PlatForum

Introduction to the Theme

2021-03-03T16:14:39-08:00

Through a Lens of Connection

2021-03-03T16:20:55-08:00

A paradigm shift within academia, and visual anthropology in particular, calls researchers to attune their lenses of human connection—vis-à-vis their digital lens and epistemologies. This paper will argue the potential of contemporary visual anthropology—employed as a community-based research methodology, form of knowledge mobilisation, and pedagogical tool—to challenge hegemonic asymmetrical power dynamics in dominant discourse and praxis. Through personal anecdotes conducting participatory research alongside counterparts in Peru and Panama, I will illuminate the ways in which applied visual anthropology bridges academic-public divides and cultivates intentional relations through its transdisciplinary, collaborative, and transformative agendas.

In the Absence of Blood: Forming Kinship Ties Through Religious Belief

2021-03-03T16:24:09-08:00

This is a personal reflection essay on my mother’s experiences growing up with her foster mother and her biological mother. The relationship between mother and daughter challenge normative ideas of how maternal love is formed and understood. I first wrote this essay for my undergraduate course on kinship where I wanted to explore how larger social structures and beliefs can influence kinship ties between mother and child. I write this essay to reflect on the emotional labour involved as my mother navigated the social intricacies of her relationships with both of her mothers.

Enhancing the Call of Place and Entangling Identities: A Braiding of Materials, Media, and Infrastructures to Place and Being

2021-03-03T17:14:44-08:00

Life is experienced in place. It is grounded, and we are connected through our experiences being grounded together in place. The call of place brings people (humans and more-than-humans) into a relational coexistence through sharing our interactions, and by being together in places. In exploring how meaningful cultural understanding between Indigenous land defenders and settler-descended activists can occur in these sites of coexistence, this paper examines how cultural entanglement that occurs through the shared experience in place can be enhanced through relationships to materials, media, and infrastructure. By evaluating if these different forms can enhance place’s call beyond its physical location, materials, media, and “infrastructure” can each be understood as a braiding of multivocal meanings capable of supporting the alteration of European worldviews to be more relational in a meaningful way that supports Indigenous resurgence.

Tree Climbing and the Locomotive Connection Between Past and Present Hominins

2021-03-03T18:41:31-08:00

Bipedalism is considered one of the defining traits of past hominins and modern humans. It has long been assumed that the adaptation to bipedal locomotion came at the cost of tree climbing ability. Recent studies are showing that contemporary humans are still capable of tree climbing to acquire resources. The results of these studies suggest that tree climbing remained an important form of locomotion for certain species of past hominins and certain groups of humans today. In this way, tree climbing could represent a connection between humans in the present and to hominins in the past.

Using Sociality to Manage Health Amongst Women Experiencing Homelessness

2021-03-03T17:56:55-08:00

This research combines non-participant observation, a focus group, and semi-structured interviews with both residents and staff at a shelter open to cisgender women, families, and trans and non-binary individuals. The shelter, Valdridge House, is in a medium-sized city in Southern Ontario. This research explores how women experiencing homelessness manage their health through sociality within the shelter space. Adapting to the perceived inaccessibility of the healthcare system, residents use sociality to narrate their mental health and trauma, placing blame on their environment rather than themselves for their situation. Here, they create support amongst residents without any perceived judgement.

Ebola Virus Epidemic in West AFrica in 2014: Senegal Standing the Test of Global Health Diplomacy

2021-03-03T18:10:26-08:00

This paper is the culmination of a project done in the context of a diplomacy and global health seminar with the Global Health Center (Graduate Institute) of Geneva on the case of Ebola contamination in Senegal. This project allowed the understanding of the magnitude of the epidemic in West Africa in 2014 with its international implications. Moreover, this project was a personal challenge to lead this reflection through the twofold lens of anthropology and diplomacy in global health, a subject that raises new questions about health as a central issue of human existence. As Dominique Kerouedan (2013) recalls through the introduction to the colloque international of the Collège de France:
     La santé est un thème de politique étrangère et de
     diplomatie, en ce qu’elle est devenue dans les relations
     internationales, plus précisément au fil du temps, un
     paramètre de pouvoir, d’influence, de sécurité, de paix, de
     commerce, voire un vecteur de positions géopolitiques ou
     même idéologiques, pour des Etats cherchant à gagner en
     importance politique à l’échelle mondiale.

Welborne, B.C., Westfall, A.L., Russell, O.C. and Tobin, S.A. 2018. The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 216 pages.

2021-03-03T18:17:24-08:00