Communitas

Migration has brought substantial and rapid demographic change to Aotearoa New Zealand.  The most recent national census (2013) reveals 25.2% of NZ’s population, and 39.1% of residents of Auckland, NZ’s largest city, was born overseas.  For new migrant communities and more established local populations alike this changed landscape is experienced as a liminal space of discomfort, uncertainty and fear of loss, but also potential for transformation.
The narrative of Cornelius and Peter in Acts 10-11 illustrates the role of liminality and communitas in the transformation of the church that was necessary for it to participate in God’s mission as it crossed new boundaries.  What are the possibilities of transformation for New Zealand’s churches if we were to accept invitations from the new margins of immigration to enter liminal space and embrace the potential for change in communitas with those who are already there?

OldTown to największy w Polsce konwent fanów fantastyki postapokaliptycznej, w ramach którego odbywa się kilkudniowy larp. Rozgrywa się on na terenie opuszczonego lotniska w Stargardzie Szczecińskim. Jest to przestrzeń odizolowana od zabudowań miasta, gdzie infrastruktura wojskowa (m. in. pasy startowe, podziemne schrony, bunkry i zniszczone hangary) jest adaptowana na potrzeby gry.
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OldTown is the largest convention of post-apocalyptic fantasy fans in Poland, as part of which larp takes place over several days. It takes place in an abandoned airport in Stargard Szczeciński. It is a space isolated from the city buildings, where the military infrastructure (e.g. runways, underground shelters, bunkers and destroyed hangars) is adapted to the needs of the game.

Three days lasting nuptial rites as examples of rites of passage take on a new significance with the contributions of professional musicians in Bergama’s surrounding country-side like elsewhere in Turkey. These musicians living in Bergama are often ‘Roma’. Leading the profession of musicianship up until today, these local musicians provide basically two different kinds of musical service: to encode certain stages with certain tunes over the course of the ritual and to guide the transition. As a female-centered activity, the core of the marriage ritual is a process of liminality in which the bride enters a new phase in her life by the help of the other women around (aunts, musicians, etc.). Unlike the relationship between the male musicians and the groom, female Rom musicians locally named ‘dümbekçiler’ stand by the bride in almost all stages of this transition and guide her to cross the inner tresholds of the ritual properly. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the ‘liminal’ roles of the male and female Rom musicians in their company consequently to the bride, the groom and all the other members of communitas during the ritual process.
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Geçiş ritüellerinin (rites of passage) üç güne yayılan bir örneği olan evlilik ritüelleri, bugün Türkiye’nin pek çok yerinde olduğu gibi Bergama kırsalında da profesyonel müzisyenlerin katkılarıyla anlam kazanır. Bergama özelinde bu müzisyenler, büyük çoğunlukla bölgede yaşayan ‘Roman’lardır. Müzisyenlik mesleğini geçmişten günümüze profesyonel olarak sürdüren bu yerel müzisyenler, ritüel kapsamında temelde iki farklı müzik hizmeti sunarlar: Ritüel akışı boyunca belirli aşamaları belirli havalarla kodlamak ve geçişe rehberlik etmek. Kadın merkezli bir etkinlik olan evlilik ritüeli özünde gelinin; çevresindeki diğer kadınların (yengeler, müzisyenler vb.) yardımıyla yaşamının yeni bir evresine adım atmaya hazırlandığı bir eşiksellik (liminality) sürecidir. Yörede ‘dümbekçiler’ olarak adlandırılan Roman kadın müzisyenler bu süreçte, erkek müzisyenlerin damatla kurduğu ilişkiden farklı olarak hemen her aşamada gelinin yanında bulunarak ritüel içi eşikleri uygun bir biçimde geçmede ona rehberlik de ederler. Bu makale erkek ve kadın Roman müzisyenlerin ritüel süreci boyunca, başta gelin olmak üzere damada ve diğer tüm komünitas üyelerine eşlik ederken sergiledikleri ‘liminal’ rollerin anlaşılmasına katkı sunmayı amaçlar.

A 17 años de que el gobierno mexicano suscribiera los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio, las poblaciones indígenas siguen presentando la mayor Razón de Mortalidad Materna del país.
Desde nuestra perspectiva, se propone que la razón de Estado, expresada en una forma de gobernar racista, define las vidas que merecen ser vividas y que los servicios de salud son dispositivos biopolíticos que sirven al Estado para reproducirse y configurar dinámicas de exclusión-extinción de los pueblos indígenas. En este proceso, las políticas y el sistema de salud van conformando un conjunto de mecanismos dirigidos al cuerpo individual y a la población, que naturaliza prácticas como la violencia de género, la discriminación, la violencia obstétrica y que, a nivel individual y colectivo, violenta el derecho a la protección a la salud y el derecho a la vida de las mujeres indígenas. Las políticas encargadas de proteger la vida amenazan
con volverse acción de muerte, al entrelazar exclusiones de género, etnia y clase, provocando que a las mujeres indígenas se les deje morir durante el embarazo, parto y puerperio, impactando también sobre las parteras indígenas a quienes a través del dispositivo de control de la ciencia hegemónica se les descalifica y relega de la tarea de cuidado a la parturienta y al recién nacido que habían desarrollado históricamente.


17 years after since the Mexican government subscribed the millennium objectives of development, the indigenous populations keep showing the
biggest maternal mortality reason of the country. Since our perspective, it is proposed that the state reason, expressed in a racist way of command, this defines those lives that deserve be lived and that the health services are biopolitical devices that serves to the state to reproduce and configure exclusion-extinction dynamics for the indigenous people. In this process, the politics and the health system goes defining a set of mechanisms targeted to the individual body and the population as well, that neutralizes practices such as gender violence, discrimination, obstetric violence and that, at an individual and collective level violents the right to health protection and to the right to live of the indigenous women. The politics in charge of protecting life are threatening with becoming into an act of death, in front of the entanglement of gender, ethnics and social class, causing that to the indigenous women letting them die during the pregnancy, birth labor and puerperium, making an impact on indigenous midwifes to whom through the control device of hegemonic science disqualifies and relegates the task of caring parturient women and new born that have developed historically.

Ya desde el mismo polifacético título, que
alude a una obligación y a una deuda, con la novela Impuesto
a la carne (2010), Diamela Eltit indaga la historia
chilena (y latinoamericana) a través de la figuración
de un poderoso hospital que ‘contiene’ una serie de
cuadros históricos.El presente trabajo se propone los
siguientes objetivos: 1) analizar la pareja protagónica y
su función meta-testimonial; 2) indagar la peculiar relación
de las dos mujeres con el espacio que las alberga;
3) examinar las peculiares formas de resistencia de las
dos mujeres y su anhelo de evasión. Gracias a la expropiación
y donación -concepto de munus-, a la pérdida y
ruptura del sujeto, la madre-hija consigue ‘liberarse’ del
espacio hospitalario. En las páginas de la novela las protagonistas
se exponen al otro, acto que disuelve y difumina
toda pretensión de identidad, abriendo los cuerpos
(políticos) a las heridas de la alteridad.

"La decostruzione nietzscheana dei concetti di individuo e comunità, la diagnosi biopolitica della comunità moderna e il tentativo di pensare una nuova possibile comunità, legata all'Evento dell'Übermensch.

The Nietzschean deconstruction of the concepts of individual and community, the biopolitical diagnosis of modern community and the attempt to think a new possible community linked to the Event of the Übermensch.

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas 1928).

This thesis takes up the case of the “Visoko Complex”, simultaneously a physical complex of purportedly archaeological sites, a social complex of various factions, and according to some a psychological complex as well. Close to a decade ago in the town of Visoko in Bosnia, a man declared that what were thought to be hills were in fact buried pyramids. This event prompted a diverse national and international reaction, still in process to this day. I examine the phenomenon in context, and consider in turn the critique from the scientific establishment, the pyramid proponents themselves, and their foreign and local supporters. An argument is made against the mainstream critique, with an alternative approach centred on Victor Turner’s communitas concept (1969) offered in its place.

What is the relationship between Mizrahi feminism and Israeli ultranationalism? What is the relevance of gender justice activism to the 2014 Gaza War and Israel’s foreign policy?

Wrapped in the Flag of Israel Second Edition examines neoliberal bureaucracy in the Global South using feminist critical race theories. It interrogates the relationship between the State of Israel and its Mizrahi single mothers who are at the forefront of Mizrahi feminism. It also presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology that preempts the agency of disenfranchised Mizrahim who are Israel’s demographic majority. Mizrahi protests fall flat when the Israel-Palestine conflict dominates the headlines. While most studies of neoliberal bureaucracy employ a Foucauldian or Marxian lens, this book illustrates how Israeli bureaucracy draws on a theological essence that fuses religion, gender, and race into the foundations of citizenship. It sets out to understand why Mizrahi mothers remain loyal to a state that injures them though its bureaucratic system.

The extensive Afterword to the Second Edition connects intra-Jewish racial and gendered dynamics to the 2014 Gaza War. It tracks sequences that began with social protest and ended with elections that bolstered Israel’s political right. In between came bloodletting between the IDF, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel’s neighboring Arab states. The 2014 Gaza War was a watershed, but not only in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Under the smokescreen of war, Israel accelerated neoliberal economic reform. The first victims of this restructuring were Mizrahi single mothers. Palestinians, however, would pay the highest price for Israel’s Mizrahi-Ashkenazi rift.

This thesis explores how a collective of Free Jazz artists and the organization they are closely associated with - Arts For Art - take the values they find in the genre of Free Jazz and its main principle, improvisation, as the inspirational basis for ways of organizing themselves and as a means to create a better world. I discuss their use of Free Jazz to challenge larger global narratives such as racism, diversity, inclusion/exclusion, sexism and the marginalization of Free Jazz from the dominating canon of the jazz tradition.
I argue that AFAs way of organizing their community can be regarded as prefigurative politics. As musicians improvise together, they can share a sense of connectedness, potentially creating the perfect conditions for a supportive environment in which individuality and differences are encouraged and understood as productive elements of a creative common reality. I discuss how improvisation can be imagined as a space where equality, at least momentarily, can be realized, as it has the power to create a multitude which promotes social cooperation. Moreover, I argue that improvisation, not only in music, but in life, is necessary for coping with the indeterminacy of change. It is not easy to improvise one's way within an established system of control, however, which demands a specific performance of its subjects - musically and economically; AFA still operates within the current monetary system and works within a limited budget. Thus, I conclude that Free Jazz alone cannot solve issues, such as lack of money, discrimination or racism, but does present a creative answer to them. My analysis leads me to suggest implementing improvisation in democratic teaching, as a tool to transmit the idea of the multitude, an empowering concept for building societies founded on the principle of equality.

Éste artículo tiene como objeto hacer una re-exposición de la teoría política de Baruch Espinosa (1632-1677) a la luz de su ontología –entendida ésta como una ontología materialista. Por lo tanto, se hará una interpretación materialista de la teoría política éste filósofo, desde un acercamiento al «Materialismo Filosófico» de Gustavo Bueno –específicamente, desde su filosofía política, como «materialismo político». Para esto, exploraremos brevemente ciertas ideas de su Tratado Político –teniendo en cuenta, desde luego, la Ética y el Tratado Teológico-Político. Lidiaremos con ideas como «derecho natural», «Estado» o «Libertad», u otras ideas que irán saliendo a través de estas y que junto a la construcción de unas, dialécticamente criticará y destruirá otras –como «Pueblo», «Voluntad», «monarquía absoluta» etc.

(The Political Ontology of Espinosa)
The aim of this article is the reexposition of Baruch Espinosa's (1632-1677) political theory, in the light of his ontology –understood as a materialist ontology. Therefore, we will make a materialist interpretation of the political theory of this philosopher, from an approach to Gustavo Bueno's «Philosophical Materialism» –specifically, from his political philosophy, as a «political materialism». For that goal, we will briefly explore certain ideas from his Political Treatise –of course, with the help of other works, like the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Ethics. We will deal with ideas like «natural law», «State», «Freedom», and other ideas that may arise from those and in which construction, they dialectically criticize and destroy others –v.g., «People», «Will», «absolute monarchy» and so on.

In " Technoetic Pathways towards the Spiritual in Art: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Connectedness, Coherence and Consciousness, " Roy Ascott sets in motion a twenty-first century momentum for art that fuses in a syncretic manner spiritual and shamanic traditions with advanced science and technology. He emphasizes the shamanic sensibility of double consciousness, which seems to parallel interactions with cybernetic and telematic systems and immersive, virtual and augmented realities. This mode of archaic consciousness that involves phenomena such as doubles and apparitions is presented in this article as pivotal for the comprehension of processes of creativity and emergent novelty, and as a major principle and reoccurring theme in the aesthetics of Networked Rites, Noetic Fields-Weaving, Learning Fields and The Transcendent Double Selfie App. These technoetic formulations are propelled by Ascott's theories as they engage with the speculative proposition of consciousness as fields and the correlation of the artist and shaman who invoke the dance of the networked mind within an all-encompassing hypercortex, weaving new realities and stirring resonance of communitas for the next nature and culture.

One thing seems certain, the technoetic principle will be at the centre of art as it develops, and consciousness in all its forms will be the field of its unfolding. —Roy Ascott, 1999

Please consult the book's 2nd edition, above

Three prints of the 1st edition were sold between April 15, 2014 - July 31, 2015. The book went out of print and its adventures in publish-land are discussed here:
https://www.academia.edu/41932472/Jadaliyya_-_New_Text_Out_Now_Author_Interview_with_Smadar_Lavie_on_Wrapped_in_the_Flag_of_Israels_Revised_Edition_with_the_New_Afterword._January_20_2020

Vinculada à linha de pesquisa de Criminologia e Controle Social do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Criminais da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, a presente dissertação investiga quais e de que modo dispositivos operaram saberes e práticas para que se alcançasse este atual estado em que a morte de uma pessoa passou a ser controlada pela técnica médica de um modo tão natural que qualquer gesto de resistência tem o potencial de ativar o sistema penal com o anúncio de um crime contra a vida. A partir da chave conceitual biopolítica, que tem permitido uma melhor compreensão das relações humanas modernas, e da deflexão dessa configuração teórica, denominada  tanatopolítica, oferece-se uma nova lente para a investigação social capaz de evidenciar um complexo dispositivo de economia da morte. A primeira metade da dissertação é dedicada à análise da construção teórica desses conceitos através dos escritos de três grandes nomes que se dedicaram ao tema: Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben e Roberto Esposito. São também analisadas as reflexões de Timothy Campbell, quem supriu uma lacuna doutrinária ao resgatar a relação da técnica com a economia da vida e da morte. Com a intenção de provar a relevância e a atualidade do problema e de  apresentar sugestões interpretativas inéditas para fenômenos violentos mal compreendidos, a primeira parte do segundo capítulo reexamina sob o viés tanatopolítico diversos fenômenos contemporâneos que reproduzem um programa discursivo e prático de extermínio do outro, sejam eles naturalizados (violência policial, política amnésica) ou escandalosos (estupro, terrorismo) à cultura vigente. A partir desse ponto, mergulha-se num breve histórico da emergência de uma medicina biopolítica, na narrativa das revoluções médicas do século XX, na abertura de um horizonte médico tanatopolítico e em três evidências da operacionalidade dessa nova economia de vida e morte: a escamoteação da morte, o direcionamento farmacêutico da vida e a interposição da medicina no processo de morte através da revolução da complexidade técnica. Ao final, a partir de notórios precedentes judiciais, relata-se como decisões e atos de médicos e pacientes desafiaram o gerenciamento técnico e burocrático da morte ao lhe subtrair vidas suspensas.

Linked to the Criminology and Social Control research line of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul’s Graduation Program in Criminal Sciences, this dissertation inquires which and how apparatus operated knowledge and practices  in order that the  current  status could be achieved, in which one’s death has been controlled by medical technique in such a natural way that any resistant gesture has the potentiality to activate the penal system by announcing a crime against life. Making use of  the  biopolitics  conceptual key, which has enabled a better understanding of modern human relations, and its deflection entitled  thanatopolitics, a new social study reading is able to evidence a complex apparatus of the death economy. The first half of this essay analyzes the theoretical  elaboration of these concepts through Michel Foucault’s, Giorgio Agamben’s and Roberto Esposito’s writings. Timothy Campbell’s  thoughts,  that have complemented a doctrinaire gap by bringing to light the relation between technique and life-and-death economy, are also examined. Intending to prove this question’s relevance and topicality, and to present unprecedented interpretative suggestions  to violent and misunderstood phenomena,  the second chapter’s first part re-examines, through thanatopolitical lens, several present-day events that reproduce a discursive and practical scheme of destruction of the  other, whether naturalized (police violence, amnesic politics) or scandalous (rape, terrorism) to modern  culture. Then, this study immerses in a brief history of the emergence of a biopolitical medicine, in the narrative of the 20th century medical revolutions, in the disclosure  of a medical thanatopolitical horizon and in three evidences of this new life-and-death economy operability: the “death against death” (Illich), the pharmaceutical guidance of life and the interposition of medicine in the process of death through the technical complexity revolution. In the end, grounded on notorious judicial cases, it is reported how doctors’ and patients’ decisions and actions defied the technical and bureaucratic management of death by rifling suspended lives.

The aim of this conference was: ..to contribute to the understanding of different forms of healing from an experiential, sensory, aesthetic perspective. The conceptual framework I am after needs to encompass both analytical and applicable knowledge and skills in clinical settings because I fieldworked as an anthropologist, a group therapist, an educator and an artisan in Dutch medical contexts. Tender skills in crafting artifacts with groups of psychiatric patients, in learning groups of students/therapists, I will argue, are indispensable too to my argument and validation of such a framework (BOAS 1955; BATESON 2000, 128-152; DISSANAYAKE 1982; VAN BEKKUM 2018).
My arguments, concepts and one of my art pieces in this paper emerged from ten years (1983-1993) of clinical fieldwork in artisinal group therapeutic contexts in clinical psychiatry (VAN BEKKUM 1994; 2018; VAN BEKKUM etal. 1996) and from 25 years (1993-2018) of educational fieldwork in group training and co-educating groups of mental health and youth care professionals in The Netherlands and less frequent in German.

Gap years are a popular rite of passage amongst school-leavers who opt to take a year out from education in order to travel around the world. Volunteer organizations became one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry, offering students the opportunity to see the world, grow up, and think about future prospects and reflect upon the question: “What do I want to do with my life?”. Therefore, gap years and voluntourism can be considered as a liminal phase in one’s life. However, the reputation of volunteer tourism (often coined: voluntourism) is under pressure as students start to turn their backs on these gap year experiences for various reasons: because they doubt the value of their help to local communities, to earn money to pay increasing university fees, etc.

This poses a question whether ‘gappers’ and ‘voluntourists’ are not becoming unwanted travelers, who consider themselves (unjustified?) cosmopolitans1? An increasing body of scholars argues that gap year volunteer tourism might well have good intentions, but does more harm than good. Eventually the question can arise whether this phenomenon is not a postmodern form of pilgrimage, mainly achieving personal aspiration levels in sacred liminoid, and whether it is not ego-centric rather than altruistic?

This paper wants to address various themes of the course ‘Anthropology and Travel’ (KU Leuven) such as rites of passage, tourism, spiritual journeys, (im)mobility, unwanted travelers, cosmopolitanism, and critique towards the convergence of gap year volunteer tourism.

My research interest follows Victor Turner, concerning processual unit and social anti-structure. To be specific, the groups with liminal feature, that sprung up and vanished in the social shifting.
When doing field work to study the Contemporary Art Circles, my primary interest is to find a "communitas" like Turner talked about. This group matches the three key cultural manifestations: liminality, outsiderhood and structural inferiority.
The first generation of contemporary Chinese artists emerged from the late 1970's, in the circumstance of centralized system loose, personality cult disintegration and mind-shaking by western culture in the post-MAO era. They were like crumbs falling apart from the collective, and adrift in purchasing of personal freedom. They formed this communitas, and tried to break traditions and boundaries by their radical creations and actions. And because of this radical, they became "the others" against the mainstream, alienated and hide from their sight.
But after that part of the story, here comes the problem, it has been more than 30 years passed by the time point I entry, several generations of artists have come out, and the way they creating changed a lot too, only the communitas remained----  neither vanish nor structuralized. It just maintains in a status of size limited, isolated and alienated, wearing its veil of mystery. According to Turner, liminal is just an unstable "between" phrase, every anti-structure will sooner or later go back to structure, or become structuralized itself. How can this one survive, and stay in liminal?
Inside this little bubble, the nature trend of structured is been resisted constantly: Authorities, including their own ones, never gain homage; sorting and classifying disgusted people so strongly; every present or potential rule would be attack, as soon as it been realized exist; high mobility and uncertainty in art institutions and projects; artist intentionally self-banished and hide from the mainstream; even the obscured, non-logical language style in their communication, etc. it seems there is a "structure fear" deep down in this circle that pushes people to fight for living in a liminal.
To describe the complexity and dynamic equilibrium state of the group, this article will introduce a culture-related metaphor ----Jianghu, on one hand to describe a sustainable anti-structure space and social ecology, on the other hand to analyses the cosmology of social structure in traditional China.

As a culture metaphor, Jianghu indicate water body ecology with the feature of high fluidity and anti-structure. It also has many usages and signifies that could provide rich resources of meaning. The metaphor of Jianghu have wide influence in Chinese culture, maybe even embedded in our cosmology, making us believe that there is another secret and distant Jianghu in our society, contains those of uncertainty, unstable and un-classified. The word was mentioned a lot by art locals when describing their community, for it vividly pictured the communitas, and for the narrative power in it also helped to fabricate the net of meaning for the locals.
The Chinese imagine Jianghu as a far-away secret zone to the mainstream , that is the structure world. The water metaphor is a contrast to the land based order of feudal china. jianghu is open, but invisible. It shares the space of our city, just concealed in another dimension. It's centerless and has an untouchable yet very strong boundary. It essentially bases on those "I-thou" relations, thus the only way to involve is to involve in a personal relation with someone already in it, or involve in a story that happens in it. However, from time to time there are some ritual occasions were held, to gather people, to confirm or strengthen the connections, and to confirm the independency and the boundary of the communitas.
The article also will explore the connection between Jianghu and the "Diversity-orderly Structure" of Chinese Native Soil Society. And outlook the further possibility of the aquatic modeling will inspire the research or liminal social groups.

This paper examines the production of hospitable experiences within consumer encounters in commercial hospitality spaces. It considers the different dimensions or forms of hospitality and distinguishes between the offer of food, drink, shelter and entertainment within commercial transactions, the offer of hospitality as a means of achieving social or political goals, and meta-hospitality: temporary states of being that are different from rational manifestations of hospitality. It is argued that meta-hospitality is tied to communitesque moments: short-lived emotional bonds that may be built or experienced through hospitality transactions. A case study is used to identify three factors that shape the development of communitesque experiences: the ecology in which it occurs, the participants’ roles and their capabilities.

While place-based pilgrimage is an embodied practice, can it be experienced in its fullness through built environments,
assemblages of souvenirs, and music? Imaging Pilgrimage explores contemporary art that is created after a pilgrimage and intended to act as a catalyst for the embodied experience of others. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another-from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The close attention to context and experience allows for popular practices like the making of third-class or "contact" relics to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the “original” in hierarchic terms.

Imaging Pilgrimage brings various fields into conversation by offering a number of lenses and theoretical approaches (materialist, kinesthetic, haptic, synesthetic) that engage objects as radical sites of encounter, activated through religious and ritual praxis, and negotiated with not just the eyes, but a multiplicity of senses.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Plates
List of Figures

Introduction: Art as Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage as Art

I. Vashon Island – Spain: A Backyard Camino
II. S. Africa – Lourdes: Souvenirs as Sites
III. England – Jerusalem: Rewilding through Pilgrimage Song and Chant
IV. Oakland – Ecuador: Haciendo marcas otra vez-Making marks, again
V. Los Altos (Labyrinth) – Beyond: "The end is where we start from"

Towards a Conclusion: "As Far as the Eye Can Travel"
Bibliography

Reflexionar acerca del pensamiento de Roberto Esposito, filósofo italiano y una de las figuras principales de la filosofía política occidental actual, en torno a las ideas de lo impolítico y la biopolítica no es una tarea sencilla, más eso no debe significar que se trate de un imposible. Perturbado por encontrar un marco conceptual que permita entender y comprender los fenómenos sociales y políticos del siglo XXI –como así también los del siglo XX, tal es el caso del nazismo y los totalitarismos comunistas-, Esposito brinda herramientas teóricas muy importantes que nos servirán para encaminarnos en la ardua tarea de explicar nuestra realidad social.

Ethnographers of Congo Basin hunter-gatherers have emphasised ritual as a levelling mechanism that strengthens community spirit and mediates power evenly between individuals and subgroups. Pursuant to recent research with a Baka community in Cameroon, now largely abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, I analyse the mutual causal interactions between ritual alterations and other markers of social change. I argue that there is a positive feedback loop between ritual change and general social transformation towards a less egalitarian mode of sociality. Increasingly pressed into convening with globalizing forces and integrating into the capitalist economy, the rhetoric of development has been adopted by the Baka. This community talk of a history of isolation, as a public road was extended to the district as late as 2007 by a mining corporation. The result of the new road and burgeoning mining activities is that the community has been exposed precipitously to new peoples, lifestyles and technologies.  Ritual has become an arena in which Baka individuals grapple with a widely experienced ethnic identity crisis, leading to structural changes that encourage further social transformation. Ritual diversion thus refers to social changes being explored through mimesis in ritual spaces, resulting in the changing character of ritual. It creates a hierarchical flow of power among the Assoumindele Baka. The hypothesis this case study yields is that, in egalitarian societies, ritual rebellion favours explorations of inequality, whereas in hierarchical societies it explores equality. In situations of rapid social transformation these ritual potentialities can be consolidated into the social order.

Dit is een Teaching Document. Het bevat drie verschillende teksten die telkens op andere manier de ervaring van transitionele ruimtes in woorden proberen te vangen. Wat door haar complexiteit en non-verbaliteit niet goed mogelijk is. Wat maakt dat transitionele, heelmakende en transformerende, ruimtes ontstaan?  Als samenleving lijken wij het vermogen om samen (als vrouwen-mannen en als generaties) diep-veilige, transitionele, ruimtes te scheppen langzaam te verliezen.

This article explores the procedural means through which video games can model travel experiences. It focuses on Journey, a highly acclaimed game in which the player embarks on an archetypical trek to a mountain in the distance, thus offering a virtual take on the sensorial and locomotive aspects of pilgrimage. Through a close reading of the game’s ludic and narrative components, as well as discursive player responses, the article contends that Journey succeeds in offering players an emerging pilgrimage through the very act of play. This aids in understanding the interrelations between travel and play within networked culture.

Abstract:
Este trabajo es un análisis de las categorías fundamentales de la filosofía de Roberto Esposito utilizando la idea de poder como hilo de lectura. Mostraremos cómo los conceptos principales de su pensamiento -communitas, immunitas, bios- fundamentan la constitución de la realidad humana y cómo la misma es un proceso espejado con aquel de la interrelación entre las dimensiones de lo político y la política.
Para ello utilizaremos la concepción de poder estratégico de Michel Foucault como herramienta teórica. Por un lado, entablaremos un vínculo fundacional entre esta definición foucaultiana de poder y la definición ontológico-biológica de la realidad humana que extraemos de la filosofía de Roberto Esposito. Por otro lado, utilizaremos esta misma idea de poder para construir una imagen integral de la modalidad en la cual se expresa el poder de la realidad humana vital y existente.

Palabras clave: poder – immunitas - estrategia

This essay is an analysis of the main categories of Roberto Esposito´s philosophy, using the idea of power as a guiding concept. Reconstructing the manner on how the core concepts of his work -communitas, immunitas, bios- lay the foundations for the process of constitution of human reality, showing the parallels to that other conceptual process in which politics and the political are intertwined.

Key words: power – immunitas - strategy

La pregunta por la comunidad y el diagnóstico sobre la biopolítica son quizá dos de los problemas centrales de la filosofía política contemporánea. En este artículo sostenemos que la singularidad y potencia de la apuesta filosófico-política de R. Esposito radica precisamente en que se sitúa en el espacio en que estos dos vectores se cruzan: comunidad y biopolítica. Para ello, desarrollaremos nuestro argumento en tres partes. Primero abordamos su lectura de comunidad en el marco de una ontología de lo común y a partir de la figura del munus. Luego, analizamos como esa perspectiva desemboca en la formulación del paradigma inmunitario como principio de inelegibilidad de la modernidad biopolítica y tanatopolítica. Finalmente, presentamos una serie de instancias en las que Esposito intenta llevar ese paradigma inmunitario y biopolítico hacia un horizonte comunitario, lo que lo lleva, a su vez, a redefinir el sentido de la comunidad en el horizonte de lo impersonal progresivamente marcado por la lectura de la filosofía de Gilles Deleuze.

«Mantichora», 8, 2018

The subject of the present discussion is the fundamental liminal character of the Sacred in its relations with space and with mankind; and therefore the role of the Sacred in the production of the Communitas and its transformation into Mass. In this regard, we will refer to the thoughts of Victor Turner and Elias Canetti.
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Il soggetto della presente discussione tratta il carattere fondamentalmente liminale del Sacro e le sue relazioni con lo spazio e con l'umanità; e tratteremo anche il ruolo del Sacro nella produzione della Communitas e la trasformazione di questa in Massa. A tal proposito faremo riferimento alle riflessioni di Victor Turner e Elias Canetti.

Many government agencies worldwide have started making considerable investments for developing information systems that enable opening important data they possess to the society, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. In order to rationalise and support future decisions concerning the development, upgrade, improvement and management of this new type of information systems it is important to understand better what value they create and how, and at the same time to identify the main improvements they require. This paper contributes in this direction presenting a methodology for determining the value generation mechanism of open government data (OGD) systems and also priorities for their improvement. It is based on the estimation of a ‘value model ’ of the OGD system under evaluation from users’ ratings. It consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three ‘value layers’, and also the relations among them. Th...

Paper presented at Annual Conference 6th & 7th of March 2015 “Permanence and transition/transitoriness: anthropological perspectives” organized by the Anthropological Association of Ireland at University College Cork, Ireland.

FAMILY AND COMMUNITY CONTINUITY

Co-Creating Transitional Spaces for Permanence in Change

Dirck van Bekkum (MSc), Self-Employed Clinical Anthropology at Moira CTT, The Netherlands, moira@ctt.nl.


Are families, communities and societies capable of remembering, of creating continuity and of correcting/adapting themselves to changing environments over several generations? If this is the case, as we assume in this paper, which concepts and integrating framework are available to make sense of what happens in intergenerational reproduction of families, communities and societies?

In a long term clinical anthropological fieldwork project (Kleinman 1980; Rush 1996) in transcultural psychiatric and youth care practices and educating transcultural family therapists in The Netherlands answering this question proved both relevant analytically in research and clinically in therapeutic practices.
Intergenerational transmission of pathological relational/communicational patterns and life-phase transitions are central re-occurring themes in the family therapy theories and in clinical practices (Falicov 1988; Schuetzenberger 1998; Krause 2002; Jessurun 2010; Tjin A Djie & Zwaan 2007; 2013).
Also the concepts of liminality and schismogenesis are common in transcultural (family) therapy (Keeney 1983; Imber-Black et. al. 1988; Di Nicola 1997; Krause 2012). In 1996, in a Handbook of Transcultural Psychiatry & Psychotherapy, the phenomenon of migration was redressed as a life-phase transition based on Victor Turner ritual processual theory in which ‘liminal vulnerability’ was coined as an explanatory and diagnostic device to de-pathologize effects of migration in psychiatry and youth care settings (Van Bekkum et. al. 1996; Van Bekkum et. al. 2010).
Schismogenesis in family therapy theory was introduced by Gregory Bateson and with the concept of complementary and symmetric communication pathological relational patterns can be detected with families in therapy (Doherty & McDaniel 2010).
Combining frameworks of Gregory Bateson (1972; 1979) and Victor Turner (1969) on process, system, ritual we introduce an integrating concept of Family & Community Continuity (FCC) which serves to redress the frequently rebalancing of permanence and change in families and communities.
Bateson’s cybernetic system’s theory is outlined in which families and communities are taken as self-generating, self-organizing, self-correcting over several generations (1972; 1979).
Change and continuity are central in Bateson’s thinking (Eriksen 2004). Applying transformational active ingredients, detected by Victor Turner, during the second ‘liminal’ phase of rites of passage could add a new explanation of containing the destructive, ‘runaway’, effects of schismogenesis.
Co-creating ‘transitional spaces’ during culture-bounded rituals in family therapy offers a clinical model to research and analyse permanence in change. During these spaces also non-rational remembering emerges with which families, as cybernetic systems, can transform stagnations, distortions and disruptions.
We will demonstrate the analytical and clinical value of these concepts by presenting the cases of Amet, a young men from Roma families/communities, and of Eric, from post-colonial Eurasian families/communities.
Keywords: schismogenesis, liminality, cybernetic systems, rituals, clinical anthropology, transition, change and stability, family & community continuity.
Literature
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Dirck Van Bekkum & Kitlyn Tjin A Djie, Glenn Helberg & Irene Zwaan (2010) Rituals & Protective Wrapping, in: Handboek Culturele psychiatrie en psychotherapie, Joop de Jong & Sjoerd Colijn (red.) de Tijdstroom, Utrecht. (in Dutch & translated in English)