Articles by admin

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Carnival King of Europe: against the domestication of the festival

21/02/2012 admin 0
"Carnival has often provided an outlet for popular expressions of discontent with the ruling classes, and was actually banned in Spain during Franco’s Fascist dictatorship, under the pretext that the Carnival practice of disguising one’s identity with masks might provide cover for leftist insurgents to launch surprise guerrilla attacks.". Though Carnival King has been tamed almost all over Europe, it could come back to life in other continents of the world. A group of activists based in Fremantle (Perth, Australia) propose since 2004 a Carnival festival in the ancient European style: irriverent, nonconformist, countercultural. Meanwhile, in some parts of the old continent, Carnival is taking back its ancient value as an occasion for social protest.
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They keep calling them “baracche” (shanties)

09/02/2012 admin 0
Gentrification in Rome spreads in circles around the black hole of the historical center, attacking parts of town that we used to consider peripheral. In Tor Pignattara, the most densified and polyglot district of Rome, real estate speculators divide buildings in smaller units, and threaten the few little houses that are left: they keep calling them "baracche" (shanties) to legitimate their gradual demolition and substitution with palazzi. Organized crime and neofascism spread even in parts of town that used to be "red"; as politicians approve new urban plans that contain no urbanism except certifying any kind of old and new speculations. But resistance is also beginning to reorganize.
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The Pinheirinho massacre

31/01/2012 admin 0
In the morning of january 22nd, 2012, 2000 military police broke into the Pinheirinho settlement in Sao Paulo (Brasil) with helicopters, tanks, horses, tear gases, and began the eviction. Almost 10.000 people had been living there for about 8 yeras; they had just regularized their housing titles. But the eviction was promoted by a company whose director fled the country in 1990 for finantial crimes, and that now needs the land to speculate, keeping them empty. In preparation of 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, some 170.000 people are under eviction all around Brasil. Residents of Pinheirinho strenuously resisted the eviction, that ended with 7 dead, and tens of wounded and arrested. Public houses had been promised to the evicted, now stacked in churches or gyms; but "those in charge of building social houses are part of the same bloodthirsty, prejudiced and deceitful elites as the governants..."
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Squatting in Europe

06/01/2012 admin 0
Squatting in Europe is a research network on the squatting movement in Europe. The origins of its members are very different: Brigthon, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Roma, Catania, NewYork, Vermont, Amsterdam, Paris... so are their academic positions: some come from the universities, other are outside, some in between, and obviously shifting. From these diversities the members share a compromise and proximity with different expressions of the squatting movement, a practice of dialogue and reflection with the people who live these spaces, and an effort to publish works in free formats. Each meeting is held in a different city, always in squatted places, to share the debates with people living and using these spaces. Since 2009, the meetings have been in Madrid, Milan, London, Berlín, Amsterdam; the last one (december 2011) was in Copenhagen, in Bolsjefabrikken and Youth House. The results of the collective work and periodic meetings is obviously the enrichment of researches with the experience of the places visited, as well as the production of collective research from multiple perspectives.
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Baraka men sakate: no more silence

17/12/2011 admin 0
"These people suffering in silence and dragging on through the streets, are fed up of hanging around! / And what does HE do? he gathers his men to rearrange the constitution! There's enough for getting mad at it. / Do they want us to rise up and rip off our rights with weapons? It's me who has to decide who do I want to sacralize / And if you want to understand it, come and live with us: god, nation, LIBERTY!". Even just this last sentence could have meant detention for Mouade Boulghade (age 24), moroccan rapper from Al-Wifaq neighborhood in Casablanca, known as "Lhaqed" (L7a9ed), the Angry One, in prison since last september. He changed the last line of the national anthem, singing "liberty" instead of "the king": a symbolic attack more dangerous for the Makhzen (the absolute power that had been ruling Morocco during the last four centuries) than all the demonstrations and protests of the 20th february movement.
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Istanbul, a city without limits. Documentary movie

15/11/2011 admin 0
"In Istanbul, we crossed the ecological limits, crossed the population limits, crossed the ecological limits. If you ask me where it is all going to lead, I will quote from Doğan Kuban: chaos" Mücella Yapıcı, chamber of architecture of Istanbul.
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Permanent Workshop on Urban Spaces

06/11/2011 admin 0
Our first workshop was on september 15th in the University of Barcelona: we plan to meet on the last thursday of every month, to share projects and reflections on the city and urban space, key issues in contemporary anthropology produced in the catalan capital. Participants in the workshop include: Omar Borrás,who is working on football among Cochabamba's immigrants in Barcelona; Andres Antebi, who is involved in a visual anthropology project on a small public square in Tangiers; Ariadna Mestre who studies Barcelona's Forat de la Vergonya as a theatralized space; Caterina Borelli who, after researching urban renewal of Raval, is now researching in Sarajevo; Marco Stanchieriwho works on the transformation of Vallcarca neighborhood; Muna Makhluffwho is doing her fieldwork in Barceloneta; Alba Marina who studies the nomadic network of "Salsa brava" in Barcelona; Miguel Fernández researching on the application of "civism" in Raval's calle Robadors; Marc Dalmau who focused on the impact of urban change of the Colonia Castells over the lifestyle of its inhabitants; and, obviously, Manuel Delgado for coordination and repression.
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“Negros” of the periphery of Barcelona: young Dominicans’ stigma and resistance

26/10/2011 admin 0
“…blacks always worked like 'niggers'; blacks are the ones who work hardest, because they want to live like whites do…” Simón, 16 years old, living in L’Hospitalet (BCN) from age 9
Los Kitasellos is the name of one of the youth groups in the outskirts of Barcelona with which anthropologist Luca Giliberti (University of Lleida – FPU-ME researcher) is doing his fieldwork. Freeing themselves from the mark ("quitarse el sello") of being different, means for many young Dominicans in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat resisting against the stigma with which they are labelled, even by the institutions - in political campaigns, constant police raids, newspapers always in search of Hispanic gangs - and convert this discrimination in an emblem of black identity.
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To destroy and to construct: history of a factory

06/10/2011 admin 0
Friday october 7th, at 7.30pm, projection of Destruir y construir, video documentary about the factory of Can Ricart, in Barcelona's neighborhood of Poblenou. Can Ricart was a group of factories active in Barcelona since mid-19th century: in its construction had been involved important architects of catalan modernism. During the years of Barcelona's real estate euphoria (2000-2008), the City Council authorized the demolition of an important part of the premises, with no regard to the protests and the detailed studies who asked respect for the industrial heritage. Similar to what is happening in other parts of town, recently the administration admitted that it hasn't got enough money to build the "Museum of Languages" - the misterious, romantic and sustainable building that architect Benedetta Tagliabue was projecting for the part of Can Ricart spared from the demolitions.
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II Conference of Young International Researchers in Lisboa

12/09/2011 admin 0
Four years after the first meeting, the Second International Conference of Young Urban Researchers provides continuity to the experience of interdisciplinary meeting of young urban researchers. Once again, the conference will be held in the Instituto Universitario de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) from October 11th to 14th, 2011. The conference aims to share recent researches on urban contexts from many different areas of social sciences, to discuss current theoretical and methodological issues and to promote interdisciplinary and international networking. It is intended that the meeting should be boosted by young researchers who work in urban studies and develop research in the cities - especially those who are studying in post-graduate programs but also those carrying out technical and intervention activities. More informations - Webpage - Program [PDF] - Timetable.
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Anthropology conference in León, september 6-9, 2011

25/08/2011 admin 0
Webpage of the Conference: here. Timetable: here. Some themes:
  • Cities and citizenship, between global showcase and experience of places.
  • The sense of anthropology today, responsibilities, dilemmas and actions.
  • Ethnography of resistances.
  • Contemporary ethnographies of political violences.
  • Towards immateriality of heritage, politics culture and conflilct in the production of immaterial heritage.
  • Housing from an anthropological point of view.
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Herstory of the revolution: words of rebel egyptian women

11/08/2011 admin 0
"Allowing my daughter to sleep in Tahrir, of course, was a revolutionary decision. This is the effect of the revolution on our way of thinking and dealing with things".Hanan Sadek, 52, works in an oil company "I'll never forget the way that soldier looked. He wouldn't look at me, he was looking away. Deliberately trying to avoid eye-contact with me, and he was crying. Then all at a sudden they all started to shoot at the same time" Sanaa Seif, 17, student "We were living with our eyes closed. We didn't use to see what is in front of our eyes" Mona Hussein, 50, housewife Every week, the independent equipe of Leil-Zahra MORTADA uploads in "Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution" a short video: the revolution should not be explained as dominant history always does, as virile adventures of heroes and martyrs. Herstory is the version that even revolution enthusiasts try to keep silent: because the existence of rebel arab women is too big a contradiction for the standard version of history.
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Racism in “Santako”

07/08/2011 admin 0
Six cities around Barcelona - Hospitalet, Badalona, Terrassa, Sabadell, Mataró, Santa Coloma de Gramenet - are among the ten most populated in Catalonia. But only Hospitalet and Santa Coloma have a higher density than Barcelona, compact city par excellence. The urbanistic chaos that characterises Santa Coloma de Gramanet is the direct result of real estate speculation and political corruption: persistent racism among some sectors of its population is the other side of overcrowding and impressive diversity of origins that defines the people of Santako. But if in the beginning of the 20th century, those who rejected the immigrants from southern Spain settled in the casas baratas at least could hold to their local origins and catalan speech, in the 21th century those who promote boycott to arabics, chinese, latinamericans, romans of the city, are themselves - for the most part - second generation immigrants. The video Mézquita no! (2005) describes the conflict around the opening of a mosque in the Singuerlin neighborhood.

Sulukule: the first gypsy neighborhood in Europe

21/07/2011 admin 0
The Roma that arrived to Istanbul in the year 1000 settled here: the city still was called Costantinopolis. After a thousand years of cohabitation, the neighborhood of Sulukule was the first victim of the ferocious wave of gentrification that is at once globalizing and turkeyzing the city.