1,721,224 research outputs found
Dimenticare i propri morti. Oggetti alienabili ed inalienabili nel Nord Ovest della Tanzania
No full textChanging environments, occult protests, and social memories in Sierra Leone
No full textIn Sierra Leone, the environmental and economic impacts of extractive industry are a source of great concern for local communities. Through the usual weapons of the weak (e.g., sabotage, thefts, and rumors) and the idiom of the occult, the population expresses dissatisfaction with a modernity which has always been promised but never achieved. By comparing three different cases this paper argues that extractive landscapes are places of great political contest at the local and national level. In the first and the second case I will explore the ways in which the inhabitants of two different mining regions interpret in terms of the occult some unexpected and mysterious events occurring to a large-scale mining company and to a hydroelectric power dam. In the third case I will show how the complex interplay of negotiations between diamond miners and inhabitants of mining areas can be mediated by the presence of spiritual beings locally named 'debul dem'. What I suggest is that mining or extractive landscapes are never neutral sites. They embody past experiences which simultaneously globally connect and locally disconnect places and people. From an anthropological perspective, occult mining narratives can be analyzed as forms of social memory pointing to a history of violence, terror, and uncertainties inscribed in the landscape and dwelling practices. The basic idea of this paper is that the local discourses on the occult are not just ways to make sense of the uncertainties and anxieties of a globalized modernity but are, above all, highly politicized practice
The Enigma of the Hippogriff. Following the Traces of the Subaltern Work in (and from) the Sierra Leone’s Mines
No full textDrawing from my archival and fieldwork research on the alluvial diamondiferous areas of Sierra Leone (2007-2011), my work follows two main levels of analysis. The first level of analysis examines the discourses produced by analysts and experts on Sierra Leone’s artisanal miners. Over the last decade, diamonds extracted in Sierra Leone have been the focus of an intense debate among analysts and development experts for two main purposes: firstly, understanding the political and economic reasons that sustained the civil war from 1991 to 2002 and, secondly, figuring out how to convert a potential resource for war into a resource for peace and prosperity. In this debate, miners are at the centre of several stereotypes, which I have analysed in my recent paper (D’Angelo 2013). Against these stereotypes, I examine the main forms of the organisation of work at a small and artisanal level in order to show the cultural complexity and historical density of work practices, as well as the vocabulary of contingency employed by miners to make sense of the unpredictability of events.
The second level of analysis explores the imaginaries and discursive practices of artisanal miners. In my recent article (D’Angelo 2014), I discuss what workers think about the uses of diamonds in Western countries. In addressing this question, I also explore how the miners’ imaginary of diamonds, money and illicit wealth have been shaped through the prism of a particular regional history.
Both levels of analysis advocate the value of an approach that links micro- and macro-history (van der Linden 2005). Indeed, my work aspires to be part of a “universal history of work”, and at the same time, a “history of globalized work” (van der Linden 2008). The issue that I would like to consider here is how (and if) the miners of Sierra Leone have become global workers.
Experts, journalists and development analysts have often compared the work of diamond miners to a form of modern slavery. According to these analyses, those who finance the mining operations in this West African country do not adequately compensate the workforce, which is thus forced into debt. Therefore, most miners have to work to repay their debts rather than to improve their lives (see for example, USAID 2001, p. 5; Even-Zohar 2003, p. 7; Moyers 2003, p. 6).
By taking into account the forms of distribution of earnings among these miners, I will show how this representation of the mining reality is misleading. In fact, it ascribes the main problems of artisanal diamond mining to local or internal factors and underestimates or denies the historical and geographical connections between these places and the global diamond industry. On the contrary, this paper emphasizes how practices and social relations widespread in the mines of Sierra Leone are informed by specific social, political and economic processes, both short and long term
Offrire sushi. Merci, mercato e città globale
No full textUrban anthropology has been simultaneously challenged and transformed as forces of globalization - variously defined in economic, political, social, and cultural terms - have been theorized as "de-territorializing" many social processes and trends formerly regarded as characteristic of urban places. Against a seemingly dis-placed cityscape of global flows of capital, commerce, commodity, and culture, this paper examines the reconfiguration of spatially and temporally dispersed relationships among labor, commodities, and cultural influence within an international seafood trade that centers on Tokyo's Tsukiji seafood market, and the local specificity of both market and place within a globalized urban setting
Soldi e perline. Note per una teoria della ricchezza e del potere
No full textWhy have so many societies adopted beads or other objects of adornment as
currencies of trade? The question opens up a series of other questions about the
nature of exchange, visibility and invisibility, and the relation of exchange both to
conceptions of the human person and ways of exercising power over others
Feticismo, violenza e Stato. Passaggi benjaminiani nell’antropologia di Michael Taussig
No full textMichael Taussig è uno dei rappresentanti più originali e provocatori della cosiddetta “etnografia postmoderna”. I suoi scritti sono stati influenzati dalla teoria critica della Scuola di Francoforte ed, in particolar modo, dalla prospettiva “micrologica” di Walter Benjamin.
In questo articolo prendo in esame alcune delle questioni che sono centrali nelle riflessioni sviluppate da questo antropologo tra gli anni Ottanta e la prima metà degli anni Novanta. Più nello specifico, mi soffermo su tre questioni, tra di loro interrelate, che riassumo in tre parole chiave: feticismo, violenza e Stato. L’obiettivo è mostrare come Taussig ha elaborato una proposta teorica coerente con l’idea che l’antropologia debba abbandonare ogni pretesa di innocenza e di oggettività per farsi critica culturale radicale
Acqua, cultura e conflitti nelle aree minerarie della Sierra Leone
No full textWhile the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone (RUF/SL) ”blood diamond war” (1991-2001) brought widespread attention to conflict associated with mining, low-level conflict is inherent in all mining regions of Sierra Leone. The most important cause of conflict is unequal access and control of natural resources in mining environments where national government sanctioned policies, agreements, and laws supersede indigenous people’s customary rights to land and water. Issues generating discord include involuntary relocation from traditional village sites, environmental degradation, loss of ecological resources and livelihoods, and desecration of sacred places. Water is central to conflict. Local perception of resource development projects like mining link to cosmological ideas underpinning the relationships between humans, land resources, prosperity or failure. Drawing on case studies from the rutile mineral industry in historical and contemporary context, this study uses a political ecology framework to explore ongoing low-level conflict in Sierra Leone mining locales. Examined are customary belief systems around land rights and use and how they influence behavior and feed into conflict between mining companies, indigenes, and "strangers," in-migrants to Sierra Leone mining areas who have no usufruct rights to land
Il capitalista e l'uomo dei topi. Marx, Freud e il significato del denaro
No full textMarx and Freud each view money as embodying concealed social meanings. For
Marx it signifies the alienation of labor and the brutal exploitation of workers in
the process of producing surplus value. For Freud it reduces to the symbolic
equation "money = feces = penis" and thus signifies sadomasochistic relationships.
In both instances the analysis of money reveals failures of mutual
recognition. These failures of recognition, and likewise the meaning of money,
originate in the interplay between capitalist social relationships and the psychodynamics
of the paranoid-schizoid position
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