1. Thematic fields.

2. Course offered. 4

3. Guest lectures. 6

4. Course description. 7

5. Summer School Staff / Location and contacts. 7

6. Application Procedure. 9

7. Special Requirements. 9

8. Social Events. 9

9. Useful Information. 10

10. Contact address. 10

 

Antropologia ISCTE

Anthropology ISCTE

 

Curso de Verão - Lisboa

Lisbon Summer Course

 

26-31 Julho 2008

July 26-31, 2008

 

Contemporary Challenges:

From an anthropological point of view

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Departamento de Antropologia, ISCTE

Centro de Estudos de Antropologia Social / CRIA

 

 

 

 

The Department of Anthropology of ISCTE (Lisbon University Institute) and the Centre for Research in Social Anthropology (CEAS/CRIA) organise a Course named “Contemporary Challenges: from an anthropological point of view" in the city of Lisbon in the period 26th to 31st July 2008[*].

 

Globalization is a key-word to define our era. For some authors it is what happens when the movement of people, goods, or ideas among countries and regions accelerates. In recent years, globalization has come into focus, generating considerable interest and controversy in the social sciences, humanities, policy circles, and among the informed public at large. This will be the context-focus of our summer course. Anthropology, as a critical and reflexive social science, can and must reorient the debate about globalization. Anthropology faces new contemporary challenges regarding theory and the political and public implications of knowledge. Anthropology is no longer only a theoretical tool for a philosophical understanding of cultural diversity and world views, but it aims to produce reflexive and critical understandings about contemporary utopias and disappointments. While globalization has created a great deal of debate in economic, policy, and grassroots circles, many implications and applications of the phenomenon remain virtually terra incognita. This Summer Course wants to contribute for this debate from an anthropological point of view.

 

Anthropologists are used to engage in critical reflections on the ways citizens organize their worlds and on the ways they construct or rethink their cultural identities, as well as the discourses they enact on themselves and Others. However, some contemporary factors present Anthropology with new or renewed challenges. These will take centre stage in the Lisbon Summer Course.

 

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1. Thematic fields

"Anthropological Theory and the Understanding of contemporary societies "

"Ethnography of Border Regions: Migrations and Flows"

"Fieldwork and Public Anthropology: Epistemological, Methodological and Ethical Aspects in the age of Globalization"

"Seminars: Aspects of Culture in a Comparative Perspective”    

 

 

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2. Course offered

Course directors: Prof. Miguel Vale de Almeida & Prof. Paulo Raposo

“Anthropological Theory and the Understanding of Contemporary Societies”

Prof. Miguel Vale de Almeida, Department of Anthropology ISCTE, CEAS/CRIA, Lisbon

“Touring Seminars” - Visiting to some places in Lisbon with cross- cultural relevance for the course; ethnographic project and exercises (written, visual and audioscapes).

“Seminars: Aspects of Culture in a Comparative Perspective”:

a)      Transnationalism and Diaspora
José Mapril, post-doctoral researcher CEAS/CRIA, ICS
Micol Brazzabenni, post-doctoral researcher CEAS/CRIA and Verona University

Classic migration theories portrait migrants either as "birds of passage", that accumulate capital to send and spend in their countries of origin, or as someone who will assimilate to the "receiving society", therefore breaking the links with their "communities" of "origin". This session proposes a third interpretation namely that migrants are first and foremost transnational actors that simultaneously sustain and develop social relations in multiple places. Several ethnographic materials, from South Asia, Europe and Africa, will be used to describe the translocal dimensions of these actors and their role as the performers of what some authors have called "globalization from below”. This session will focus in another context: European Roma/Gypsies populations represent one of the oldest minorities identified, since the Modern Age, in every European country. Our reflection try to point up for discussion the European imaginary idea about “mobility” and “migration”, as underlying the process of construction of national and European identities. Especially, I’ll analyze why that “imaginary idea” tend to consider European Sinti and Roma groups like “no natives” and “itinerants” and so explain, in that way, their presumed “lack of integration”.

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b) Transnational Culture
Lorenzo Bordonaro, post-doctoral researcher CEAS/CRIA and Torino University
Ricardo Campos, post-doctoral CEAS/CRIA
Miguel Moniz CEAS/CRIA and Brown University 

Some critical observers have pointed out how an increase in transnational cultural flows triggers processes of homogenization, standardization of local cultures, and the loss of local specificities. Taking the lively, diverse and inventive artistic scene of Lisbon as a case example, this view is questioned, showing how the mobility of both cultural forms and people produces unexpected and dramatically new expressive cultures and creates a new local context. Classroom lectures will be avoided, as our theoretical and cultural argument will be made by discussions during visits to selected locations of the Lisbon urban space. Parallel to these theoretical discussions, our program also includes a night time musical and arts calendar, through which participants will experience on their own the senses and vitality of the vibrant intersection of Lisbon’s translocal cultures.

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c) Media, Technology and Surveillance
Filipe Reis, Department of Anthropology, ISCTE, CEAS/CRIA
Catarina Fróis, post-doctoral researcher CEAS/CRIA, ICS     

The idea for this session is to view excerpts from the film Alice, which was shot in Lisbon, and use them as a starting point for a debate on surveillance, more particularly, on how it transforms and appropriates itself of urban spaces, and on what influences its gaze. We will also discuss the role played by technology in this mediation between those watching and those being watched, as well as the ends for which it is used.         

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d) Health and Migrations
Chiara Pussetti, post-doctoral   researcher CEAS/CRIA and Torino University
Clara Saraiva, researcher IICT and FCSH/UNL/CRIA

Vulnerability is a characteristic which is socially recognized as being common in migrant communities. Health problems are exacerbated by poor integration into the general community, social and economic levels that are below the average in the country of residence, cultural and linguistic barriers, etc. This session proposes a reflection on the process of encounter between the different therapeutic alternatives coexisting within the “recovery market”, and on the problems of social management of medical pluralism. The final aim is to explore the relation between individual experience of suffering and structural violence, coupling an anthropological perspective with a broader view of the political, social and economic constraints that define immigrant’s illness experiences.

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e) Work and Consumption
Emilia Margarida Marques, post-doctoral researcher CEAS/CRIA
Marta Rosales, post-doctoral researcher FCSH/New University of Lisbon/CRIA

In the contemporary world(s), work and consumption relate to each other in a variety of ways and dimensions: within the huge commodity chains from which goods come into existence, but also in the ways people construe themselves through their work and/or consumption practices.  Keeping a focus on the complex relations between subjective agency and global processes, this seminar will discuss two related issues on work and consumption (i) is work still there? debates on the contemporary dynamics and meanings of work and consumption; (ii) consumption in private and public contexts: different expressive appropriations of contemporary (mass) material culture.

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f) Tourism and Heritage
Frederic Vidal, historian and post-doctoral researcher CEAS/CRIA, ISCTE
Paulo Raposo, Department of Anthropology ISCTE, CEAS/CRIA

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Tourism has been a central dimension of globalization, and it offers a useful lens on many key questions: questions about identity and heritage, commoditization, historical and cultural representation, authenticity and ownership, inequality, environmental sustainability, and more.The aim of the session is to reflect on the historical construction of tourism practices, presenting and analyzing some documents (such as texts, photos, etc.) and some itineraries in Lisbon which will be the core for the intersection between global processes and local agency (institutional or not); namely some tour guiding activities amongst “migrant” communities/neighborhood as a minority policy exploring the eventual advantages of the “exotic other” within Europe as a merchandising. Some questions might arise: Is tourism a modern form of religion or pilgrimage? What are tourists looking for? Does tourism “damage” culture or is a process of “objectification” of culture? What can tourism offer and what touristic experience do we get? And, will tourism bring development?

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3. Guest lectures

Guillermo Goméz-Peña

Mexican performance artist writer, activist, educator and researcher, founder of LaPochaNostra. Most of his work concerns the interface between North and South, Mexican and U.S. culture, border culture and the politics of the brown body. His original interdisciplinary arts projects and 8 books explore borders, physical, cultural and otherwise, between his two countries and between the mainstream U.S. and the various Latino cultures: the U.S.-Mexican border itself, immigration, cross-cultural identity, and the confrontation and misunderstandings between cultures and races. His artwork and literature also explores the politics of language, the side effects of globalization, "extreme culture" and new technologies from a Latino perspective. http://www.pochanostra.com/


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4. Course description

26, Saturday - ISCTE

10 AM Reception and registration

11.30 AM Welcome Session

12.00   Lunch

Visiting Tour in Lisbon (Ethnographic project I- Transnational Youth Culture) + dinner and after diner tour - Lorenzo Bordonaro, Miguel Moniz and Ricardo Campos

 

27, Sunday

Visiting Tour in Lisbon (Ethnographic project II – Touristic scapes – Frederic Vidal and Paulo Raposo)

20 PM – Dinner (optional)

 

28, Monday

11 AM Lecture - “Anthropological Theory and the Understanding of Contemporary Societies” Miguel Vale de Almeida, Department of Anthropology ISCTE, CEAS/CRIA

Lunch

14-17 PM Seminar - Transnationalism and Diaspora

José Mapril & Micol Brazabenni

 

29, Tuesday

10-13 AM Seminar – Work and Consumption

Emilia M. Marques & Marta Rosales

Lunch

14-17 PM Seminar - Health and Migrations 

Chiara Pussetti & Clara Saraiva

 

30, Wednesday

10-13 AM Seminar - Media, Technology and Surveillance

Filipe Reis & Catarina Fróis

Lunch

Ethnographic Exercise (ethnic radio visit or/and ethnographic exercise)

21 PM Performance- conference

Guillermo Gomez-Peña (Casa da América Latina)

 

31, Thursday

10-13 PM Seminar – Tourism and Heritage

Frederic Vidal & Paulo Raposo

14PM Final Conclusions

21 PM Banquet & Summer School Party

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5. Summer School Staff / Location and contacts

CENTRO DE ESTUDOS DE ANTROPOLOGIA SOCIAL (CEAS) [ISCTE]

Secretariat:
Isabel Cardana (CEAS/CRIA)

 

Av. Forças Armadas, s/n - Ed. ISCTE - Salas 2N7 e 2N9 / Cacifo 237

1600-083 Lisboa PORTUGAL

Tel: +351 21 790 39 17

Fax: +351 21 790 39 40

E-mail: ceas@iscte.pt

Website: http://www.ceas.iscte.pt

 

DEPARTAMENTO DE ANTROPOLOGIA [ISCTE]

Secretariat:
Paula Almeida & Fernando Gil (Department of Anthropology)

 

Av. Forças Armadas, s/n – Ed. ISCTE

1600-083 Lisboa PORTUGAL

Tel: +351 217 903 011

Fax: +351 217 903 012

E-mail: paula.almeida@iscte.pt e fernando.gil@iscte.pt
Website: http://da.iscte.pt

ISCTE – (Lisbon University Institute) – Location here: http://iscte.pt/localizacao.jsp

 

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6. Application Procedure

Each applicant should complete an application form and send it by email to the Summer Course contact email address: isabel.cardana@iscte.pt

The application can be downloaded from here:  http://www.ceas.iscte.pt/docs/summerschool/app_form.doc

Deadline for the submission of application is 29 June 2008. All applicants will have been notified by 4 July 2008.

The daily schedule will consist of one weekend seminar-tour in Lisbon, three days of teaching sessions (10am/13am and 14pm/17pm), and one performance-conference. English will be the summer course official language but Portuguese will be present as well.

Eligible to apply are final year undergraduate, MA and doctoral students from any European or other country Universities. No more than twenty (20) participants are expected to be admitted.

An estimated fee of €150 is necessary for admission. This amount is intended to cover the costs of the lecturers. The fee should be paid upon registration in ISCTE-Lisbon.

Accommodation expenses during the Summer Course will be covered by the participants but there is a hotel contact for cheapest prices (around 17-22euros/per night). The organisation has an agreement with two local hostels – Pensão Luar (15 persons)[†] and Travellershouse [‡] (6-10 persons). Any travel costs for coming to and leaving Lisbon must be paid by the participants themselves.

A Certificate of Attendance will be provided to the Summer Course participants.

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7. Special Requirements

Each participant must bring a photo camera (digital or other) and obviously summer clothes, sunglasses and head protection.

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8. Social Events

July is a period with many social events, religious celebrations and public feasts, festivals of all sorts in all parts of Portugal, namely in Lisbon. In addition to this, on the first weekend-seminar (26th and 27th) participants will be visiting several venues with a cross-cultural atmosphere; and they will attend several cultural activities. There will be a free performance-conference (30) at the Latin American House (Casa da América Latina) by Guillermo Gomèz-Peña. The last day (31) all participants are invited for a social dinner at an alternative cultural restaurant in Lisbon – Fábrica do Braço de Prata.

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9. Useful Information

The following web sites provide information on ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, CEAS/CRIA and the town of Lisbon.

·            ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute:
http://www.iscte.pt

·            Department of Anthropology:
http://da.iscte.pt

·            CEAS/CRIA:
http://www.ceas.iscte.pt

·            City of Lisbon:
http://www.cm-lisboa.pt/
http://www.virtourist.com/europe/lisbon/index.html
http://www.agendalx.pt/cgi-bin/iportal_agendalx
http://www.mapadelisboa.com/

 

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10. Contact address

For any further information please contact the Summer Course's email address:

isabel.cardana@iscte.pt

 

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[*] Visit websites: Department of Anthropology: www.da.iscte.pt and CEAS http://ceas.iscte.pt

[†] Pensão Luar: http://www.cb2web.com/pensaoluar/reservas-pt.php

[‡] Travellers House : http://travellershouse.com/