Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2023.320101
Marta Filipová
World's fairs and international exhibitions do not cease to fascinate researchers. Just as the objects, people and ideas on display at these massive events captivated their audiences, many humanities disciplines have studied exhibitions with similar curiosity and interest. A vast number of publications comprising articles, monographs, anthologies and special issues have been written on individual world's fairs, histories of exhibitions in a single country, or the participation of a specific country in the expositions. They are approached from various subject areas, but most commonly and fruitfully from anthropology, ethnography or ethnology, or from my discipline, which is the history of art and design. While all of these have different methods, they often share their study material. Historians of art and design have examined, for example, the architecture of fairs, the design of the grounds, and exhibits of the visual arts, but also performances and displays of native people. And this is where the interests of art history meet anthropology.
{"title":"Response to Issue 31(2) on World's Fairs","authors":"Marta Filipová","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2023.320101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2023.320101","url":null,"abstract":"World's fairs and international exhibitions do not cease to fascinate researchers. Just as the objects, people and ideas on display at these massive events captivated their audiences, many humanities disciplines have studied exhibitions with similar curiosity and interest. A vast number of publications comprising articles, monographs, anthologies and special issues have been written on individual world's fairs, histories of exhibitions in a single country, or the participation of a specific country in the expositions. They are approached from various subject areas, but most commonly and fruitfully from anthropology, ethnography or ethnology, or from my discipline, which is the history of art and design. While all of these have different methods, they often share their study material. Historians of art and design have examined, for example, the architecture of fairs, the design of the grounds, and exhibits of the visual arts, but also performances and displays of native people. And this is where the interests of art history meet anthropology.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83815764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2023.320103
Irene Götz, Petra Schweiger
This article presents case studies of older women's survival strategies in domestic settings in the expensive city of Munich, based on ethnographic material from two research projects on women's precarious retirement and the use of technology in old age. The self-care routines developed by the women over time assemble mental strategies and attitudes, bodily practices and socio-material techniques integrated into a specific spatial setting. These routines help them adapt to their physical impairments under multiply precarious circumstances: the pensioners portrayed have limited retirement funds, and thus, cannot afford household assistance or technical aids or even moving to another flat or into assisted living. Delving into private life-worlds and approaching women's perspectives and vulnerable agency, provides fresh insights into the field of private dwellings, often neglected in studies on old age.
{"title":"Micro-Practices of Domestic Living","authors":"Irene Götz, Petra Schweiger","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2023.320103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2023.320103","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article presents case studies of older women's survival strategies in domestic settings in the expensive city of Munich, based on ethnographic material from two research projects on women's precarious retirement and the use of technology in old age. The self-care routines developed by the women over time assemble mental strategies and attitudes, bodily practices and socio-material techniques integrated into a specific spatial setting. These routines help them adapt to their physical impairments under multiply precarious circumstances: the pensioners portrayed have limited retirement funds, and thus, cannot afford household assistance or technical aids or even moving to another flat or into assisted living. Delving into private life-worlds and approaching women's perspectives and vulnerable agency, provides fresh insights into the field of private dwellings, often neglected in studies on old age.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88561747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2023.320104
Tiina Suopajärvi
In this article, I discuss the way that the body becomes the crucial socio-material element of ageing in a future city when it is imagined in participatory workshops involving seniors, city officials and researchers and when this joint learning process is analysed through the lens of affect theory. The analysis shows how the materiality of bodies that move between places and with other human and nonhuman bodies adds to the anthropological understanding of ageing as an experienced and cultural phenomenon, as well as the understanding of ageing as a human–nonhuman assemblage. Furthermore, analysing participatory design processes through the lens of affects generates knowledge on how emotions participate in the making of boundaries that are essential when designing not only to cater to senior city dwellers, but also to anyone.
{"title":"The Body as the Affective Materiality of Ageing in a Future City","authors":"Tiina Suopajärvi","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2023.320104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2023.320104","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this article, I discuss the way that the body becomes the crucial socio-material element of ageing in a future city when it is imagined in participatory workshops involving seniors, city officials and researchers and when this joint learning process is analysed through the lens of affect theory. The analysis shows how the materiality of bodies that move between places and with other human and nonhuman bodies adds to the anthropological understanding of ageing as an experienced and cultural phenomenon, as well as the understanding of ageing as a human–nonhuman assemblage. Furthermore, analysing participatory design processes through the lens of affects generates knowledge on how emotions participate in the making of boundaries that are essential when designing not only to cater to senior city dwellers, but also to anyone.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90410741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310206
Nicolas Freeman
This article examines the various stagings of progress as exhibited at Argentina's International Centennial Exhibitions hosted in Buenos Aires in 1910. In preparation for the exhibitions, a wealthy port aristocracy oversaw renovations of the private and public, material and symbolic spaces of the city which transformed the capital into a political theatre. A chronology of the exhibitions (agriculture, industry, hygiene, railways, and the arts) and their accumulated symbols are read as multidimensional sites of encounter where a clash of contradictory interests and agencies interact. The text emerges out of a moment of ethnographic encounter and weaves together the words of my interlocutors with historical and theoretical analysis. In doing so, the article reflects from different angles upon the relationship between the rituals of showing and of spectatorship involved in the State's aesthetic performance of national progress.
{"title":"The Mise-en-Scène of Modernity","authors":"Nicolas Freeman","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310206","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article examines the various stagings of progress as exhibited at Argentina's International Centennial Exhibitions hosted in Buenos Aires in 1910. In preparation for the exhibitions, a wealthy port aristocracy oversaw renovations of the private and public, material and symbolic spaces of the city which transformed the capital into a political theatre. A chronology of the exhibitions (agriculture, industry, hygiene, railways, and the arts) and their accumulated symbols are read as multidimensional sites of encounter where a clash of contradictory interests and agencies interact. The text emerges out of a moment of ethnographic encounter and weaves together the words of my interlocutors with historical and theoretical analysis. In doing so, the article reflects from different angles upon the relationship between the rituals of showing and of spectatorship involved in the State's aesthetic performance of national progress.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73226917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310205
D. Ballestero
This article discusses the importance of commercial exhibitions of Indigenous people in the development of anthropological practices in South America between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, it examines the intrinsic links between commercial ventures based on the exhibition of Indigenous people and anthropological practices. These spaces of scientific popularisation allowed the anthropologists to economise the time, economic, material and human resources involved in an excursion to the field in the classic sense. The article then presents and examines the anthropometric, linguistic, photographic and musicological investigations that the German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche (1872–1938) conducted between 1898 and 1904 on Selk'nam, Qom and Tehuelche groups exhibited in local and international commercial enterprises. Finally, through Lehmann-Nitsche's research, I explore of how European anthropologists profited from these commercial ventures for the study of indigenous people, the use of urban spaces for ‘fieldwork’ and their transformation into anthropological ‘laboratories’.
{"title":"Picturesque Savagery on Display","authors":"D. Ballestero","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310205","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses the importance of commercial exhibitions of Indigenous people in the development of anthropological practices in South America between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, it examines the intrinsic links between commercial ventures based on the exhibition of Indigenous people and anthropological practices. These spaces of scientific popularisation allowed the anthropologists to economise the time, economic, material and human resources involved in an excursion to the field in the classic sense. The article then presents and examines the anthropometric, linguistic, photographic and musicological investigations that the German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche (1872–1938) conducted between 1898 and 1904 on Selk'nam, Qom and Tehuelche groups exhibited in local and international commercial enterprises. Finally, through Lehmann-Nitsche's research, I explore of how European anthropologists profited from these commercial ventures for the study of indigenous people, the use of urban spaces for ‘fieldwork’ and their transformation into anthropological ‘laboratories’.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90336343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310203
Marina Cavalcante Vieira
In 1883 five Brazilian Botocudos were exhibited at Piccadilly Hall, London's popular theatre. This exhibition aimed to replicate in Europe the success achieved by the display of seven Botocudos, held the previous year by the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro at the Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition. Measured and studied by scientists from the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, the Botocudos performed daily for the public in London, Manchester, and Sheffield, until they were sold to P.T. Barnum, joining the US tour of the Grand Ethnological Congress of the Bailey and Barnum Circus. This article emphasises the ambivalent trajectory between science and spectacle in these three different exhibition formats and versions. Illustrations, posters, photographs and newspaper reports are relied on as research sources.
{"title":"The Exhibition of Botocudos at Piccadilly Hall","authors":"Marina Cavalcante Vieira","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310203","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In 1883 five Brazilian Botocudos were exhibited at Piccadilly Hall, London's popular theatre. This exhibition aimed to replicate in Europe the success achieved by the display of seven Botocudos, held the previous year by the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro at the Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition. Measured and studied by scientists from the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, the Botocudos performed daily for the public in London, Manchester, and Sheffield, until they were sold to P.T. Barnum, joining the US tour of the Grand Ethnological Congress of the Bailey and Barnum Circus. This article emphasises the ambivalent trajectory between science and spectacle in these three different exhibition formats and versions. Illustrations, posters, photographs and newspaper reports are relied on as research sources.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89146773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310202
Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, Hande Birkalan-Gedik, Andrés Barrera-González, Pegi Vail
World fairs and exhibitions served as important venues for empires to showcase their industrial and technological achievements. Moreover, they also presented ‘civilisational models’ that portrayed Europeans as the most advanced and sophisticated and depicted the distant inhabitants as exotic and primitive. In portraying distant peoples, these contrasts were evident through their dress styles, dance, music, and performance of daily customs, but most noticeably, through their skin colours. With five articles focusing on world fairs and exhibitions in diverse locations and times, this special issue raises questions about the display and showcasing of humans that are still pertinent to the current contexts of anthropology. The articles call for ‘decolonising’ thoughts, discourses, and practices in political and public space in displaying contemporary cultures. While acknowledging the problematics and limits of ‘decolonisation’ itself, the articles reassess through a critical lens the connections between fairs and exhibitions in the early days of anthropology.
{"title":"Introduction: World Fairs, Exhibitions and Anthropology","authors":"Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, Hande Birkalan-Gedik, Andrés Barrera-González, Pegi Vail","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310202","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000World fairs and exhibitions served as important venues for empires to showcase their industrial and technological achievements. Moreover, they also presented ‘civilisational models’ that portrayed Europeans as the most advanced and sophisticated and depicted the distant inhabitants as exotic and primitive. In portraying distant peoples, these contrasts were evident through their dress styles, dance, music, and performance of daily customs, but most noticeably, through their skin colours. With five articles focusing on world fairs and exhibitions in diverse locations and times, this special issue raises questions about the display and showcasing of humans that are still pertinent to the current contexts of anthropology. The articles call for ‘decolonising’ thoughts, discourses, and practices in political and public space in displaying contemporary cultures. While acknowledging the problematics and limits of ‘decolonisation’ itself, the articles reassess through a critical lens the connections between fairs and exhibitions in the early days of anthropology.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88404787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310208
R. Zervou, M. Dragouni
Contemporary carnivals represent rather banal spectacles, harnessed by institutional control and stripped of their meaning as disruptive processes of revelry, expressivity and defiance. However, when organised at grassroots level, carnivals may retain their subversive character, revealing intentions to cross the limits of urban normality. By drawing on ethnographic data, this article explores the carnival of Metaxourgio in Athens, performed in a multicultural neighbourhood at the heart of the metropolis by a small group of young artists and creatives. Based on the notions of liminality and threshold, it analyses how the carnival creates a temporal universe that challenges mainstream perceptions of public space and Otherness, contests gentrification and seeks to maintain a sense of community in a world of ever-shifting boundaries of precarity.
{"title":"Escaping Gentrification?","authors":"R. Zervou, M. Dragouni","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310208","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Contemporary carnivals represent rather banal spectacles, harnessed by institutional control and stripped of their meaning as disruptive processes of revelry, expressivity and defiance. However, when organised at grassroots level, carnivals may retain their subversive character, revealing intentions to cross the limits of urban normality. By drawing on ethnographic data, this article explores the carnival of Metaxourgio in Athens, performed in a multicultural neighbourhood at the heart of the metropolis by a small group of young artists and creatives. Based on the notions of liminality and threshold, it analyses how the carnival creates a temporal universe that challenges mainstream perceptions of public space and Otherness, contests gentrification and seeks to maintain a sense of community in a world of ever-shifting boundaries of precarity.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88465925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310207
M. M. Kerimova, Maria V. Zolotukhina
The article is based on the text analysis of previously unknown archival documents (letters, petitions) to assess the impact of Pervaa Vserossiiskaya etnographicheskaya vystavka (the first all-Russian ethnographic exhibition) had on different spheres of Russian life – ranging from reinterpreting Slavic identity and rallying Western and Southern Slavs around the empire to growing museum attendance. Demonstrating the diversity of ethnic groups in Russia, in addition to emphasising its imperial power managed to also serve the purpose of structuring and further developing academic knowledge, and presenting its results to the larger public in an easily accessible yet sophisticated way: the Ethnographic Department of the Imperial Society of Devotees of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography at Moscow University was founded in 1868, and the first ethnographic museum (Dashkov Museum) in Moscow used the items for its collection. Russian ethnography exercised this new chance of proclaiming itself as an independent and actively evolving discipline and field of knowledge.
{"title":"A New Turn in Russian Ethnography","authors":"M. M. Kerimova, Maria V. Zolotukhina","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310207","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article is based on the text analysis of previously unknown archival documents (letters, petitions) to assess the impact of Pervaa Vserossiiskaya etnographicheskaya vystavka (the first all-Russian ethnographic exhibition) had on different spheres of Russian life – ranging from reinterpreting Slavic identity and rallying Western and Southern Slavs around the empire to growing museum attendance. Demonstrating the diversity of ethnic groups in Russia, in addition to emphasising its imperial power managed to also serve the purpose of structuring and further developing academic knowledge, and presenting its results to the larger public in an easily accessible yet sophisticated way: the Ethnographic Department of the Imperial Society of Devotees of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography at Moscow University was founded in 1868, and the first ethnographic museum (Dashkov Museum) in Moscow used the items for its collection. Russian ethnography exercised this new chance of proclaiming itself as an independent and actively evolving discipline and field of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77287593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-01DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2022.310204
Juliana Coelho de Souza Ladeira
This article proposes a comprehensive and detailed approach to the reception of the Balinese performances and the performers’ stay at the International Colonial Exhibition of 1931, held in Vincennes, France. Thus, it analyses French sources, such as the daily press, specialised and literary magazines, photographs, films and sound recordings. As one of the most acknowledged attractions of the Exhibition, the Balinese group appeared extensively in the press. This ensemble of documents allowed us to understand that their performances’ favourable reception contributed considerably to creating a positive impression of Dutch colonisation and the progressive inclusion of Bali in the world's cartography.
{"title":"‘To the Extremes of Asian Sensibility’","authors":"Juliana Coelho de Souza Ladeira","doi":"10.3167/ajec.2022.310204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2022.310204","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article proposes a comprehensive and detailed approach to the reception of the Balinese performances and the performers’ stay at the International Colonial Exhibition of 1931, held in Vincennes, France. Thus, it analyses French sources, such as the daily press, specialised and literary magazines, photographs, films and sound recordings. As one of the most acknowledged attractions of the Exhibition, the Balinese group appeared extensively in the press. This ensemble of documents allowed us to understand that their performances’ favourable reception contributed considerably to creating a positive impression of Dutch colonisation and the progressive inclusion of Bali in the world's cartography.","PeriodicalId":43124,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Journal of European Cultures","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80765616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}