(R)E-TIES: Managing mobility and human relations in digitally saturated social worlds

Morell, M. 23.–26.07.2024. On the sacredness of the concrete scale in urban conflict. A dispatch from the Maltese frontline. In: European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) 18th Biennial Conference: Doing and Undoing with Anthropology. Barcelona, Spain

In this paper I aim to explore the sacralisation of the scale of the concrete that many social movements across world profess in their opposition to development projects. While on the one hand the character of the concrete is expressed through the denunciation and mobilisation against urbanisation projects located in a specific time and place, on the other such concreteness manifests itself in the severing these from the economic model that encourages them, hence precluding any kind of struggle against it.

By illustrating this double movement with the heuristic capacity of the changing economic vision of the Maltese state in the last half century (from tourism development to the attraction of financial assets), I determine a continuum based on the spurring of the brick-and-mortar economy opposed by the laudable struggle carried out by organisations such as Moviment Graffitti, one that among other programmatic axes opposes these speculative projects. Yet the ritualised form that its protest takes privileges the local scale to the point of sacralising it, thus avoiding the questioning of the economic policy encouraged by the Maltese authorities.

I conclude that although the sacralisation of the concrete scale is strategically positive to be able to create alliances between agencies of all sorts where these projects take place, the lack of a connection of these with the national dynamics of the promotion of tourism and the attraction of financial assets only reinforces a Sisyphean struggle that does not seem to have an end date.

Puzo, I. 27.02.2025. Between knowledge and intimacy? Employment-related decision-making among international scholars in Japan and Latvia. In: Conference: New Pathways, New Perspectives: Migration to Non-Traditional Destinations. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

In this paper, I critically examine oft taken for granted rhetoric about academic mobility as a desirable move. I do so by zooming in on how mobility decisions are coproduced by researchers and people important to them. Based on semi-structured interviews with international scholars in Japan and Latvia as well as other ethnographic data, I highlight the ways in which researchers center personal relationships, intimacies and kin ties—including hopes for creating them—when making decisions about their potential employment locales. Through these narratives, I question assumptions about the centers of knowledge production in “the West” as the most desirable places for advancing careers and building lives.

While the “ideal” researcher is often portrayed as someone unencumbered by close personal ties and dedicating their life to science, the lived reality for many scholars, however, is quite different. They struggle to balance a multitude of professional and personal facets of their lives, especially as they grow older, create families of their own, and assume increasing care responsibilities. These struggles are exacerbated by research policies and employment structures that increasingly prioritize short-term employment contracts facilitating, in turn, the movements of research workers from one institution to another, both within one country and across borders. It is in this context that, through the perspectives discussed in this paper, I subtly destabilize the geographical hierarchies of global knowledge hubs and highlight how, when centering intimacies and other personal ties, more peripheral locales—or non-traditional migration destinations—may turn into desirable destinations for research workers.