Anuac

Anthropology, financial expansion and its relationalities from “marginal sites”: An introduction

2024-02-25T18:39:18+01:00

In this introduction we map the tradition of thoughts and state of the art on the study of finance and financialization in relation to the anthropological Italian debate. We suggest a particular attention towards ethnographic approaches “from the margins” of finance that can help build a non unilinear and west-centric agenda for studying financial expansion also in the Italian context. Then we discuss conceptual trends on financial expansion that emerged in the international anthropological debate after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), underlining a shift from the “double movement” analysis to the rediscovery and the reframing of relational approach. Thinking of financialization beyond the dualistic interpretative prism that sets finance against society, movement against counter movement, center against periphery we invite to conceptualize financial expansion as the result of a variety of independent but related processes which must be apprehended holistically. We consider ethnography as an opportunity to unravel the multiple spatial and temporal axes and kinds of processes that constitute financial expansion. When analyzed ethnographically, financialization seems to proceed by simultaneous movements and countermovement resulting from the confrontation among increasingly financialized subjects. This interactive practice produces attempts that, despite the power asymmetries, might result in unplanned transformative outcomes.

Bringing dissent to shareholders’ meetings: An investigation into critical shareholding

2024-02-24T17:21:26+01:00

This article deals with critical shareholding, that is, the action of non-profit organizations that resorts to involvement in corporate ownership as shareholders to promote socially responsible corporate behaviours. Based on the combined use of sociological and anthropological tools, I focus on the attendance of annual general meetings (AGMs) as a gateway to understand the potential and the limits of the transformative power of marginal actors in investment capitalism. My findings suggest that confrontation through share ownership exerts transformative pressures not only on companies but also on activist organizations, which over time are called to redefine their skills, actions and intervention logic to pursue their goals more effectively and report them to their stakeholders. Thus, the analysis of the phenomenon reveals the dialectical nature of the processes that take place in and around the AGM, giving them a place in the complex dynamics of movements and countermovements of finance and their mutual relationship.

State action and the movements of finance during the Spanish housing crisis: Alleviating or amplifying the social impacts of financialization?

2024-02-24T17:22:48+01:00

This paper addresses the entanglements, complicities and collisions between financialization processes and state action during the current housing crisis in Spain, with a focus on Catalonia and the Barcelona area in the last decade. Departing from the assumption that housing financialization has been a major driver of the crisis, state interventions, including housing policies and legal regulations imposed on financial and real estate markets and on landlord-tenant relations, will be interpreted as modulators that may either alleviate or amplify the impacts of financial dynamics on people’s access to adequate housing. Drawing on the cases of several legal reforms, we will illustrate variegated attitudes towards financial extraction adopted by different state agencies. It will be thus shown how, in the rare cases where the state has tried to alleviate the social harms derived from financial extraction, reforms have been superficial, have arrived late, and have failed to reverse the structural drivers of the crisis. We will thus try to shed some light into the nature of state action in the face of housing financialization, contending that states should not be understood as outsides with respect to finance, as, to the contrary, they are part of finance’s very conditions of possibility.

Disruption, interrupted: Startups and social challenges in a government accelerator

2024-02-24T17:27:19+01:00

This article investigates how the dual demands of finance and social impact affect the relationships of founders to disruption, as a rhetorical function, material goal and relational context. Building on recent studies of innovation and entrepreneurship such as Bardinelli (2019), Irani (2019) and Lindtner (2020), the article offers a nuanced view of disruption that complicates unidimensional narratives of financialization as a singular force and accounts for the complexity of reconciling financial and social interests. Based on data gathered at a startup participating in a government-funded accelerator program in Melbourne, Australia, we analyse how the logics of finance impact entrepreneurial experience in an early-stage social enterprise startup. Our data suggests that, in their attempts to attract the attention and funding of financial investors, founders of early-stage startups focus more on proving the value of their disruption in a rhetorical sense than on refining the materially disruptive potential of their products to ensure real world social impact. By analysing disruption through a relational lens, we identify four layers of disruption (product innovation; social value; financial return; and labour relations) to which early-stage startups are aligned, and through which their products and personal lives are transformed.

Sacred residues in museums: A membrane ethnography of Taiwanese religious heritage

2024-02-24T17:29:33+01:00

This article reflects on the existing dynamics between the sacredness derived from the museumification of religious items and the sacredness of those artefacts employed in rituals that survive in museum spaces as a trace or sacred residue (Beekers 2016). Which sacrality predominates, and how do they influence each other? Through an ethnography conducted in several Taiwanese museums, the article probes into a stratification of sacralities: the encounter between Buddhist and Chinese religious practitioners with museum artefacts’ sacred residue reflects complex and unpredictable dynamics. The ethnography presented in this article is defined as membrane ethnography since the relationship between humans and matter is like a membrane that unites and simultaneously separates, filters and subjectifies. This article extends the meaning of sacred residue by examining the reproducibility of religious artefacts through technological or experiential means. The latter, rather than determining the artefacts’ inauthenticity, makes the sacred residue more explicit. Furthermore, the ethnography of the membrane shows how non-European contexts are permeated by porosity and interdependency between the secular and the sacred of religious heritage, thus preventing a dichotomisation between museums and ritual contexts for analysing the implied dynamics between them instead.

More seats at “The Philosopher’s Table”: The reinvigoration of a multicultural community association in southern Italy during and post-pandemic

2024-02-25T08:08:57+01:00

How voluntary associations promote social interaction across difference and contribute to building diverse communities are questions of relevance in Italy and beyond. To be successful, associations must earn and maintain reputations as groups worth joining. To do so can be challenging, given that they bring together people with different life experiences and languages. To thrive, groups must remain flexible and adaptive. This article addresses an under-considered type of voluntary association that contributes to building relationships and shared sense of community across cultural boundaries: the multicultural social club. The report is based upon early findings from an on-going ethnographic study in Puglia concerning the aspirations, activities, and life-cycles of multicultural clubs. It describes how members of one organization – The Philosopher’s Table – launched themselves on a path of reflection and reinvigoration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their objectives were to discover ways better to serve existing members, assist the community, and increase membership. Among the club’s noteworthy characteristics is that it includes locally-born Italians and expatriates in nearly equal number. Expatriates rarely receive attention in discussions of diverse communities in Italy. Findings from this project help address that knowledge gap, contribute to current interest in conviviality in multicultural settings, and extend understandings of the dynamics and life-cycles of social leisure groups that are diverse by design.

A journey between literature and anthropology

2024-02-05T08:57:07+01:00

Review article of Andrea Canobbio, La traversata notturna, Milano, La nave di Teseo, 2022, pp. 520; Renzo Guolo, Michel Leiris etnologo, Milano, Meltemi, 2022, pp. 274.

Francesco Apergi, I mezzadri e i trovatelli: Famiglie e senza famiglia nei poderi del Mugello (secoli XIX-XX), Firenze, Società editrice fiorentina, 2023, pp. 108

2024-02-05T08:57:34+01:00

Book review of Francesco Apergi, I mezzadri e i trovatelli: Famiglie e senza famiglia nei poderi del Mugello (secoli XIX-XX), Firenze, Società editrice fiorentina, 2023, pp. 108.

Alessandra Brivio, Serpenti, sirene e sacerdotesse: Antropologia dei mondi acquatici in Africa occidentale, Roma, Viella, 2023, pp. 216

2024-02-05T08:57:46+01:00

Book review of Alessandra Brivio, Serpenti, sirene e sacerdotesse: Antropologia dei mondi acquatici in Africa occidentale, Roma, Viella, 2023, pp. 216.

Alessandra Ciucci, The voice of the rural: Music, poetry and masculinity among migrant Moroccan men in Umbria, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2022, pp. 228

2024-02-05T08:57:58+01:00

Book review of Alessandra Ciucci, The voice of the rural: Music, poetry and masculinity among migrant Moroccan men in Umbria, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2022, pp. 228.

Gabriella D’Agostino, Vincenzo Matera, eds, Storie dell’antropologia, Milano, UTET, 2022, pp. 635

2024-02-05T08:58:10+01:00

Book review of Gabriella D’Agostino, Vincenzo Matera, eds, Storie dell’antropologia, Milano, UTET, 2022, pp. 635.

Serena Olcuire, Indecorose: Sex work e resistenza al governo dello spazio pubblico nella città di Roma, Verona, Ombre corte, 2023, pp. 236

2024-02-05T08:58:47+01:00

Book review of Serena Olcuire, Indecorose: Sex work e resistenza al governo dello spazio pubblico nella città di Roma, Verona, Ombre corte, 2023, pp. 236.

Denise Pettinato, Etnografia al bancone: Spazi, corpi, oggetti nelle pratiche del bar, Afterword by Pietro Meloni, Pisa, Pacini, 2022, pp. 231

2024-02-05T08:58:59+01:00

Book review of Denise Pettinato, Etnografia al bancone: Spazi, corpi, oggetti nelle pratiche del bar, Afterword by Pietro Meloni, Pisa, Pacini, 2022, pp. 231.

Antonello Ricci, Sguardi lontani: Fotografia ed etnografia nella prima metà del Novecento, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2023, pp. 237

2024-02-05T08:59:11+01:00

Book review of Antonello Ricci, Sguardi lontani: Fotografia ed etnografia nella prima metà del Novecento. Con immagini di Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Griaule, Renato Boccassino, Lamberto Loria e Raffaele Corso, Gregory Bateson e Margaret Mead, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2023, pp. 237.

Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the idea of degrowth communism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 276

2024-02-05T08:59:22+01:00

Book review of Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the idea of degrowth communism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 276.

Francesco Scotti, Per una storia della riforma psichiatrica in Umbria: Nascita ed evoluzione di una psichiatria di comunità in Umbria, Perugia, Morlacchi, 2021 (vol. 1, pp. 448), 2022 (vol. 2, pp. 506)

2024-02-05T08:59:40+01:00

Book review of Francesco Scotti, Per una storia della riforma psichiatrica in Umbria: Nascita ed evoluzione di una psichiatria di comunità in Umbria, Perugia, Morlacchi, 2021 (vol. 1, pp. 448), 2022 (vol. 2, pp. 506).

Patrick Williams, Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans, Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins, Gens du voyage…, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2022, pp. 601

2024-02-05T08:59:52+01:00

Book review of Patrick Williams, Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans, Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins, Gens du voyage…, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2022, pp. 601.