European Ethnography

Migrating - Remitting -‘Building’- Dwelling: House-making as proxy presence in postsocialist Albania. in JRAI vol.16

by Dimitris Dalakoglou

This article examines the material culture of migration, focusing on migrants’ house-making projects in their... more This article examines the material culture of migration, focusing on migrants’ house-making projects in their countries of birth. In particular, it examines the houses built or refurbished by Albanians in their home-country, which is no longer their place of permanent residence. This is a widespread phenomenon in Albania, but it is also a frequently appearing practice amongst other international migrants. Why do migrants living outside their home-countries build houses there even though they do not plan to return? I seek to answer this question in the case of Albania by focusing empirically on the process of constructing these houses, rather than merely on the material entity of the house
as such. I propose that such ‘house-making’ by Albanian migrants is not only a simple house-building process; it also ensures a constant dwelling and dynamic ‘proxy’ presence for
migrants in their community of origin. These ethnographic observations have further significance for the anthropological study of both houses and international migration.

The road: An ethnography of the Albanian-Greek cross-border motorway. In American Ethnologist vol 37

by Dimitris Dalakoglou

This article is an ethnographic study of a 29-kilometer stretch of cross-border highway located in South Albania and... more This article is an ethnographic study of a 29-kilometer stretch of cross-border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokaster with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics
constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross-border road section as my main ethnographic
point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

[roads, globalization, transnationalism, development, postsocialism, materiality, Albania]

Prefazione [Foreword to] 'Vita agricola e pastorale nel mondo. Tecniche ed attrezzi tradizionali' by M Jean-Brunhes Delamarre (2001)

by F G Fedele

The Italian edition of a major book on European 'ethnography' (Ivrea: Priuli & Verlucca Editori). Foreword, pages 1-3; bibliography and museology, page 211.

SMEARED SOOT AND BLACK BLOOD: REINTRODUCING THE BROWN BEAR TO THE PYRENEES AND ITS FESTIVALS

by Patrick Mabey

A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Environmental Humanities
Department of English
August 2007

Currently underway in the Pyrenees Mountains is a reterritorialization that raises numerous polemical issues including... more Currently underway in the Pyrenees Mountains is a reterritorialization that raises numerous polemical issues including the nature of place-making, the influence politics
and economy have on human-wildlife interactions, perceptions of wildlife, and environmental ethics and justice. The human-bear interface throughout Pyrenean history,
alongside the present international 2006-2009 Restoration and Conservation Plan between France, Spain, and Andorra, reveals a complex and deeply entrenched coinhabitation,
decimation, and reintroduction hundreds of thousands of years in the making. With nineteen to twenty-three bears currently inhabiting the mountain range, and another ten more transplants from Slovenia projected over the next three years,
Pyrenean brown bear populations have the potential to resurge. Yet, this repopulation must be negotiated within economic and recreational contexts such as transhumance,
logging, hunting, skiing, and highway construction, and historical contexts including anthropocentric ideologies, a commerce of ursine fur and fat, political land
reorganization, and taxation.
Using first-hand experience at the Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste Bear Festival in 2004 as a narrative frame, this creative explication uses various types of French and English literature and individual voices to represent the Pyrenean body. Interdisciplinary lenses, including ethnography, anthropology, biology, history, economy, and politics have been used to bring about a multifaceted perspective on the Pyrenean topocosm. In part, this work focuses on the need for a reconstruction of ecocentric, regional and global Bear Ceremonial practices, especially in the context of performance art and festivals, in order to welcome bear repopulation.
The future survival of the Pyrenean-Slovenian brown bear depends upon a synthesis of characteristics seen in shepherds, bear exhibitors, hunters, and aboriginal
ecocentric beliefs. A new pattern of thinking and myth-making is presently happening, in which new festivals are engaging in a discourse infused with biology and the needs of
bears. Organizations involved in the direct sale of bioregional staples such as the Fromage Pé Descaous, a cheese imprinted with a bear’s paw, are not only yielding increased profits, but are bridging the gap between ecology and economy. Because of its
economic importance, and its relevance to both international species initiatives and bioregional festivals, the hope of this thesis is discovery and application.

Nostalgia culturalista y modernidad tardía. Persiguiendo la cultura en Castilla-La Mancha

by Monica Cornejo Valle

Гербер: о традиционном летнем празднике удмуртов

by Denis Sacharnych

Narratives of colonisation: the Quai Branly in context

by Alexandra Sauvage

Published in 2007 in ReCollections, Journal of the National Museum of Australia

This paper explores the origins and historical context of the museum and its collections, and the history of... more This paper explores the origins and historical context of the museum and its collections, and the history of Indigenous Australian collections and Australia's involvement in the museum's design.

Emmanuel De Martonne and the Ethnographical Cartography of Central Europe

by Gilles PALSKY

Synchronized arousal between performers and related spectators in a fire-walking ritual

by Dimitris Xygalatas

co-authored with I. Konvalinka, J. Bulbulia, U. Schjødt, E-M. Jegindø, S. Wallot, G. Van Orden, and A. Roepstorff.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2011.

Collective rituals are present in all known societies, but their function is a matter of long-standing debates. Field... more Collective rituals are present in all known societies, but their function is a matter of long-standing debates. Field observations suggest that they may enhance social cohesion and that their effects are not limited to those actively performing but affect the audience as well. Here we show physiological effects of synchro- nized arousal in a Spanish fire-walking ritual, between active participants and related spectators, but not participants and other members of the audience. We assessed arousal by heart rate dynamics and applied nonlinear mathematical analysis to heart rate data obtained from 38 participants. We compared synchro- nized arousal between fire-walkers and spectators. For this comparison, we used recurrence quantification analysis on in- dividual data and cross-recurrence quantification analysis on pairs of participants’ data. These methods identified fine-grained com- monalities of arousal during the 30-min ritual between fire- walkers and related spectators but not unrelated spectators. This indicates that the mediating mechanism may be informational, because participants and related observers had very different bodily behavior. This study demonstrates that a collective ritual may evoke synchronized arousal over time between active partic- ipants and bystanders. It links field observations to a physiological basis and offers a unique approach for the quantification of social effects on human physiology during real-world interactions.

The Burning Saints: Cognition and Culture in the Fire-walking Rituals of the Anastenaria

by Dimitris Xygalatas

forthcoming by Equinox Press, London.

The Burning Saints is an anthropological account of the fascinating tradition of fire-walking rituals performed by the... more The Burning Saints is an anthropological account of the fascinating tradition of fire-walking rituals performed by the communities of the Anastenaria in Northern Greece in honour of Saints Constantine and Helen.

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and insights from various disciplines across the humanities and the natural sciences, this book offers a multi-level approach of the Anastenaria. It examines the historical development and sociocultural context of the Greek fire-walking tradition, while at the same time placing it within a wider framework of highly arousing rituals, discussing possible social, psychological and neurobiological factors that may be involved in their performance. Of particular interest is the role of emotional and physiological arousal involved in the performance of such rituals in motivating participation, mediating experience and providing meaning for it.

Shifting identities: A comparative study of Basque and Western cultural conceptualizations

by Roslyn Frank

Another paper in the series “Hunting the European Sky Bears”.

Full citation reference:

Frank, Roslyn M. 2005. “Shifting identities: A comparative study of Basque and Western cultural conceptualizations.” Cahiers of the Association for French Language Studies 11 (2): 1-54. Also available online at: http://www.afls.net/cahiers/11.2/frank.pdf

The paper analyzes two contrasting sets of cultural conceptualizations. One centers around the complementary opposition of the colours 'black vs. red' represented by cognitive frames of traditional Basque thought and performance art while the other set is the deeply rooted hierarchical opposition of 'black vs. white', embedded in Western thought.

As is well known, the Western worldview brings into play an extended colour-coded cultural model known as the Great... more As is well known, the Western worldview brings into play an extended colour-coded cultural model known as the Great Chain of Being, grounded in a mutually exclusive, asymmetric opposition between ‘black’ and ‘white’. In contrast, the Basque model introduces complementary colour-coded oppositions consisting of ‘black’ and ‘red’. The Basque dataset model should not be understood as merely some kind of inversion of the Western one, but rather as being composed of a radically different set of cognitive alignments. Nonetheless, there are junctures where the reader may be able to identify a certain overlap between the component parts of the two systems. Moreover, in the case of the Basque model it is clear that these alignments harken back to earlier indigenous pan-European beliefs in the efficacy of the colour black, its intrinsic epistemological grounding in notions of fecundity and wholeness as well as the positive role of black animals in general.

So far our provisional research results argue for the following scenario: that in the case of Europe the powerful life-giving and protecting characteristics associated previously with the colour black have been distorted, although not totally eradicated from the consciousness of Europeans, in part because of the influence of the Catholic Church and the Inquisitional authorities. The task of countering black’s positive polarity was central to the Church’s efforts to win converts. Given that the colour black was a key component in the competing eco-centric cosmology, attempts to assign a different value to it constituted an assault on one of the principle tenets of the indigenous interpretative grid. The fact that the colour black continues to have a highly charged aura about it – the sudden appearance of a black cat still generates a certain level of uneasiness in modern urban dwellers – testifies to the resilient nature of the older eco-centric cosmology: it has not been forgotten.

In contrast to the hierarchical anthropocentric cultural model encountered in and propagated by the ontological metaphors encountered in the Western dataset, we allege that those found in the Basque dataset derive their vitality from this earlier pan-European eco-centric cosmology, grounded in a different myth of origins, namely, in the belief that humans descend from bears. Reflexes of the belief in the sacredness of bears are still encountered in the rich folkloric traditions and practices of Euskal Herria.

An essay in European ethnomathematics: The social and cultural bases of the vara de Burgos and its relationship to the Basque Septuagesimal System

by Roslyn Frank

Fulll citation reference:

Frank, Roslyn M. 1999. An essay in European ethnomathematics: The social and cultural bases of the vara de Burgos and its relationship to the Basque Septuagesimal System.” ZDM. Zentralblatt für Didaktik der Mathematik 31, 2 (April 1999): 59-65.

In 1780 the renowned French historian of metrology Alexis Paucton [1780:166, 191-195] argued that the physical length... more In 1780 the renowned French historian of metrology Alexis Paucton [1780:166, 191-195] argued that the physical length of the "feet" of the vara de Burgos (which are identical to those of the Basque bar standards of Gipuzkoa and Bizkaia) should be adopted as the universal linear standard, rather than the length of the new decimal meter bar standard which at that time had been proposed by a group of French astronomers, including Méchain and Delambre. Although Paucton was unaware of the Basque Septuagesimal System (BSS), his intuition was correct since, as the present study demonstrates, the geometric feet coded into the vara de Burgos produce a remarkably accurate geodetic model [Frank 1997b].

Furthermore, given the evidence, the septuagesimal system of coordinates along with its unique celestial and terrestrial cartographic traditions and other related cognitive artifacts, e.g., an ingenious device called the Thread and Pearl Analog Calculator (TPAC) as well as the units of measurement and the geometry embedded in the construction of the Basque stone octagons [Frank-Patrick 1993], suggests that the different modes of numerical and geometric thought intrinsic to the BSS should be considered indigenous to Western Europe while the cognitive origins of the system itself and its ecocentric cosmovision can be traced back to the Iron Age or even before [Frank 1996a; Zaldua 1996].

Kurzreferat: Ein Essay über europäische Ethnomathematik:Soziale und kulturelle Grundlagen des vara de Burgos – Maßes und seine Beziehung zum baskischen Septuagesimalsystem. 1780 sprach sich der berühmte Metrologie-Historiker Alexis Paucton dafür aus, die physikalische Länge ”feet” des vara de Burgos-Maßes als universelles Längenmaß zu nehmen anstelle des neuen dezimalen Längenmaßes, das zu dieser Zeit von einer Gruppe französicher Astronomen, unter ihnen Méchain und Delambre, vorgeschlagen wurde. Obwohl Paucton das baskische Septuagesimalsystem (BSS) nicht kannte, war seine Intuition richtig, denn – wie diese Arbeit zeigt – geometrische Fuß kodiert nach vara de Burgos ergeben ein bemerkenswert genaues geodätisches Modell.

Des weiteren wird durch das septuagesimale Koordinatensystem zusammen mit den einzigartigen Traditionen der Himmelsund Erdkartographie und anderen kognitiven Artefakten (wie z.B. ein raffiniertes, Thread and Pearl Analog Calculator genanntes Werkzeug) wie auch durch die Geometrie, die in der Konstruktion der baskischen steinernen Achtecke steckt, nahegelegt, den Ursprung der verschiedenen, dem BSS innewohnenden Arten des numerischen und geometrischen Denkens Westeuropa zuzurechnen, während die kognitiven Ursprünge des Systems und seiner ökozentrischen Kosmovision bis zur Eisenzeit und davor zurückverfolgt werden können.

ZDM-Classification: A30, F70, G70, M50