AnthroArt

The “Same Same – A Capacity Building and Empowerment e-mentorship Program for People with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (IDD)” is a Program with the objective to test the reliability and effectiveness of a Training and Empowerment Program for Mentors and to provide people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead their peers...

Ethnotheatre is a critical world-making practice that combines ethnography, social knowledge and the performing arts. As an art-based methodology, it aims to research a common ground with a group of people to adapt these observations and knowledge to an aesthetic performance as the practice of participant observation, and the anthropology toolkit methodology. In the transition to the 21st century...

The project called “Workshop on Anthropology and Photography” (WAF) is related the work done during 8 months, from March to September 2023, in a small town near Lisbon (Portugal) in a public primary and secondary school, with a particular characteristic: being a multicultural school, attended by children of many nationalities other than Portuguese, with a high number of immigrants and refugees (mi...

The history of the Portuguese presence in Asia has been the subject of study of numerous analysts from various perspectives. It is well known that during just a few years Portuguese had managed to create several commercial, political, and administrative establishments. This was only possible through the displacement of people to fill in the administrative positions, but also to guarantee the safet...

The article tackles physical activity inequalities, both socio-economical and gender, in preschool and school age children. The undisputed benefits of physical activity on physical and mental health are well documented. So why is it that most children in industrialized countries are failing to meet weekly physical activity guidelines? The answer is complex and nuanced, but may lay in the ever perv...

This article is the result of ten years of work as a social interventionist with women in situations of social vulnerability, based on the premise: Which of my experiences as a social interventionist in the last ten years can contribute today to empower other individuals to also become social interventionists and develop actions aimed at women in situations of social vulnerability? The aim of this...

This article examines the potential benefits of creating a virtual gallery as a response to health crises, remote areas, and the elderly population, with a focus on addressing inequality and promoting social inclusion. The study explores how virtual reality technology can effectively break down physical and geographical barriers, facilitating access to diverse artistic expressions and encouraging...

Anthropology is the discipline of counterintuition. It seeks to find the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the incomprehensible. When finished, the process starts again, this time in reverse. In the hope that a synthesis will manifest itself. In this article we propose to look at participatory art, changing the turns. What kind of art is this, the ‘non-participatory’? What does dissent f...

The article discusses how older adults act as social intermediaries in Romanian farmers’ markets. The conclusion focuses on the violent effects of the gentrification of farmer’s markets on vulnerable age groups, causing social exclusion. A text by Florin Dumitrescu llustrated by Alexandra Cărăvan, read by Daniel Popa https://theanthro.art/seniors-at-the-farmers-market-the-elders-as-agents-of-the-f...

In the last two decades, since Romania’s EU accession, Cortorari Roma from the South of Transylvania have been performing a new procurement activity, begging in the streets of Western Europe. During my PhD fieldwork I myself became an apprentice to a family bagging in Italy. This piece shows that contrary to wide spread conceptions of beggary as a non-lucrative activity, Cortorari experience it as...

This is the story of my (non)-interaction with the Hungarian far-right paramilitary groups, during their ‘war’ against Roma people in countryside Hungary in 2011. Some context first: I began researching the Hungarian far-right in 2009. I had mainly two reasons for doing this: on the one hand, I was interested in how people come together in groups that challenge the state’s monopoly on violence, an...

In this article, I will examine working conditions, vulnerabilities, and social exclusion, experienced by Romanian migrants working in the Agro-Food sector in the Netherlands. Within the agricultural industry, there is a common presence of prime technical progress, a sector where immense resources go to innovations and research, but also a sector of evermore precarious forms of employment. Therefo...

What is hate? How are the objects formed towards which it is directed? And why do sex and sexuality figure so centrally in defining the essential Otherness of various objects of hate in the contemporary world order? In this essay, I seek less a set of firm answers to these questions. Instead, I propose an exercise in the ethnographic imagination—a way to begin addressing them in more nuanced ways....

Starting in 2012, I began to study artistic events taking place in domestic spaces. From the repeated contact between hosts-artists and audience in domestic settings, inclusive social spaces emerge which I call homemade culture bubbles . In this text, I posit that they constitute a subcultural solution (Cohen, 1955) through which people interact and associate with those who share the same maladjus...

In this paper, I ponder a research project that I was a part of, during my employ­ment at a research consultancy. I want to use it as a case study, to raise some ethical questions I have no definite answers to: how do we do research on diversity & inclusion, particularly for public policy, and how do we do it in an ethical way? And what are the best/right policy choices? When it comes to the p...

Showing our vulnerabilities is hard. However, not doing so will undeniably compromise our possibility to connect with others. In this essay, I share my experience in a week’s research in a community home located in Amsterdam. The story that happens in De Meevaart is a gateway to talk about emotions and about the power that having resources and company to experience emotions can have for social inc...

As an anthropologist I believed that ‘culture’ is what makes humans exceptional compared to other living beings. Research on social learning and cultural traits among animals, however, shows that ‘human abilities’ are found among animals as well. It states that humans and animals are more alike than different. These findings invite us to learn to understand animals’ intelligence through the settin...

What happens when an etic category or label like “first-generation students” enters public discourse? In the Netherlands, public discussions of first-generation or first-in-family students and their predicaments have arisen in recent years. But few people grow up thinking of themselves in those terms. Not a common identity-marker, the concept is introduced in other moments, like in news items or i...

In the West of Amsterdam there is an area that used to be occupied by light industry, but which since has been designated as a new area for housing development. Surrounding the area is a working-class neighbourhood with homes built in the first half of the 20th century. Rather than giving corporate developers free range, the municipality has also given space to citizen initiatives and community de...

We should question the belief that women’s less ideal positions at work compared to men, are their individual duty to undo. This belief encourages women to focus on self-improvement, and ignore and reduce the differences between men and women when it comes to equal payment, leadership positions, professional behavior, maternity leave and other work-related matters. However, when approaching gender...

We all care about the environment, one way or another. The news in recent decades about the state of the Planet has probably made us more careful about our actions, because we care about nature and what we pass on to future generations. Also, in addition to the general public, specialists in the natural sciences initiate numerous environmental protection programs. All these efforts and good intent...

My experiences with anthropological research in Ghana and Cameroon made me aware of the differences between doing such research ‘there’ and ‘here’, between being a visitor in another country and being a researcher in my own society. Illustration by Studio Sonsuz https://theanthro.art/investigative-or-embedded-research-fieldwork-experiences-in-ghana-and-cameroon-as-lessons-for-anthropology-at-home-...

Understanding the causes of persistent inequality between different segments of a society is at the core of social science. This article explores the issue of exclusion by examining various mechanisms of durable inequality within Romanian society, with a specific focus on the Roma population. Throughout history, the Roma have experienced institutionalized exclusion, including slavery, which this t...

It is well known that tuberculosis (TB) damages the physical body. Less known is the fact that the body is frequently damaged by one or more of the many side effects of TB drugs. What is even less recognized, including among doctors, is that this multi-layered damage often lasts long after a person is cured and may be irreversible. In this article I will discuss hearing loss and other sequelae (af...

In this reflective paper, I delve into the moral evaluation process carried out by emergency department (ED) triage workers in Romania as they grapple with the rising demand for emergency care. Adopting a symbolic interactionist approach, I scrutinize how triage staff assess patients’ entitlement to and deservingness of care, with a focus on the intricate dynamics of this assessment process. My lo...