AnthroArt

Corporations have always had the power to demand their rights: their freedom often clashes with the freedom of others to protect their needs and their lives. The article analyzes the arbitration over Roșia Montană brought by Gabriel Resources against Romania in 2015. Beyond Romania’s unexpected victory, we want to highlight that this controversial legal mechanism is a form of perpetuation of struc...

This article explores how migration from urban to rural areas influences dietary habits and promotes the adoption of more sustainable food practices. The research is set against the backdrop of increasing counterurbanization, where individuals are leaving cities in pursuit of healthier, more balanced lifestyles in rural settings. The connection between food and nature is examined in this context,...

It is necessary to reflect on the role of the anthropologist in denouncing realities that are often subalternised, with the role of changing them through initiatives and solutions proposed by the anthropologist, allowing us to reflect on the porosity between the spheres of activism and anthropology. To realize the implications and interconnections between different contexts, it is necessary to tak...

This study investigates the challenges and strategies for incorporating sustainability into the social control of municipal School Feeding Councils (CAEs) in Minas Gerais within the National School Feeding Program (PNAE). The research aims to understand the performance of CAEs in promoting sustainability and evaluates the impact of an educational intervention on counselors’ intentions to act. The...

The Creating Life Champions project is a collaboration between the ERASMUS+ program and the UEFA Foundation for Children, to strengthen positive social values and principles by using sports fields as a vehicle. This project gathered 16 partners from 8 European countries. The following text presents the results of the ethnographic research done in Portugal regarding this project, aimed to conduct a...

This article explores the pivotal role of videos and thematic routes in promoting sustainable tourism through the lens of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Anchored in anthropological and ethnographic methodologies, it highlights how these tools preserve and celebrate traditions, crafts, music, and oral histories. Using the Mouraria neighborhood in Lisbon as a case study, the project documents l...

Speculative Design is a methodological approach that can be a huge tool for anthropologists. By working in collaboration with designers and using speculative design techniques, anthropologists and designers together could engage with communities and specific social groups for understanding social problems and imagining alternative futures. With this text is on the one side to present Speculative D...

Ridesharing practices such as hitchhiking and carpooling form specific ways of mobility, rich in composition and narratives. Both social practices are present at the margins of all urban areas in Romania having their own specific modus operandi. Although they are not associated with the concept of sustainability by their public, they are embedded in a sustainable kind of mobility, as alternatives...

For several years now the financial industry has been enrolled, more or less voluntarily, in the global quest for sustainability. Sustainable finance is currently a complex, variegated field of practices and discourses which claims to invest in projects that have, in the best case scenario, a positive impact on society and the planet, or, worst case scenario at least avoid having a negative one, w...

This article focuses on fieldwork conducted in Odivelas, Portugal, where the Municipal Council of Odivelas (MCO) implemented a program to introduce halal meals in the municipality’s public school system. The initiative aimed to accommodate the dietary needs of Muslim students while promoting sociocultural and religious inclusion, as well as school integration. In its first edition, the program cov...

This article examines the connection between the Hunedoara Steel Plant, the Corvinul football team, and the collective identities of the residents of Hunedoara. Following the decline of the local industry, the team and the stadium have become symbols of a glorious past and community unity. Nostalgia for the golden era of the Steel Plant is reflected in the fervent support for the team and the proj...

When looking for information on the famous 3 Rs of sustainability, I came across a video on YouTube by a French woman living in California called Bea Johnson, that proposed a waste hierarchy of 5 Rs (refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot). The practices shared were not new to the environmental movement, nor to the lives of people who were born before the consumer society. But, for the first time,...

Food systems can be a valuable tool to think about biodiversity as inherently interconnected with our human worlds, in practices that look towards the sustainability of ecosystems, rather than based in the logic of extracting resources without caring for the degradation of landscapes. Through an ethnographic looking glass, we can understand the ways in which certain food production systems can in...

The use of holographic technology in art and its relationship with social inclusion and the democratization of access to art have been increasingly prominent topics in the contemporary art scene. Through an innovative and accessible approach, holographic art has the potential to transform the way artworks are presented and appreciated by diverse audiences, including communities in remote areas. Th...

It is necessary to reflect on the role of the anthropologist in denouncing realities that are often subalternised, with the role of changing them through initiatives and solutions proposed by the anthropologist, allowing us to reflect on the porosity between the spheres of activism and anthropology. To realize the implications and interconnections between different contexts, it is necessary to tak...

Funerary practices have been around since the dawn of humanity serving two main purposes: the need for body disposal and to help the grieving community process the loss. We will focus on mainland Portugal during the Medieval Period up to present day to provide a brief overview of how people have dealt with death, from evolving perceptions from the Past to Present, to the emergence of a “new type o...

This position paper claims that local governments, within a regional inter-related scope, should envision a new territorial social policy for the effectiveness of sustainability and wellbeing of communities. The proposal of this work stems from a long period of research on sustainability matter; the framing of ecumene studies; and from applied science as consultants with local governments. Our rec...

Inclusion is a topic that is increasingly being debated and transformed. Performing arts are not out of this equation and tend more and more to look at the issue and create new opportunities for those who are often left behind by physical, intellectual or social issues. In this article I propose a critical analysis of a programme of inclusion of people with disabilities in a professional contempor...

Taking inspiration from the approach of heterosexuality as a political regime, as proposed by lesbian feminism and queer theories, this study starts from the premise that mononormativity (Porto, 2018) permeates the legal apparatus of the state and, simultaneously, transcends it, imbuing social relations and cultural practices in ways not always evident. Building on this intuition, I begin this ref...

Words, in addition to their declarative or descriptive formats, also have a performative character – they do not exclusively serve the purpose of reporting what is done, but also serve to do so. What is the importance of language in the daily life on the outskirts of Lisbon? I intended to understand how language, on the one hand, is articulated with the contexts of exclusion and inequality that st...

This article aims to address the intimate relationship between bureaucratic violence in Portugal against irregular Brazilian immigrants and social inequality. The situation of irregularity limits immigrants’ access to the spheres that make up public life in society and simultaneously restricts their opportunities and working conditions in the host country. To carry out a solid ethnographic article...

Evidence gathered since the late 2000s has suggested that a part of the working class goes through episodes of poverty without becoming chronically poor. Drawing on a project conceived to capture successful movements that escape severe or extreme destitution and deprivation and based on an ethnography with 28 families in two public housing estates in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, this article w...

In today’s digital age, cloud storage has become increasingly prevalent, fundamentally altering how we manage and interact with data ownership. While corporate entities have traditionally relied on cloud storage for large-scale data management, personal data storage has recently migrated to the cloud, emerging as a primary means of storing various virtual assets. This shift towards personal cloud...

There is almost a poetic appeal to crafts that render them timeless. Crafts such as textiles maintain continuity, in contrast to trends, like fashion. Textile practice provides thus established codes for interpreting local culture. In doing so, they inhabit their environment in a caring and conscious way. That’s why it should come as no surprise that craftspeople think differently about sustainabi...

The role of water in rural Moldova transcends its physical properties as a vital substance to become a poignant reflection of the broader socio-economic, political, and environmental dynamics at play in post-Soviet rural life. Against a backdrop of historical disinvestment, both during the Soviet times and in their aftermath, the article explores the ways in which residents of a village in the nor...