Convenor
Rajko Mursic
Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Abstract
The aim of the panel is to consider relevant, but usually hidden, or ridiculed, or ignored, scenes and practices in local, regional, transnational and global urbanities, virtual networks, and beyond. Participants are invited to present ethnographic studies of underground practices and activities, as well as to discuss them and scholarly evaluate their importance for cultural and social life in late modernity in “the West”, and “the rest”.
We re trying to rehabilitate emic term underground derived from counter-cultural roots from the late 1960s, but as well to accentuate importance of hidden living practices among those who simply do not fulfill the presumed expectations in prevalent ways of conduct in given places and times: invisible, informal, bizarre and unusual mixtures, and unprecedented encounters of differences and commonalities beyond existing institutional and regulated activities; colorful variety of underground, ethnic and world music clubs, of informal casual meeting places, as well as occupied urban and rural places, party places, squats, social clubs, youth clubs or streets occupied by dancers or street artists.
Basically, the panel will present creative practices of suppressed or ignored groups of people in various locations and institutions in urbanized or semi-urbanized world. Important concern of the presentations will be related to music and various cultural expressions of those groups of people who are usually considered neither as migrants nor as minorities, although they are considerably different from the predominant rest of society.
The panel will be organized with the collaboration of the Commission of Urban Anthropology and proposed Commission on Anthropology of Music, Dance and Related Practices.