Programme

Cosmopolitan Routes/Roots: Intersections of Migration and Global Heritage. 2-4 November 2011. Leiden University, Academy Building, Small Auditorium

Conference Schedule

WEDNESDAY - 2 NOVEMBER

16.30-18.30  Keynote Lecture: Peter Geschiere (Anthropology, UvA)

Title: Perils of Belonging - Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion, from Present-day Africa and the Netherlands to Classical Athens.

  • Chair: Peter Pels (FSW, Leiden)

  • Discussant 1: Leo Lucassen (History, Leiden)

  • Discussant 2: Ethan Mark (LIAS, Leiden)

 

18.30-19.30 Reception (Faculty Club Restaurant)

 

THURSDAY - 3 NOVEMBER

Coffee and tea 

9.00-10.55  Session 1: Material connections. Transcultural networks of materiality in a comparative perspective. Chair: Miguel John Versluys (Archaeology)

Break

11.05-13.00  Session 2: Transformations : Religion and Migration. Chair: Bas ter Haar Romeny (Religion)

Lunch

14.00-15.55  Session 3: Round Table - Current Trends in Global Heritage Management - Chair: Peter Pels (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology)

Break

16.05-18.00  Session 4: Imagined Histories. Chair: Isabel Hoving (Literary Studies)

18.00-19.00 Reception (Faculty Club Brasserie) 

 

FRIDAY - 4 NOVEMBER

Coffee and tea

9.30-10.55  Session 5: The Social Life of Connections: Transforming technologies on the African continent. Chair: Mirjam de Bruijn (ASC)

Break

11.05-13.00  Session 6: Asian Expressive Practices in the Context of Migration: Traditions and Modernities (Organized by the Research Profile Asian Modernities and Traditions). Chair: Patricia Spyer (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology)

Lunch

14.00-16.00  Roundtable Discussion

  • Leo Lucassen (Chair of Institute for History, Leiden)

  • Maarten Jansen (Professor of Archaeology, Leiden)

  • Petra Sijpesteijn (Professor of Arabic Language and Culture, Leiden)

  • Peter Pels (Professor of Anthropology, Leiden)

  • Paul Nugent  (Professor of Comparative African History, Edinburgh)

  • Michael Rowlands (Professor of Anthropology, UCL) 

  • Carolyn Nakamura (LGI Postdoc, Leiden)

 

16.30-17.30 Film Screening: Connecting Dreams: Success/failure, crossing borders and new ICT

Filmmakers: Sjoerd Sijsma (Eyeses) &  Mirjam de Bruijn (ASC)

 

 

Session 1: Material Connections

Material connections. Transcultural networks of materiality in a comparative perspective.

Chair: Miguel John Versluys (Archaeology)

In the definition of Giddens (1990, 64) globalisation is the “intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring miles away and vice-versa”. As such the concept is often strongly linked with (our) Western modernity. In popular western discourse globalisation has thus become a buzz-word invoked to account for a variety of phenomena: the global economic recession, the relocation of traditional European manufacturing facilities to the developing world, the erosion of local heritage in the face of unrelenting global consumer culture, and the ever-present threat of unchecked global warming.

However, peoples, goods and ideas have always circulated around the globe and interacted: in that respect the intertwinedness between the local and global that is seen as the defining characteristic of globalisation is nothing new. Globalisation as we define it at present, therefore, clearly has its histories but also its pre-histories. Many historical periods show the existence of transnational networks that are functioning as world-systems in all respects but the fact that from our contemporary perspective their scale was not truly spanning the whole world.

In this session we would like to compare and discuss three of those transnational networks from an interdisciplinary perspective, mainly involving historical, archaeological and anthropological approaches and focussing on materiality as a starting point for studying cultural processes. Materiality is understood here as “the tangibility of things” and refers to a growing body of theory which sees material culture as an active agent in relations with people rather than simply a representation of meaning. Materiality has been usefully described in terms of “potential presence” (Miller 1996, 27) and is as such highly relevant, so it seems, to study transnational networks. Beyond comparison, therefore, this session has two explicit aims.

In the first place it looks for a material culture approach to connectivity theory. People, goods and ideas are often studied as being directly related to one another in terms of, for instance, acculturation and exchange. However, networks of artefacts are not at all necessarily congruent with networks of peoples those artefacts are equated with. The application of materiality theory might help us to develop a truly material culture perspective on connectivity and globalisation; a perspective that might help us to further deconstruct the highly problematic paradigm of “area studies”.

In the second place it looks for the feasibility of globalisation studies as a theoretical framework to understand historical periods and societies. In recent years, a growing body of scholars has argued that globalisation is best understood from a deep historical perspective; criticising the ‘globalisation as modernity’ approach for its euro-centric stance, which they argue to effectively describe a phenomenon of Westernisation rather than globalisation.

Case studies discussing three specifically selected transnational networks (the pan Caribbean network in the common era; the Mediterranean network in the Bronze Age and the south east Asian network in Prehistory) will be presented from several different perspectives, mainly historical, archaeological and anthropological. The speakers have been invited to present and define their transnational network in general and comparative terms with the two aims described above in mind.

The discussion will be initiated by Prof. Dr. P. ter Keurs who will first elaborate on the concept of materiality and the role materiality theory can play in new understandings of connectivity and (the historicity of) globalisation. An important point in the discussion will be the feasibility of the term “hybrid” as a description or explanation of cultural phenomena in transnational, globalised contexts. What, in fact, is not, in some way or another a “hybrid” when we see intertwinedness as the raw material of history?

The session has been designed as to provide interesting interfaces with the other sessions of the conference. One can think here of the fluidity of “culture” and “identity” (ter Haar Romeny), the dynamics of intercultural identification (Hoving) and the transformative capacity of connections (Dietz). What this session adds to those debates is its focus on material culture and materiality.

Presenters:

Corinne Hofman (Archaeology, Leiden)

Jan-Paul Crielaard (Archaeology, VU)

Ilona Bausch (Archaeology, Leiden)

Discussant: Pieter ter Keurs (FSW, Leiden/Rijksmuseum)

 

 

Session 2: Transformations

Transformations: Religion and Migration

Chair: Bas ter Haar Romeny

According to popular views in Dutch society immigrants should either ‘integrate while retaining their own identity’ or ‘adapt themselves to Dutch standards and values’. Though these models are in perfect opposition to each other, they do have something in common. They are in fact both based on the same premise with regard to the nature of such categories as culture and identity. In both models, culture and identity are constant and immutable quantities that determine the way its carriers stand in life and develop themselves. One either accepts the identity of the receptor country or one keeps one’s own.

The question is whether this view of culture and identity conforms to reality. Among social scientists the idea that these categories are social constructs is winning ground. Some social scientists working on migration conclude that this means that culture and identity are fully determined by structural factors and are devoid of any capability of determining the outcome of socio-economic processes. There is, however, much to be said for a more dynamic view of culture and identity. For instance, it may be true that culture, as a collective inventory of meanings and values, is determined by the experience of social reality, but in its turn it also determines the way this reality is perceived. In other words, there is an element of continuity in culture: cultural patterns can survive even when structural constraints change. This has to do with the process of reification that takes place when culture and identity are communicated. What we find interesting is the way selections are being made: we appear to be able to ‘forget’ one part of our identity, to change another and to retain a third, in a process that is dependent on the context and often takes place unconsciously.

Migration of people is an outstanding example of a circumstance in which we see the dynamics at work, as the first two papers of this session will show. The exposure to a different culture and the sense of uprooting which life in a very different environment entails, are transforming the culture and identity of migrants, and in fact also other aspects of their life. However, it is not just the migrants who are involved: the receptor society and its identity is also transforming in the process. The third paper will show that similar dynamics can be observed when it is ideas and customs rather than people that migrate. Ideas and customs brought to a region by tradesmen, missionaries, or other means may lead local people to adapt to a new dominant culture. In each of the three case studies, it needs to be determined which patterns change and which remain, and the mix of change and continuity has to be explained.

The first two papers discuss Muslims and Christians who emigrated from the Middle East to Europe. These migrants exchanged an environment with an Islamic majority for a secular, in many ways post-Christian one. The question is: which elements in their identity are of a static nature, which appear to have been changed, and which are altogether new? A central role is played by religion: migrants from the Middle East define themselves—or used to define themselves—often on the basis of religion. Religion does indeed play an important role in many of these people’s lives, but like other elements of culture, it is not exempt from change either. Moreover, it plays its role not in isolation, but rather within a context where other factors are also important.

The third paper in this session gives an example of ‘migrating’ ideas. It discusses the events in central sudanic Africa following the introduction of the use of tobacco as well as the spread of Islam in the region. Tobacco and Islam represented two different cultures that moved into the area and were put in opposition to each other in a way that was specific to the local environment.

Format of the session. After a short introduction three 20-minute presentations will be held. A senior scholar will act as discussant. After each presentation he or she will give a first reaction, which is followed by general discussion.

Presenters:

Nathal M. Dessing (Leiden Institute for Religious Studies): Forms and Elements of Religiosity in Dutch Muslim Women’s Groups

Naures Atto (Leiden Institute for Religious Studies): The Dynamics of Shame ('aibo) and Sin (htitho) among Assyrians/Syriacs in Europe

Dorrit van Dalen (Leiden Institute for Area Studies): Choosing an Identity: Tobacco in 17th-Century Central Sudanic Africa

Discussant: Petra Sijpesteijn

 

 

Session 3: Round Table - Current Trends in Global Heritage Management

Current Trends in Global Heritage Management

Convenors: Peter Pels (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology) & Carolyn Nakamura (Leiden Global Interactions Research Profile)

‘World heritage’ has been supported since 1972 by a classical combination of authorities: the national sovereignty of nation-states, as delegated to an international organization like UNESCO in collaboration with academic experts, as represented by the advisory bodies like ICOMOS. Their routines of attributing value to heritage sites and items have long been questioned as reproducing western assumptions and biasing the business of heritage management towards the monumental and the European. Today, however, changes in global heritage management suggest more radical breaks with and critiques of UNESCO’s World Heritage model: while at the UNESCO level, the increasing recognition of global cultural diversity and the critique of universal value seems to go together with a crisis in the extent to which ICOMOS expertise is trusted, we also see different global perspectives developing in conjunction and as an alternative. In this panel, we would like to discuss both the crisis in world heritage management and the development of alternative forms of value attribution at UNESCO level; as well as two thought- provoking alternatives: what is now called “mutual heritage”, often developed against the background of –sometimes painful - colonial relationships; and the “corporate turn” in governance, which leads, among other things, to multinational companies putting forward their own heritage guidelines.

Participants:

Peter Pels (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology)

Willem Willems (Archaeology, Leiden)

Anouk Feinieg  (CIE)

Michael Rowlands (UCL)

 

 

Session 4: Imagined Histories

Imagined Histories

Chair: Dr. Isabel Hoving (Literary Studies)

Many narratives that articulate a collective self, need an absolute or abject other. This may be the otherness against which the self defines itself (for example the western image of the inscrutable Chinese that, according to Rey Chow, functions to indicate the limits of cultural comprehensibility even in Derrida’s critical writing), but it can also be an otherness that is evoked as the inexpressible truth of the self, as an authenticity that one has sadly lost. This is the case in early twentieth century modernist primitivist art and literature, to such an extent that modern art is said not to be able to exist without the primitive (Daniel Miller). Such polemic identifications with a fantasized pre-modern, non-western other often functioned as a cultural critique. Examples of such scandalous gestures of identification, which can be understood as political or social statements, abound. While the Trinidadian calypso-singers who performed “African war songs” to express their passionate affiliation with the Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1930s, when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, can still be understood as referring to a shared African heritage, the sixteenth-century slogan used by the rebels against the Spanish occupation of the Low Countries (“Rather Turkish than Papist”), shows that these polemic forms of identification need not be based on any shared genealogy at all. The commonality of such examples invites us to reconsider the dynamics of intercultural identification; the process is apparently radically relational (Glissant) instead of only concerned with the articulation of an identity; it responds with great flexibity to its changing opponents in a global context. As the most outspoken examples of these appropriations can be found in art and literature, the theories of art and literature especially have developed an extensive vocabulary to bring out these complexities.

The workshop  “Imagined Histories” will explore to what extent such intercultural constructions of cultural, social or political identities have found their way into the historical narratives of a nation or a (diasporic) community. We will specifically focus on the figure of the pre-modern in historical art practices, and consider the contemporary appreciation of each practice. Why, and for what (polemic) reasons, is the fantasmatic pre-modern included in certain national or communal (art) histories? Two cases will be discussed.

First, orientalism. We will talk about the place of orientalism in early twentieth century European art and literature and the reconsideration of that fascination with the seductive or perverse orientalist other in contemporary art and literary histories. We will also study the changing perceptions of seventeenth and eighteenth Ottoman art in Turkey. How do contemporary art historians and literary scholars theorize the hybridity (or syncretism) of these intercultural identifications, appropriations, or desires? How do they situate this orientalist/Ottoman past within a Dutch/Turkish history? How do their theories relate to political developments?

Second, cannibalism. We will consider the place of cannibalism in early twentieth century Brazilian literature, made highly visible in the Cannibal Manifest (de Andrade), and in contemporary Latin American and Caribbean art. How did the claim of this outrageous geneaology serve as a cultural or political critique, and what is the exact social or political function of its present-day evocations? How should we theorize this identification, or appropriation, desire, or polemic rage?

The workshop aims at problematizing current debates on the construction of identity in an intercultural or global context, by highlighting the surrealist, or unexpected aspects of identity formations, as well as the polemical nature of these identifications. By discussing the way in which such identifications have, or have not found, their way into national or communal (art and literary) histories, we hope to stimulate a debate about the role of theory and historiography in these processes. In addition, we hope to reflect on the differences in approach between art and literary theorists, historians, and sociologists.

Presenters:

Liesbeth Minnaard (ICD, Leiden)

Begum Firat (Istanbul/Netherlands)

Nanne Timmer (ICD, Leiden)

Discussant: Wieke Vink (Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken)

 

Session 5: The Social Life of Connections

The Social Life of Connections: Transforming technologies on the African continent

Chair: Mirjam De Bruijn (ASC)

It may be a platitude, never the less it is true, that in our globalised world all people, communities and places are connected to one another. From footpaths to Blackberry applications, from written texts to electronic images, humans have constructed and developed all manner of ways of connecting with one another. In the past 200 years humans have “quantum leapt” from lifetimes that generally did not extend beyond a radius of 5 kilometres, to the present in which hardly anyone blinks an eyelid or expresses surprise at receiving real-time images or data from anywhere around the globe. People, things and ideas now appear to effortlessly shuttle back and forth from one point on the globe to any other.

A decade ago academics marvelled at the impact of the globalised world and studied the rise of consumer identities and the “macdonaldisation” of the world. The world appeared to be becoming a bland superficial “spam”/“eenheidsworst” in which regional and cultural differences were erased in a wave of consumerism. However, when looked at a little closer, academics discovered, for instance, that Country and Western adepts in the Phillipines had their own specific and culturally determined understandings of Country and Western, which did not necessarily align with those of music producers and fans in Nashville Tennessee. It was clear that people and societies situated at various points around the globe displayed agency and selectively took on and transformed in their own imaginary whatever it was that the world had on offer.

The rise of globalisation studies led to a flurry of academics hastily seeking to show how their chosen community or society dealt with the globalising world. Whilst a number of historians cantankerously set about showing how their chosen people had always been part of a globalised world. Yet, what was missing from the bulk of these studies was an analysis of the socially transformative capacity of the connections that made for this globalised world. That is, people were particularly interested in researching and understanding the various distinct points in the network that now spanned the globe, but very few people actually looked at the socially transformative capacity of the connections that linked the distinct points. Following Appadurai and Latour, we would like to expand and explore the social life of connections.

Connections, that which enables two distinct points to be joined, all differ in form and shape, and differ in the socially transformative impact that they might have. It will be clear that there are differences for individuals between crossing a river by boat, bridge or mobile phone. But exactly what the socially transformative character of these innovations is for societies or communities is seldom studied. We would like to investigate these connections, not so much in terms of their material content (wood, steel, tungsten, etc.), but in terms of how they transform and change societies. Specifically we would like to take two examples drawn from our two disciplines, history and anthropology, and investigate what the implications are of research into connections with regard to source material. That is, what material can we use to write histories or anthropologies of connections.

Presenters:

Jan-Bart Gewald (ASC, Leiden)': Kaliloze Guns: writing the history of magical firearms in Western Zambia in the 1950s.

Jesper Bjarnesen (Anthropology, Uppsala): Ambiguous Returns: Conflicted Belongings in the Burkina Faso-Côte d'Ivoire Transnational Space

Discussant: Professor Paul Nugent (African History, University of Edinburgh)

 

 

Session 6: Asian Expressive Practices in the Context of Migration

Asian Expressive Practices in the Context of Migration: Traditions and Modernities

(Organized by the research Profile Asian Modernities and Traditions)

Chair: Patricia Spyer (Faculty of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Leiden/Anthropology, NYU)

Creative, expressive practices from ritual to the arts are significant ways in which societies mediate and negotiate change, reminding us that heritage is a dynamic category that continually shapes and is shaped by performance and public expression. This session looks at expressive practices in the context of international migration and transnational circulation. With papers dealing with Nepali migrants' ritual practices in Belgium and the UK (Hausner), Pakistani musicians' transnational networks connecting the UK and Pakistan (Hodgson), and Afghan refugees' poetry in Iran (Olszewska), we explore how expressive practices shape migrant communities, their lifeworlds, and the networks through which they and their music, poetry, and ritual practices circulate. We also explore the effects of migration on these expressive practices, as place, memory, identity, etc. take on new significance in new surroundings.  

Presenters:

Zuzanna Olszewska (Oriental Studies, Oxford): Afghan refugees' poetry in Iran

Thomas Hodgson (Music, Oxford): Pakistani musicians in Bradford, England

Sondra Hausner (Theology, Oxford): Nepali migrants and religious ritual in the UK and Belgium

Discussant: Anna Stirr (Leiden)

 

 

Film: 'Connecting Dreams'

‘Connecting Dreams’: Life histories, Crossing borders and New ICT

A film by Sjoerd Sijsma (Eyeses) and Mirjam de Bruijn (ASC)

(25 minutes)

Our communication landscape has changed radically with the introduction of wireless technology. The mobile phone has become a partner in our lives. This often labelled ‘communication revolution’ has as well impacted dramatically on the lives of many African families whose members often live widespread over the globe. The film confronts us with the liberty of communication and the reality of migration policies, but as well with the increasing connectedness and ideas about closeness yet being so distanced both in geography and life worlds. In the film we follow people from various social backgrounds, and show both the perspectives of those who stayed behind in Cameroon and those who went abroad.

The film is part of an on-going research programme based at the African Studies centre: ‘Mobile Africa Revisited’ (see: www.mobileafricarevisited.wordpress.com); this film is one of the many short films we have produced and that are accessible through our web-site. The film is a first step in the process of film-research interaction. We continue to follow the people in this film. This will finally end in a production of short films in which the life stories are presented in relation to communication and mobility.

 

 

 
Last Modified: 02-11-2011