- Anthropology, Anthropology of Indonesia, Migration, Work and Labour, Sociology of Children and Childhood, Anthropology of Children and Childhood, and 20 moreCritical Prison Studies, Sociology of prison life, Post-War Reconstruction, Youth Studies, Kinship (Anthropology), Kinship and Relatedness (Anthropology), Marriage and Family, Matrifocal Societies, Società Matrifocali, Peace and Conflict Studies, Indonesia, Anthropology of the Malays, The Malaays, Acehnese history, Acehnese Studies, Banda Aceh, Low Cost Housing, Hinduism, Neo-Hinduism, Anthropology of Religion, and Loic Wacquantedit
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Research Interests: Southeast Asia and Bond
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Becoming operators in factories as young women has brought about an unprecedented change for Tamil women living in Penang (Malaysia). Devigai and Jayesh, today in their forties, have been unskilled workers since their teens. Their life... more
Becoming operators in factories as young women has brought about an unprecedented change for Tamil women living in Penang (Malaysia). Devigai and Jayesh, today in their forties, have been unskilled workers since their teens. Their life embodies the tension that Tamil women feel today between their perception of their job as a basic individual resource and a whole set of life practices embedded in ethnic belonging, especially in the sphere of marriage strategies. The dichotomy these women experience between their life at work and their life in their “ethnic community” brings about confusion at a personal level in terms of self-perception. The difficulty these women have in perceiving themselves as workers is the consequence of Malaysian developmentalist politics, as well as one of the basic conditions for the country’s fast industrial development.
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Typically, scholars approach migrants' religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, something that connects migrants to their communities of origin. This ethnographic anthology challenges that position by reframing the religious... more
Typically, scholars approach migrants' religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, something that connects migrants to their communities of origin. This ethnographic anthology challenges that position by reframing the religious experiences of migrants as a transformative force capable of refashioning narratives of displacement into journeys of spiritual awakening and missionary calling. These essays explore migrants' motivations in support of an argument that to travel inspires a search for new meaning in religion.
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Alcano, MC; Bellagamba, A; Ciavolella, R; Fava, F; Ford, M; Lyons, L; Rimoldi, L; Vignato, S; Viti, F
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Quando, a un anno dalla scomparsa di Ugo Fabietti, abbiamo cominciato a lavorare a un numero della rivista Antropologia a lui dedicato, ci siamo chiesti come essergli fedeli e come trasmettere attraverso queste pagine le sue qualita... more
Quando, a un anno dalla scomparsa di Ugo Fabietti, abbiamo cominciato a lavorare a un numero della rivista Antropologia a lui dedicato, ci siamo chiesti come essergli fedeli e come trasmettere attraverso queste pagine le sue qualita intellettuali e affettive di collega, amico e maestro, mantenendo integri la vitalita e il potenziale euristico della sua eredita intellettuale. La rivista e stata fondata da Ugo Fabietti nel 2001 come “progetto culturale (…) per riflettere in maniera pertinente, approfondita e circonstanziata sulle forme culturali della contemporaneita”. Ugo Fabietti l’ha diretta e trasformata, nel 2014, da collana di saggi tematici sull’antropologia della contemporaneita in pubblicazione a consultazione gratuita online con un sistema di revisione in doppio cieco. Negli anni Ugo Fabietti ha formato e si e formato con molte delle persone che vi hanno lavorato e vi lavorano, ha trovato i mezzi per fabbricarla e si e speso perche continuasse a vivere dentro alle continue t...
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This article describes a vision of time (the past and the future) in post-industrial dynamics that the author and her co-researchers could gain through shooting a film in the region of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, a once fruitful site of extraction... more
This article describes a vision of time (the past and the future) in post-industrial dynamics that the author and her co-researchers could gain through shooting a film in the region of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, a once fruitful site of extraction of natural gas subsequently planned to become a Special Economic Zone. It engages with the notion of “worlding” processes and pinpoints, in the ethnographic case of Aceh, the difficulty to access them through discourse because specific strategies of silencing and erasure are enforced throughout an emotional landscape. It is argued that it was the use of film-making as a relational tool aiming to create images that enabled the researchers to see through time and beyond regimes of invisibility. This is how they met ghosts on the gas scene. The steps in the making of an ethnographic film are used as a narrative lead. A scene is set up where the extractive economy of gas is linked to a global vision of development and prosperity as well as to present a...
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This chapter looks into the imposed order and conflicting superdiversity of mixed religion environments in Medan. It focuses on the historical change of practiced religious tolerance in line with the Tamil Hindu ritual carried in Medan. A... more
This chapter looks into the imposed order and conflicting superdiversity of mixed religion environments in Medan. It focuses on the historical change of practiced religious tolerance in line with the Tamil Hindu ritual carried in Medan. A specific analysis of moral values is needed to examine an enacted pluralism in a neighborhood. Hinduism was made to fit into the national framework through debates and specific policies rooted in Bali. Moreover, Reformasi and the ensuing lightning-fast liberalization and globalization of Indonesian multireligious environments have established and specified divinity and its consequent morality in respective religions. The chapter notes monistic values are hierarchically superior to pluralistic values.
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, University of Milano Bicocca " We see the worlding city as a milieu of intervention, a source of ambitious visions, and of speculative experiments that have different possibilities of success and failure […] Such experiments... more
, University of Milano Bicocca " We see the worlding city as a milieu of intervention, a source of ambitious visions, and of speculative experiments that have different possibilities of success and failure […] Such experiments cannot be conceptually reduced to instantiations of universal logics of capitalism or post-colonialism. They must be understood as worlding practices, those that pursue world recognition in the midst of inter-city rivalry and globalized contingency. " (Roy, A., Ong, A., 2011: xv)
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A long civil conflict and the 2004 tsunami left 80,000 children in Aceh without at least one of their parents. Orphanhood is a category both of childhood and suffering, which needs to be examined more closely. In this article, I tackle... more
A long civil conflict and the 2004 tsunami left 80,000 children in Aceh without at least one of their parents. Orphanhood is a category both of childhood and suffering, which needs to be examined more closely. In this article, I tackle two issues: what constructs an orphan in the Acehnese post-catastrophe society and what institutionalised “orphans” actively do within and beyond their definition as such. More specifically, I consider some institutions called panti asuhan, “home for the care of the needy”, as well as dayah or pesantren, Islamic residential schools that host orphaned and poor children. I first describe what the idea of “orphanhood” conveys for the Acehnese I encountered and then turn to the dialogue between families and institutions using some specific cases. This will relate to practices and ideas of marriage and parenthood in a prevailingly matrilocal society, where single women (janda) are not an exception. The way children experience and shape the construction of ...
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Introduction to the volume. In the decades leading up to 2012, South East Asia has not only experienced civil wars, but has also seen a number of major ‘natural’ disasters (typhoons, earth- quakes, floods and tsunamis). ‘Life after... more
Introduction to the volume. In the decades leading up to 2012, South East Asia has not only experienced civil wars, but has also seen a number of major ‘natural’ disasters (typhoons, earth- quakes, floods and tsunamis). ‘Life after Collective Death in South East Asia’ is a two-part collection of papers – each part comprising a special issue of South East Asia Research (the second will appear in June 2013) – which examines the after- math of the immense collective deaths caused by such events from a mid-term perspective.1 We look into how South East Asian societies adapt in the aftermath of environmental, social and human destruction; and we examine the processes these societies go through in order to make sense of the disasters they have faced and to cope with the destruction they have endured. On a personal level, this is both painful and exciting work. While engaging with mental and physical suffer- ing, the researchers whose work is showcased in this volume have also encountered peoples and groups with the capacity to overcome such suffering. Hence we focus as much on this vitality as we do on death.2
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... Ringrazio Lidia Calderoli, Adriana Soldati, Mauro Massaro e Chiara Letizia per le riletture di questo articolo alle quali si sono generosamente prestati. ... da Valentine daniel (1984) che vi ha partecipato negli anni settanta del... more
... Ringrazio Lidia Calderoli, Adriana Soldati, Mauro Massaro e Chiara Letizia per le riletture di questo articolo alle quali si sono generosamente prestati. ... da Valentine daniel (1984) che vi ha partecipato negli anni settanta del secolo scorso e quindi da Filippo Osella, alla fine degli ...
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Since the peace agreement has put an end to the 30-year-long civil conflict in the province of Aceh in Indonesia, poverty, parental loss, lack of opportunities and an old tradition have caused a growing number of Acehnese girls and boys... more
Since the peace agreement has put an end to the 30-year-long civil conflict in the province of Aceh in Indonesia, poverty, parental loss, lack of opportunities and an old tradition have caused a growing number of Acehnese girls and boys to spend between three and ten years in residential Koranic schools [dayah or pesantren]. There, they process their experience of the conflict, be it direct or indirect. In this article, thanks to ethnographical data, the author explores this labour of transformation. An idea of resilience which is culturally based in local societies is analysed. Key issues are the difference between personal and social resilience, plus the transformations that a resilient process enhances in the very culture from which it stems. The dayah have proved very effective structures in facing the needs of the poorest Acehnese children. Nevertheless, the author argues, they tend to shape the children according to a general model that can create exclusion and crystallize pre-existing psychic suffering. This paper indicates that different visions of trauma and memory characterize different parts of the same society, and that selecting one or another is a political choice that is embedded in international policies.
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Malay and Acehnese single women live their lives within an Islamic religious and political frame in different ways. Aceh and Malay societies share a similar tradition. Cognatic kinship and a varying focus on matrilocality and matriliny... more
Malay and Acehnese single women live their lives within an Islamic religious and political frame in different ways. Aceh and Malay societies share a similar tradition. Cognatic kinship and a varying focus on matrilocality and matriliny concern them both, as well as an old Islamic tradition. As other researchers have shown, for both the Malays and the Acehnese, ‘sexual desire’
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Abstracts The images we have of drugs, especially the latest generation of synthetic drugs, are often associated with urbanity, luxury and entertainment venues, as well as the squandered areas of large cities or border cities. However, it... more
Abstracts The images we have of drugs, especially the latest generation of synthetic drugs, are often associated with urbanity, luxury and entertainment venues, as well as the squandered areas of large cities or border cities. However, it is known that the use of psychotropic drugs in rural and agricultural areas is equally significant.
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In this paper, the practice of a particular kind of systemic psychotherapy called Family Constellation Therapy (FCT) is taken as an anthropological fieldwork. FCT draws its inspiration both from ethnographic experience and from the... more
In this paper, the practice of a particular kind of systemic psychotherapy called Family Constellation Therapy (FCT) is taken as an anthropological fieldwork. FCT draws its inspiration both from ethnographic experience and from the Christian Catholic religion. It relies on the idea of a ��natural�� or ��true�� family and it is practiced by psychologists as well as by �alternative� therapists. Its main feature is that it works through ritual and through what, in anthropology, would be called possession by a spirit, most likely an ancestor. Ethnography collected in Italy, Spain and India will show that FCT deals with a specific idea of ancestrality seen as both �natural� and �good�, and thus defines the individual-cum-ancestors� primacy over any wider social structure. Sociality, citizenship and state are mainly constructed as dangerous though historically unavoidable disturbances to nature and, ultimately, to health and morality. Conversely, it will be argued that precisely because i...
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Dans cet article, j'analyse l'evolution d'un rituel de la diaspora tamoule dans deux pays d'Asie du Sud-est (Indonesie et Malaisie). Les transformations de ce rite depuis les premiers temps de la migration jusqu'a nos... more
Dans cet article, j'analyse l'evolution d'un rituel de la diaspora tamoule dans deux pays d'Asie du Sud-est (Indonesie et Malaisie). Les transformations de ce rite depuis les premiers temps de la migration jusqu'a nos jours, differentes dans les deux pays, montrent la construction d'une specificite symbolique et rituelle des Tamouls des deux rivages du detroit de Malaka. Grâce a l'etude du sakti karakam, je m'attache a montrer que si apres l'avenement de l'Ordre Nouveau (1967), les Tamouls d'Indonesie tendaient a disparaitre en tant que groupe dans un Etat niant avec force l'origine ethnique de ses habitants, et a soumettre leurs pratiques religieuses aux exigences du regime, maintenant, apres la chute de Soeharto, ils s'adonnent plutot a une revendication de leur «ethnie». La pratique religieuse est l'un des, voire le vehicule fondamental de cette revendication. Du cote malais, je tente de montrer que les Tamouls malaisiens, s...
This article analyses the practical and theoretical process of structuring research fieldwork in a prison, and the specific research topics that it has led to shape. In 2011, my former research-assistant in Aceh, Indonesia, was sentenced... more
This article analyses the practical and theoretical process of structuring research fieldwork in a prison, and the specific research topics that it has led to shape. In 2011, my former research-assistant in Aceh, Indonesia, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for drug dealing. I subsequently carried out ethnography in the prison where she was detained, in the area of North Sumatra. My main argument concerns the relationship between a prisoner and the State as it is constructed before, during and after prison, and the subjective feelings and prison narratives which such relationship originates. I shall question how the researcher can make sense of prison through the prisoners’ own efforts to that end. I shall analyse the hypertrophic role that the ethnographic vis-a-vis encounter plays when the research develops in a restricted place and consider the “prison mind” as the totalisation of thoughts typical of incarceration. I shall conclude on the possibility of self-rescue that narr...
Introduction to Antropologia's Special Focus on "Independent Children", Volume 4 (2) (Guest Editors: Giuseppe Bolotta, Silvia Vignato). All the articles in this Special Focus are accessible online:... more
Introduction to Antropologia's Special Focus on "Independent Children", Volume 4 (2) (Guest Editors: Giuseppe Bolotta, Silvia Vignato).
All the articles in this Special Focus are accessible online: http://www.ledijournals.com/ojs/index.php/antropologia/issue/view/91/showToc
All the articles in this Special Focus are accessible online: http://www.ledijournals.com/ojs/index.php/antropologia/issue/view/91/showToc