Books by Alexander Koensler
Com’è possibile coniugare l’impegno politico con la ricerca sul campo? Offrendo una rassegna ragi... more Com’è possibile coniugare l’impegno politico con la ricerca sul campo? Offrendo una rassegna ragionata, il testo illustra le radici profonde nell’antropologia italiana, ma evidenzia soprattutto la politicizzazione dell’etnografia, tornata prepotentemente alla ribalta nell’ultimo decennio con lo studio dei movimenti sociali. Viene scandagliata la letteratura internazionale ma soprattutto gli studi di etnografi militanti italiani emergenti, per perlustrare diverse opzioni politiche, teoriche e metodologiche su come fare ricerca qualitativa e su come comprendere le forme dell’attivismo contemporaneo con un esplicito intento di trasformare l’esistente. Il taglio è autoriflessivo, centrato su potenziali tensioni e dilemmi che si creano nelle relazioni con il contesto studiato, nella conduzione della ricerca e in fase di restituzione. Distinguendo l’etnografi a militante da altre forme di coinvolgimento pubblico della ricerca – quali l’antropologia applicata, la ricerca-azione e l’antropologia pubblica –, si chiarisce la continuità e la discontinuità delle etnografi e militanti contemporanee rispetto alla celebre presentazione gramsciana dell’“intellettuale organico”. Infine, i tre autori ripercorrono la loro esperienza politica ed etnografi ca per mostrare come fare ricerca possa sia contribuire al sapere scientifico sia rafforzare contesti politici.
Quale rapporto intratteniamo con ciò che mangiamo? Perché in alcuni contesti culturali certi alim... more Quale rapporto intratteniamo con ciò che mangiamo? Perché in alcuni contesti culturali certi alimenti sono considerati sacri mentre in altri vengono disprezzati? Che cosa c’è dietro il crescente interesse per i cibi biologici e le forme di consumo alternativo come i gruppi di acquisto solidale? In che modo il capitale finanziario condiziona il mondo dell’alimentazione? Come cambia l’alimentazione con l’uso delle nuove tecnologie? Se uno degli obiettivi principali dell’antropologia è decostruire il senso comune, il compito dell’antropologia dell’alimentazione è quello di stimolare l’immaginario individuale e collettivo ad ampliare l’orizzonte sui modi in cui pensiamo il cibo. Facendo dialogare etnografia e teoria, gli autori si occupano di tabu alimentari, dispositivi tecnologici, intrecci fra attivismo alimentare e altermondialista, “utopie concrete” della neoruralità.
When do words and actions empower? When do they betray? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this vol... more When do words and actions empower? When do they betray? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this volume tracks the repercussions of advocacy activism against house demolitions in 'unrecognised' Arab-Bedouin villages in Israel's southern 'internal frontier'. It highlights the repercussions of activism for victims, fund-raisers and activists. The ethnographic episodes show how humanitarian aid intervention and indigenous identity politics can turn into a double-edged sword. Ironically, institutional lobbying for coexistence and its interpretative categories can sometimes perpetuate different forms of subjugation. The volume also shows, how, beyond the institutional lobbying, novel figures of activism emerge: informal networks create non-sectarian, cross-cutting countercultures and rethink human-environment relationships. These experimental political subjects redefine the categories of the conflict and elude the logic of zero-sum games; they point towards a shifting paradigm in current ethnopolitics.
Koensler outlines an ethnographic approach for the study of social movements that follows multiple relations around mobilisations rather than studying activism in itself. This perspective thus becomes relevant for scholars and activists engaged with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and those interested in global rights discourses.
Contents: Introduction. Part I The Social Life of Claims: Ethnography and social movement studies; The life of Israeli-Palestinian claims. Part II Contradictions: The 'ghost village'; Illusions; Frictions and connections. Part III Innovations: Politics of poliphony?; Global ecosophies; Conclusions. Appendix: conceptual tour; Bibliography; Index
Reviews:
‘Retelling several times the ritual of destruction-reconstruction of a single uninhabited village, Koensler gently unpeels almost Borgesian layers of illusions and misconceptions about conflicts staged by multiple actors for different effects. A writing experiment in minimalist details sketching complex structures, and a meditation on styles of personal and existential activism. Not for those who already know the answers.’
Michael M.J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and author of Anthropological Futures
Come i movimenti sociali estendono lo spazio di ciò che appare
fattibile e pensabile? Come nasco... more Come i movimenti sociali estendono lo spazio di ciò che appare
fattibile e pensabile? Come nascono idee innovative in grado di
trasformare le società? La presente antologia raccoglie sia saggi che presentano ricerche sul campo su movimenti, mobilitazioni e pratiche di resistenza in Asia, America e Europa, sia saggi che si basano sul dialogo interdisciplinare tra analisi sociologica, scienze politiche e prassi etnografica. L’attenzione etnografica alle micro-pratiche e il suo interesse per i fenomeni culturali “marginali” o “periferici” mette in luce come essi siano spesso i luoghi privilegiati per l’elaborazione di forme di mobilitazioni e stili di vita nuovi, delineando così alcuni elementi costituenti per l’antropologia dei movimenti sociali. "
Quando Aziza Abu-Frekh, una donna arabo-beduina nel deserto israeliano del Negev, decise di ospit... more Quando Aziza Abu-Frekh, una donna arabo-beduina nel deserto israeliano del Negev, decise di ospitare l’autore, un giovane studente di antropologia, per alcuni mesi, non poteva prevedere quello che sarebbe successo poco dopo: un conflitto per la terra dove costruire un nuovo villaggio israeliano porta a manifestazioni, a un caso legale e a molti incontri trasversali e confusi tra arabo-beduini locali, amministratori provinciali e attivisti ebraici. Queste persone costituiscono così quella rete di “amicizie vulnerabili” in grado di mettere in luce come diversi percorsi di vita possano intrecciarsi in una “zona di frontiera” che è considerata attualmente tra le più scottanti. Introdotto da riflessioni teoriche sia sulle pratiche trasformative lungo la frontiera sia sul dibattito relativo alla scrittura etnografica, il volume si inserisce nel genere del “diario di campo” e ha come sfondo la vita quotidiana di una famiglia arabo-beduina a Rahat.
Papers by Alexander Koensler
ANUAC, 2023
This essay discusses poses of identities available for anthropologists in relation to increasingl... more This essay discusses poses of identities available for anthropologists in relation to increasingly salient issues of contemporary anthropological knowledge-making. Starting with a critical evaluation of the idea of the anthropologist as a witness by George Marcus (2005), we outline cornerstones in current debates on the positionality of the researcher, such as the implications of the end of meta-narratives, the call for epistemological openness, the crisis of representation, the delimitation of fields and the discussion on human rights. In a second step, we highlight how, at first glance, the concept of witnessing seems to provide a solution for these dilemmas. Yet, witnessing entails blind spots and other limits which are often overlooked. These concern relationality, memory, involvement, understanding, and the question of how to intervene in the scenarios we observe. In sum, the essay redefines the conditions of anthropological knowledge production in an age of witnessing.
American Anthropologist, 2023
The concept of transparency is now an unescapable reference in public, professional, and private ... more The concept of transparency is now an unescapable reference in public, professional, and private life. As transparency-making has recently transmuted from a progressive instrument to counter corruption into a new universal ideological formation, it is time to problematize the concept of transparency and its uses. In this article, I consider transparency not as a moral principle or static ideology but as a terrain of political struggle over its meaning and practices. An emerging literature in anthropology highlights how transparency has become a form of governance that leads to a sense of deprofessionalization in working life. Based on ethnographic research with activist networks and small-scale farmers in Italy, I investigate experiments with horizontal and inclusive forms of alternative transparency-making in food processing. I consider three interrelated emblematic frictions within these experiments: informal versus formal, top-down versus horizontal, and not-for-profit versus commercial. While these experimental forms of transparency-making allow small-scale farmers to reappropriate a sense of autonomy and professionalism, the frictions indicate that conventional and alternative transparency-making are not diametrically opposed. Frictions in emancipatory transparency-making repoliticize decision-making processes in ways that are unknown in contemporary concepts of transparency. Ultimately, the concept of emancipatory transparency-making calls for engagement in open dialogical processes.
are probably among the most cited and least understood political and cultural critics of contempo... more are probably among the most cited and least understood political and cultural critics of contemporary social sciences. Less influential outside the Arab hemisphere remains Waddah Charara (1942-), a key figure of critical intellectual history and a protagonist of the Lebanese New Left in the sixties and seventies, a cultural and political critic, writer and social scientist. Charara, similarly to Gramsci and Benjamin, offered a deeply engaged analysis of universal questions regarding the political imagination and the possibilities of emancipatory politics. The three figures share a number of captivating characteristics: they all had experiences of intellectual militancy in times of war, they were all notably "free-minded spirits" that are difficult to categorise, they all transcend personal, political and academic boundaries and move considerably beyond conventional routes of academic or political career paths.
Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 2020
What and how we eat have once again become prominent in debates on the fight for global justice. ... more What and how we eat have once again become prominent in debates on the fight for global justice. Proponents of alterglobalism consider experiments with food sovereignty a pre-figurative practice that anticipates broader ecocultural change. Critics, however, remain skeptical about its capacity to enhance social change. In social movement research, the practical implications of these prefigurative politics have rarely been investigated empirically. Based on an ethnographic analysis, this article illustrates the multifaceted dynamics of a continuously evolving experiment with Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) in a neorural microeconomic network, a cornerstone of food sovereignty activism. An ethnographic perspective can grasp the shifting terrain of the political mobilization, frictions and unintended consequences of these types of politics. The article demonstrates the importance of understanding the complexities of prefiguration as not a simple linear, coherent process. Also, the case study allows a critique of re-emerging neorural populism.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2019
In writing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the image of neo-Zionist settlers is
taken often ... more In writing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the image of neo-Zionist settlers is
taken often uncritically as an immediate expression of power, in representations
by both settler movements and their opponents. Based on an ethnographic
perspective that combines Herzfeld’s attention to the “intimacies” with
critical writing on the symbolization of reality, I shift attention to an intricate
representation of “affective borderlands” to illuminate situated experiences of
settler–native relations in practice. Focusing on specific fragile and contradictory
relations of single settlers and natives unfolding around a newly established village
in Israel’s southern Negev desert, this ethnographic lens contributes to a deeper
understanding of Israeli–Palestinian relations as entangled and entwined rather
than separate. Beyond a dichotomist conception of native–settler relations and
beyond the palpable dynamics of power, this examination of affective borderlands
demonstrates that the more opponents invest in distinguishing themselves from
the settler endeavor, the more its power over them grows.
In an increasing number of realms in everyday life, informal personal relations of trust are bein... more In an increasing number of realms in everyday life, informal personal relations of trust are being replaced by a constraining formalization of standardization and certification implemented in the name of transparency. Examining the repercussions of this process for small-scale farmers in Italy, this article offers an understanding of ordinary experiences with transparency and explores attempts to resist it. Based on ethnographic research with a neorural activist network that opposes official food-certifications, the article describes ambiguities in ingenious attempts to reinvent procedures to attest the quality and safety of “genuine” food products in more inclusive terms. Restoring the primacy of trust and solidarity, these cases illustrate how a different type of transparency can contribute to realizing a humanistic potential that is nevertheless not free of contradictions.
Anuac, 2018
Who should have the right to certify? As the influence of certifications of all kinds increases a... more Who should have the right to certify? As the influence of certifications of all kinds increases and penetrates in more and more realms of life, the Peasant Activism Project investigates forms of resistance of neo-rural activists against the politics of transparency. Certifications and standards implemented in the name of transparency often favor large agribusiness. Uncovering the forces that restructure social control in the name of the moral imperative of transparency, this research report presents a circular and collaborative conversation between the team of the Peasant Activism Project and Andrea Zappa who represents an Italian network of small-scale farmers and food processors. The focus is on experimental practices of the Participatory Guarantee (PG) that farmers and food processors use to ensure the safety and quality of their products instead of other, more standardized means of certification. Its goal is to restore trust-based personal relations instead of implementing top-bottom forms of control. This issue touches the possibility of realizing similar models of cooperation and sharing, although in academic research: is it possible to practice forms of neo-humanistic hori-zontality that spare social research from some of the risks inherent in the demands for disclosure and popularization made by research councilsʼ third-mission policies?
in: Anuac, 6,1, pp. 83-88
In academic and public discourse on the Zionist–Palestinian conflict, there still prevails a 'met... more In academic and public discourse on the Zionist–Palestinian conflict, there still prevails a 'methodological nationalism' based on a separatist imagination overshadowing the existence and role of Israeli–Palestinian forms of communality and solidarity. This arti cle analyses micropolitical practices that cross existing frontiers, both within Israel and between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. Through recent conceptualizations of 'acts', I read these ethnographic episodes in their intentional and performative dimen sion. What is the role of these 'acts'? What are their effects, both on participants and the wider public? Through two interconnected cases, different functions of acts are explored. The first case relates to encounters between Israelis and Palestinians in the embattled city of Hebron in the occupied Palestinian territories; the second investigates moments during a Gandhiinspired peace march at the 'internal' frontier of the Israeli Negev desert. The ethnographic perspective reveals what lies behind and beneath the acts, going beyond the conflict's obvious structures of power. Acts function primarily as a valve of catharsis for the participants themselves, both overcoming and reproducing hegemonic discursive elements of the conflict. Paradoxically, acts of solidarity are often crucial in shaping public knowledge about the conflict in more sectarian terms.
Anuac, 2018
Who should have the right to certify? As the influence of certifications of all kinds increases a... more Who should have the right to certify? As the influence of certifications of all kinds increases and penetrates in more and more realms of life, the Peasant Activism Project investigates forms of resistance of neo-rural activists against the politics of transparency. Certifications and standards implemented in the name of transparency often favor large agribusiness. Uncovering the forces that restructure social control in the name of the moral imperative of transparency, this research report presents a circular and collaborative conversation between the team of the Peasant Activism Project and Andrea Zappa who represents an Italian network of small-scale farmers and food processors. The focus is on experimental practices of the Participatory Guarantee (PG) that farmers and food processors use to ensure the safety and quality of their products instead of other, more standardized means of certification. Its goal is to restore trust-based personal relations instead of implementing top-bottom forms of control. This issue touches the possibility of realizing similar models of cooperation and sharing, although in academic research: is it possible to practice forms of neo-humanistic hori-zontality that spare social research from some of the risks inherent in the demands for disclosure and popularization made by research councilsʼ third-mission policies?
Islamism and terror: a great jihad against the common sense ABSTRACT: What implies the conversion... more Islamism and terror: a great jihad against the common sense ABSTRACT: What implies the conversion to fundamentalist Islam? What are the repercussions and implications of 'political Islam' in specific contexts? The relation between Islam, democracy and violence is often represented in a reductive or simplistic way. In order to contribute to a reasoned debate on these pressing questions, this essay covers some key dynamics stemming from long-term ethnographic observation regarding the conversion to neo-Salafism among Arab Bedouin citizens in southern Israel, placing them in the context of contemporary developments of Islamic political thought. The ethnographic sensitivity, combined with the voices of some eminent Islamic intellectuals, allows to go beyond both the rhetoric of cultural complexity and the common-sense view that Islamic terrorism would be a kind of 'anti-imperialism of the losers', arguments employed often to contest emerging neo-orientalist discourses. In this sense, the essay states the need to shed light on coordinates and interpretative categories that are not placed in an essentially different but in often unexpected ways.
The question of how to advance justice for indigenous or marginalized ethnic groups leads to the ... more The question of how to advance justice for indigenous or marginalized ethnic groups leads to the heart of a polarized debate. We find a widely diffused ‘right to culture’ stance on one hand and a critical, constructivist one on the other. By taking up Tsing's metaphor of ‘zones of friction’, (2005) this article follows the way in which voices and imaginations about Bedouin culture and rights are produced in the conflict over a piece of land in the Negev desert, which is contested between the Israeli authorities and Bedouin representatives. As an imagined inhabitant of the area, ordinary citizens such as Mustafa are fashioned by activists and political tourists in highly culturalist or romanticized ways – images that are distant from the shifting self-representations of Mustafa himself. This case shows how the current emphasis on the ‘right to culture’ creates both new sites of contestation and new spaces for collective action.
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Books by Alexander Koensler
Koensler outlines an ethnographic approach for the study of social movements that follows multiple relations around mobilisations rather than studying activism in itself. This perspective thus becomes relevant for scholars and activists engaged with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and those interested in global rights discourses.
Contents: Introduction. Part I The Social Life of Claims: Ethnography and social movement studies; The life of Israeli-Palestinian claims. Part II Contradictions: The 'ghost village'; Illusions; Frictions and connections. Part III Innovations: Politics of poliphony?; Global ecosophies; Conclusions. Appendix: conceptual tour; Bibliography; Index
Reviews:
‘Retelling several times the ritual of destruction-reconstruction of a single uninhabited village, Koensler gently unpeels almost Borgesian layers of illusions and misconceptions about conflicts staged by multiple actors for different effects. A writing experiment in minimalist details sketching complex structures, and a meditation on styles of personal and existential activism. Not for those who already know the answers.’
Michael M.J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and author of Anthropological Futures
fattibile e pensabile? Come nascono idee innovative in grado di
trasformare le società? La presente antologia raccoglie sia saggi che presentano ricerche sul campo su movimenti, mobilitazioni e pratiche di resistenza in Asia, America e Europa, sia saggi che si basano sul dialogo interdisciplinare tra analisi sociologica, scienze politiche e prassi etnografica. L’attenzione etnografica alle micro-pratiche e il suo interesse per i fenomeni culturali “marginali” o “periferici” mette in luce come essi siano spesso i luoghi privilegiati per l’elaborazione di forme di mobilitazioni e stili di vita nuovi, delineando così alcuni elementi costituenti per l’antropologia dei movimenti sociali. "
Papers by Alexander Koensler
taken often uncritically as an immediate expression of power, in representations
by both settler movements and their opponents. Based on an ethnographic
perspective that combines Herzfeld’s attention to the “intimacies” with
critical writing on the symbolization of reality, I shift attention to an intricate
representation of “affective borderlands” to illuminate situated experiences of
settler–native relations in practice. Focusing on specific fragile and contradictory
relations of single settlers and natives unfolding around a newly established village
in Israel’s southern Negev desert, this ethnographic lens contributes to a deeper
understanding of Israeli–Palestinian relations as entangled and entwined rather
than separate. Beyond a dichotomist conception of native–settler relations and
beyond the palpable dynamics of power, this examination of affective borderlands
demonstrates that the more opponents invest in distinguishing themselves from
the settler endeavor, the more its power over them grows.
Koensler outlines an ethnographic approach for the study of social movements that follows multiple relations around mobilisations rather than studying activism in itself. This perspective thus becomes relevant for scholars and activists engaged with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and those interested in global rights discourses.
Contents: Introduction. Part I The Social Life of Claims: Ethnography and social movement studies; The life of Israeli-Palestinian claims. Part II Contradictions: The 'ghost village'; Illusions; Frictions and connections. Part III Innovations: Politics of poliphony?; Global ecosophies; Conclusions. Appendix: conceptual tour; Bibliography; Index
Reviews:
‘Retelling several times the ritual of destruction-reconstruction of a single uninhabited village, Koensler gently unpeels almost Borgesian layers of illusions and misconceptions about conflicts staged by multiple actors for different effects. A writing experiment in minimalist details sketching complex structures, and a meditation on styles of personal and existential activism. Not for those who already know the answers.’
Michael M.J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and author of Anthropological Futures
fattibile e pensabile? Come nascono idee innovative in grado di
trasformare le società? La presente antologia raccoglie sia saggi che presentano ricerche sul campo su movimenti, mobilitazioni e pratiche di resistenza in Asia, America e Europa, sia saggi che si basano sul dialogo interdisciplinare tra analisi sociologica, scienze politiche e prassi etnografica. L’attenzione etnografica alle micro-pratiche e il suo interesse per i fenomeni culturali “marginali” o “periferici” mette in luce come essi siano spesso i luoghi privilegiati per l’elaborazione di forme di mobilitazioni e stili di vita nuovi, delineando così alcuni elementi costituenti per l’antropologia dei movimenti sociali. "
taken often uncritically as an immediate expression of power, in representations
by both settler movements and their opponents. Based on an ethnographic
perspective that combines Herzfeld’s attention to the “intimacies” with
critical writing on the symbolization of reality, I shift attention to an intricate
representation of “affective borderlands” to illuminate situated experiences of
settler–native relations in practice. Focusing on specific fragile and contradictory
relations of single settlers and natives unfolding around a newly established village
in Israel’s southern Negev desert, this ethnographic lens contributes to a deeper
understanding of Israeli–Palestinian relations as entangled and entwined rather
than separate. Beyond a dichotomist conception of native–settler relations and
beyond the palpable dynamics of power, this examination of affective borderlands
demonstrates that the more opponents invest in distinguishing themselves from
the settler endeavor, the more its power over them grows.
shortly thereafter. This article analyses how insurgent building is employed as a spatial practice by emerging political actors to claim contested Bedouin landownership.
Importantly, insurgent building relies on the ability of media and advocacy organizations
to mobilize behind the issue. Most of the relevant scholarship takes the interpretative categories advanced by these actors at face value. Following anthropological debates regarding objectification and categorization, I examine the context of a specific case of insurgent building. Emerging political actors who employ insurgent building often rely on predefined ethnic categories and clear-cut people–state polarities. This case demonstrates the need for a more differentiated understanding of multilayered local dynamics than the one offered by mainstream linear interpretations. At a more abstract level, political actors contribute to the reproduction of the very categories against which they mobilize. """