Valerio Simoni
Valerio is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology (ANSO) and the Global Migration Centre (GMC) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He is the Principal Investigator for the project "Returning to a Better Place: The (Re)assessment of the 'Good Life' in Times of Crisis" (BETLIV), funded by the European Research Council Starting Grants Programme.
Valerio graduated in Social Anthropology at the University of Neuchâtel (2004) and holds a PhD from Leeds Metropolitan University (2009). He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (Postdoc FCT, Portugal 2010-2014), and a Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute (Ambizione SNSF, 2014-2017). His investigations, grounded in ethnographic research in Cuba and Spain, have focused on the economic, social and cultural flows generated by international tourism and migration, with theoretical interests spanning three main areas of concern: the economy and its margins, the transformations of intimacy, and the politics of mobility. Valerio has published extensively in peer-reviewed books and journals and his first monograph came out with Berghahn Books in 2016. Teaching in Portugal and Switzerland, he has delivered classes and supervised students notably in the areas of tourism and travel, gender, sexuality and morality, and the politics of culture, identity and heritage. Since 2014, he has been a co-convenor of the Anthropology and Mobility Network (ANTHROMOB) of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA).
Valerio's new project, 'Returning to a Better Place: The (Re)assessment of the "Good Life" in Times of Crisis' (ERC STG – 759649 – BETLIV), focuses on how ideals of the 'good life' are articulated, (re)assessed, and related to specific places and contexts as a result of experiences of crisis and migration. A multi-sited endeavour, with three interrelated subprojects carried out in Spain (PhD Candidate), Ecuador (Postdoctoral Researcher), and Cuba (Principal Investigator), the research explores the imaginaries and experience of return of Ecuadorian and Cuban men and women disappointed with their migration to Spain. The project contributes to three main scholarly areas of enquiry: 1) the study of morality, ethics and what counts as 'good life', 2) the study of the field of economic practice, its definition, value regimes, and 'crises', and 3) the study of migratory aspirations, projects, and trajectories.
Valerio graduated in Social Anthropology at the University of Neuchâtel (2004) and holds a PhD from Leeds Metropolitan University (2009). He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (Postdoc FCT, Portugal 2010-2014), and a Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute (Ambizione SNSF, 2014-2017). His investigations, grounded in ethnographic research in Cuba and Spain, have focused on the economic, social and cultural flows generated by international tourism and migration, with theoretical interests spanning three main areas of concern: the economy and its margins, the transformations of intimacy, and the politics of mobility. Valerio has published extensively in peer-reviewed books and journals and his first monograph came out with Berghahn Books in 2016. Teaching in Portugal and Switzerland, he has delivered classes and supervised students notably in the areas of tourism and travel, gender, sexuality and morality, and the politics of culture, identity and heritage. Since 2014, he has been a co-convenor of the Anthropology and Mobility Network (ANTHROMOB) of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA).
Valerio's new project, 'Returning to a Better Place: The (Re)assessment of the "Good Life" in Times of Crisis' (ERC STG – 759649 – BETLIV), focuses on how ideals of the 'good life' are articulated, (re)assessed, and related to specific places and contexts as a result of experiences of crisis and migration. A multi-sited endeavour, with three interrelated subprojects carried out in Spain (PhD Candidate), Ecuador (Postdoctoral Researcher), and Cuba (Principal Investigator), the research explores the imaginaries and experience of return of Ecuadorian and Cuban men and women disappointed with their migration to Spain. The project contributes to three main scholarly areas of enquiry: 1) the study of morality, ethics and what counts as 'good life', 2) the study of the field of economic practice, its definition, value regimes, and 'crises', and 3) the study of migratory aspirations, projects, and trajectories.
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Papers by Valerio Simoni
Tourism exerts a powerful global influence on how alterity and difference are framed and understood in the contemporary world and contributes to the valorization and dissemination of particular views of culture, identity, and heritage. Tourism is increasingly intertwined with processes of heritage-making, whose study helps advance anthropological reflections on cultural property, material culture, and the memorialization of the past. A key source of livelihood for a growing number of people worldwide, tourism is also becoming more and more associated with development projects in which applied anthropologists are also enrolled as experts and consultants. The study of the tourism-development nexus continues to be a key area of theoretical innovation and has helped advance anthropological debates on North–South relations, dominant responses to poverty and inequality, and their entanglements with neoliberal forms of governance.
Given its diffuse and distributed character, tourism and touristification have been approached as forms of ordering that affect and restructure an ever-growing range of entities, and whose effects are increasingly difficult to tease out from concomitant societal processes. The ubiquitous implementations of tourism policies and projects, the influx of tourists, and the debates, reactions, and resistances these generate underscore, however, the importance of uncovering the ways tourism and its effects are being concretely identified, invoked, acted upon, and confronted by its various protagonists. Research on tourism has the potential to contribute to disciplinary debates on many key areas and notions of concern for anthropology. Culture, ethnicity, identity, alterity, heritage, mobility, labor, commerce, hospitality, intimacy, development, and the environment are among the notions and domains increasingly affected and transformed by tourism. The study of tourism helps understand how such transformations occur, uncovering their features and orientations, while also shedding light on the societal struggles that are at stake in them. The analysis of past and current research shows the scope of the theoretical and methodological debates and of the realms of intervention to which anthropological scholarship on tourism can contribute.
Putting Belonging(s) and Identification(s) to the Test : Migrants on Return Visits to Cuba
This article looks at return visits of Cuban migrants to Cuba, and the tensions that these experiences generate in terms of identification and sense of belonging. The analysis is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Spain and Cuba. By focusing on disjunctures between the aspirations and positionings of returnees, and the way in which they are perceived and treated by their fellow nationals in Cuba, I show how identifications and belongings are played out, negotiated, and reframed in these return visits. The experience and assessment of relations with family, friends, and the country more generally leads migrants to rethink the parameters of their “being Cuban” and their place in Cuba. The analysis of such “tests” of returning sheds light on the important work of renegotiation of ideals and moralities that takes place, leading notably to the rearticulation and reworking of notions of "Cubanness", family, intimacy and economic practice.
Tourism exerts a powerful global influence on how alterity and difference are framed and understood in the contemporary world and contributes to the valorization and dissemination of particular views of culture, identity, and heritage. Tourism is increasingly intertwined with processes of heritage-making, whose study helps advance anthropological reflections on cultural property, material culture, and the memorialization of the past. A key source of livelihood for a growing number of people worldwide, tourism is also becoming more and more associated with development projects in which applied anthropologists are also enrolled as experts and consultants. The study of the tourism-development nexus continues to be a key area of theoretical innovation and has helped advance anthropological debates on North–South relations, dominant responses to poverty and inequality, and their entanglements with neoliberal forms of governance.
Given its diffuse and distributed character, tourism and touristification have been approached as forms of ordering that affect and restructure an ever-growing range of entities, and whose effects are increasingly difficult to tease out from concomitant societal processes. The ubiquitous implementations of tourism policies and projects, the influx of tourists, and the debates, reactions, and resistances these generate underscore, however, the importance of uncovering the ways tourism and its effects are being concretely identified, invoked, acted upon, and confronted by its various protagonists. Research on tourism has the potential to contribute to disciplinary debates on many key areas and notions of concern for anthropology. Culture, ethnicity, identity, alterity, heritage, mobility, labor, commerce, hospitality, intimacy, development, and the environment are among the notions and domains increasingly affected and transformed by tourism. The study of tourism helps understand how such transformations occur, uncovering their features and orientations, while also shedding light on the societal struggles that are at stake in them. The analysis of past and current research shows the scope of the theoretical and methodological debates and of the realms of intervention to which anthropological scholarship on tourism can contribute.
Putting Belonging(s) and Identification(s) to the Test : Migrants on Return Visits to Cuba
This article looks at return visits of Cuban migrants to Cuba, and the tensions that these experiences generate in terms of identification and sense of belonging. The analysis is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Spain and Cuba. By focusing on disjunctures between the aspirations and positionings of returnees, and the way in which they are perceived and treated by their fellow nationals in Cuba, I show how identifications and belongings are played out, negotiated, and reframed in these return visits. The experience and assessment of relations with family, friends, and the country more generally leads migrants to rethink the parameters of their “being Cuban” and their place in Cuba. The analysis of such “tests” of returning sheds light on the important work of renegotiation of ideals and moralities that takes place, leading notably to the rearticulation and reworking of notions of "Cubanness", family, intimacy and economic practice.
d’étude en sciences sociales durant la dernière décennie au
point de déclencher un «tournant affectif» (Clough et al. 2007).
L’enjeu de ce numéro est d’explorer l’intérêt de développer
cette thématique en anthropologie et le potentiel des ethnographies
de l’affect ou, plus précisément comme nous le suggérons,
des affects. Nous allons dans un premier temps situer
l’émergence d’un intérêt en sciences sociales pour le thème de
l’affect, puis, dans un deuxième temps nous esquisserons les
critiques anthropologiques à l’encontre du courant affectif.
Celles-ci concernent principalement la définition de l’affect en
opposition au langage et à la subjectivité humaine. Sa présentation
en tant que catégorie unitaire et abstraite qui minimise
toute contextualisation historique et socioculturelle est aussi
visée car elle ne permet pas une prise en compte de conceptualisations
emic. Ainsi, les contributions à ce volume proposent
des études situées qui intègrent corps et langage, matérialité
et subjectivité, et qui visent à respecter les données ethnographiques
avant toute adhésion théorique. Dans un troisième
temps, nous aborderons le thème du néolibéralisme. En effet,
ce thème est au coeur des travaux associés au courant affectif
car il inspire des lectures contradictoires des affects: ceux-ci
sont perçus soit comme une puissance qui est captée mais garde
le potentiel d’échapper à toute emprise, soit comme une force
d’attachement qui peut renforcer des structures socio-politiques.
En partant d’ethnographies détaillées, les contributions
de ce numéro spécial s’intéressent aux imbrications multiples
entre expériences affectives et réalités néolibérales dans des
contextes bien définis. Elles explorent donc des manifestations
diverses de capture, de résistance et d’attachement.