Date: 18 November 2022
Time: 10:00-12:00
Place: Aud. 1, Room 4206-117

To register for this event: Accept calendar invite or send email to rpa@cas.au.dk

Anthropology Matters are guided academic discussions for PhD student members of the Research Programme of Anthropology (RPA), but all are welcome!

At each meeting, a faculty member presents a concept important to their research. Two designated PhD students present how the concept in question relates to their research. The idea is to open up and push one's work in a new direction. All attendees are expected to read 2-3 papers and engage in the plenum discussion.

Schedule:

• 10:00-10:30 Presentation On concept of ‘Hybridity’ by Dr. Anna-Karina Hermkens visiting professor from Macquarie University, School of Social Sciences
• 10:30-10:45 Respondent #1, Maja Kirstine Dahl Jeppesen, PhD fellow in Anthropology
• 10:45-11:00 Respondent #2: Sophie Charlotte Monachini, PhD fellow in Criminal Law
• 11:00-12:00 Plenary Discussion

Abstract: The concept of hybridity has seen a prolific revival in both theory and policy-making, especially in Australia. In recent studies of development, as well as conflict resolution and peacebuilding (including law), the concept of hybridity has been appropriated to denote a combination, or mix, of elements from different orders and worldviews. I argue that we can only talk about ‘hybrid’ approaches to development and peacebuilding by looking at the ontologies and practices of the people who are included and excluded to be part of those processes. Focusing on continuing tensions in Marau Sound (Guadalcanal Province) in ‘post-conflict’ Solomon Islands, I highlight the complexity of local identities involved in hybrid peacebuilding and development projects. Here, Are'are ‘settlers’ from Malaita Province and Mbirau ‘landowners’ have constructed a hyphenated culture wherein Marau-Are'are and Marau-Mbirau people perform a precarious balancing act between two parts of the hyphen, as well as with each other. The hyphenated culture of Marau-Are'are and Marau-Mbirau shows that identity and place is multiple and a process of lived social relations, rather than an accident of birth or geography. In fact, it shows the significance of contextual identity, which in case of tensions and conflict, but also in times of peace, emerges. This shows the fluidity of identity, and, in particular, the importance of local ontologies and practices of placemaking and belonging. As such, my paper highlights the need to deconstruct essentialist notions of identity as fixed and constant, at the same time critiquing so-called 'hybrid' approaches in peacebuilding and development projects, which continue to homogenise and essentialise 'the Other', as well as 'place'.

Readings:

1. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988): “Can the Subaltern Speak?” p. 24-28 in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan, 1988.
    
2. Yazdiha, Haj (2010): “Conceptualizing Hybridity: Deconstructing Boundaries through the Hybrid” Formations, 1(1): 31-38.
    
3. Richmond, Oliver P. (2009): “Becoming Liberal, Unbecoming Liberalism: Liberal- Local Hybridity via the Everyday as a Response to the Paradoxes of Liberal Peacebuilding” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 3:3, 324-344.