MATERIAL PROTESTS: A CONTRIBUTION FROM THE CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY OF THINGS

Maria Florencia Blanco Esmoris; María Jazmín Ohanian

doi:10.23858/ethp.2022.43.3004

Published: 22022-12-30 — Updated on 2023-01-26

Vol. 43 (2022)

MATERIAL PROTESTS

Maria Florencia Blanco Esmoris , Prof. María Jazmín Ohanian

Ethnologia Polona

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.23858/ethp.2022.43.3004

Abstract

This article traces and exposes the material dimension of contemporary protests. In this piece, we consider protest as a particular type of human communication that gains intelligibility in specific social situations that are embodied in objects. This has led us to (re)think (about) the dialogue which exists between anthropology and communication in light of the role of material culture. We read and review these experiences from epistemological and theoretical frameworks of protest studies in Argentina and reconstruct social situations arising from our joint work developed at the research group Cosas Cotidianas (CoCo), which we co-coordinate, dedicated to analysing, from an ethnographic perspective, how objects ‘participate’ in social life. Our paper is structured into 3 parts. Firstly, an analysis of anthropology and communication is undertaken followed by protest(s) as social situations and finally, understanding protest through objects. We present how pots (in Spanish cacerolas) in Latin America, umbrellas in Hong Kong and waistcoats in Paris (France) appear as objects of protest in countries of the global south and north. The ‘cultural biography of things’ is proposed as a conceptual framework for our analysis

Keywords:

Protests, social situation, objects, anthropology, communication

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Blanco Esmoris, M. F., & Ohanian, M. J. (2023). MATERIAL PROTESTS: A CONTRIBUTION FROM THE CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY OF THINGS. Ethnologia Polona, 43. https://doi.org/10.23858/ethp.2022.43.3004

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Arrueta, Cesar. 2012. “Discusiones acerca de la interdisciplina en comunicación. Aportes para la especificidad disciplinar.” Revista Pensar. Epistemología y Ciencias Sociales (7): 1–17.
Google Scholar

Baudrillard, Jean. 1975. El sistema de los objetos. Ciudad de México: Siglo XXI.
Google Scholar

Boas, Franz. 1897. “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians.” Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1895: 311–738.
Google Scholar

Boyer, Pierre; Thomas Delemotte; Germain Gauthier; Vincent Rollet; and Benoit Schmutz. 2019. “Lesdéterminants de la mobilisation des ˝gilets jaunes˝.” Série des Documents de Travail – CREST (06): 1–30. http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2019-06.pdf
Google Scholar

Caggiano, Sergio and María Graciela Rodríguez. 2008. “Comunicación y Antropología: continuar el diálogo.” Paper presented at the IX Argentine Congress of Social Anthropology. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences – Universidad Nacional de Misiones, Posadas.
Google Scholar

Cefai, Daniel. 2012 [2002]. “¿Qué es una arena pública? Algunas pautas para un acercamiento pragmático.” In Cefaï, Daniel and Gusfield, Joseph. La herencia del pragmatismo: Conflictos de urbanidad y pruebas de civismo. La Tour D’aiges: Editions de L’Aube.
Google Scholar

Cervio, Ana Lucía y Anvy Guzman Romero. 2017. “Los recursos expresivos en la protesta social. El caso del “acampe villero” en Buenos Aires.” Iberofórum. Revista de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Iberoamericana 12(23): 36–64.
Google Scholar

Cross, Jamie. 2003. “Anthropology and the Anarchists: Culture, Power, and Practice in Militant Anti-Capitalist Protests.” Theomai. Red Internacional de Estudios sobre Sociedad, Naturaleza y Desarrollo (7). https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/124/12400708.pdf
Google Scholar

Escobar, Arturo. 1992. “Culture, Practice and Politics: Anthropology and the Study of Social Movements.” Critique of Anthropology, 12: 395–432. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X9201200402
Google Scholar

Geertz, Clifford. 1987. La Interpretación de las culturas. Barcelona: Gedisa.
Google Scholar

Gibb, Robert. 2002. “Toward an Anthropology of Social Movements”, Journal des anthropologues [En ligne], 85–86, consulté le 20 janvier 2022. https://doi.org/10.4000/jda.2904
Google Scholar

Gluckman, Max. 1940. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Bantu Studies, 12: 1–30.
Google Scholar

Godelier, Maurice. 1998. El enigma del don. Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidós.
Google Scholar

Gonzalez Villarruel, Alejandro. 2010 “La vida social de los objetos etnográficos y su desalmada mercantilización”. Alteridades [online] 20 (40): 65–76.
Google Scholar

Ismangil, Milan and Lee Maggy 2021. “Protests in Hong Kong during the Covid-19 pandemic”. Crime Media Culture. Vol. 17(1) 17–20. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1741659020946229
Google Scholar

Jasper, James. 2011. Emotions and Social Movements: Twenty Years of Theory and Research, Annual Review of Sociology, 37(1), 285–303. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150015
Google Scholar

Kammerer, María Luján and María Victoria Sánchez Roncero. 2005. “El cacerolazo como nueva forma de expresión popular.” Question 1(6): w/n.
Google Scholar

Kluckhohn, Clyde. 1960. Paper prepared for the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Burg Wartenstein Symposium (no. 13), “Comparative Aspects of Human Communication,” held in Austria, https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1961.63.5.02a00010
Google Scholar

Knapp, Mark. 1997. La comunicación no verbal. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Paidós.
Google Scholar

Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process” In Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Leach, Edmund. 1977. “Culture and Communication. The logic by which symbols are connected. An introduction to the use of structuralist analysis in social anthropology”, Philosophy and Rhetoric 10 (3): 205–207.
Google Scholar

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1951. “Language and the analysis of social laws.” American Anthropologist 53: 155–63.
Google Scholar

Longoni, Ana. 2010. “Arte y Política. Políticas visuales del movimiento de derechos humanos desde la última dictadura: fotos, siluetas y escraches.” Aletheia: Revista de la Maestría en Historia y Memoria de la FaHCE 1 (1): 1–23.
Google Scholar

Longoni, Ana. 2014. “Coming out of Silence: Art and Politics in Latin America from the 1960s to the 1980s.” Art Journal 72 (2): 14–19.
Google Scholar

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1987. Los argonautas del Pacífico Occidental. Barcelona: Península.
Google Scholar

Morozov, Andrew, Sergei Petrovskii, and Sergey Gavrilets. 2019. “The Yellow Vests Movement – a Case of Long Transient Dynamics?” SocArXiv. Doi: 10.31235/osf.io/tpyux.
Google Scholar

Ngai, Pun. 2020. “Reflecting on Hong Kong protests in 2019–2020”. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10 (2): 333–338. https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%205420-6420/Pun-Reflecting%20on%20Hong%20Kong%20Protests.pdf
Google Scholar

Pereiro, Julio. 2019. “Sin palabras: génesis y desarrollos de los estudios sobre la comunicación no verbal.” Question 1(64): w/n https://doi.org/10.24215/16696581e205
Google Scholar

Schuster, Federico and Sebastian Pereyra. 2001. “La protesta social en la Argentina democrática. Balance y perspectivas de una forma de acción política.” In La protesta social en Argentina. Transformaciones económicas y crisis social en el interior del país, edited by Giarraca, Norma et al, 41–63. Buenos Aires: Editorial Alianza.
Google Scholar

Pereyra, Sebastian. 2013. “Procesos de movilización y movimientos sociales desde la transición a la democracia.” Observatorio Latinoamericano (12): 235–253.
Google Scholar

Romanutti, María Virginia. 2012. “Identidad y protesta social: Contribuciones al estudio de su relación.” Andamios 9(20): 259–274.
Google Scholar

Sapir, Edward. 1929. “The status of linguistics as a science.” Language Vol. 5 (4): 207–214
Google Scholar

Soar, Katy and Paul-François Tremlett. 2017. “Protest objects: bricolage, performance and counter-archaeology.” World Archaeology 49(4): 423–434. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2017.1350600
Google Scholar

Svampa, Maristella and Pablo Stefanoni (eds.). 2007. Memoria, Insurgencias y Movimientos Sociales. Buenos Aires: Ed. El Colectivo
Google Scholar

Telechea, Roxana. 2006. “Historia de los cacerolazos: 1982–2001.” Razón y Revolución (16): 141–184.
Google Scholar

Tilly, Charles. 1995. “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834.” In Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, compiled by Traugott, Mark, 15–42. Durham: Duke University Press.
Google Scholar

Weiner, Annette. 1976. Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange. Austin: The University of Texas Press.
Google Scholar

Werner, Carlota and Johanna Sunder-Plassmann. 2014. “Hacked Protest Objects”. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 28th, 2014. https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/designandviolence/hacked-protest-objects-anon/?fbclid=IwAR0pJkYt18LyMzVcjb_jDpQcGTF8AUFS5e5Y-1fRW8umaB7RiZ0eO489-Gsg
Google Scholar

Maria Florencia Blanco Esmoris

flor.blancoesmoris@gmail.com

Affiliation:

CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIONES SOCIALES, CONSEJO NACIONAL DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS Y TÉCNICAS, INSTITUTO DE DESARROLLO ECONÓMICO Y SOCIAL Argentina

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

María Florencia Blanco Esmoris holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Institute for High Social Studies (IDAES) of the National University of San Martin (UNSAM). She has a Bachelor's degree in Sociology from the same institution where she also serves as Assistant Professor in Anthropology. In addition, she is a Professor in Anthropology at Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). She is affiliated to the Institute of Economic and Social Development -Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social (IDES)-. Florencia co-coordinates a research related to daily lives and materiality with María Jazmín Ohanian and is also a member of research groups connected to housing studies, intimacy and urbanism at IDES and IDAES-UNSAM. Find her on twitter: @florabsas

Prof. María Jazmín Ohanian

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2239-8796

Affiliation:

CENTRO DE INVESTIGACIONES SOCIALES, CONSEJO NACIONAL DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS Y TÉCNICAS, INSTITUTO DE DESARROLLO ECONÓMICO Y SOCIAL Argentina

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

María Jazmín Ohanian is an anthropologist (UBA), Master in sociology of culture and cultural analysis (IDAES-UNSAM), and she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology (IDAES-UNSAM). She is a fellow from the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) at the Center for Social Research (CIS) / Institute of Economic and Social Development (IDES) where she co-coordinates with María Florencia Blanco Esmoris the study group called "Cosas cotidianas" (Material Culture). She is also part of the research project "Mar de Guerra. Estudios sobre experiencias de soberanía en el conflicto anglo- argentino de 1982" (Sea of War. Studies on experiences of sovereignty in the Anglo-Argentinean conflict of 1982). Her current doctoral research topic deals with the ethnographic analysis of the technical learning experience during the training of Argentine Navy NCOs at the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) and the current NCO School (ESSA).