Anthropology of space

At the beginning of the 21st Century, the functions of State borders have changed.  Borders do not just contain but also overflow spaces, districts and jurisdictions. Borders are losing their linear aspects and are becoming more mobile and more diffuse in order to adapt to globalisation. Actors managing border control have also substantially multiplied. In addition to states, new stakeholders such as agencies, corporations, and NGOs have emerged as actors of border management. The ways in which people’s mobility is controlled are more and more diversified and differentiated. People have to pass through multiple networks and identification devices. All these mutations have to be analyzed in detail, using a wide range of modes of expression and critical tools.

"In this paper, we study the traditional houses of the Mamprusi  ethno-linguistic group. Specifically our work is focused on some houses of the village of Bende, in northeastern Ghana.
Our main premise is to understand houses as an element of material culture that not only reflects their social and cultural context but also participates as an active element in shaping social reality. To do this, we will focus on analysing the essential features of houses to better understand what the social and cultural dynamics of the Mamprusi community of Bende are, and how the houses are actively involved in the maintenance, negotiation and subversion of such dynamics."

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

"""Dispersed memory: Narratives based on the landscape, the
individuals and the surface finds of the Dispilio excavation"

Memory is inscribed in archaeological landscapes
and this integration could be approached
through the surface finds of an excavation. The
identities of the archaeologists, the inhabitants of
modern Dispilio, the visitors of the site and their
individual and public memory/memories are
combined in order to realize how social memory
is constructed in a border archaeological site, like
Dispilio. Original texts of the finders and the excavators
of the site, newspaper articles, Dispilio visitor’s
book, photographs of the 60’s and 70’s, of-
ficial documents of the local authorities, together
with surface finds like a number of bullets from
the Greek civil war (1946-1949), a Christian amulet,
a sickle, small plastic toys, a medal etc. are the
sources to accomplish the object.
""

"Neoliberal economics have emerged in the post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of countries in the global south. For much of the global south, however, the promise that markets will bring increased standards of living and emancipation from tyranny has been an empty one. Instead, neoliberalisation has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills.

This book deals with the post-conflict geographies of violence and neoliberalisation in Cambodia. Applying a geographical analysis to contemporary Cambodian politics, the author employs notions of neoliberalism, public space, and radical democracy as the most substantive components of its theoretical edifice. He argues that the promotion of unfettered marketisation is the foremost causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition. The book demonstrates Cambodian perspectives on the role of public space in Cambodia's process of democratic development and explains the implications of violence and its relationship with neoliberalism.

Taking into account the transition from war to peace, authoritarianism to democracy, and command economy to a free market, this book offers a critical appraisal of the political economy in Cambodia.
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Reviews:

Gunn, G. C. 2013. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43.1: 188-191.

Brickell, K. 2011. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52.3: 372-374.

Percival, T. 2011. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 32.2: 270-272.

Christie, R. 2010. South East Asia Research, 19.2: 349-372.

Ordóñez de Pablos, P. 2010. International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management, 1.4: 65-66."

"

This article examines mobile phone use among migrants in the Naples region to consider how this mediated technology enables them to mitigate or resolve uncertainties of everyday working life in relation with others. In particular, I am interested in precarity, which has been understood as both an analytical concept and an emergent subjective form of identification for citizens in Europe to express anxiety about work conditions and social alienation. Precarity emerges from the reconfigurations of political economies in neoliberal regimes that force flexible and temporary labour contracts, in contrast to the ‘certainties’ of welfare state labour markets and social arrangements. ICTs recently introduced in European states, such as biometric analysis tools and computer software and networks used to harmonize border entry across EU member states, can create an impediment to legal status and increase the surveillance and exclusion of others, but at the same time ICTs are vital to a forced migrant’s sense of security and wellbeing. "

This article aims to illuminate the paradox ingrained in the collusion of transition ideology with postsocialist reality by investigating recently constructed public buildings in the Autonomous Republic of Ajaria. It asks why these buildings - which are supposed to represent progress - often remain empty. I argue that these empty buildings show how, despite great disparities, the myth of transition and the actual social-political changes are intimately connected. The buildings, and more generally the regime's emphasis on construction, contribute to the continuation of the myth of progress and modernity. Moreover, I argue that the emptiness reinforces the power of this myth by keeping the images and dreams part of the future and thus accessible to everyone. Even more so, because people are made to believe that the buildings will be put to use soon, this future is tied to the present, thus keeping the dream not only accessible but also very much alive.

"This paper calls for attention to a process of accumulation in tourism that takes place outside the arenas of service-related labour and building activities. Instead I show how the global tourism industry also depends on the rather invisible appropriation of the localised, unwaged, yet highly productive labour stored in collectively produced social spaces.

In order to unveil this appropriation, I bring together the work on urban space of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. In applying their analysis to accumulation processes in the tourism industry of Majorca, I introduce a concrete example of how this industry incorporates the reproduction of social relations into the very process of production, thus, production-as-a-totality.

I illustrate this with two ethnographic sketches: First, how collective labour intended to rescue the built heritage and to liven up a gentrifying neighbourhood on the margins of the centre of the capital city is appropriated as the area becomes part of the existing tourism circuit. Second, how the conservation efforts towards the Northern Majorcan mountain range serve the same pattern of accumulation as it becomes a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Such collectively laboured oeuvres, are thus converted into capitalist exchange value, land-as-a-commodity, which ultimately turns collective labour into unwaged labour for capitalism. What is happening is a quasi-perennial "original accumulation of capital".

By emphasising that theoretical and methodological insights need to be combined in order to understand the capitalist subsumption of collective labour, I stress ethnography is an essential project for social anthropology rather than a self-explanatory program per se.
"

"Abdelmajid Arrif « Fragments d'une enquête dans un bidonville de Casablanca », Ethnologie française 1/2001 (Vol. 31), p. 29-39.
URL :
www.cairn.info/revue-ethnologie-francaise-2001-1-page-29.htm.
DOI : 10.3917/ethn.011.0029.

An ethnological research project concerning a population subjected to relocation and marked by a dependence on the public authorities that set the course of its residential destiny harbours difficulties and traps which methodological vigilance alone cannot overcome. To deal with power affects statements and judgements, and confounds the status of the researcher who tries to find his proper distance.

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