Convenor
Marcello Mollica
University of Pisa
Co-convenor
Kayhan Delibas
Adnan Menderes University
Abstract
Challenges in data collection have always been part and parcel of the academic discourse. Field-workers’ personal experience and means at their disposal have often dictated the very itinerary of their research and subsequent publications. However methodological problems by themselves have sometimes become a source of data by their own right.
Last twenty years witnessed tremendous changes. Among them globalization has been a rather unique development which has `opened up enormous disparities of wealth and power, stimulating widespread movements of resistance`(Kumar, 2005). Given the rapidly changing present world, with its reframing of concepts such as local and global, and the growing interface with information technology means, this panel aims at contributing understanding the changing role of the researcher researching present religious political movements. How have researchers changed into a changing environment and its changing conditions? How are their narratives constructed? Do they play any role in shaping conflict representations or their analysis? What are the main challenges imposed by recent upheavals particularly in the Middle East in terms of fieldwork practices within Anthropology and Sociology? Are researchers facing unprecedented restrictions to data collections or those restrictions have always existed while what has changed is their representation and the means of their divulgation?
By looking at narratives of field researchers in anthropology and sociology, as well as their self-experiences, working on contemporary urban conflictual scenario, we aim at looking how researchers have reframed their role within the present changing environment and how can they still contribute understanding the causes of conflict, including pluri-religious and multi-ethnic loci previously known to have experienced coexistence for centuries.
panel presented by IUAES Commission on Urban Anthropology