Oscar Hemer

Thomas Tufte

Marie Brobeck

Anders Høg Hansen

This book approaches the memory sharing of groups, communities, and societies as inevitable struggles over the interpretation of, and authority over, particular stories. Coming to terms with the past in memory work - alone or with others - is always unsteady ground, and the activation of memory will always relay imaginations of futures that we want to shape and inhabit. The book's contributors all explore in different ways how citizens can actualize a public and how citizens and groups struggle with their pasts and presents (and other group's understandings) in their work for futures they dream of, or envision. This implies an engagement with the notion of social justice which in turn entails trial and revision of ideas and procedures of how to share the world. But, to share also requires some kind of common ground and distributed power. The anthology engages with a range of cases that bring views and voices back in public, demanding justice, recognition, sometimes literally triggering new trials. Some of the memory work is done strategically in the context of communication for development and social change interventions, where NGOs, community based organizations, governments, or UN agencies pursue, not just voice and views, but also very material demands for social justice and social change. (Series: Culture: Research and Science / Kultur: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Vol. 20) [Subject: Memory Studies, Sociology, Social Justice]

Media, Citizenship and Social Justice

Memory on Trial

In an unusual merging of academic and literary practices, this volume attempts to identify a form (or forms) that is congenial with the subject of interrogation: the world in transition, with South Africa as the main focal point. Approaching anthropology from the position of the literary writer, Oscar Hemer here takes the reader through a kaleidoscope of perspectives—a stream-of-consciousness understanding of “writing the city” of Johannesburg, embedding ethnography in subjectivity; a challenge to binaries both temporal and gendered in examining the growth of the IT metropolis Bangalore to a combusting mega-city; an auto-ethnographic interweaving of fictional reportage with a close-reading of anthropological and philosophical treatises, including Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger and Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, among others—to interrogate themes of transition, identity, purity and variation in the Western Cape. As the form transcends boundaries to create a methodological hybrid, creolization comes to the fore as a theoretical concept and as cultural practice.

Southern Crossings

Contaminations and Ethnographic Fictions

Per-Markku Ristilammi

Maja Povrzanović Frykman

Conviviality has lately become a catchword not only in academia but also among political activists. This open access book discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. The urgency of todays global predicament is not only an argument for the revival of all three concepts, but also a reason to bring them into dialogue. Ivan Illich envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of 'autonomous individuals and primary groups (Illich 1973), which resembles present-day manifestations of 'convivialism. Paul Gilroy refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be 'at ease in contexts of diversity (Gilroy 2004). Rather than replacing one concept with the other, the fourteen contributors to this book seek to explore the interconnections - commonalities and differences - between them, suggesting that creolisation is a necessary complement to the already-intertwined concepts of conviviality and cosmopolitanism. Although this volume takes northern Europe as its focus, the contributors take care to put each situation in historical and global contexts in the interests of moving beyond the binary thinking that prevails in terms of methodologies, analytical concepts, and political implementations.

Conviviality at the Crossroads

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Äventyraren vid världens ände

Maja Povrzanovic Frykman

Conviviality has lately become a catchword not only in academia but also among political activists. This open access book discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. The urgency of today's global predicament is not only an argument for the revival of all three concepts, but also a reason to bring them into dialogue. Ivan Illich envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of 'autonomous individuals and primary groups' (Illich 1973), which resembles present-day manifestations of 'convivialism'. Paul Gilroy refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be 'at ease' in contexts of diversity (Gilroy 2004). Rather than replacing one concept with the other, the fourteen contributors to this book seek to explore the interconnections - commonalities and differences - between them, suggesting that creolisation is a necessary complement to the already-intertwined concepts of conviviality and cosmopolitanism. Although this volume takes northern Europe as its focus, the contributors take care to put each situation in historical and global contexts in the interests of moving beyond the binary thinking that prevails in terms of methodologies, analytical concepts, and political implementations. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

What can fiction tell us about the world that journalism and science cannot? This simple yet vast question is the starting-point for an interrogation of the relationship between literary fiction and society's dramatic transformation in South Africa and Argentina over the past several decades. The resulting discursive text borders on both journalism and literature, incorporating reportage, essay, and memoir. (Series: Freiburg Studies in Social Anthropology - Vol. 34)

Writing the Present Past in South Africa and Argentina

Fiction and Truth in Transition

Hans-Åke Persson

This edited volume addresses various aspects of social and political development in Turkey and the latter’s role within a global context. Paradigmatically and theoretically, it is situated in the realm of communication and/for social change. The chapters thread together to present a fresh and innovative study that explores an array of issues related to the Gezi protests and their aftermath by scholars and activists from Scandinavia, Turkey and India. Through its thorough analysis of the government’s repressive policy and the communication strategies of resistance, during the protests as well as in the dramatic on-going aftermath, the volume has wide international and interdisciplinary appeal, suitable for those with an interest in globalization, communication and media, politics, and social change.

Oscar Hemer

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