admin – Page 6 – Perifèries Urbanes

Taksim halkindir- Taksim belongs to the people!

05/06/2013 admin 0

“Early in the morning I find Taksim square already full of people and fully operational, among the flags of the left-wing extraparlamentary groups, and of associations of the civil society, from feminists to LGBT, from kurdish anarchists to muslim anticapitalists and marxists…” A commentary from our correspondent in Istanbul: [in spanish and italian]
[audio: https://periferiesurbanes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/CavBella.mp3|titles=Cav Bella|artists=Grup Yorum]…

Anthropology will either go public, or die

23/05/2013 admin 0

“The field that one might have expected to be one of the most useful and productive of the sciences had gone under, not because the people in it were no good, or the subject was unimportant, but because the structure of scientific principles that it tries to rest on is inadequate to support it“. Robert M. Pirsig, Lila (1991).

You wake up one morning and find yourself in the periphery of the Academy. Far from the established paths. It is the experience Jessica Collier and Rebecca Schuman describe in two recent posts (thanks Cate!), and maybe also the one suffered by David Graeber, one of the best anthropologists around, dismissed by Yale probably for political reasons. As Graeber itself has argued, anthropology has an innate difficulty to position inside academic contexts: but those of us who keep trying to bring anthropology to the society outside it, are often pushed into difficult or painful situations (as recently happened in Barcelona). Luckily, there is a new approach that is opening its way, that could draw a bridge among “inside” and “outside” the Academy, towards breaking these annoying barrers. Some examples:

“WHY A PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY?” the new book by Robert BOROFSKY (Pacific University, Hawaii!) now available for download as an ebook; the first chapter also in PDF.
ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY, a blog by Maximilian FORTE (Concordia University, Montreal!): it is a “project of decolonization”, with the aim to transform anthropology into something that is neither eurocentric nor elitistic. HERE
Noël JOUENNE (2007) “Être ethnologue et hors-statut: vers une réelle valeur ajoutée?”. Journal des anthropologues (en ligne), 108-109, pp.69-85. [link][PDF]: being precarious, staying outside the Academy, could they be values added?

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Wastelands: Weizman on military urbanism

03/05/2013 admin 0

The spatial conflict over Palestine has re-articulated a certain principle: to be governed the territory must be constantly redesigned. This goes beyond a search for a stable and permanent “governable” colonial form, but rather points to the fact that it is through the constant transformation of space that this process of colonization has played out. Unpredictability and the appearance of anarchy are part of this violent logic of disorder.

Peripheries of a colony: modernity as a challenge in Tetouan

24/04/2013 admin 0

“Immigrants from different places, spanish and moroccan, gathered in the neighborhood. […] About this part of Tetouan, we should write not a history but… a novel“. Mohamed Anakar, former resident of barrio Málaga.

Haussman and Cerdà’s modern urbanism was at its peak in Europe, when the Sultanate of Morocco fell under the military and economic pressures of France and Spain. So hispano-moroccan colonial cities grew as cities in an unlimited expansion; but at the margins of the m

edina and the “Ensanche” grid, popular neighborhoods developed, in which lower-class moroccan and spanish neighbors challenged the cultural and linguistic barriers, like a working-class dance in front of modernity. With El barrio Málaga video [link], and the exposition Tetuán desafíos de la modernidad [link] (recently opened in Casablanca) the interdisciplinary equipe of architect Alejandro MUCHADA proposes a post-colonial look on the hispano-moroccan city observed from its peripheries: where the lower classes cohabited and created their own city, outside all plannings, and in an overflowing melting pot.

“Tetúanmodernchallenge” is a research of Gamuc.org group on the urban and social transformations during the 45 years of spanish occupation in the north of Morocco, through the lens of social housing: PDF of the expo presentet this april in Casablanca : presentation of the expo : Webpage Tetuán Modern Challenge
The word challenge refers to the moroccan historian Abdallah LAROUI, who used it to describe what modernity represented for pre-colonial moroccan society. See also Josep Lluís MATEO (2007) “El interventor y el caíd. La política colonial española frente a la justícia marroquí durante el protectorado” [PDF]
The historical critique allows us to identify what solutions were offered to this challenge in the field of housing. Architect Alfonso de Sierra Ochoa put forward a series of middle-scale projects, in which where involved Moroccans from Tetouan: through architecture, we can compare what modernity was imagined in that times, with the one Morocco has today.

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On the occasion of the election of a new pope…

13/03/2013 admin 0

The speech of the great Manuela Trasobares [more about her] during the protest against the visit of Joseph Ratzinger to Barcelona, on november 7th, 2010, in a video made by our friend Jordi Secall: a political line about the church, the state, history… that reminds us of when, in Barcelona, we had a very clear opinion about these things. [original video in jordi secall’s blog :: reduced version in youtube, subtitled in SPANISH, ENGLISH & ITALIAN!]…

A photographic and critical “gentrificatour” in Madrid’s Malasaña neighborhood

01/03/2013 admin 0

On february 9th, 2013, Todo por la praxis (TXP), a group from Madrid, organized the first of its programmed critic and photographic walks focused in the process of gentrification which is happening in Madrid’s city centre, specifically in the historic neighborhoods of Malasaña y Chueca. An enterprise of real estate developers, in need for new investments in an era of financial cuts and economic contraction, with support from the City Council, promoted a “programmed gentrification” of the area, which has been renamed Triángulo Ballesta (TriBall). The new triBall brand inspires from NYC’s business zones like SoHo and Tribeca, in an attempt to replace and erase the identity of this popular area of the city. “Gentrificatour intends to generate an archive of pictures of posters, labels and luminous of the commercial and productive activities that existed in the neighborhood before their replacement. […] The intention is to build a time-capsule that will allow us to evaluate the effects of a process of gentrification, and, in this way, to make them more visible” we read in TXP’s website. Victoria Herranz, photographer and anthropologist from Madrid, part of the group, explains: “Does Malasaña exist? Maybe; or maybe it exists in a different way. […] The line that divides the rehabilitation of a neighborhood from its destruction is too thin. When a process of rehabilitation limits the options of the neighbors to the point in which families have to leave the neighborhood, maybe something is going wrong”.

Todo por la Praxis – webpage
Anti-triball: critique, actions, reflections, images of the campaign organized by Agip-Pro collective from Patio Maravillas social center in Madrid. [WEBPAGE]
“Gentrificatourtriball” on Paisaje transversal: negociación urbana para la transformación colectiva blog.
Photo gallery: images taken during the last Gentrificatourtriball

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Towards an anthropology of the good families

23/02/2013 admin 0

In our ethnographies they are often in the background, as in this photo taken by Jordi Secall in 2003 [see his blog]. But professor MCDONOGH proposed many years ago the study of the good families of Barcelona – the ‘catalan oasis’. Thursday, february 28th, 7pm at Reina de Àfrica (calle Bolivar 10, Vallcarca), debate “Towards an anthropology of catalan elites” with Gary W. McDonogh, organized by GTEEP – GRECS – OACU

Download a chapter of McDONOGH’s The Good Families of Barcelona. A social history of power in industrial Barcelona, Princeton, 1986, in PDF (spanish) “De la família a la oligarquía” (courtesy: OACU friends!)
Another brilliant contribution to the study of the elites: Longina JAKUBOWSKA (2012) The straw in the anthropologist’s boots: studying nobility in Poland
Excellent reportage on how the influx of new global elites is changing the face of Europe on The Guardian webpage [march 2013]

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Where the salt water meets the fresh: les Saintes Maries de la Mer

19/01/2013 admin 0

More on popular celebrations: in may, in the village of french midi les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (Camargue), an extraordinary strange celebration takes place, and gypsies have an important part in it. Together with the procession for the two “canonical” saints, Saint Salomé and Saint Jacobé, gypsies from all France and other parts of Europe gather for the procession of Santa Sara, Sara Kali, or Sara the black: who officially is only the servant to the other two saints, but that the gypsies promoted as their patron saint, and that they carry into the sea. This celebration was invented in the end of the XIX century to promote turism and save a depressed region from the effects of massive migration; today it is a strange festival “in disguise”, during which both gypsies, turists and camarguaises fully entered some kind of role play, with neither shame nor complexes. For three days, gypsies with high-class caravans draw their alliances and organize marriages, and settle just opposite to the folkloric carriages that the locals organize for turists. Everybody adopts for three days the identity that the others project on them, as they are all playing, just for partying, for singing and dancing regardless of their traditions and their original musical styles. Flamenco mixes with other musics, as the gypsies with non-gypsies, just like the fresh waters of river Rhone meet the salt water of the sea, and aigues mortes of Camargue melt into the live waters of the Mediterranean.

Marc Bordigoni (2002-3), “Le ‘pèlerinage des gitans’, entre foi, tradition et tourisme” Ethnologie française, 2002/3, vol.32, pp. 489-501.
Among the most assiduous invitees of Santa Sara’s celebration there is the romanés band Urs Karpats, here live in 2010, known also as Ursarii, or bear tamers
Great video about the celebration and Santa Sara, with music by Urs Karpaz: TSIGHINDIA SARA KALI :: see also Kali Sara by Latcho Drom
Sara Kali, i.e. Sarah the Black, is not recognized as saint by any official church; the fact that her statue wears clothes is a sign of popular religion – it is the devotion of the gypsies with canonizes her as holy. Actually her statue wears many dresses one upon the other, as to symbolize the extreme devotion of her devotees. Many connect her faith with indian goddess Kali, that is also dumped underwater in an annual celebration under the form of Durga.

[audio: https://periferiesurbanes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/6Rumba-gitana.mp3] Rumba gitana in Santes Maries de la Mer, recorded by ethnomusicologist Roberto Leydi in 1968…

Calabrian contradictions: culture as an excuse

22/12/2012 admin 0

The traditional feast is like a litmus test: it changes naturally as the group that takes part in it changes, writes Angelo Maggio, Calabrian photographer after participating to the festa della Vergine at Polsi some years ago. Popular feasts change, tradition is reinvented and rewritten, according to new needs. After the nineties, in Calabria (Italy), the "second folk revival" (studied by australian anthropologist Stephen Bennetts), converted festivals in an excuse to attract tourists and money to small villages mostly depopulated: but this commercialization reduces Calabrian popular culture to "tarantelle", excluding all the rest of local popular traditions, that end up homologated in a common regional-popular denominator. At the same time, much more dangerous manipulations are taking place. A series of sinister individuals linked to mafia "clans" are publishing articles, books and records presenting 'ndrangheta (Calabrian mafia) as a "cultural" phenomenon, linked to folklore and popular traditions of Calabria, thus giving a kind of ethnic legitimacy to the cruelty of clans in front of public opinion, even internationally. And meanwhile, local anthropologists keep classifying ethnomusicological variants, and show little concern to all this public manipulations of their object of study.

Concrete geographies: displacements and trails on the territory, “Cicle Nòmades” with Xavier Ribas

16/12/2012 admin 0

This sunday 16th at 6:30pm the anthropologist Maite Marín and the photographer Jordi R. Renom invite us to the last nomadic trip organized in "El Centre", Ateneu democràtic i progressista de Caldes de Montbui, doubtlessly so interesting as the previous sessions of Nòmades cycle, that are taking place since one year ago. In this session they will show us the photographic project of Xavier Ribas, and starting from it we will hold a debate among photography, urbanism, architecture, anthropology. To the conversation are also invited the urbanist-photographer-arquitect Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, the architect Emanuela Bove from Repensar Bonpastor, and the anthropologist Núria Sánchez Armengol, a member of our research group. The work of Xavier Ribas Nòmades deals with issues such as limits, frontiers, expulsions from territory, everyday life, simbolic violence and historical memory, starting from photos taken in peripheral territories. Xavier Ribes has been working since 1994 on different projects in urban peripheries. "...Peripheries are not all the same. In Barcelona is not the same thing if you visit Besós or Llobregat, or if you go to Nou Barris, Pedralbes, or Sarrià… I'm interested in periphery, among other issues, because it is a counterpoint, or countervision, to the city thought from the center. If contemporary city differ in something, these are their peripheries more than in their urban centers. So, we could say that the true character of the cities is in there, and that peripheries, more than equalize, generate identities". [link on blog "a sangre" by Francisco Navammuel]

Conference on anthropology and urban conflict (Barcelona)

04/11/2012 admin 0

All conferences will be transmitted in streaming from the congress webpage! FINAL PROGRAM [check the webpage]:

Wednsday, november 7th: 3pm Inaugural lecture - 6pm Public space desertions urbanity
Thursday, november 8th: 10am Opening lecture - 11.30am Neighborhoods conflictivity coexistences - 4pm Movements speculation urbanism - 6pm Resistance gentrification urban transformation - 7pm Closing lecture
Friday, november 9th: 10am Opening lecture - 11am Territory forced mobility violence - 12.30am Heterotopies marginality stigmatization - 4pm Urban practices illegalism social control - 6pm Closing lecture
Saturday, november 10th: 9am Struggles for the city, the case of Barcelona - 11.30am Thematic guided walk: conflictive Barcelona - 6pm Civil desobedience and social change in visual anthropology

Tijuana’s Flowers of the Rancho

24/10/2012 admin 0

Our friend Anna BOSCH had been giving a workshop in participatory photography at Rancho Las Flores, a spontaneous settlement in Tijuana: shanties and self-made houses less than 1km from the most frequently crossed international border in the world. In few cities the inhabitants are so heavily influenced by images built from outside: Tijuana is represented alternately as borderland or as "center of the universe"; as a city without law, or as a "perfect place" for US tourists.

From the center to the periphery, from the periphery to the center

15/10/2012 admin 0

The center is the meaning and the substance; the periphery is the tangible form that it assumes. The city is the field in which the alternate movements among form and substance unfold; some centrifugal, other centripetal, all centrifocal, i.e. positioned towards a center. Living in the periphery is identifying with this distance toward a supposed center, casting one's barycenter out of oneself. But on the surface of the earth there are no centers: actually, the sphere is the locus of the peripheries, being the only center inside the earth - any point on the surface is the center of its own world.

More “rrom” evictions in Rome

04/10/2012 admin 0

Following the policies of the previous left-wing administration, Rome's right-wing city council is executing a series of fast and almost illegal evictions against the few rrom settlements still resisting within the city (see Amnesty International declaration on 9/28/2012 eviction in Tor de' Cenci). The pretext are the alleged "problems to circulation" and the need for "urban decency", in a city in which the inauguration of a store can paralyze traffic for a whole evening, and where the parties ruling the city council break the norms on the use of public spaces. The residents of the settlements, some of which have been living more than 15 years in Rome, are forced to move to the extreme periphery, in isolated "solidarity villages" under a strict surveillance: often they resist actively to deportations. These intervention inevitably summon back the memory of the policies towards the popular neighborhoods in Rome's center during Fascism (1921-1945): the residents considered less valuable were evicted towards the suburbs, and forced to live in borgate neighborhoods, poorly built and cut off from the town.

Video of the eviction of Tor di Quinto settlement in summer 2012; Photos; Description :: Video Rom a Roma da vicolo Savini alla Pontina 1 - 2
Fernando SALSANO (2007) The guts of Rome. PhD thesis on the monumentalization of the center and the birth of borgate during fascism.
In august 2012 urbanist Italo INSOLERA died in Rome; together with Antonio Cederna, they were among the few authoritative fueron voices that kept denouncing those they called "enemies of the human race": real estate speculators. A commentary in Eddyburg, the best webpage on cities and urban transformation in Italy.

Perifèries Urbanes

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