Methods

Marta Vilar Rosales
(University of Lisbon)

This session will ask to what extent perspectives on the materiality of (forced) migration require specific methodological, but also ethical, approaches in order to produce new and multifaceted social and personal insights into the complex field of everyday human–thing relations. We want to explore the (often not obvious) possibilities of material inscriptions and traces entailed in practical relations to things. But we are also interested in the pitfalls and ethical dilemmas faced by ethnographers who study such precarious and tense fields.

Forced migration is characterized by the fact that many individuals have lost or left behind most of their belongings. People in such circumstances, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, need to develop new ways of living – a process that requires fundamental renegotiations of ties to people and material objects. Thus, the approaches we seek to discuss in this panel must be able to bring to light different ways of relating to things (familial, spatial, temporal, etc.) – regardless of whether they are at hand or out of reach.

Keynote
Marta Vilar Rosales

Discussant
Sarah Mallet
(Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)

Chair
Antonie Fuhse
(University of Göttingen)

Convenor
Friedemann Yi-Neumann
(University of Göttingen)

Contributors
Elena Höpfner
Rachel Barber
John Doering-White
Friedemann Yi-Neumann