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Visionary Practices In Comparative Perspective: An Anthropology of the Imaginal

Description

studija_imaginarnega
Photo: Maja Petrović-Šteger

The research proposes to study visionary conceptions of the world that are not yet fully socially embedded or networked, but carry in them a potential for social change. It will focus on visionary people and imaginal practices in four fieldsites – Serbia, Albania, Papua New Guinea and India, who, in a climate of hopelessness, intend radical social transformation premissed on some notion of the common good. The research will foster collaborative inquiry, ethnographically-based but theoretically precise, into how individuals and groups understand their mediation of sociohistorical change.

The project, comprising four researchers (including PI), will last 36 months. The team will address comparatively, ethnographically and theoretically:

  1. a range of visions and visionaries (creators, makers, scientists, artists, thinkers) oriented to societal transformation, and
  2. the meaning and effects such imaginal practices have in wider social contexts of Serbia, Albania, Papua New Guinea and India.

Our central suggestions are:

  1. that ethnography of the visionary can observe the ways in which individual and collective imaginative practices acquire social purchase,
  2. and that theoretical attention to the imaginal can explain history and time as potently as anthropologies insisting on economic, political or religious analyses. In turning to emergent seeds of vitality – the visionary ideas and the imaginal – this project breaks with the assumption that politico-economic language represents the ultimate terms in which anthropologies of certain postconflict, postcommunist or postcolonial societies ought to articulate these contexts’ sense of their time.

While adopting a critical, not starstruck, position in relation to ‘visionary’ ideas, research goal is to open up a discussion on the value of training anthropological attention on not just observable facts but also on what is latent in historically-situated consciousness.


Results

  1. Research Articles

GREGORIČ BON, Nataša. 2022. Restoring pasts and enriching futures in Albania. Anthropological quarterly. Fall 2022, vol. 95, no. 4, str. 731-760. ISSN 0003-5491. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/35/article/871104, DOI: 10.1353/anq.2022.0043. COBISS.SI-ID 131971587

GREGORIČ BON, Nataša, STANČIČ, Liza, KANJIR, Urška. 'Vjosa riverine environments: approaching dynamic continuity'. Anthropological notebooks. 2022, vol. 28, issue 3, pp. 39-73. ISSN 2232-3716. http://notebooks.drustvo-antropologov.si/Notebooks/article/view/558/449, http://www.dlib.si/details/URN:NBN:SI:doc-ZH8YJ50N, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7463519. [COBISS.SI-ID 150085891].

JELNIKAR, Ana. 2023. Towards the symbol of a missing fullness : place of travel and education in Rabindranath Tagore's world vision. V: QUAYUM, Mohammad A. (ur.). Rabindranath Tagore’s journey as an educator : critical perspectives on his poetics and praxis. London [i. e.] Abingdon; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023. Str. 214-231. ISBN 978-0-367-69500-2, ISBN 978-0-367-74428-1. COBISS.SI-ID 131580163

JELNIKAR, Ana. '"A Holy Experiment": Medical Mission Sisters or How Women Religious within the Catholic Church Became Doctors'. The Journal of religious history. 2023, vol. 47, issue 3, pp. 405-438. ISSN 0022-4227. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9809.12938, DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12938. [COBISS.SI-ID 144382211], [WoS, Scopus]

  1. Research papers presented at conferences and workshops

GREGORIČ BON, Nataša. Engaging pasts, unlocking futures: predavanje na mednarodni konferenci "Europe's Past, Present and Future: Utopias and Dystopias", University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland, June 27-29, 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID 161295875]

JELNIKAR, Ana. 2022. "Can a woman act?": autographical fiction of missionary Marija Sreš in Tribal India. H-WRBI Conference 2022 "Women Religious Lives and Life Stories", UCD University Club, University College Dublin, June 2 & 3, 2022. COBISS.SI-ID 131575811

JELNIKAR, Ana. Women's Voices in Adivasi Literature : Marija Sreš's Short Stories about Sabarkantha Tribal Women. St. Xavier's College, Ahmedabad, Indija, 25. jan. 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID 172510211]

JELNIKAR, Ana. “My Passage to India”: Travelogue as a Gendered Site of Missionary Ideas and Expectations. H-WRBI konferenca 2023 "History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland", University of Roehampton, London, 8.-9. jun. 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID 172510467]

PETROVIĆ-ŠTEGER, Maja. 2022. Pollution and its metaphors: climate change in Serbia. Experiencing climate and environmental changes in and beyond Europe: symposium. May 5th-7th, 2022, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana. COBISS.SI-ID 107438851

PETROVIĆ-ŠTEGER, Maja. 2022. Waste, value and death in a riparian environment. "Disturbance on the Danube: State, Infrastructure and the Environment" international workshop. September 29-30, 2022, New Europe College, Bucharest. COBISS.SI-ID 129867267

PETROVIĆ-ŠTEGER, Maja. An anthropology of the imaginal in contemporary Serbia : predavanje na mednarodni konferenci "Europe's Past, Present and Future : Utopias and Dystopias", University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland, June 27-29, 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID 158675715]

TELBAN, Borut. 2022. The materiality of religious experience in the Karawari region of Papua New Guinea. 13th ESfO Conference, June 2-5, 2022, Ajaccio, Corsica. COBISS.SI-ID 116307715

TELBAN, Borut. 2022. Kunaypa historicity: conceptual specificity of temporal reciprocity in the Sepik, Papua New Guinea. International Workshop on Historical Awareness and Agency “Pasts in the Making", November 10-11, 2022, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Aarhus (DNK) COBISS.SI-ID: 130525699

TELBAN, Borut. Relational ontology in a Sepik (PNG) society. Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society, November 29, 2023, Macquarie University, Sydney. COBISS.SI-ID 175004163

  1. Lectures given by the project members

GREGORIČ BON, Nataša. Remitting values, reassuring well-being: social entrepreneurship in Albania. Visiting lectures to PhD students at IQS School of Management, Universitat Ramon Llull (ESP), 19. Jul. 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID 161296131]

PETROVIĆ-ŠTEGER, Maja. Cognitve anthropology : an invited lecture for the students of interdisciplinary master’s programme in Cognitive Science (MEi:CogSci), Medical University, Ljubljana, May 17th, 2023[COBISS.SI-ID 152827651]

TELBAN, Borut. Specificity of religious im/materiality in a Sepik (Papua New Guinea) society : e-invited MS Teams online lecture within "Anthropology Research Seminar, Term 1, Autumn 2023", Brunel University London (GB), 3 October 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID 172718083]

  1. Public lectures organised within the project

HIRSCH, Eric. Visions and effects in Melanesia: description, cosmology and transformative act : Invited Guest Lectures Series organised by the research team "Visionary Practices In Comparative Perspective: An Anthropology of the Imaginal ", Dvorana štirih letnih časov, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 21. sep. 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID - 170815235]

HONKASALO, Marja-Liisa. Vulnerability matters : Invited Guest Lectures Series organised by the research team "Visionary Practices In Comparative Perspective: An Anthropology of the Imaginal ", Dvorana štirih letnih časov, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 19. apr. 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID - 152826371]

KAPILA, Kriti. Nullius : owning and dispossessing in contemporary India : Invited Guest Lectures Series organised by the research team "Visionary Practices In Comparative Perspective: An Anthropology of the Imaginal ", Dvorana štirih letnih časov, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 4. maj 2023. [COBISS.SI-ID - 152827139]

  1. Round-tables and interviews

JELNIKAR, Ana (intervjuvanec). Jezus Kristus, Srečko Kosovel in boginja Kali : Ana Jelnikar, raziskovalka. Dnevnik, Dnevnikov objektiv. [Tiskana izd.]. 21. maj 2022, leto 72, št. 116, str. 14-16, fotogr. ISSN 1318-0320, ISSN 1854-6781. https://www.dnevnik.si/1042989483. COBISS.SI-ID 131339523

JELNIKAR, Ana (interviewee), KOZIN, Tina (presenter). Ismat Chughtai in Saadat Hasan Manto – authors, who did not succumb to the dictates of their era. Ljubljana: Radiotelevizija Slovenija javni zavod, 2023. Literarna matineja. https://ars.rtvslo.si/podkast/literarna-matineja/173250796/174999291. [COBISS.SI-ID 172328963]

JELNIKAR, Ana (interviewee), MOTOH, Helena (interviewee), ŠTEFANČIČ, Nadina (interviewer). The 20th century is very important for migration routes; it also includes women missionaries. Interview with Ana Jelnikar and Helena Motoh, authors of Potovanje v Indijo / A Passage to India : MMC RTV SLO 27. March 2023. MMC RTV SLO https://www.rtvslo.si/kultura/intervju/20-stoletje-je-za-migracijske-poti-zelo-pomembno-vanj-spadajo-tudi-misijonarke-in-misijonarji/662651. [COBISS.SI-ID 149214979]

JELNIKAR, Ana (interviewee), UDOVČ, Andreja (interviewer). Deceitful beds and Translation into the original : a conversation with Ana Jelnikar, editor of the Hermit Crab book series. Sanje TV, 2023. https://sanje.tv/zbirka-rak-samotar-prevajanje-v-izvirnik-pogovor-z-urednico-ano-jelnikar_375f44e61.html. [COBISS.SI-ID 172732163]

PETROVIĆ-ŠTEGER, Maja (diskutant), RUS-MAKOVEC, Maja (diskutant), KUHAR, Metka (diskutant). Znamenja preteklosti: okrogla miza v okviru dogodka Teden možganov, 18. marec 2022, Atrij ZRC, Ljubljana. COBISS.SI-ID 101791747


Research Project

Keywords
primerjalna antropologija
etnografija vizionarskih praks
antropologija imaginalnega
družbene spremembe
družbeno samorazumevanje
Srbija
Albanija
Papua Nova Gvineja
Indija

Research Fields
Kulturna antropologija, etnologija S220