm, Anthropology Seminar Room, upstairs in Rowan House
Dr Ian McGonigle, Department of Anthropology, Maynooth University
Title: "Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank"
Abstract:
This lecture explores how indigeneity has become an identity and political resource within the context of Israeli settlements in the contested West Bank territories. It examines how Jewish settlers in the West Bank have mobilized the concept of indigeneity and fashioned themselves as natives to assert divine rights to the land, despite Palestinian claims of indigeneity as a colonized people. The lecture provides an overview of the ethnographies in the recently published volume “Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank” and specifically discusses the religious and ideological motivations of the West Bank’s orthodox winemakers, many of whom see their vocation as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecies and the realization of the era of ge’ula, or redemption. The lecture problematizes simplistic conceptualizations of indigeneity as historical marginality and contributes to broader discourses in settler-colonial studies and anthropology on indigeneity and sovereignty in contested territories.