English posts – Page 16 – STANDPLAATS WERELD

Fieldwork 2010: On the Way to Jerusalem

Published April 28, 2010

Our Master student Gijs Verbossen conducted field research in the occupied territories of Palestine. He lived in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, adjacent to the city of Nablus. He focused on young Palestinian refugees’ experience of Israel’s occupation. In this photo reportage Gijs gives an eye-witness account of a violent encounter between Palestinians and the Israeli army.

From Nablus buses go to all destinations within the West Bank. They do not go across the separation wall, which Israel built on Palestinian land, annexing territory within the West Bank’s borders of 1967. Public buses cannot go inside Israel, because almost no Palestinians have a permit to cross the wall. Jerusalem for them is inaccessible. Foreigners are able to cross the wall, entering Israel. I had an appointment in Jerusalem today, March 20^th. I took the bus from Nablus, passing Ramallah, to Qalandia; one of the largest checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel.

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Fieldwork 2010: Chechens in Moscow

Published April 16, 2010

In this part of the series, Laura finally reveals her research topic.

You have all been waiting. Now is the time. I did research among the CHECHENS!!! Or the Noxchi, which is the name they use to refer to themselves. You might have guessed it… that’s where the ‘N’ referred to in my mysterious posts. Why were they mysterious, Laura? Well…

Pál Nyíri on Chinese migration

Published April 13, 2010

“Our” Pál Nyíri recently published a book called Mobility and cultural authority in contemporary China. Daan Beekers asked him a few questions about this new book.

Continue ReadingPál Nyíri on Chinese migration

Rebiya Kadeer at the VU, or the anthropologist’s dilemma

Published April 1, 2010

By Pál Nyiri When I lecture on China and democracy, I show students excerpts from Carma Hinton and Geremie Barme’s 1992 film, The Gate of Heavenly Peace. In the film, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square student movement, referring to exaggerated stories of the 1989 massacre, asks: “Must we use lies to stand up to our lying enemy,” i.e. the Chinese Communist Party?

The same question arose in me on 30 March as I listened to Rebiya Kadeer, the “leader of the Uyghur people” according to the president of the Turkish Academic Student Association (TASA), which organised her appearance at the VU. He had asked me, as a “China scholar,” to speak at this event, which he called a “symposium”, on the situation of the Uyghur people in China.

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Fieldwork 2010: researching prostitution in the Philippines

Published March 16, 2010

With three weeks to go, Sanne Maris looks back on her fieldwork in the Philippines. This is part 6 of our series on master students’ fieldwork.

It is nine weeks now that I am in the Philippines, and fieldwork preparation taught me things should get normal after a while. They don’t. Every week I find myself in several situations in which I am either overwhelmed by everything that happens or it raises many questions on how to respond. I am here in the Philippines to conduct research on prostitution. My main question is how women who prostitute create and maintain security and how the organization I work alongside plays a role in this process.

I knew prostitution was big in the Philippines, but walking in the huge red light district of Angeles City, which is known as the sex city of the country, is still an experience.

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Fieldwork 2010: Moscow (2): a bloody romance

Published March 9, 2010

In part 5 of the fieldwork 2010 series, Laura van Deventer posts an update on her research in Moscow.

A few weeks ago I told you about my arrival, getting settled and first contacts with the ‘N’. Some of you have inquired about this mysterious group – who are they, what am I doing here? Although I can answer the second question, and will try to do so in this post, I will not disclose what group it is I am doing research among. This is for security reasons. The ‘N’ have received some harsh treatment in the past and me mixing with them and gathering data about that, well, I’m just not quite sure if the authorities applaud that. Once I’m back in April, I’ll make it public, promised!

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A new approach to Human Security

Published March 5, 2010

Yesterday, members of our department and Thomas H. Eriksen (Oslo University) presented their new book A World of Insecurity. This collection of essays is the result of years of fruitful cooperation and debate in the context of the department’s research programme, Constructing Human Security in a Globalizing World (CONSEC), and it provides a captivating sample of the research carried out by our staff.

The concept of Human Security was introduced by the UN Development Programme in 1994, in order to expand the scope of development work and research. Human Security was defined as ‘freedom from want and freedom from fear’. This books draws on a different approach that includes subjective and existential dimensions in an area which has been dominated by quantitative and ‘objective’ measurements of well-being.

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Fieldwork 2010: “I felt like a brugklasser (freshman) all over again!”

Published March 2, 2010

Francien Barske

In part 4 of the fieldwork 2010 series, Francien Barske tells us how it is to go back to highschool…

Over the past seven weeks, I have been researching Hyves misuse and online identity forming among young adolescents in two Dutch high schools, one in Amsterdam and one in Limburg. How does the social network site Hyves influence identity forming of young adolescents in the Netherlands and how do adolescents use Hyves-pages for creating new (online) relationships or misuse it as a tool for e-bullying? Not the most common research topic when thinking of Social & Cultural Anthropology, however, very ‘hot’ at the moment and not boring at all!

The first days of my research were, of course, terrifying, even though I am staying in the Netherlands, I felt like a stranger.

Fieldwork 2010: Right around the corner…

Published February 22, 2010

In part 3 of the Fieldwork 2010 series Master’s student Katie Rabar tells us about her first impressions as a researcher of asylum seekers in Holland.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve found in finding a research site is that I only speak one language fluently. For me that’s English, and I chose to conduct my research here in the Netherlands, in Noord Holland, looking at how asylum seekers experience and construct ‘home’. I speak only a tiny bit of Dutch and I’ve sat through hours of classes at my fieldsite where every language was being spoken but English. This means putting into practice all the language skills I have acquired growing up, and I am able to understand a variety of languages with some proficiency but responding… well, not so easy.

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Category: English posts